Gotta love those pet store employees...

[Barbel]

My sister needed some crickets for her tarantula and I needed a new heat bulb for skink, so we went down to everybody's local pet store. My sister wondered off and I headed down the reptile isle to search for my bulb where a man was being "helped" by an employee. I ease dropped while sorting through the bulbs and was not happy with what I heard. The man had his first ball python at home and he was trying to get a bulb for it. He currently had it under a 60watt day glow bulb and didn't think it was hot enough. He asked which wattage to get and she said a higher one was best as they like it really hot and she pointed to the red bulbs. He grabbed a 100watt and asked, "you can't get it too hot in there right?" and she said, "nah..." Then she handed him a stick on temp gauge and said, "just so you know what the temps are..." He asked if the red ones were for at night and the yellow were for day and she said "yes." He then said "so I need two lamps?" and she said "yeah unless you want to be switching the bulbs out in the morning and at night, ha ha ha." Then he asked how to keep it moist and she handed him a bag of moss and said to just spray it down when it drys out and that would be enough. It was hard for me to keep quiet, but I am not an intrusive person and I really didn't want to embarrass the girl (as ignorant as she was), so I waited until she left and then introduced myself to the man and corrected her "help." He was relieved to have actual information as she left him more confused then when he came in.

I just have to wonder what they are telling these people when they are hiring them (if anything)? And why is it that people can't say "you know that's a really great question, but honestly I don't know. Let me see if I can find the answer for you" instead of pretending to know? I just don't understand.

 

[ariana]

i dislike those employees...
most of them know as much as a year old baby does.....
and sometimes the babys smarter!

 

[goReptiles]

I thought I'd bump this. I just got a comment on one of my hubs. The gist was:

My gecko was obese when I got it, so I still feed a lot of food about 3-4 crickets, 3-4 mealworms, and 1 waxworm a day. I've had it for 3 months and it's not eating. I was told to spray the enclosure daily bc leopard geckos love and need lots of humidity. We spray down the main hide daily. The gecko is not eating, starting to get really thin, and starting to smell. We've stopped spraying the cage bc I see that humidity is bad. I have lost a leo before bc of impaction.

Ok, my problem is: you lost a gecko before bc of improper husbandry, and you didn't do any more research other than what the pet store employee told you before getting another one... Apparently we will kill a gecko with new husbandry problems until we figure it out. We no longer use sand bc of impaction killing one gecko; we won't spray the next one or use sand bc of killing a gecko from high humidity and the first from impaction. We're getting closer to having proper husbandry with each gecko we kill.


Another pet store employee giving bad advice, and another dumb owner for not doing proper research.

 

[bigcat]

i know what your saying.i should have done more resurch.but i got my 1st squrpion from a pet store and about a week later it died. i called them up they said sure we will change it out get there they are closing down for good. so i got my money back. talked to the lady and she told me about the empoly not knowind any thing. so i have 2 bags of sand, that i will never use in anything. i went to my reg. pet store they told me every thing i should know and what i need and what temp i should have.

and one other time there was a guy looking to buy a cameleon and was
asking about what type of cage he would need and every thing the guy that was helping him didnt know vary much. i have looked into them be for when i was like 14 but never got one because of the price. but i help him and was vary grateful.
and sorry for all the miss spelling. learned alot about animals and thats about it

 

[earls413]

I was told that a uth would fry the geckos insides recently at a pet store. Complete idiots I may be a newbie but I'm not that gullable.

 

[M_surinamensis]

The blind, criticizing the blind, for leading the blind?

 

[robin]

The blind, criticizing the blind, for leading the blind?

i resemble the partially blind seamus *slap*

 

[T-ReXx]

I just want to pop in on this:

When I was younger (17) I did a brief stint at one of those "unmentionable" chain stores as a part time employee. I lasted about 3 months before I got completely fed up and quit. Now, I came into that job with quite a bit of reptile experience under my belt, in fact I knew more than the store manager did. But, most of those employees are young kids and the "training" they gave me consisted of a 2 hour long video(mostly blathering on about customer service) and a 20 page employee manual. That's it. I was thrown into being the head care taker of all the store's herps AND the fish department. Now, I knew absolutely jack squat about fish, and this store was a new one and had the first shipment(including saltwaters) coming in so I had 2 weeks to figure out how to setup and maintain all of them plus the herps. So I did what any responsible pet lover would do: I immersed myself in a crash course on aquatics and crammed as much fish knowledge into my brain as possible in two weeks. Luckily, I'm a quick learner and had some "fish freak" friends to back me up.

My point is, even though these employees should do the work and learn what they need to, the cooporation doesn't provide training worth jack, and if they want to learn it they're doing it on unpaid time. Not something most high school age kids want to do unless they're already into animals.

 

[M_surinamensis]

i resemble the partially blind seamus *slap*

Only physically.

When I was younger (17) I did a brief stint at one of those "unmentionable" chain stores as a part time employee.

Oddly enough, so did I. Around the time when you were seventeen too, if the age listed next to your avatar is accurate.

Slightly different reasons for working there I imagine. At seventeen a pet store job probably seems to be infinitely better than flipping burgers, especially if you have an interest. I happened to be friends with someone who was hired by them through a headhunting website as a retail store manager and they offered me an absurd amount of money to come in as a departmental manager for a little while. I was between projects of my own and had nothing else going on, so I agreed.

I lasted about 3 months before I got completely fed up and quit.

How much of that frustration was with the company and how much of it was with the work involved?

The most irritating thing I found about the job was not the corporate structure or the vendors or my coworkers. It was, without question, the public. The average consumer is a complete imbecile and I rarely went more than a few hours without wanting to garrote one of them.

With a very small number of extremely select exceptions, the customers were abjectly ignorant relative to any and all of the employees. That goes double for any of them who were dumb enough to try arguing about something the employees had said.

But, most of those employees are young kids and the "training" they gave me consisted of a 2 hour long video(mostly blathering on about customer service) and a 20 page employee manual. That's it.

Strange. I am... or was, there's a good chance it's been changed since the late nineties... intimately familiar with the training materials and resources that were available for employee education with both the national big box companies. It was always readily available and pretty comprehensive in my experience. Obviously yours differed.

There were some elements that showed a distinct retail bias, discussion points for suggestive selling and various strategies to develop a repeat customer base but there was a lot of animal information as well.

Training materials were, at the time, tied in to the pay rate. Read the book- and it was a book, at about 120 spiral bound pages give or take, for a given subject. Take a test on the subject. Pass the test and get a ten cent an hour raise. I gave those materials a pretty thorough look- it's just habitual for me anytime I encounter anything that's supposed to be an informational resource- and thought that they served as excellent primers on the subjects they covered. That is not to say that I necessarily agree with every minute detail and found them to be absolutely perfect... but they were a damn sight better than most web resources and many older commercially produced books.

Additionally there was on the job training for all new employees at the hands of the existing employees and the management- one of the manager positions was specifically held by an individual responsible for the live animals and the idea is to fill this position with someone knowledgeable.

There were also regular paid training seminars and lectures given by a person who's sole job with the company was to make sure store employees knew enough to do their jobs. That person was never further than twenty four hours away via email or telephone in case of questions that none of the store employees were able to answer.

And now for my rant that isn't replying specifically to either of the people I quoted.

It has become a popular trend to bash pet stores.

I blame Dateline specials exposing puppy mills. There was a period of time some fifteen-twenty years ago where a pretty despicable industry got the lid torn off it and a light shone directly into the heart of it for the world to see and this became an immediate catalyst for a massive shift in public perception. Suddenly people were aware that animal abuse and neglect was something that happened. They were outraged.

Unfortunately the outrage was pretty poorly directed and has resulted in a great deal of collateral damage. Stupid people, people who simply do not have the knowledge to substantiate an informed opinion, turned around and equated the worst pet stores in the country after they had a crack team of editors compile damning footage of them... with every pet store, everywhere.

It became a terrible social crime to buy an animal. Everything needs to be called a "rescue" even when it wasn't rescued from a goddamn thing.

It became this introverted circle jerk of people who had been keeping one animal for two months to start bashing and badmouthing pet stores while all the other inexperienced morons cheer them on.

It is elitism from a group of people who are not remotely close to being elite.

There are bad pet stores. And bad breeders and bad importers and bad owners. And there are great pet stores, great breeders, great importers and great owners. Most of all of these things are neither. They're just average, middle of the road nothing special in either direction, room for improvement but doing fine and well within acceptable parameters.

It is possible to levy legitimate criticisms against individual examples of practices worth criticizing. I rarely ever see that happen though. It seems to be far more common for people to spout off on the subject when they themselves don't know their ass from a hole in the ground and are just regurgitating complaints that they have seen other people make.

Bad mouthing a pet shop employee after eavesdropping on a conversation and hearing half of it devoid of the context of the full thing? That's egregiously idiotic.

Misunderstanding something you were told, then relaying it incorrectly and holding it up as an example of how bad the person who is being misquoted is? That is wantonly stupid.

Identifying a subject about which there is debate, or where there is variability that can make it right or wrong depending on mitigating circumstances and trying to rally the masses against it? That is the act of an ignorant clown.

It would be funny to watch the uninformed crawl out of the woodwork in order to attack a subject they don't remotely comprehend, to laugh as they try to "correct" something that isn't wrong- mostly with something as bad or worse... if they weren't actively working to destroy the businesses that someone had worked hard to build. If they weren't simultaneously condemning an entire industry with their half-assed assumptions and tunnel visioned "knowledge."



... right then.

In conclusion, I am a former employee of a bog box retail store. If anyone would like to challenge my intelligence, my knowledge or my accomplishments- feel free to send me a private message through these forums. We can play animal trivia for money. Make sure you have a paypal account and at least two hundred dollars, I'm thinking about refinishing a portion of my basement and will happily put your money to use.

 

[robin]

seamus, i read the first few paragraphs, till about where you said you disliked people, which is obvious. then i looked at all the poo below that and skipped to the ending and LOL'd

 

[M_surinamensis]

I still have that problem with making short, to the point posts. I get all uppity and can't stop.

 

[BrilliantEraser]

Do I have to challenge you for money? I'd really rather just pick your brain about... well essentially everything. :laugh:

 

[Fyrii]

Just went to a chain pet store (I needed a dimmer, I know they don't sell them there but my grandma insisted they had them..and you can't stop her...) so I had looked down the reptile cage (after viewing very crowded ferrets and birds and beta fish that looked half dead in colored liquid that didn't look very healthy) and of course, no rheostat. Or thermostat.

My grandma ran off to get an employee (Once again, can't stop her) and the girl was clueless. So she went to get another employee (I'm standing there mentally shaking my head) and the guy goes and points to a THERMOMETER. I tried to say as politely as I could (the man was twice my age) that there is a difference between a rheostat and a thermometer. Then he said oh, I'll get the manager. At this point I just want to run out of the store.

The manager comes over looking very bored and like she'd rather rip my throat out than offer me advice (of which I knew more than her anyway) and she said well, we have thermometers. No, I do not want thermometers. Thank you very much..

I also passed by the live leopard geckos and read the little "about me" thing they had- it said that "I like colorful sand that shows off my pretty colors!" That sounded...not right. >_>

Sometimes I wish I could save all the pets there. I always wondered, what do they do with the pets when the store shuts down at night? Do they keep all the heating stuff on and aquarium things going?

 

[Barbel]

I always wondered, what do they do with the pets when the store shuts down at night? Do they keep all the heating stuff on and aquarium things going?

Yes they keep everything running (at least at the one I worked at). For the reptiles they turn off the daylights and turn on night/heat lamps.