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That will be theft then.
Anyway, I agree that the guitar and keyboard could have been donated to a worthy cause, but it's a bit late for that Gibson Les Paul. Maybe, just maybe, Guitar Centre can get their priorities sorted for the future.
I know someone who works for a major distributor, who has been ordered to destroy items on more than one occasion. One was a batch of amps (combos) which were deemed substandard in some way. The whole things were smashed, including perfectly good brand new Celestion Greenbacks. Pure stupidity - aside from the sheer unnecessary waste of it, those could easily have been taken out and sold as B-stock or used for repairs. He offered to do it but the management insisted that he didn't.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
To that end I have personally broken up guitars (including snapping headstocks off to ensure they can't be taken out of the skip) that could fall into this category. The cry is always to donate them to music charities... however, if something is substandard that charitable act could misfire badly... especially if (and I'm not saying this happens a lot but it does happen) the charity involved deems that the units given to them would serve a better purpose if they were sold to finance something else. You then have substandard guitars in the market that could give the brand a bad name, or could come back for warranty repairs...
I can't give names - but suffice to say this *wasn't* Line6. An MI company skipped some units with gluing issues and a few were 'rescued' by an enterprising bin man. He then sold them on eBay. The new owner of the guitar found the neck wasn't attached properly and complained - the bin man lied and told the new owner he'd bought it from a particular music shop but had lost the receipt. The guitar was returned to the music shop on a busy Saturday where the sales guy, whilst trying to get rid of an awkward 'customer' swapped the defective guitar for a shop stock guitar to appease the situation. On the Monday, the store tried to return the defective guitar for a credit - and then the arguments started because the serial number was listed as one of the destroyed units...
So, smashing up "repairable" guitars happens - and for very good business reasons. In this particular case, the inventory issue thing could be that it would have cost both companies more than it was worth to correct the audit problem - I'm guessing that could be the case... but either way, I've instructed stores to destroy defective units (and send me pictures) as it wasn't worth the return costs, vs what it would cost to repair, restock and sell (bear in mind it wouldn't be new any more). In those scenarios you rescue the parts that can be saved and destroy the "chassis".
So no, its not unusual...