Guitar Center Lessons Associate reviews

2.5

27% would recommend to a friend

(92 total reviews)
avatar

Gabe Dalporto

5% approve of CEO

4% positive business outlook

Lessons Associate employees have rated Guitar Center with 2.5 out of 5 stars, based on 92 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Lessons Associate professionals have an average working experience there. Guitar Center is rated 29% below average by Lessons Associate professionals compared to other employers within the Retail & Wholesale industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

92 reviews
5.0
Jun 29, 2025

Lessons Lead

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Really great atmosphere, loved working with the music community!

Cons

Work/life balance got a bit difficult at times

2.0
May 16, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Employee discount - Good relationships with coworkers - Good relationships with lessons customers

Cons

The company is just so poorly managed from the top down. I lost count of how many new things were promised by corporate in order to streamline the lessons business and make my job significantly easier that simply never happened. The weekly conference calls make the poor management glaringly obvious - "good job you made number go up! everyone look at number and also make number go up! yay big number!" - That is pretty much the intelligence level you can expect from upper management. Aside from my part of the business, which improved dramatically because I was good at it, literally nothing else improved in the 2 years that I worked there. Note that if you have a degree in anything, no one will bat an eye. They do not value intelligence, only your ability to do grunt work, make numbers look good, and sell insurance plans and credit cards. It's just sad, Guitar Center wants to do it all--guitars, drums, keyboards, pro audio, DJ, production, lessons, repairs, rentals, used & vintage--but they will never be able to cover all these areas successfully as long as they keep cutting labor and offloading part time responsibilities to full time managers. Obviously the pay is laughable, this is retail so don't expect anything competitive. I was there for the experience, and I guess it was cool for a while. But whenever I talked to people with regular jobs, they were shocked at my workload and how stressed I was all the time.

3.0
Mar 24, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

As a lessons instructor you are generally able to be pretty independent. You won't have anyone breathing down your neck, but you won't have anything in the way of support. Your cash flow is directly tied to how motivated your lessons lead is, which mine was not at all motivated. Thus, he would rather hire another instructor, than give you more students. You have to remind him that you work a job, in order to make money to live, and then he might remember to get you students. This is a store specific issue, and overall my experience was decent.

Cons

as stated before, scheduling difficulties were the con

Viewing 10 - 12 of 92 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,801 Guitar Center reviews submitted anonymously by Guitar Center employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Guitar Center is right for you.