lfs employees!

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
okay for all you people who think that they are just asking you questions so they can understand here is my story:
I went to petsmart to buy a few guppies to breed (forgot to) and when i got there i noticed that i thought that the tinfoils might be nice to buy when i got a larger aqaurium( at the time i had a 10 and 30) one of the emplyees saw me eying the tinfoils and said hey buddy( we had talked before and he knew i had a 30 as the largest) do you like the tinfoils and i said yeah but they wont fit they need like 100g for 3. And he says no where did you hear that those guys can be kept in a 30 FOR LIFE.
Needles to say i havent gone to petsmart or Petco to buy fish only equipment
 
yea, sometimes you get idoit associates who don't know anything about fish, that happens however most of the time they(or at least i) am trying to help.
 
Unfortunately its looking more and more like we're going to have to get used to the uninformed employees. Atleast in my area the Petcos and Petsmarts are driving the smaller specialty shops out of business. One here in town is full of well informed kids and the owner is very much into fish also. They will be done by the end of the month and im hoping some of them get hired on by the new pet smart down the street but i know they will not fit in there. what a bummer.
 
my lfs manager had a customer call in and want to return an anemone because it died. curious she asked what kind of fish she had with it 9thinking the fish could have picked at it) to whici the lady replied mollies. she told the lady that the anemone is saltwater and mollies are fresh water. the lady replied "and..." so she further explained in more detial( if thats even possible) then the lady finally said the guy told me when i bought it but i thought i's try it any way...can i have my money back? she got a NO!!! and they won't sell her fish anymore.:D:headbang2
 
I am a high school student and I work at a LFS. I dont see the problem with asking questions of somebody before selling them fish. I usually ask "How big is your tank" and "what else is gonna be in there", and if the person doesnt know what they're talking about, even "is it cycled". I have steered many people with 30 gallon tanks away from oscars, etc.
Once somebody even asked to speak with the manager because I refused to sell a RD to a 20g for life. Thankfully the manager is a nice guy and sided with me, but it goes to show that there IS something to be said for checking where your selling fish to.
 
The petstore chains are just walmart with pets. The only reason they are still in business is because there are a plethora of stupid people that just buy fish on a whim and forget about it.

Take it for what it is, but don't complain about them and then go there to buy your feeder fish, you are just as bad supporting it. We don't have any mom and pop petstores around here because the petsmart and petco pushed them all away. People are more concerned with saving say $0.40 on a pack of 8 filters than keeping a good company in business. Maybe the "savings" aren't so blatently obvious at a family owned LFS, but their savings are offered in a different form than money.

I went into an LFS and was asking about salvini and the next week they had ordered some in for me. Sajicas, same thing. They will order in fish just on the off chance that a customer they have will buy them. They care much more about your business than a chain petstore. I will always go to a LFS over a chain, I don't mind paying a dollar more for something. If it would be up to me I would be throwing money at the owner thanking him for takin a chance and opening up this business and making that career his entire life. Its a thankless job of owning an LFS.
 
You guys may say that you would rather have someone say i don't know then give you there guys but either way ppl are gunna be mad, i know from experiance. I don't work at an lfs buti do sell auto parts, and although i do know alot there are a few things that i don't know and there are alot of ppl who apparently don't like the fact that i don't know and have freaked on me numerous times. That makes it very very tempting to just give them your best guess and not say "i don't know" and have a customer scream at you. Although you do always get alot of other customers who think that person is a complete idiot.

Also even someone who knows alot about fish doesn't know everything and i am sure at times even some of the best employees have givin there best guesses out as fact, and been wrong, so don't give the youg ppl who are making 8.50 an hour if that crap for not knowing everything about every kind of fish. And it actually isn't there job to know everything. They are hired to sell fish. If the employer wants ppl who know everything about every fish then they should either hire ppl who know everything or train them, as it is there responsibility to do so.
 
I like the thread, I know my Petsmart will not sell me fish anymore because I told the guy I had a arowana, they wont sell me any fish, even when I have 5 tanks, the arowana is only in 1 of them, it just irratates me.
 
Ohh and the guy that works at Petsmart, he told me oh my god you have a arowana, and I said yes and the guy said that thing when it gets full grown, he told me it will get 4 foot, he said it will bite your arm off, and I just started laughing at him, I told him I dont think you should be working here.
 
i dont get it why wont they sell you any fish at all thats f^^ked up
i must be missing something or maybe iam one of them dumb ppl that have to ask
 
MonsterFishKeepers.com