My trip to Guitar Center yesterday...

Didn't I read yesterday they filled for Bankruptcy?

 

I worked in a mom & pop music store for about six years. Monday through Saturday, open to close. Here is what I can tell you about what it's like to work in that kind of an environment:

• The first few months of working in a store are brutal. You are exposed to lots of loud guitars and drums all day long. Your ear ring a lot. You get irritable. There is no escape, unless it's your lunch break or you use the restroom.
• You acclimate after awhile. After a few months, you start to not notice the cacophony of noise that's around you all day long. It has become your new background sound, almost like listening to smooth jazz in an office setting.
• Nirvana, AC/DC, and Metallica become unbearable to listen to outside of work. You hear the same riffs played over and over by every Tom, Dick, and Harry that picks up an axe. The last thing you want to do is hear those same riffs on the radio outside of work.
• Every novice guitarist is a gear expert. No matter what facts or informed opinions you give these customers about the gear they are interested in, they seem to always know better. No exceptions.
• You are now a babysitter. You find that there are parents that drop off their teenagers for hours at a time. Upon closer evaluation, you realize that these parents are just ditching their kids so that they can go do other errands or have an early date night.
• A string or drum head breaks, but no one ever broke it. That's right. You'll find broken strings on the guitars and heads on drums, but you'll never find a customer that owns up to it. It's not like you would charge them for it anyway.
• Customers think you have the dream job. You don't. You thought you might have the dream job when accepted the job, but you quickly learn that your position is basically being a car salesman on a car lot with tons of loud cars and customers that don't know how to drive.

 

You would have been reading that everyday, for years, but this time it really happened.

 

Smoke on the Water! The guitar part on a bass, guitar or keys. That's what I remember. And Stairway on acoustics.

 

I could never stand going into Guitar Center stores. The noise was/is/may-be-for-a-while-longer unbearable. They never had any instruments in which I was interested anyway.

 

Having done two tours of duty in one myself, I will only add this. Gospel keyboard players think that music stores are places to meet and exchange ideas. "Show me dat chord you just played! What was that????"

It's the only thing more annoying than Nirvana guitar chords.


OK, never mind. That was a stupid thing to say. Nothing is more annoying than Nirvana.

 

Reorganization bankruptcy, so the doors remain open. Could one day indeed be bankruptcy-bankruptcy, and they could close low performing stores under the current bankruptcy-attempt-to-turnaround plan.

 

Never understood why people park themselves for more than 5 minutes trying out an amp, pedal or guitar. I know in 30 seconds if I'm interested still.

 

I've always wondered that myself. That and if people who work at music stores have a running tally of how many people show up and play "over played" riffs. I'm sure it all becomes white noise after a while haha.

 

I worked in an upscale music store for 13 m0nths one time................ouch.
We had a poster board on one wall with our favorite questions/statements from customers.
The top 3 were:
1) (over the phone) "How much are your guitars?"
2)"I need a pair of strings" "Ok..........which 2 out of the 6 would you like?"
3)"How come this guitar costs $3999.99 and this one costs $99.99?"

But my fave statement goes to the Pentecostal Church: "The Lord laid it on my heart to come down here and get this keyboard because you are going to donate it to the church!"

The funnest part was catching shoplifters. And that is a whole 'nother story.

 

There is always a line to get Into the Sunset store. Haven't been in there for almost a year .

I worked for GC in the late 90s. It is a brutal job. I can't recall how many times I heard Enter Sandman or Beautiful People. I worked
through one Christmas as a salesperson and transferred to operations shortly after. The next Christmas I found myself counting more cash in one day than I made in a year, and I had to leave. Not for the faint of heart.

 

The bass part to Smoke on the Water on a bass is pretty cool though!

 

The most insightful post ever at TB!

 

Yep, that about covers it.
B.

 

I’ve been advocating coin operated amps for years, but they still won’t listen to me.

 

I think that the executives that run G.C.'s advertisement division should seriously cut back on their advertisement budget. Maybe then they won't go bankrupt because they get so much free advertisement here.

 

I met two players in a music store a few years back who knew that the bass in that song didn’t start until sixteen bars in, after the guitar and after the drums. It was like encountering the Holy Grail! Well, not a lot like that, but I was surprised just the same.