Favorite LFS "CUSTOMER" STORIES ...

[Bogwoodbruce]

i just recently had an interview at my pet shop but they sell true monster set up anyway i hung around looking at the stock and talking to one of the staff there who cares about them next thing you know some 19 year old with his mum walk in and go straight to the fish section mum goes "why not get a stingray for your tank?" he then shouts "FU** OFF my oscar would freakin eat it" he was a chav(british gangster but poorer)but it didnt sound like "my oscar would kill it" it was a definet idiotic nimrod i didnt even ask him how big his tank was cos i felt like making him infertile for his dumbass comment justice!!! me and john (staff) were laughing to a coma as he bought 3 angelfish.
but seriously if a oscar attempted to nibble a ray im sure it would feel a bit more than quesy after that sting

Ive kept large oscars with large rays and small oscars with young rays and always been fine

 

[Bogwoodbruce]

and there are just as many customers out there who like to hand out bad advice to fellow customers as there are employees. i can't stress this enough if you go into a conversation like you're better than someone and expect them to be stupid you're probably not going to get anything positive out of it regardless of the employee's knowledge.

Exactly, its not a one way street

makes plenty of sense why they question a 12 year old little kid when it comes to touching the animals in the store, for many reasons, such as liability/safety concerns. at the stores I worked at years ago, a 12 yr old little kid would need a parent present to handle an animal at the store, or buy an animal of course.

Yep where i work you cant come in if your under 16 without adult supervision.

 

[Phosaurus]

Bump!

 

[Plec123]

so, a couple days ago one of the bio teachers in my high school asked me to set up the 10gal tank that was up and running in the bio lab last year. i said sure but she'd have to buy the fish. she had no objections because this would mean she got to pick what went into the tank. i explained how it had to be stocked slowly and that it'd be best for her to start out slow, with a single dwarf gourami or golden wonder killie.

this morning i came in and, eager to see what she got, i go into the lab to see the tank. to my horror, there're 3 tiger barbs and 2 peppered corys. i told her she'd have to get at least 2 more tiger barbs and 1 more cory for them to live happily. luckily, the tank is broken up enough that the barbs wont be able to be too aggressive towards each other, so 5 tiger barbs should work. she was understanding and said "i knew i shouldve listened to you". after school she was supposed to go out and get the 2 more barbs and 1 more cory, but ill see if thats been done when i go in tomorrow morning. i told her she could pick out any kind of cory because they all school together.
strangely, when i looked in the tank today, one of the tiger barbs was in breeding dress, and it had only been about 18 hours since they had entered the tank...
right now, everything looks healthy and is eating well, thank god.

 

[trojan09]

tell us about the oscar story. or did u already tell it?

 

[laxplaya8613]

BUMP!!

 

[LateInningMagic]

Yesterday I was at one of the LFS (chain store) and some guy was there waiting for his fish to be bagged. I don't even know how we started talking, but we did and he told me about how he bought some of those fish over there *points*, I asked, the gourami (right next to the tank he was pointing at) and he said "no, the African chinchillas!" I managed not to laugh, and said they were cool.

He said they weren't eating though and that the store sold him some "***got" fish. I asked him if he checked his PH and he said he had no idea about that kind of stuff. He said he just bought a tank, set it up and had some feeder fish in there for like 6 months. I told him the fish probably weren't eating because the PH was too low. I told him our PH is like 6 and they need the PH over 8. I suggested crushed coral. He said he was going to see if his new fish (more fish from the cichlid tank) would eat first.

When I went to the cash register (I bought an angelfish) he was there with a PH test kit and the employee was telling him he had to use the perfect PH 8.2 stuff and to try to get the test kit more blue than the test kit allows. I suggested he buy the master test kit since it comes with the high range PH and crushed coral, to which the employee interjected "you don't have crushed coral in there? That would really help". The guy I guessed didn't want to spend more money and just took the normal PH test kit and PH perfect stuff.

Oh, this was a 28 gallon bowfront tank. He has about 3 or 4 fish he was buying. Don't know how many more he had at home.

 

[LateInningMagic]

Just rememberd another story. I was at another chain store this week in Manhattan and I saw this lady getting a goldfish bagged. First time fish keeper for sure. She asked the employee questions about feeding and then went to pick up a bowl, small filter, food, and water conditioner. She kept asking an employee questions about each item she was picking up and he never told her a bowl was inadequate for a goldfish. *facepalm*

The sad thing is that I couldn't really catch her alone because she kept going back to the employee for questions and I didn't want to get kicked out of the store or something for telling her she needed a way bigger tank. I'd already warned another guy some 5 minutes earlier that the tank he was getting shrimp from had a rummynose tetra with ich in it. I didn't want to push my luck.

 

[justonemoretank]

I was at an LFS this past weekend and a lady was buying a jellybean parrot. I was watching the guy bag it, and I managed to keep my mouth shut about the inhumane, cruel treatment that is fish dyeing. I was proud of myself. (I think sometimes my husband worries about leaving me alone at the LFS.)
Then, she pointed at an albino cory, and said, "I'd like one of those, too. One of mine died." He told her, "No, you can't do that, I'd at least put that fish in your cichlid tank, they get big and aggressive." She, of course, was like, "Are you sure, because..." "Yep, I mean if you want it, I'll sell it to you, but they get big and aggressive." I finally said, "That's an albino cory. It only grows to like two or three inches. And it will act just like your other ones." He looked at it, and then agreed with me, and said he thought the fish was an albino channel cat.
#1, try looking at the fish before you tell the customer what it's like, and #2, you'd sell someone an albino channel cat with that crappy warning? Like, she wasn't exactly twisting his arm, and he'd already relented, and was going to bag the tiny monster up! #3, like it will be better in the cichlid tank. It must be a big one, with very big cichlids. Wow. At least give max. size... "really big" is a really relative term.
I went back today and all of their jellybeans have ich. It shows up really well on their disgustingly dyed scales. But, fear not, as they've gotten a new order of painted glassfish in! Grrr.

 

[Plec123]

I was at an LFS this past weekend and a lady was buying a jellybean parrot. I was watching the guy bag it, and I managed to keep my mouth shut about the inhumane, cruel treatment that is fish dyeing. I was proud of myself. (I think sometimes my husband worries about leaving me alone at the LFS.)
Then, she pointed at an albino cory, and said, "I'd like one of those, too. One of mine died." He told her, "No, you can't do that, I'd at least put that fish in your cichlid tank, they get big and aggressive." She, of course, was like, "Are you sure, because..." "Yep, I mean if you want it, I'll sell it to you, but they get big and aggressive." I finally said, "That's an albino cory. It only grows to like two or three inches. And it will act just like your other ones." He looked at it, and then agreed with me, and said he thought the fish was an albino channel cat.
#1, try looking at the fish before you tell the customer what it's like, and #2, you'd sell someone an albino channel cat with that crappy warning? Like, she wasn't exactly twisting his arm, and he'd already relented, and was going to bag the tiny monster up! #3, like it will be better in the cichlid tank. It must be a big one, with very big cichlids. Wow. At least give max. size... "really big" is a really relative term.
I went back today and all of their jellybeans have ich. It shows up really well on their disgustingly dyed scales. But, fear not, as they've gotten a new order of painted glassfish in! Grrr.

wow.... i hate it when employees say crappy stuff like that.
im proud of 2 things in my petsmart: they have healthy fish, and stock natural glassfish, not painted ones.