i work at a guitar center and have been for nearly 2 years. retail is hell and i have stories. open to answer questions or kill myself if anyone wants, i figure someone might give a shit. i just got off of work and im drunk.anyone else work at a gc or other music retailer? are first generation indian immigrants in their 50s also the worst fucking customers or is it just my store
>>129294243is it true sometimes you guys dump guitars in the dumpster around back? Can I have them?
>>129294363yes, we do this sometimes.theres really only a few reasons why we have guitars that we trash:1. whoever gave it to us wanted to donate it (if its shit we just smash it and throw it away, if its worth anything then any employee gets dibs, and if its worth a lot then we retail it)2. its broken and not worth repairing3. it isnt in our inventory, has no record of ever entering the store, and is just taking up space.basically most of what gets trashed is just things that would be a liability to sell (busted, usually, but also if an acoustic has a peeling bridge). if you want one i would just ask. this happens somewhat rarely (usually like no more than once a month tops) so dont get your hopes up. they're also almost always dogshit lol but free at least.
>>129294243Whats the best guitar you have tried? Or amp.
Do you play keys?
What is the most common riff people bust out when trying guitars? I know it's not le waynes world stairway to heaven.
>>129294437best guitar ive ever played was a Suhr telecaster. easily the nicest neck ive ever felt, and completely blows Fender the fuck out of the water.there was also a squier thinline that we bought in as a secondhand instrument, and the neck was insanely smooth. i nearly bought it but i was saving up for a trip to visit my parents during the holidays and didnt want to spend the money.for amps? the best clean amp is a roland jazz chorus. any time you think you want a fender tone you actually want a jazz chorus. for metal, either a 5150 or a mesa boogie dual rectifier. anything in between is pretty much any two rock.
>>129294461yeah, but mostly just chords. im good at keys when it comes to theory but for actual playing? dogshit lol
>>129294480suprisingly there really isn't one song in general, but what i've found is that people will sit down and play a "funny guitar center no-no song" and then immediately follow it by playing a different song. the second song they play is the actually annoying one.first song choice is usually the ones you'd imagine like stairway to heaven or enter sandman or smoke on the water or some other reddit humor shit, and then they play something like everlong or a different metallica song or a nirvana song that isn't smells like teen spirit.most people usually play some blues licks though. or they try to be impressive and shred a pentatonic scale.
>>129294537How did I know blues and pentatonic licks would be the next thing lmao not that I'd do any different.
>>129294243how much of an employee discount does GC offer?
>>129294243I applied there and got rejected despite tons of music store and venue experience. They must want total noobs? Or more corporate types.>>129294499>roland jazz chorusI'll check that out because I have had one of the roland micro cubes for years and it's gotten a lot of use
>>129294715the employee discount is 10% + whatever the store paid for it (+ tax). so for things like amps and guitars, the store usually marks those up about 40%, so we get it effectively 30% off. cables are by far the cheapest. theyre usually marked up around 95%, so most of my cables cost less than $6 after taxwe get no discounts on used gear since employees determine that pricing.there's also this thing called GAIN that gc offers. it basically lets you order directly from the manufacturer. so now something that costs 400 usually gets marked down to like 150-200. i know that ableton is 50% off there as well.
>>129294243every time I've ever been to GC. There's always some manager there who's a wannabe rock star stuck in the 80s with frizzed out hair. Except he's got his shit together enough to be a guitar center manager at least. But he's never letting go of the dream Also as seen in the pick of destinyperfect example
>>129294748if youve been to a gc in the last few years, youll probably notice that we are incredibly understaffed. at my location we usually operate with only 2 or 3 people. since employees earn commission, neither salespeople or corporate want a single extra person on the sales floor. i think they're fucking morons for this because it means customers are waiting over 10 minutes in line just to buy strings. this is more likely than not why you haven't heard back. i also know that my store is currently "hiring" according to the website but we're really not (this is evil scum behavior imo). generally we're looking for salespeople or multi-knowledgable people, so if you only know about one kind of instrument then that will slim your chances.sorry, at this point im just rambling. tldr is that you probably werent hired because the store was already full, but if you went in for an interview and didnt hear back then its probably because they didnt think you would make for a good salesperson.
>>129294814every gc manager is one of three things:1. former manager from a different, offensively unrelated retailer (like macys or bevmo)2. musician who didnt quite make the cut3. "rise through the ranks" managerthey all suck in their own ways. the manager from another mother will basically just be an extension of corporate, so there's no actual banter or soul. the store will run better but it will be less fun and the best coworkers get fired.the failed musician will probably be the best manager to work with but my god the store will fall to shit. they are always "secretly" anti corporate so when corporate tells them how to fix their shit, they wont listen. usually senior staff will run the store better than them.the "rise through the ranks" guy is usually an old salesman who stayed with GC for 5 years or so. theyre usually good with working with the actual staff but will immediately turn against them if corporate demands it. it will feel evil (and it kind of is).
>>129294825It wasn't any skill issue, I play a bunch of instruments and DJ and had experience recording and doing live sound. applied online and got rejected online, like you said probably they have an ad but aren't really hiring probably to harvest my information. Anyway now that that company did that i'll make sure to only support local independent music stores.
>>129294870Learn piano
>>129294870>It wasn't any skill issuein that case, they might have had an internal hire (not common but not super duper rare). i dont know if GC harvests data from resumes. i wouldn't be insanely surprised but it doesn't seem on brand in the way that GC fucks over customers.if you do want to stick it to GC beyond just boycotting, there's a better plan.after every sale (if we have your phone number and email), we email the customer a satisfaction survey. these are the only reviews that the store or GC corporate read. in that survey, specifically mention corporate policy: understaffing, information grabbing, insurance selling, mostly understaffing tho. do NOT mention things that the store itself is expected to resolve like cleanliness or taking too much time. corporate will immediately push that onto managers and us salespeople. every store is expected to have at least a 90% customer satisfaction rating, so if you fill it out every time you buy something, then youll tank the score (most people don't fill it out).
Can I just get in the store and play Stairway to heaven to test a guitar
>>129294952I'm not buying shit there after they rejected me>>129294952>there's a better plan.>>129295101This>Can I just get in the store and play Stairway to heaven to test a guitar>>129294877I play keyboards but I could learn stairway to heaven on piano just to go in guitar centers and play it on different instruments
>>129294243How do I get the most money from a street buy? I dealth with some workers that do their best to get you what something is worth, the others are old guys like $20 bucks! Id love to shoot up the whole place. Nothing of value would be lost.
>>129295146so basically, we look at reverb and gc.com for used listings of whatever you're selling. then, we cut you 60% of that value.well, at least we used to.our ceo fully bought into the ai scam and now we are prompted to use a shitty webscraper that automatically calculates the price. it routinely fucks up (especially if there's a lot of used listings for it) and will suggest only giving the seller 50% of the sale.if you think you're getting shafted, ask to see the reverb listings for them to show you. we try to give 60%, but we are mandated by corporate to give no more than 67%.never sell on a weekend. if you try to sell to our story on a saturday or sunday when we're our busiest, we fucking hate you and will cut you a bad deal. we also fucking hate you if you are selling more than a few items at once. every item you sell to us requires around 10 minutes to deal with, so if you sell us 3 guitars, 2 pedals, and an amp, you now have taken an entire hour out of my shift. at this point we will just try to get done with pricing and buying.to make sure you're always getting the best you can get:1. come in on a weekday, right near opening time is best. sell as few items as possible at the same time2. ask to see what prices they're seeing while evaluating the price (or better yet just do the pricing yourself)3. calculate and make sure you're getting at least 60% of the value of the sale.
>>129294499>>129294748I had a JC40 before I last moved. Sounded amazing but made an annoying hiss when you weren't playing.I really want a cheap replacement because I'm tired of playing into my interface with headphones on.
