Pros
Discount, benefits (FT employees only), coworkers, being connected with local music, and pretty fun for an entry-level job. Secretly a sales job, but fun once you find your groove. You can move up fast but I’d recommend short term only to get experience. I gained so much music gear knowledge for being there so long. It was also cool learning about new products coming out before anyone else!
Cons
There are SO many downsides to working at GC that the list is endless. Low pay, low staffing, poor treatment from corporate employees to store employees, unrealistic expectations from corporate, zero formal training, and no long term incentives for employees. Everything that makes the job horrible is due to the decisions made at a corporate level rather than a store level. Any former GC employee would tell you the same. I had been an employee for many years and I had so much fun at the start, but year after year they made worse and worse decisions that made the job unbearable. ADVICE. Save money BEFORE working there, I recommend you stay as a part-time employee, take advantage of the discount for 1-2 years and leave! Two stories I would like to share with you, if you want details. 1. After GC had it’s record breaking profits in 2021, they decided to cut almost 50-80% of labor in their stores. I kid you not, I recall of a store that had 10 part time sales people, get cut down to 2 part time sales people. They had guitar techs and lessons instructors ringing customers up because no one else was there. Perhaps you would say it’s because we are in a recession and they were making the necessary cuts. They revealed that Salesforce of all things, would be implemented in the stores at this time. For those that don’t know, Salesforce can run $175-$300 per month for each user. They expected gutted stores to call a 50+ customers for each employee as a call campaign when we had lines going out the door. I always liked calling customers and inviting them in but come on GC read the room, they rolled out a call center tool for a retail store that no one had time to use! They even bragged saying how “Salesforce will make it so we can hire people who aren’t musicians!” because of the generated gear suggestions the CRM tool was capable of. Probably because at this point they knew they can’t keep their talent, and rather than solve the problem, they want to rid customers of the one experience they are looking for at a GC. As a result, Store Managers and others quit by the troves. I literally received 3-5 emails PER DAY about new Store Manager opportunities at other GCs all over the country. Twas a dark time and somehow stayed even though the writing was on the wall. 2. My personal experience during the event that I mentioned, was a strange one. Normally, we should have been up against 2020 sales, but since 2020 was so bad, we were up against 2019 sales goals which felt unbeatable. In 2021 my store hit maximum bonus payouts for the ENTIRE year. I was so proud of myself and my team, I felt so accomplished because everyone made decent money. But at the start of 2022, they cut 50% of my labor, and increased my goals by 30% for the year. While other stores who performed similar to us, were given 1-10% comp. Online you have multiple sources with different opinions on what healthy growth looks like, but 30% is pushing way beyond anything you’ll come across. I couldn’t help but feel this was a predatory ploy to earn back the money they lost from paying me out. This and many other similar experiences from GC ultimately made me decide to leave my once beloved job.
