Not to be insulting, but your people skills must suck. Though I dought you have actually done this a thousand times with only one sucess. Obvious by your posts your are knowledgable in fish keeping so I'm not sure the reason for you being unsucessful. But hey at least ya tried
99.9% was an exaggeration....The point is that actual hobbyists or people that want to be actual hobbyists are a small minority.
Most of the people going in to buy fish DON'T want to hear how to cycle their tank, they DON'T want to hear that they have to wait to add fish, they DON'T want to hear that those fish they're buying will outgrow their tanks, they DON'T want to hear that they have to do actual maintanance other than adding some water to take care of the fish, they DON'T want to hear that the little 5g hex they just bought won't support much more than a betta, so when the employee tells them what they want to hear they're happy with it.
You're assuming that a majority of people actually give a **** if their fish keel over.
The ones that ARE potential hobbyists are going to likely end up extremely confused in the process of setting up their tank because any information they get is going to contradict what they've already heard and what they will hear, including the information I give them myself. You can give them references but anyone that knows how to use the net is going to look at your references and then several other websites that likely have contradictory information. The way most of us found out how to keep fish properly was by accidentally killing fish and then figuring out how NOT to kill fish. Flame me if you want, but that's the sad truth because there is a lack of valid fishkeeping information and a HUGE amount of utter CRAP floating around about it, especially on the net.
That doesn't mean I don't try to educate people that I come into contact with and that NO ONE is receptive, but it's not a very large percentage of people and most people feel inconvenienced when you go up to them trying to tell them anything whether it's in a polite manner or not.
I can't fault petsmart for not hiring educated fishkeepers because there's a shortage of those types of people. I CAN fault the individual employees that
knowingly give people invalid information (and yes they do exist).
And no I'm not faulting ALL employees. I have seen some of the signs with correct sizes on the fish written in, or papers put over the signs with correct info. It's all up to which employees are there at what times.
:WTF: Your telling me that a small LFS is selling 3-8 pacu a day.
