Stupid petland employees!

I like looking at snakes, I don't really like petland and their business ethics though. I sometimes go just to look at snakes since there are no other local places to look. Today I go in and they have about a 3 1/2 ft Af rock in withabout a 2-3 ft ball python. When I mentioned to the store employee that it wasn't wise to house them together, explaining the reasons. Then I mentioned the harm in housing a hatchling ball with one at least 8 mo. old He went off about how he has bred snakes over 10 yrs. and had bred every variety the store was carrying. Did I mention there was burmese, rat snakes, corn snakes,af rock, ball pythons, just to name a few. He said there was no chance of cannibalism. He should know since he has bred them over 10 yrs. Did I also mention he was about 25 yrs. old. I'm not saying young people could not have been doing it that long, but give me a break. He kept carrying on like he was father time himself. I thought he was going to blow a fuse when I said, "You may breed snakes, BUT YOU DON'T KNOW SNAKES" I usually don't lose my cool, but I hate it when someone without a clue runs off at the mouth. I am not real knowledgable, but I will admit if I don't know something. Did I mention this is the Petland in Cherryvale Mall in Rockford Il.:mad:

Sounds like the kid at my local pet store. The one where I found the pastel that mxrider got. He's the same kid that told him that they had a pied that they sold for $75. This kid believes anything anyone tells him and then swears it's the truth afterwards.


I mentioned the so-called pied they had and the owner said "say what???" and the kid goes - "yeah, the guy that brought it in swore it was a pied, but I couldn't tell, but he said it was, so I said ok." The owner then says "that guy called me, it was a HET pied, with no papers - so it was essentially a normal".

This is the same kid that wanted to bet me "$100 that teacups are made by starving the puppies their first six months of life to stunt their growth" after I overheard him tell a customer that and said "NO they are NOT made that way!" He got all flustered and wanted to bet me that he was right and I was wrong. I just shook my head and walked away in disgust.

Yes, it upset him so much when I told him he didn't know snakes, I think I ruined his whole day!!:carrot:

It sucks that sometimes you just have to bite your tongue. At the local store where I got my boa, I felt comfortable buying from them because they only sold from their single breeding pair, but their, ahem, "knowledge" was... well it's most of the things that turn out to be myths. I had to pretty much nod my head through all the bull crap just so I could purchase the snake. I wanted to unload but it wasn't worth it.

I think I work at one of the only stores where the employees actually know the do's and don'ts of the animals. It's privately owned and I usually encourage people - if you are going to buy pets from a store, go to the privately owned places. That is just my experience. I think all stores have the good ones and the bad ones.

However, I have to admit, at the store that I work at, we have dumb kids (I have nothing against teenagers, but these are brats) that tell our customers ridiculous myths! I want to choke them. :mad:

hopefully you did mongoose...i h8 jerks like tht.

Oh boy, can I relate to this stuff. I actually left a fairly good job last year cause I got offered (begged to accept is more like it) a job at Petsmart...which is something I had always wanted to do. Oh how disillusioned I was!
Aside from the nice manager who hired me leaving a week later to be replaced by the witch from he**, the company policies on animals are awful! They're just merchandise to them! I was one of only two employees in the pet care department who knew ANYTHING about reptiles, let alone about how to care for and house them. It's really horrible to think about what happens to those poor dear lizards and frogs that go out with the myth-laden, just plain wrong advice those clueless kid employees give. I did my best, but when you're only one person, and you're always being yelled at for trying to handle and house the animals properly instead of as they are...well, I only stayed there about 8 months.
Anyway, sorry for the rant, but yes, the best place to buy ANY pet, after checking with rescue groups of course, is from a specialty place where they breed them and have the know-how.

Ok, off my :soapbx:

Yeah, some of those pet shop employees need frontal lobotomies. :mad: Luckily, my local PetCo's reptile dude breeds cresties and actually knows how to take care of the animals there. When I bought my baby corn there he like quized me about the husbandry(the good kind, not petco printouts) before he'd sell the snake to me. :)

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Originally Posted by Sausage

When I bought my baby corn there he like quized me about the husbandry(the good kind, not petco printouts) before he'd sell the snake to me. :)

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The sad part is, some employees have been fired for quizzing costomers, rather than just selling the animal and as many supplies as they can push.:(

Yeah, that's one of the things I would get chewed out over. That, and spending 'too much time' with a single customer helping them get all the right supplies and info.

My local petstore is NERD :D

It's about 40 minutes away actually, I pass about 3-4 Petsmarts on my way up there. I Must say that the Petsmart closest to my house seems to have nice proper setups for the snakes they sell which seems to be BP's, Kings and Corns. As far as the knowledge of the employees I wouldnt know seeing I never felt the need to speak with them.

Any animal I have ever had in my adult life has been bought from a reputable breeder which is the obvious way to go.

BTW, I am 33 and have been breeding balls since 1975 ;)

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Originally Posted by BostonMacK

My local petstore is NERD :D

It's about 40 minutes away actually, I pass about 3-4 Petsmarts on my way up there. I Must say that the Petsmart closest to my house seems to have nice proper setups for the snakes they sell which seems to be BP's, Kings and Corns. As far as the knowledge of the employees I wouldnt know seeing I never felt the need to speak with them.

Any animal I have ever had in my adult life has been bought from a reputable breeder which is the obvious way to go.

BTW, I am 33 and have been breeding balls since 1975 ;)

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There are a lot of knowledgable young people who breed snakes, but they don't give you an unbelievable earful of crap like I was hearing from him. Yes , he was old enough to have bred snakes for ten years. Do I believe him? No! Anyone who has bred snakes that long would have been aware of alot more. I don't buy anything but crickets from this store, but noticed it was a bad setup , mixing species and sizes in the manner they were doing and being concerned for the animals in question I'm not the type to sit back and say nothing. You were a young'n!:P At 1 yr old I was still figuring out the genetics of breeding dogs!;)

I go the petland in Tinley Il, and they don't even have snakes! But I must admit their fishtanks are VERY nice!

The fish tanks at this one are great, but they should get out of all other livestock they sell.

There is this one guy at my store that gets on my nerves soooo badly. He's a little spoiled brat, who gets an animal and likes it until he loses interest. I want to wave a giant fishnet at him and tell him to get away from the reptiles! Sadly, I can't do that. He works there and I have to work with him. He says all these ridiculous things about snakes! Oh, and once he sent a bp home with SAND. Sand. SAND. To go on the bottom of the snake's home. True, the owner should have done his/her research and known, but...SAND?!!

My wife worked at a petland, and although it def. wasn't the best place it wasn't horrible. The reptile areas went up alot after her being there, and me going in every other day and making sure they stayed up on it. Before she left the store though they got a bad mite infection in their balls, and wouldn't do anything but soak them in water every now and then and the manager was like well, no big deal. Someone will buy them and then it's there problem and we wont let it happen with our next batch of them. I tried informing her that even if she removed those 3 balls and put 3 new in there, they'd get the mites too...**sighs** Oh well. You cant help everyone.

cant we report them to Peta or something, Isnt that a form of animal abuse? I thought you could get jail time for that or at least nice fines for each instance.

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Originally Posted by darkdreamer

cant we report them to Peta or something, Isnt that a form of animal abuse? I thought you could get jail time for that or at least nice fines for each instance.

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No no, not PETA, they'd just kill all the animals there. :rolleyes:

:8:

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Originally Posted by Sausage

No no, not PETA, they'd just kill all the animals there. :rolleyes:

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Unfortunately most of these pet stores put profit before the animal. It really is sad, too. What sucks even more is that there are some great mom & pop type stores that have great animals being given great care; however, they usually get run out of business byt these big chain stores. Oh well, not much we can do I suppose.

Yeah, that happened here. The only pet store in town was a place called "Aqua Mart" (or something like that) It had been the only place around, but they took pretty good care of their animals. A friend of mine at work has 2 7 year old BP's and he had gotten his rats from "Aqua Mart the entire time he had owned them. About the time I got my BP a Petco moved into the new shoping area that was built. Within a month, "Aqua Mart has shut down. Now to get anything other than a very small 'adult' mouse, or almost full grown rats, you have to drive almost an hour to get to the next town with a pet store of any sort. -_- I got kinda lucky b/c when I went into Aqua Mart to look around just before I got my girl, every thing was marked down, so I got alot of good supplies for just a fraction of what they should have been. Although, I would have rather paid full price for that stuff, and have a place where I could get decent feeders... =/

That is exactly what happened out here with the Petsmart. There was a wonderful little family run reptile store a few blocks away with really in-the-know people that suddenly disappeared one weekend. My thought is that they were run out by the nearby 'big bad chain store'. Also happened back in ElPaso with a little shop I volunteered at. *Sigh*

It's also very sad that people will listen to and believe the incompetent pet store people OVER the breeders and experienced caretakers just because they 'work at the place that sells them'. It's the same as going to an idiot sleezeball mechanic to fix your car instead of the friend who rebuilds engines and such as a hobby.

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Originally Posted by BostonMacK

My local petstore is NERD :D

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<-- GREEN with envy

Not all privately owned reptile stores are good. The one in the town I live in has pretty awful husbandry for their snakes and I try not to frequent it. The last time I went, I saw some terribly dehydrated and starving sub-adult BP's - just makes you so sad.

I drive 30 minutes to get to a good one (amazon reptile!), which I do every week to get feeders...and from which we've purchased two healthy snakes. =)

I live in Simi valley and they have a pet co and some smaller shops. THeresas feed and pet but they cater to everything, reptiles, fish birds, rodents bunnies, horses, they also sell feed for farms chickens ect. their prices are decent as well there is another store as well 2 blocks from pet smart, then again the pet smart mainly caters to dogs and cats and other furry pets. where I live.

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Originally Posted by Argentra

It's also very sad that people will listen to and believe the incompetent pet store people OVER the breeders and experienced caretakers just because they 'work at the place that sells them'. It's the same as going to an idiot sleezeball mechanic to fix your car instead of the friend who rebuilds engines and such as a hobby.

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What else is sad is that I've been in these stores when people come in talking to the employees about how their snake died a month after they got it. More often than not, they were given poor advice and a poor quality animal. But they don't realize that and think "oh boy, snakes are hard to care for" and it turns them off from the hobby.

The worst one for me was I overheard some employee at PetCo telling a woman buying a corn for her son "Oh yeah, for the first 6 months, just feed it crickets if you don't want to feed it mice." I nearly had a heart attack. Luckily he walked away and I was able to talk her out of buying from them and she actually ended up adopting one of my normal hatchlings that needed a home.

Sadly, here in Toledo, the only two private pet shops are dens of horror. Thank goodness one did recently shut down. Unfortunately the days of good mom and pop pet stores are passing unless these stores get VERY creative with marketing and finding ways to draw customers in and most just do not do this. Best thing any of us can do though, if we know a great private pet store is to pass the word as much as possible and speak with our wallets. If you have to drive out of your way to that small, private store...do so. If you're part of a herp group....promote the store. Everyone complains about chain pet stores, but obviously people shop there and stop going to the private stores or those stores wouldn't be closing down every other day.

hey freaky which private pet store closed in toledo, and what pet stores do you recommend? i mostly go to sweet feed because its close and i dont get out to to many others so i was just wondering. thanks.

It's franky LOL (I'm really not the "freaky" sort). It was the one over on Lagrange, in the polish village area.

I usually only use the pet stores in Toledo for dry supplies like bedding and for feeder mice. We breed our own rats but have a few snakes that will only take mice. Those I buy from the store up at Alexis and Lewis as they will let Mike and I go in the back and handpick our feeder mice ourselves.

sorry about the name i work nights and have been up for about 24 hours so words are not my best freind right now.

Ah... so you have seen the dreaded Petland as well. No use talking to them, they're morons.

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Originally Posted by frankykeno

Sadly, here in Toledo, the only two private pet shops are dens of horror. Thank goodness one did recently shut down. Unfortunately the days of good mom and pop pet stores are passing unless these stores get VERY creative with marketing and finding ways to draw customers in and most just do not do this. Best thing any of us can do though, if we know a great private pet store is to pass the word as much as possible and speak with our wallets. If you have to drive out of your way to that small, private store...do so. If you're part of a herp group....promote the store. Everyone complains about chain pet stores, but obviously people shop there and stop going to the private stores or those stores wouldn't be closing down every other day.

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That would be a cool idea to have a category for the forums organized by state of good Mom and Pop pet stores. Might help out the stores and help guide us all to good places.