Stories of your bad local pet store?

If I may put out, that the pet store I work for is probably the only pet store around me that actually takes care of their pets, whether it be feeders to reptiles.


Monster Pets, Petsmart, Petco, Precious Pets, and the local petstore in our community town center are disgusting and you can tell the animals aren't takin' care of. The smells and the sights are just enough to make you sick.

The petstore in the towncenter got in a baby BP the same day and time I was taking a browse... with scabbing all over it. It was triangular and didn't wanna come out of it's ball. It just sat like that, it had to be in pain just had to. Not to mention the guy wouldn't even touch it to take it out of the little container it came in! The poor thing was close to dying, if it hasn't already it would be a surprise but haven't gone back since I've seen that. I would have taken it but I wouldn't be able to handle a dying snake emotionally and I'm sure the vet bill would have been expensive to get her/he stable. I won't even go into the dogs, the guinea pigs.... and all because it's digusting. Like the guinea pig water looks like it hadn't been cleaned for months.

Precious Pets, just has TOO many pets to take care of, so newer things are prioritized over others, since they apparently don't have enough money to care for them all. Which makes me think, "well then STOP getting more animals in!" Which means the ones prioritized least get less attention. At least the BPs here don't normally look that bad.

Petsmart, Petco are not the greatest obviously. I've come across a lot of inaccurate advice and the ball pythons that I have come across have been triangular and underfed. I even had a gentleman come into my pet shop and show use a dying BP that couldn't even wrap around your wrist or hold it's own, that he got from petsmart.

Monster Pets.... I don't know what I can possibly say, but this place is horrid. A chinchilla jammed in a 12.5 by 12.5 container... the height no more the like 12 inches as well.... BPs jammed in a slightly smaller container, maybe eight or nine together! All not looking good... large reptiles in the small sized containers just the same as the snakes'... I mean like large adolescent beardies and large monitors in 12 by 12 (or smaller) containers. Not to mention their dogs are sick. I think the birds had it better there. O.o;

The Pet Supplies Plus in my home town is decent with their snakes, occasionally they will house more than one together but they have multiple hides and clean water (something a lot of chain stores don't)
However, the same chain where I am now is horrible, they had 3 snakes together with one half log and one had a horrible shed, 90% of his skin was still on him in pieces. The employees didn't seem to know what to do at all.

Both towns are college towns, so its the same demographic of employee.
I've tried applying there, as did one of my other friends who is pet-savvy and both said they weren't interested. Actually, the fact that we did have prior knowledge seemed to be a turn-off. :-(, they seem to care more about profit than care.

My petsmart is horrible.
They keep 6 Beardie babies in a 6 gallon tank.
3 baby bps in a tank the size of my bps hide.
4 turtles in a 20 gallon long with 2 inches of dirty water.
20 mice covered in little bugs, with 3 dead mice.
3 rats in a 10 gallon
4 chameleons in a 5 gallon tank.
3 Red tailed boas in a 10 gallon just a hide, no water bowl.
and some other stuff

I've had a few bad pet store experiences. One was a pet store in Wise, Va. They kept about 15 anoles in a 10g tank with blue sand. I have a picture somewhere because we were trying to take evidence to have the store shut down or at least warned. I can't remember that much but I do remember the anoles either had a small water dish that was dry or they didn't have one at all. The sand was littered with feces and dead crickets that were obviously too big for the little anoles. Many of them looked emaciated and sickly.

They had some puppies there as well. One was a little golden pup who was obviously sick. Very lethargic and was just acting like he was not feeling good. We asked to hold him and he just cuddled up to me and gave me a little lick. I was almost tempted to bring him back to my dorm room. I approached the man behind the counter (all the cages were dirty and 1/2 the animals didn't have water or food) and he was sitting behind the counter reading a magazine) and told him the puppy was sick. He said the puppy was fine (That puppy was not healthy!) We left and came back the next day. The little puppy was gone and he said someone had bought him. :(

I also had another pet store that kind of sucked. They sold a guy a red tail boa and told him in was a ball python. :confused::confused: (Wouldn't you realize that the tail of the snake is not red?) Apparently the guy at the store told him the tail would turn red as the snake aged.

There have been a lot of good stores around here though. Noah's Pets was awesome but they had to shut down a while ago. We went to that store for years. I'm really sad its gone. The Petsmarts and Petcos around here are pretty good as far as animal care. While they do sometimes put too many animals per cage, the cages are always clean and the animals have fresh water and food. I'm actually hoping to get a job with either Petsmart or Petco to work with the small animals and reptiles. :) (Though the Petsmart employees tend to be completely useless in the information department when it comes to reptiles and small animals. Petco employees have some knowledge but sometimes its wrong info)