Petsmart employees

[SludgeMunkey]

I have found that both Big Name "Pet" retailers in the US to be very, very, touch and go both on cleanliness and knowledge. I often purchase supplies for my pugs and our snakes at them, however I would never buy anything live from them, other than fruit flies. Here in Omaha, PetSmart is better stocked, but PetCo has better prices.

If I were to make a judgment call on employee knowledge between the two here, PetCo would win, however I found that most of them in other locations around the country were masters of misinformation.

Then again, I am a bit of an elitist when it comes to pet shops in general...

[Kurt]

Aren't we all?

[SludgeMunkey]

Aren't we all?

The wife claims this is my main interest in this hobby:

"You just like going to pet shops and making the poor idiotas that work there look stupid in public. You also enjoy watching them squirm when you ask to see the manager/owner."


She is right...I guess...

[Kurt]

Yes, that is fun! The other half of the coin is when you get employees that worship you like a god. I think those ones are the caring ones, as they seem to want to learn everything you can teach them.

I do like shooting down the ones that think they are better than me just because they work there and they are the "expert". There was this one employee at Petco that comes to mind.
Their hermit crab enclosure was overly wet, I mean it was really swampy. There was so much water in the substrate that you could pour it like gravy. Anyway, there was the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh emitting from the enclosure. I told an employee and he said they had a new guy that doesn't quite what he was doing yet and he had taken care of the animals the day before. Other cages were screwed up too. He then went and got the "expert". She came over looked and at told him and I that's just the way that hermit crabs smelled. I have never kept hermits before, but I have been around quite a few and I know the smell of rotting flesh, so much so that I can usually tell what kind of animal it is down to class.
I argued with her over it she was having no part of it. Even after I told her who I am and what my credentials are. My friend who is a wildlife educator/science teacher was with me. She has kept hermit crabs and she was even arguing with this pinhead of an employee. I should've asked to see the manager, but I just walked away in disgust. Its a shame she had to hide behind her arrogance to cover up her lack of knowledge and the fact that an employee and ****ed up and they had not fixed the problem.

[adawinters]

I would love to know where she got the idea of "swampy" for a hermit crab enclosure. The tropical beaches they come from can't really be classified as "swamps." They need water/humidity to keep their gills wet, but a bog isn't really their thing.

I don't even think of it as arrogance any more: just insecurity. When someone is factually wrong, and fighting with made-up or inaccurate facts, I often think it's just not having the sense of self to admit it. It's scary to be wrong. Yeah, sometimes we get old or bad information, but what ever happened to, "I have never heard that. Let me look into it." Is that really so hard? If I could get that sentence out of more clerks' mouths, that alone would be enough to send me home with a smile on my face.

[Kurt]

When I worked at the Museum of Science in Boston and the Museum of Natural History of Harvard University, we were told if a vistor was ask a question for which we had no answer for, we were to say "I don't know". We were also that we should take their contact info and get back to them with an answer when we had one, but that was optional and not a single visitor ever took me up on that offer. We were never to make stuff up to look smarted or to cover up our short comings. To do so was a good way to get fired.

[John]

Kurt, that's the scientific approach.

[sschind]

I have found that both Big Name "Pet" retailers in the US to be very, very, touch and go both on cleanliness and knowledge. I often purchase supplies for my pugs and our snakes at them, however I would never buy anything live from them, other than fruit flies. Here in Omaha, PetSmart is better stocked, but PetCo has better prices.

If I were to make a judgment call on employee knowledge between the two here, PetCo would win, however I found that most of them in other locations around the country were masters of misinformation.

Then again, I am a bit of an elitist when it comes to pet shops in general...

Why wouldn't you buy anything live from them?