My boyfriend has a parrot that he treats like a child, and he takes it into stores fairly often. It irritates the crap out of me.
Before you leave your house with your pet (snake, dog, cat, bird, spider, whatever) you should ask yourself, "Could everyone else who might be exposed to this animal reasonably expect to see one of these at the store I'm going to?" If the answer is no, you shouldn't take it. For example, would it be unreasonable to think you might see a snake at Petco? No. At The Gap? Probably.
As far as taking responsibility for another person's phobias, that's not what you're being asked to do by not taking your snake into a public place where people wouldn't normally have to be prepared to encounter one. If you were being asked not to take it into a pet store, you'd be right. The phobic person who has a melt down in Lowe's is taking responsibility for their own phobia by buying their do-it-yourself-home-improvement-supplies from somewhere not-snake-related. Same goes for every other animal, by the way.
To me, this is the equivalent of walking through Lowe's with a ghetto blaster playing gangsta rap at an unreasonable volume and then being upset because you shouldn't have to compromise your love of All-50-Cent-All-The-Time just because other people might not like it. It's a public place, afterall.
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