The TRUTH about PetSmart | perspective from an ex-PetSmart employee
The TRUTH about PetSmart | perspective from an ex-PetSmart employee
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Every time I buy my very overpriced mice for my snakes at pet co I see people buying pets mostly for little kids and I just feel so bad knowing that their pet is not going to be the best quality especially housing many reptiles together and the ferrets with tiny tiny cages housed together I can’t say much for fish because I don’t personally own fish so I don’t know a lot.
Your an Ex-employee like some people is an Ex-boyfriend / girlfriend
I got more in depth training on how to specifically make the ‘perfect’ taco at taco bell than how much petcare training employees at petco/petsmart get
I was buying more Conditioner for my tanks, and I overheard a couple looking to buy a Oscar, the employee told them they can get a 20 Gallon. I fucking rushed my ass over there and told the couple just HOW BIG OSCARS GET. Also, witnessed a family buying a blackmoor with a 1 Gallon bowl thing …. The fish person said nothing… I do like that compared to PetLand they’re not super pushy, and make me feel all weird, but letting that happen????? I also asked for a bristlenose pleco once, and got a common pleco but was too shy to say anything so now I have a common pleco in my 35 Gallon🙁
My father was pet care manager for a long time and there was no quarantine room
How old are you?
My PetSmart:
Lucky if you get your headset for the day
Employees happy to help and knowledgeable
No quarantine for fish.
Would not let dog trainer do their job.
Left when told I couldn’t tell parents they were exposed to covid
I’m trying to work at my starter dream job…not shore if it’s like PetSmart but it’s animals job lol so I am trying to get both of bad and good of what might happen in my first career so I can prepare I am not really good at accepting seeing abused animals but this might help me a little to figure out what I might get myself into. Hopefully I don’t get fired for a bit of memory lost lol.
The real issues with petsmart is the overarching company. While I worked there we had to follow rules that where written long ago. Like all snakes had to be in aspen while I was there. Now most people knew that was wrong and about 80% of the employees knew their stuff. But… the 20% were loud and often screwed things up badly. One being a manager actually got mad when I broke policy by putting a BP on coco coir to combat stuck shed. Recently though the snakes are all on coco coir and that makes me happy. I also think the manager who was dumb no longer works at my store. Which are two positive things.
Oh Nv I am waching all of them out of order
This is the reason I want one of my first jobs to be at petco They really mistreat their fish(especially their betta) and I really want to help them! I am not old enough to get a job yet but I am going to write a letter to them with some suggestions for how to improve their betta fish care while still having enough space and time to care for larger tanks! Wish me luck that they will listen!
I feel like part of the problem is all the "Karens" that either don’t want to listen to advice or don’t care…
Can you imagine having no idea that a bearded dragon needs a balanced and diverse diet? Yea you can survive for ten years of PB+J but you’ll probably hate your life and see some health side effects
My son hitting that minecraft In the background 💯
I’ve learned which employees to ask about certain things at my petco, there’s a woman there that told me that I could keep a goldfish in a mason jar, and that fish would undoubtedly die in cycle, no matter what I do. I don’t ask her about fish things any more lol 😂
Bruh why did I get an ad for petsmart
I unfortunately worked at PetSmart for around half a year. It started out as a decent team who is knowledgeable and cared. But then corporate put its foot down and things changed real fast people transferred and with the change in the team training was messed up, people didn’t know their jobs, and the others who had to take up the slack were just swamped. Turned out that our manager transferred and we got a new manager who did not know the ins and outs of the job. Pet Care was put under such strain that are quality of work failed. PetSmart has really fallen and failed their employees. One of the reasons I said goodbye.
now it’s humans going to quarantine
I work in the pet care department and with the pandemic happening. They’ve really gone downhill in terms of animal care. Like I do my very best to give the animals and fish what they need but now I’m rushed to do customer service since we only have three people on the sales floor.
I work at Petsmart now and my manager’s name is Alex too. What a coincidence. I’m straight out of high school and this is my first job. I wanted this job because I really love animals and I thought that it would be a great environment for me and very therapeutic. But when I started working there, it was the total opposite and really not what I was expecting. Plus I got no training at all what’s so ever and I got treated very poorly. I had no idea what I was doing and when ever I would ask for help, other coworkers would catch hostile attitudes with me and the managers would avoid helping me and ignore me. I feel like I may quit this job very soon.
Are you able to give your fish that unfortunately cant stay in your tank anymore? I have 4 neons and they are in a one gal right now and they nipped at my bettas tail so i cant keep them anymore. Does it depend on your store? Also are you able to ask the cashier to not count the sale of a betta. I want to rescue one but i dont want to support them at the same time.
I remeber like a month ago maby two he was like the truth about PetSmart hey that would be a good click bait
Did you bring your tanks to college? I would like to that when I go to college in 2 years I have some ideas of how I’ll do it and I’ve done some research but I’d really appreciate a video on how you moved with them and tips.
i spotted my petsmart cleaning tanks, feeding, actually do logical stuff. Sadly my petco has a Blue tongue skink yes a $300 DOLLAR lizard in a 5-10 gallon. I choose my petsmart over petco
The Petsmarts near me at least seem to take care of their fish tanks (still have all the bettas in small cups though :c ). I went to two Petsmarts today all with well kept while I also went to one Petco and the amount of gross tanks with pilez of dead fish… it was so incredibly sad.
Do you think that PetSmarts like the one near me should be able to sell a three inch chinese water dragon, and not say that it gets to three feet. This is also how iguanas got into the Everglades.
Ok so I bought a bird from there. I was telling everyone on discord and petsmart said it was a month old. I showed a picture of the bird and said what age petsmart told me it was to my friend. He said that it had too much feathers to be a month old and he worked at a place that required u to have real animal knowledge to work there. So what I’m trying to say is that they either just wanted us to buy it more or they got told it was a month old. Honestly even if they didn’t lie I would still buy it because it was a friendly bird and i found that out because they let me hold it to see if I wanted it. I just had to go to my friend for the information because like I said he worked at a store that required u to know almost everything about exotic birds.
What do they do with the animals that are sick and don’t get better in quarantine?
My local pet store is pretty good, but it has a more limited selection for fish. It still has a bit, but not like full on fish stores. My only other options are a couple fish stores in North Dakota, but not headed there anytime soon.
I drive an hour & half to get to a great fish store. Its definitely worth the drive
My pet smart has tank size recommendations on their fish displays 🙂
And my mom still doesn’t believe me that petsmart and petco is bad. 🙄
I just stumbled upon your page. I want to get a job at petsmart.. I’m just concerned that I don’t know EVERYTHING like everyone else does. I have 3 cats a fish and a gecko.. was there work discrimination if someone didn’t know much to help guests?
Are different stores, you know, different?
(As far as education requirements)
Shopping for cichlids and Bettas at Petsmart. Many times I go home without any fish purchased. I think they should hire aquarists dedicated for sourcing and purchasing nicer fish they could sell. Only buy fish from 100% very serious breeders. When you sell fish produced through hybridization, it will speak volumes of what kind of Pet Store you have. You will alienate those serious aquarists. These people in the fish e-groups actually do not recommend you. I still visit Petsmart stores anywhere. Their setup / ambiance is bright and clean. Just looking around and sometimes I could snag a nice cichlid or Betta fish I fancy. Once in a blue moon. 😉
I have so many stories, seven years worth
Man the other day I went to Petsmart and there were two full tanks of dead fish. At least 100 fish. When i asked the lady working in care if they were dead, she said "Probably. We just got them in a shipment today." They definitely sont quarantine their new fish. And no one made any effort to clean the tanks the whole hour I was there. So who knows how long those tanks kept dead fish in them.
Here in the Netherlands we don’t have Pets Mart or Petco but other larger chains of pet stores and it depends on who runs the specific store what kind of advice you get.
Most say that 10l (2 gallons?) for a common goldfish is good but they need like 2 meters space and for each fish at least 100l (20 gallons?) if you want do it correct. 🙈
For fancy goldfish it’s about half of that.
The LFS around the corner don’t sell goldfish because they don’t have the space to house them properly, they sell mostly small fish that doesn’t need big tanks and are more focussed on aquascaping.
Fish bowls are forbidden here though, but there are still people that buy them as flower vase and then put fish in it. 🤦🏼♀️
Also, they only sells hamsters, mostly with hamsterscaped enclosures but still a bit too small to my taste.
But it’s a huge upgrade if you compare it to most of the other petstores. 😉
Petcare employees need ongoing training on husbandry. Few people have a working knowledge on all the animal carried at the store. And don’t get me started on the care guides!!
I like my local petco, the tanks are clean, sometimes i get sick fish, but not always, and they know their stuff, they made sure i had at least a cycled 10 gallon when I bought my guppies.
It varies from place to place, I’ve seen an awful PetSmart before regarding fish care but the employees eventually got let go and better people were rehired.
I used to call ahead and make sure certain employees were working the fish section.
In Canada pet care employees do get vetted but they are more concerned about testing for sociopathic tendencies than vetting for animal experience. It’s kind of interesting though, getting asked questions like "do you have any regrets" for example.
I’ve considered lately going to work part time with petsmart or petco on top of my full time job because I wanna be in the aquatics center because I would be able to help people with problems I’ve had to get through on my own
I only had one Pet Care manager that knew more than I did about the department. Three managers later never knew anything. I had to train all of them and they didn’t care about anything.
Bruh I had a bad experience at petsmart. This worker needed to be fired. She wouldn’t not hush about how much the goldfish needed a heater. She kept on about "if you don’t have a heater I won’t sell this fish!" Yes that’s true. But not true. Yes and Oscar fish needs a heater but a goldfish doesn’t. I don’t care about these "smart people" saying "he will have no fun" Yeah well I got a fish at a fish pong and guess what? He lived a good long 8 years without a heater. Yes it’s adviced but they CAN live without. They really need to rethink who they hire. Chris would be a good worker tho! Much would have rather had him as the worker instead of that rude lady.
not petsmart, but petco. my local petco is currently selling red bellied pacu. with no information on the tag other than a $5 price tag. thankfully the employee that works there sometimes that I frequently see is decently knowledgeable. (More so than the others that work there) it makes me sad looking at those 2” fish, knowing that someone is going to buy them and the chances that they don’t know what they’re doing is high.
What is ur filter on the left I really like it
Sadly if they give you bad info and you kill you fish you probably come back and buy more
I’m glad your store was alright. Not many are, and if you want to learn more, you should watch goherpings ‘calling 84 petsmarts and petcos’ to see more about WHERE those animals come from. They come from mills. They are not in clean enclosures, often in groups of several male and female animals, where they fight and breed freely, and they are not given much water, if any. They are neglected and get many infections. All petstores need to be very heavily regulated, and the employees need to be thoroughly processed to ensure that they are informed. Then, they need to have those mills charged according to the law, to be shut down. This is simply what needs to happen. It definately is…
Honestly petsmarts in Florida are big hit or misses I met a person who was in a petsmart and the fish where so healthy but the petsmart near me is good for small animal care and horrible in fish care I never bought a fish for them anymore
There is a local pet store where I live and he only hires experienced employees so ya that’s pretty nice