Pros
Co-workers and customers. You get to sell cool stuff.
Cons
First let me address my title. I happen to know that corporate clowns are trying to stack the deck, so to speak, on their reviews by putting very corporately worded junk like "challenging" and other such junk, and giving stellar 4-5 star rating with positive reviews in "Opportunities", "Compensation", "Outlook", "Opinion of CEO" and so forth. Nobody in their right mind would agree that Mr. Webb is a good CEO, and the compensation is a joke. I was wrongfully terminated after a decade of loyal service; based completely on lies and then they had the nerve to appeal my unemployment insurance (which after speaking to multiple former employees, they do that to everybody), which they lost. The fact is, they are purposely weeding out the long time vets to both save on money (because we made the most) and to get rid of people that know what the company used to be like. They are only interested in paying the very least in wages. They figure if they get rid of the vets that sell the most, those sells will still happen, but spread out among more sales people that may not reach that idiotic sales number to make any sort of commission. Before I was so kindly dismissed, I calculated that in order for me to make what I USED to make under my old pay before April 1st (April Fool's Day, mind you) and the restructure of the job positions and pay, I'd have to sell roughly $70,000 in sales a month, when my average was around $50,000. So basically, they made it incredibly difficult for me to get what I was making before. In their April restructure, I estimate over 900 hard working Assistant Managers were effectively "demoted" to sales person without cause because they decided to eliminate the position. I know for a fact that they wrongfully terminated quite a few veterans in order to save money. I've gone and scouted various Guitar Center stores, and it seems it's all new faces these days. They sacrificed customer service and loyal employees to line the pockets of Ares exec's and upper management types, like Mr. Webb. When the company was being led by the previous CEO, Mike Pratt, he was very open with improving the employee experience and compensation. He had this idea called "Vision 2020", which basically was his vision for GC to be the place to work by the year 2020. Upon his replacement by Mr. Webb, one of the very first things they did was have a conference call with store GM's and told them to immediately remove and "destroy" the "Vision 2020" posters. Kinda fishy. To sum up....DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY. They are ONLY in it for the sake of Ares and upper management. They even went as far as either dismissing company founders/pioneers or demoting them to a far lower position. Just another company plagued by corporate GREED.