Welcome to the world of retail my friend!
I work for a major aquarium products manufacturer. I've heard some stories that I find to be unreal, but one I heard this past year takes the cake. It is however ignorance/greed coming from the other direction. An account of mine happened to be in another store checking things out. He noticed an older woman who wanted to purchase fish for her dying husbands tank. In the tank were his beloved goldfish. She picked out some animals that she wanted for the tank, but told the worker that if they were going to harm her husbands precious fish that it wouldn't work. The store employee assured her that all would be fine. My customer, taking note of this thought something major was wrong as she was in the marine section of the store. When he confronted the employee to tell him that these marine fish (not brackish) would die within minutes in her tank, he went and got the store owner. The owner, like the employee assured the old lady that all would be fine. My customer flipped and asked how he could do such a thing. He was told to leave or he would deal with the police. I guess it's true that these fish certainly weren't going to have a chance to harm her husband's precious fish!
I don't know what bothers me more, ignorance or greed!
I work for a major aquarium products manufacturer. I've heard some stories that I find to be unreal, but one I heard this past year takes the cake. It is however ignorance/greed coming from the other direction. An account of mine happened to be in another store checking things out. He noticed an older woman who wanted to purchase fish for her dying husbands tank. In the tank were his beloved goldfish. She picked out some animals that she wanted for the tank, but told the worker that if they were going to harm her husbands precious fish that it wouldn't work. The store employee assured her that all would be fine. My customer, taking note of this thought something major was wrong as she was in the marine section of the store. When he confronted the employee to tell him that these marine fish (not brackish) would die within minutes in her tank, he went and got the store owner. The owner, like the employee assured the old lady that all would be fine. My customer flipped and asked how he could do such a thing. He was told to leave or he would deal with the police. I guess it's true that these fish certainly weren't going to have a chance to harm her husband's precious fish!
I don't know what bothers me more, ignorance or greed!
Ignorance that is innocent can be changed with knowledge, when it's ignorance mixed with arrogance, knowledge is useless. I've heard more people say 'fish grow to the size of their tank' in that store than anything else. I've seen a guy purchase $200 worth of salt water fish, coral, and anemonies (mixing species of anemonies at that) and when he was asked what size tank and how long it's been set up, his reply was "it's a 30gal and I've had it set up for a few days".
When the guys told him that everything he bought was going to die (especially since they were hard corals and all he had was a freshwater flourescent), his reply was "I've been doing this for years kid, and how much experience do you have?" All I could do was laugh and walk away. 
