It may not be the case in all petco/petsmarts but every store i've ever gone into the employees rarely know anything about the reptiles they care for. I got a job at a petco for a few months and literally two weeks after getting the job they promoted me to a dept manager because no one else knew anything about their reptiles or arachnids. It still astounds me that they feed fuzzy mice to juvie ball pythons (not hatchlings) many of them were several months old.