OP - If you want a wrench, go to a hardware store.
Actually, what you do is call them first to see if they have it. You go if they say yes and you don't if they say no (they said no). At Guitar Center, yes apparently means "I have no fucking clue".
But maybe I'm being too hard on them. Perhaps it was a bit ridiculous of me to think that a guitar store that sells guitar-related accessories would stock a certain guitar-related accessory if I asked them on the phone and they said yes.
My point is that there are individual people responsible for the shitty-looking guitars, so blame them, not Guitar Center.
This would be like the CEO of McDonald's saying "Don't blame McDonald's if you constantly get pubic hairs in your food, blame the individual servers for scratching their crotches and not washing their hands". This wouldn't make sense because individual responsibility increases as you go up the corporate chain, not down. The corporate entity ultimately owns all the responsibility since it is made up by everyone who works there. The people higher up are responsible for not enforcing stricter sanitary standards. If you get a nugget shaped like a deformed chicken head, chances are you won't sue the cashier who sold it you.
All this talk of GC moments has made me recall some more instances. I'm going to vent them now.
One time my cousin and I went to Guitar Center to try out some Gibsons and a worker there was warm and friendly and helped take the guitars off the wall for us to test. When we were done, we gave the guitars back to someone else and decided to leave the store. The same guy stops us on our way out and asks when we were planning to buy one. I said we didn't know and he got all cold on us and said "oh okay" as if a girl he liked told him she was getting married. It may sound like I go there often, but these incidents make up like a half the times I've been to that store in the last 3 years.
This store really has deserved their notoriety for having condescending employees and clueless ones (people have made animations on this). I think the condescension comes from being overly eager to sell stuff since they get commission. I've often been in situations where they try to sell me stuff I don't need, and when I refuse to buy it, they act as if I'm making a dumb mistake. I was buying a used bass over the phone from an out-of-town Guitar Center, and the guy told me it would be extremely risky to ship the bass without me buying a $100 hard shell case to put it in. I said that lots of guitars are shipped safely without hard shell cases and large companies like Music Go Round do it all the time. He then completed the transaction with a shitty "you have no idea what you're doing" attitude as if I just asked him to ship me an egg in a large metal box. I ended up getting a well-padded beautiful SRX705 for a little over $300 so the dude was full of shit and he knew it. Why did he have such an attitude then? Anyways, the awesomeness of the bass made me forget the experience (until now of course).
However, they do have the best selection and prices in town (at least in my area), but that's because Mars Music and Brook Mays went down under. The only two big music stores I know of here is Mr. E's and Guitar Center. The closest local music store to me doesn't carry name brand gear, is twice as expensive for basic accessories like guitar strings, and is maybe a fifth the size of Guitar Center. The dude there is really nice and knowledgeable though, so I go there every once in awhile to get something. If the price and selection at my local store was even remotely competitive, I'd be going there all the time. Actually, I mostly get my stuff used on ebay or craiglist
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Look, I understand that no business is perfect. But in order for any to succeed, they need to know what their customers think. This is why companies spend so much money and time on surveys and comment cards. This also benefits the consumer since they'll be more aware of what to expect. Guitar Center is still in business despite some of the crappy service because I think people just want a certain piece of gear at a low price. You have to pay a premium for good service, and I think people would rather put up with some douchery for a lower price (maybe it's an American thing like Wal-Mart). When I lived in Spain, I noticed that people would pay a lot more for good service like at places such as El Corte Inglés. My Spanish friend was buying a laptop there and when they said they were out of stock of the model he wanted, they offered to have one shipped overnight from a different location for free (my friend said he needed the laptop before he left the city the next day). The salesmen was nice, knowledgeable, and seemed to really care about his client's concerns. The laptop was way more expensive than in the US though (which to be fair is probably mostly due to import taxes).
