Musicians Friend

Musician's Friend is an interesting company to work for and if you play music at all, especially rock band combo instruments like guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, or drums it's a great place to network, meet other musician's, talk about the things you love with both customers and co-workers. That's both the best thing and the worst thing about the job. 

It's a passion based retail sales industry and people are incredibly passionate about the things they love. That means things can become very emotionally heated at times and customers can often be very difficult when they call to ask questions about products or have a problem with a product or a problem with company policy, product availability or the level of knowledge the sales person they are dealing with has. 

Most of Musician's Friend customers are guitar players with a very special way of seeing the world around them. The other customers are also a blended type of musician From a-z you could talk to a musician who plays an Alto Saxophone to a musician who prefers the Zither.  You could speak to a total expert that knows way more than you do or an absolute novice that totally relies on you to be the expert. If you understand this going into the job, you can learn a lot about how to communicate with people from all over the country and the world from a variety of cultures and sub-cultures.

The employees at Musician's are some of the sweetest people I have ever met, but the management and office staff have created a toxic environment in this company. Much of this is due to Guitar Center corporate management standards. There is an incredibly restrictive point system, disregard for employee happiness, and a philosophy in practice of getting the most work out of an employee for as little compensation as possible. Upward movement within the company is very difficult because there is a glass ceiling within each department which should cross reference. The conveyor system they have is incredibly loud in a warehouse with metal roofing and cement flooring causing every employee I knew(aside from repairs who are in an isolated section which used to be the store front) have elevated tinnitus, which is completely ignored by upper management and office staff. There is minimal climate control with open dock doors and typically generator exhaust pouring into the warehouse by the dock doors.  Overall a very unhealthy and toxic place to work. There are supervisors and lower level managers doing the best they can and attempting to improve the work environment in increments, but big changes should be coming from upper management, which it has not. Everyone I knew with few exceptions has quit. I was in the Returns department, but frequently was exported to other shipping and receiving departments as well as repairs.

Musician's Friend overall is a fantastic place to work especially if you're passionate about music or if you happen to be a musician yourself. Even if you don't play an instrument, the training is very thorough, and you are constantly learning about different products and instrumentation.

The people who work here are awesome! They're very friendly and nice. A lot of long-term friendships are made within the company throughout all departments.

The hardest part about this job is having a full call queue and taking call after call with no break in between, but that can be expected of any call center.

The management is 2/5 stars because when policies change, the communication throughout the hierarchy of management doesn't go through smoothly all the time, and as a rep you're left wondering what's going on around you as your bosses/supervisors tell you a variety of different things.

The most enjoyable part of the job is being able to sit through vendor trainings and see what's coming out in the music industry in terms of new products. There are also plenty of opportunities for advancements and raises if you're a passionate and driven employee.

Do not work here unless it is a last resort or temporary job. To start, they expect you to be doing A+ work with computers that are barely working and crash multiple times a day. The highest manager promised us new computers, but it never happened and he pretends he never said it. If you try to give feedback to upper management, they just get defensive and do not listen to what you say. The scheduling department is awful and will 100% mess up your schedule at least once a week. When I started, I got 3 weeks of training, and now new employees get only a FEW DAYS. No new employees know what they are doing when they get on the phones and there is a lack of management to help them. If you are in any sort of "specialty" department that is not sales, you are deemed as less important, even though you keep things running, and have to apply, and interview for a specialty department. I kept waiting for this place to get better and it just kept getting worse and worse.

There are many different departments at MF. A lot of the work is monotonous and most of it is physical. There's a good vibe here and that is the biggest plus. The negative is pay rises. Regardless of how hard you work, their performance based raises aren't much. So it doesn't really pay off to stick around here. There isn't much room for advancement. The lead paybump is weak, sup is ok, but then you're back to small raises. There's a lot of OT chances, it's largely drama free, they've been safe about covid, and they have the typical benefits of working for a big company
-good insurance
-set hours
-work standards and high safety
-clear attendance policies 
-slightly competitive starting pay

Its a good place to work for a while but not a long time. 

As a call center goes this is without a doubt one of the less stressful ones in the Salt Lake area as far as the calls go. Unfortunately most people who have worked here will agree that everything from HR, to management, to even building maintenance is just straight failing. You will be told you are appreciated as an employee and then every act of disregarding you as a human being will follow. Don't expect a family vibe here, these are people only concerned with their bottom line and pushing sales. If you are not meeting their expectations you will be fired on whatever extreme circumstance they can muster up to avoid unemployment insurance. Some of the reps who tolerate the situation are amazing but most find better after a while, although they usually leave with a bad taste in their mouth sadly.

A fun, pretty laid-back environment while still keeping busy. The best part is being able to use their loaded practice room. It had everything from guitars, electronic drums to recording equipment and DJ gear, etc. Pretty much everything they sell in their catelogue you could see in there. Was opportunities for prizes and bonuses for selling certain amounts and certain promotional gear.

Just like in all call centers, you do sit down all day. Although, they don't mind if you stand up as long as you don't disturb someone next to you on the phone.

Your breaks are based on if there's a spot on the whiteboard or not. Helps people who prefer to be more self-contained at work yet encourages good time management.

Working in the KCDC equates to juggling office politics, and doing so for pennies. The culture there is awful, with the reigning king and queen keeping their noses in everything and cultivating a hostile work environment by doing so. Rather than rewarding performers, they reward anyone who is willing to 'play the game' and throw others under the bus for their personal gain. They ensure that everyone knows they are not valued or appreciated, but should make work their number one priority anyhow. After all, we're all so lucky to have jobs in this economy. All of that said, some of the support staff there are fantastic to work with if you can deal with the rest of it, and the employee discount is a great deal for musicians!

One of the hardest things to do is to get a day off even if you planed something 3-4 months ahead of time. they always tell you ( you can switch or trade with anyone) No one wants to pick up hours. May days of working 8-10 hrs a day and they push there warranty on the sales reps very hard and if you are unable to make quota, you will get a write up. My coach was amazing and didn't always agree with everything from cooperate which made it easier on our team. The biggest complaint was being on the phone all day and half the day you were getting yelled at because someone messed up a order or lied about how long a product would take getting to there location or the item was on back-ordered and the rep didn't tell the customer.

The management here sees you as just cogs in a machine. they will change your "set" hours on a whim, and if the hours don't work then you're gone. The company also works online sales for Guitar Center, which is a mess, having to balance the two, and work alongside stores. The Guitar Center stores are all about stealing sales and placing blame on the customer.You can also get hired here with literally no music experience, meaning if you as a customer call in, the agent that picks up may or may not know anything and are just BSing it. In my time here,my job description had changed 3 times, had 3 different sets of hours, and 2 different commission structures.There's a reason Musician's Friend has seen its sales lower over the years, and the company refuses to fix it

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