petsmart...

[hamato_yoshii]

I think you can find some decent fish there, you just have to be real careful as to what you buy, and especially how they look.

 

[sharpy]

I work at Petsmart, while in college, and it was very funny that after getting hired on they found out i was majoring in Zoology and new a good deal about fish, so they made me fish specialist. Which sucks for me because everytime there is fish question, whether i am working or not i get a call to help them out. They train there employees very well, and our fish wall and department got an "A" from our reginal manager last week, for keeping fish death down, clean tanks, and excellent advice. I have people scrubbing tanks and reading up on fish, with each employee learning about a different group of fish so they can help out more. The Petco near us has i think 20-30 tanks, never any healthy fish and they cant keep there salt-water fish alive. There are 3 LFS around, one of which they guy has no filtration on his tanks , and the other 2 are decent. One is in a bad location and the other is just flat out to expenive for most folks. People always come in and say we have the best selection of fish in the area, and i take that as a personal compliment. I would have loved to have a petsmart around when i first started keeping fish 15 years ago, instead of going to wal-mart to get fish that were miss treated.

So please dont say all PetSmarts' suck because that siply isnt true. If you want to bash yours thats fine. But i wanted to work there so i could help people get the right fish for there aquarium and make sure that they were healthy fish. Bashing all PetSmarts is like bashing me in the face and my employees and all the employees that actually no what they are doing and want to see the fish hobby continue long after we go to "swim with the fishes"
P.S. One of the LFS even buys his community and semi-aggressive fish from us then breeds them at his store.

I use to work at a petsmart also when I was in high school. I was one of the most knowledgeable employees in that department. I was the only one with 18 tanks. That's for sure!! I don't agree with a lot of the cooperate policies. Luckily our store didn't go by a lot of them. We could refuse to sell a fish/pet to anyone who couldn't/wouldn't provide for it. How we find out if they can provide for it was buy asking them how many gallons their tank was and what fish/inverts were in it when they came up and asked us for any fish. Of course that doesn't tell you how many water changes they do or if they test their water. We asked the people that brought back deads about that. Most people look at you like your crazy when you start talking about water changes, pH, GH, Nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, salt levels, cycling, stocking level, aggressive and compatibility issues, and beneficial bacterial. A lot of people don't want advice. Some do. Most don't. I developed relationships with many customers/families that I helped in my time there. Most of them came to me when they were setting up their first tanks. I walked them down the aisles picking out every piece of equipment they needed, what it does, how it does it, why it is important, and how to use it. It was very common to spend a half hour to forty-five minutes per customer. There were many times I spend over an hour per customer. This was when there were other co-workers on the floor. The people that wanted help waited for it. The people who didn't picked up whatever they needed without the advice. I had a couple regulars that knew my shifts and came to see me every week. Some were small pet owners, others were reptile owners, but most of them were fish owners.

 

[RadleyMiller]

I use to work at a petsmart also when I was in high school. I was one of the most knowledgeable employees in that department. I was the only one with 18 tanks. That's for sure!! I don't agree with a lot of the cooperate policies. Luckily our store didn't go by a lot of them. We could refuse to sell a fish/pet to anyone who couldn't/wouldn't provide for it. How we find out if they can provide for it was buy asking them how many gallons their tank was and what fish/inverts were in it when they came up and asked us for any fish. Of course that doesn't tell you how many water changes they do or if they test their water. We asked the people that brought back deads about that. Most people look at you like your crazy when you start talking about water changes, pH, GH, Nitrates, nitrites, ammonia, salt levels, cycling, stocking level, aggressive and compatibility issues, and beneficial bacterial. A lot of people don't want advice. Some do. Most don't. I developed relationships with many customers/families that I helped in my time there. Most of them came to me when they were setting up their first tanks. I walked them down the aisles picking out every piece of equipment they needed, what it does, how it does it, why it is important, and how to use it. It was very common to spend a half hour to forty-five minutes per customer. There were many times I spend over an hour per customer. This was when there were other co-workers on the floor. The people that wanted help waited for it. The people who didn't picked up whatever they needed without the advice. I had a couple regulars that knew my shifts and came to see me every week. Some were small pet owners, others were reptile owners, but most of them were fish owners.

Same here. I have my regulars that come in because they know I am there every Sunday and won't get fish from any of my coworkers, let alone another store. I recently had a customer write corporate thanking them for my service (which is always nice, and I know I am doing something right) I am also the youngest employee at in the store but guess who used to do fish orders and take care of the system, thats right, me. I basically do everything in the store except for groom dogs and work the register but helping customers is #1. Sometimes I spend an hour talking to a customer, but that is normal. My managers know that I know what I am doing and let me refuse sales without a question. I am also the one that ends up fixing mistakes made by other people so not all of us are ignorant, just some. In a few more months, I will be old enough to be Lead and will most likely get it. I actually like working at Petsmart because I have many regular customers and I feel bad when someone else helps them and something goes wrong in their tank. Not all big chain stores have sick animals and ignorant employees, more often than not they do, but sometimes you get lucky and you have a fellow hobbyist to come and chat with. I swear some of my regulars just come in to talk about stuff, but its cool, I love talking to them too.