Just A Bit of A Rant!

Well I don't usually "go off" on PetCo employees but boy today it was VERY tough to keep my temper.

My son and I were browsing through PetCo and stopped to look at some big, black Bear hamsters. Another family was also looking and asked for assistance. This young man came over and was about as clueless as it comes with small animals. After fumbling about in the enclosures and basically scaring the beejeesus out of the hamsters, he finally manages to grab one. Funny enough making comments about how he gets bit a lot (I'd have bitten you too buddy!).

Not holding this poor hamster correctly he promptly drops the poor bloody thing. This is a tall young man. That poor thing dropped over 4 feet on to a very hard floor! Dumb dumb stands there looking rather stunned until I sharply told him to get that animal off the floor and have it looked at immediately by a manager. After mumbling something about this (the other family was just standing there with their mouths open in shock), he goes to put it back in the cage with the others! ARRRRGH!

I'm getting a tad ticked at this point! So I tell the clueless wonder..."DO NOT put that hamster in there! Call your manager and have that animal seen to!" He mumbles something and wanders off. At that point I leaned over and suggested to the mother of the family she might want to buy a pet elsewhere and that this kid was about as clueless as a stump when it came to handling small pets.

Unfortunately we did have to leave to catch our bus home so I wasn't able to follow up with the store manager but he's a pretty good guy and really seems to like the small animal section so I'm confident the hamster was seen to. I think the kid didn't want to show his manager he'd dropped and injured the hamster but no way was I going to let him put that poor thing back into the enclosure with the others. Geeze louise!

While it's nice to know it's not just reptiles that are subjected to incompetent pet store employees, that story gets me pretty wound up. It'd be even better if pet stores only employed competent employees.

don't they have some sort of training..... or something....

Awwww, the poor thing. :( I'm glad you were there to see that he received some attention.

They hire kids that are there only for a pay check, and move on to the next job every other month. Training usually consists of, take out the old bedding, this is the new. Because the animals are not socialized to handling, they squirm and nip and bite, and they untrained staff are more afraid of their job then interested. Terrible fate for the animals.

That's it exactly. They seem to hire the most clueless people they can just so they won't get smart to the horrible rules and conditions the animals are kept in. No, there is no training whatsoever in regards to the animals. The only training you receive is in following their outdated crappy policies. The animals are purchased en mass from a mass breeding company that works with these pet stores and are NEVER handled. I've been around animals most of my life and I was afraid to reach in for those frickin hamsters...more so for the ferrets. Despite this, I still tried my best to handle them every chance I got and of course was promptly told off by idiot managers.

Every animal in one of those chain stores, from fish to birds to mice, are mishandled, improperly housed, and cared for by morons in 90% of stores.

well i have a good story to share with you jo. i was at a petsmart a year ago - looking at the mice and i was interested in a little cutie pie... well the woman went to get him for me and he jumped out of her hands and smacked down on the floor. she immediately scooped him up and said to me, "sorry, you can't buy him, we have to get this little one to the vet immediately"... off she scurried with the mouse safe in a box (so he couldn't jump again).

made me proud to see her take his injury so seriously. she came back a little bit later... apologized for the inconvenience and asked if i was interested in another one. her manager was taking the mouse to the vet as we spoke... i wasn't interested in any of the other mice, but i sure was pleased to patronize that store again!

yea or she said she was taking it to the vet...

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Originally Posted by Kagez28

yea or she said she was taking it to the vet...

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I don't see what she would gain in lying about it.

That's great Aleesha and I'm hoping they treated this little creature just as well. It just astounds me that they are this clueless about their own stock. Little rodents are jumpy, anyone with half a brain knows this. Why in the world wouldn't you have a system to move them from the general enclosure into a small carrier (they sell enough of those!) and then on to a raised edge small table for customer examination. Hand grabbing nervous rodents isn't showing them off well to potential buyers, it puts the rodents and the staff at risk of exactly what happened....other than the physical risks, it just seems plain bad business practise in my mind.

i couldn't agree more! when i worked at the petstore. we had the tanks with rodents on the floor... so IF they jumped... they had a couple inches to fall.

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Originally Posted by Kagez28

yea or she said she was taking it to the vet...

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she was visibly upset... and didn't seem to be at all deceiving in her words or actions. her concern seemed genuine to me.

Oh it probably was genuine! She is one of the wondrous few who actually know their stuff. Occasionally you get whole stores like that, but they are really rare. Most chain pet stores just see the animals as more merchandise and don't give a :cens0r: :cens0r: :cens0r: :cens0r:.

Whenever I had to get a rodent out, I coaxed them into one of their tunnels, covered the ends with my hands, and slid them into a box. Reaching in and grabbing around is a recipe for disaster. I was heartbroken once to find that one of our G.Pigs, one I liked, had been dropped by a little boy and broken it's back. It was put to sleep right away, but I was so mad at the associate who let a little kid (meaning around 4-6) hold that animal standing up...

Well I've been in that particular PetCo numerous times and it just seems a bit stupid to not have an area set up for safe ways to show customers a small animal. There's certainly ample room. I may in fact have a word with the manager next time I'm in. From a purely business point of view it's dumb to loose stock to needless injury, it's stupid to have employees or a customer bitten by scared pocket pets and it certainly does not follow their stated policies of "responsible pet ownership".

Sorry to say this, and it's not ALWAYS true of every store, but keep in mind that those 'posted' and 'advertised' policies of theirs are just to get the customers in. In reality, when dealing with animals it's all about "get em in, get em out". They're merchandise. They don't really care if one gets hurt, or sick, or even dies. They just write it off on the sheet and order new ones (trust me, I had to fill out those loss sheets cause my idiot manager couldn't work a computer). The main thing they care about is selling stuff and having customers come back to buy more.

I once stood my ground and refused to sell a pair of parakeets to a particular low class and low morales family because they refused to get any other cage but the cheapest and smallest in the store. That crummy cage wouldn't have even held finches comfortably. I got them to leave, probably to go to another branch where an idiot associate would sell them the birds, and was promptly chewed out by managers for 'refusing a sale'. I tell you I really wanted to launch off then, but I held back and simply told them that I would not sell any animal to someone I knew was not going to care for it properly.

Small animals are tough! I'm confident when it comes to handling reptiles but little hamsters just freak me out.

Where I worked this summer, I've dropped about three hamsters and a gerbil. I try to be as careful as possible but sometimes they squirm around and take a flying leap! This was usually when trying to move the animal into a box, or trying to sex it, or crouching to show the young child it was destined for that it was nice and wouldnt bite when handled (thankfully nothing ever drew blood). You can't completely blame someone for a hamster hissing and wriggling and bolting like a flash of lightning, however it's the way you handle the situation that's important. If you take all precautions beforehand, and afterwards see that the animal is tended to, then it should be fine. Standing around dumfounded is just silly.

I don't like chain stores, I like the place where I worked (and probably will work again next summer)... owned by a nice family who breeds reptiles and have more compassion than those seemingly heartless chain stores. Yes, animals are merchandise but they all deserve medical attention when needed, and proper care. If you sell a sick animal, you're going to get bad rep and possibly lose customers... you would think larger pet stores would catch on that by spending the money to properly care for their animals, they would get surges of support by people who otherwise would be too sickened to shop there.

The problem is too many people are blissfully ignorant of what goes on at those pet stores. Just working at a small one, and seeing all the problems we ran into with recieving sick animals (a part of the problem is the suppliers, not just the stores)... I can't imagine what sorts of issues places like petsmart and petco run into and cover up. All our animals were taken to the vet if needed, even snakes :)

Oh I don't have a problem with how small rodents can be. My problem was this young man who had obviously not the first clue how to pick up a large black bear hamster and messed about so long he had them thoroughly freaked out by the time he did manage to grab one. It's only common sense that the animal will now jump wildly and try to escape. Anyone that deals with living things should know or be taught this. Heck I've been in pet stores where the staff were too scared of a rat to get one out for me to examine and I've had to go do it myself LOL (and then show them how to do it so they don't upset the rat, get themselves bit or freak out their customers).

It just seems to me if you are in the business of selling animals you should at the very least train your staff to present the animal in such a way to encourage a sale. Not drop the poor darn thing on it's head, stand their looking baffled, have to be told what to do by one customer while your other customers walk out the door with their money still in their wallet.

I fully agree with everything, ladies, that's why I left and won't go back (even tho they almost begged me this summer). Those stores seriously need to update their policies, get some experienced people in there or at least some training, and improve on the enclosures all animals are put in... and that's just the most pressing stuff!

I was and still am appalled at the double face most of those stores have: On one hand they advertise and tout to the masses that they are all about customer service (I got yelled at for spending too much time on one customer who had a ton of Q's about G. Pigs), and always having what you need (it sometimes took months to get stocked on things), and behind the scenes they shove too many panicked and underfed animals into tiny badly made enclosures and hardly take care of them while just wanting their people to make sure sales are made.