I expect a retail employee to know what their job trained them to know. It's always nice when the employee goes above and beyond that and does some actual research on their products, but in today's workforce it's not expected. I can't really fault an employee for repeating what they've been told to say... I can find fault in a corporation that trains people to say things that could end in disaster for the animals they're selling.

I have a buddy that works in a PetSmart down in Texas and she knows more than half the procedures with the reptiles are wrong. She also knows that if she does something outside of company policy and the pet care manager catches wind, she'll very likely be out of a job. So instead she forcefeeds the snakes that are too stressed to eat on their own, can't quarantine, etc. She hates it, but she's bound by company policy. She is at least allowed refuse to sell to customers that are planning to refuse their pet something necessary ("yea man, I heard on the internet that corn snakes can eat crickets so I'm not buying any mice"), and she tells me about them quite often :\