walking through my local petco looking for some black convicts to breed my own live food since i do not risk giving my fish rosies and comets anymore. and i overheard a conversation going on between a customer and one of the employees. he was feeding his fish 100 comets a week from petco. i politely asked what type of fish he had and he replied "three red belly pacu". i was trying to inform him of the health risks and nutritional value of an actually store bought goldfish. even explained to him that convicts could be bred easily for safe healthy food, plus you can jam pack them with all kinds of good food. and the employee quickly cut me off and disagreed. he says that you cannot kill one of these fish!!! any type of illness and apparently they heal in a day or two!!! i thought it was pretty damn rude.. on top of being untrue. so i sat my convicts down infront of the employee and left the store. i had a cigarette outside the doors and waited for the customer to exit, and just asked him to do some research on feeders and concerns with them. i also told him about MFK. needless to say he was a little more cooperative than the petco employee. it is a shame how often ignorance is displayed in our communities!!!
PETCO help
- Thread starter fishmanbob87
- Start date
had a petco employee tell me that he generally tells people with pacu they need at least a 75 gallon tank..........yup for a sump maybe.
First of all, I agree with you but, you could've waited until the employee was not present. I would not pick a fight with a Petco employee. It's OK to educate uninformed hobbyist, but there is a way to do it, and not in front of a Petco employee who is trying to make a sale. As a matter of fact, you said the customer buys comets on a regular basis from that store. You're right, but you need to consider the situation from the store employee's perspective.
phillydog1958;4586033; said:
Only issue is that when an employee is there, he generally won't leave until the fish is at least bagged, possibly until it's bought. I still agree, though. Employees of PETCO get nippy, Petsmart employees aren't as bad but still might say the same just so they don't lose business.
I think he did the right thing waiting until the customer walked out of the store.
xRage10;4586049; said:
No, he actually interrupted the conversation between the employee and the customer. He then left and waited outside for the customer.
I know, but that's not the worst thing in the world. You should know just as well as anyone that feeding feeders from PETCO or Petsmart isn't smart and that it can disease or kill any fish in the home aquarium. Though he was interrupting a sale, he was likely saving that customer money on both feeders and new stock.
i believe that causing a little rucus for your cause is not a problem.. and really think about it, i would fight to have petco or petsmart lose all of their sales! if tremendous companies like that were not around the little guys(LFS) would being making a better living doing something that they love. the advice would be good quality, and there would be more happy healthier fish around. not to mention ALOT more people out there would be more well informed about keeping fish.
fishmanbob87;4586151; said:
I wouldn't go that far, but I still think someone should step in. A lot of the people that work at Petco and Petsmart are actually very knowledgeable, but due in part to the company itself they can only follow certain rules and can only do things a certain way. The Petsmart near me actually has responsible employees (except for one or 2) but can't do anything about the way things go on because they could be fired.