The TRUTH about PetSmart | perspective from an ex-PetSmart employee 

in my experience, i've seen both petsmart and petco employees do their best to steer customers away from poor husbandry decisions. once, a woman came with her daughter to get a goldfish and a bowl and the employee was trying to get her to pick "a cuter, littler fish" and a 5 or 10 gal tank kit. when the woman asked why, the employee just looked at the little girl and back to the mom and said, "so your daughter doesnt cry in a week". idk what the woman ended up doing, but it's not the only time i've seen the employees try to influence better decisions.

When I worked at Petsmart in 2002 I got in trouble when I over heard some people talking about their oscar fish having ick and they where going to just flush it. I was like we have medicine for that and you shouldn't flush LIVE ANIMALS! The customers told my boss on me and a manager talked to me about. I flat out told them if someone was talking about drowning a bucket of kittens should I not suggest they get taken to a shelter instead of killing them?

Petsmart employee: Can I help you? Me: I know more than you.

If we don't hear from u in a month we'll assume petsmart got u

i’m a petsmart employee now and having pets all my life i’m constantly catching my coworkers lacking on super basic knowledge that’s very worrying :/

The petco near me used to actually be OK, I was buying plecos (I don’t support them anymore) and the lady who was catching the fish was talking about how long they live, how much they poop, how they get huge and need big tanks and honestly I love that 👌 don’t worry the plecos went in our 1400 gallon pond (it’s 4 feet deep so it’s warm enough)

When I was 8 or 9 I went to pet smart and an employee told me I could put 3 Bala sharks in a 20 gal,I chose guppies instead thank god

I’ll never forget the answers to my questions from a Petco “fish expert” when buying my first goldfish for a first mini pond setup. “Goldfish actually prefer colder water below 60” “You could start with feeders. If they die, who cares, they only cost 35c” “To grow plants just put these in there and random plants will grow” *hands me API Root Tabs*

I’m just glad the pet smarts near me don’t sell to many “larger” fish anymore. Not much that require more then a 55 gallon.

I'm a former PetSmart employee as well. It used to be a good company. They USED to train about animal care. Now they don't. According to a friend who was with the company for about 18 years, they used to have to get certified in different things like birds, small animals, reptiles, etc. And would receive a pin to put on their shirt showing they were knowledgeable in that field. It was slowly phased out bit by bit. About 2 years ago they stopped the standardized trainings altogether. Now it says to "read the care guides" which are not always accurate. They imply that Bearded Dragons can eat melon, mango, and banana daily or 3x a week.... uhhhh, no they can't... they also don't inform employees that hatchling dragons (we would frequently get dragons 2 weeks and younger) need to eat up to 4x a day. Habitats are becoming more style over actual care. It's very disappointing. My last store manager wouldn't make it possible to get animals to the vet. It was supposed to be ONLY me and I ALWAYS closed. Vet closes at 6. Just because she and the others didn't like the vet and he was a little hard to deal with. I get his attitude. If they can't be bothered to read the chart and tell him what is wrong with it, he has other patients. I was a Customer Engagement Leader. They did away with the Pet Care Manager, Front End Manager, and Cashier Manager and just combined the 3 into 1. So you also don't have any time to really train people on every detail of animal care. Closing all of the time, I NEVER saw my openers which the SL did on purpose. She knew I wanted them to do a thorough job which took more time. If she told them to half-ass it, it was done quickly and she could get off register to dooooo... nothing. Or slap them on less important projects like helping to stock when the stocking team should have been held accountable for that. So yeah. There's my story and why I left.

Don’t expect to get much better information at locally owned a pet stores either. I have a Petsmart, a Petco and a local pet store who also animals and none of them know a damn thing about them.

Yes when i transferred to petcare i thought there would be some lessons and tests on the pets we're working with regarding husbandry but no there wasn't. I had to do my own personal research on each animal to get proper knowledge and also build up enough self confidence to tell people no when they didn't want to establish proper habitats for the pets. Its also important to encourage others to do their own research on the pet they're getting which can be very difficult.

As a current PetSmart employee in the petcare section, I totally agree! I had to do all of my research on my own time, and we often buy supplies for the animals with our own money, to keep them as happy and healthy as possible. Especially the reptiles! They are my absolute favorite babies in the store! We have to buy salad ingredients for the baby beardies, because they are seen as a treat! I, like you, am lucky that I work at a store that does care a bit more, and has very knowledgeable people in Petcare, one of our Petcare managers is actually a zoo keeper! She is beyond awesome to learn from!

They were rather rough with the snails I got from them. All the black mystery snails had crushed or cracked shells.

I think this is a great perspective on PetSmart (and petco too). The lower ranking employees vary wildly in experience and knowledge and really aren’t at fault most of the time when things go wrong. The upper management needs to rethink how they hire and market though.

I used to work at PetCo for several years. Everything stated in this video is the same for PetCo as well. It's incredibly sad just how low the bar is set for information and training. I've seen many people leave with healthy ferrets (which I specialized in) and come back with their ferret looking terrible because of other employees not giving the information needed to care for these babies. Most people believe that taking care of an animal is incredibly easy because of how easy it is to obtain animals now, but the truth is that it isn't and I wish that was laid out for the customer more.

Chris: asks for likes Chris: *gets likes Chris: it's rewind time

Woah! I never knew you were a conservation biologist! That's what I'm wanting to do, what's your favorite part about it??

Dealt with petsmart this past week bc I had a gift card from Christmas and didn't want it to go to waste, and bought 2 long tailed grass lizards and the worker pulled out a juvenile Bahaman anole. And broke it's leg in the process of putting it in the container. (Eye witnessed) I don't feel comfortable taking the anole back for the grass lizard I was supposed to get judging by how she reacted to hurting it initially, so now I'm Trying to figure out how to help this little dude and gonna get the other grass lizard from somewhere trustworthy.

The only time I got to petsmart is strictly for supplies. Never purchase animals from petsmart.

You must've worked at a 1 in a million PetSmart.... because the ones around me are a freakin nightmare!

Thank you for this video Chris. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said. I'm still currently employed at a Petsmart in the petcare department and I'm in the same situation as you were. My team is pretty great, we have experience and knowledge about the animals kept at the store. But the issue is, like you said, there is NO training regimen for new hires in petcare. We all learned what we know from working at Petsmart. Sometimes this results in knowledge gaps like you said. I don't know anything about Pacman frogs because we no longer sell them in our stores. I agree that Petsmart needs to move away from that "retail store" structure, but I think another issue is with the average customer who comes into our stores. They aren't looking to care for an animal properly. They want to spend the least amount of money possible to have a new "decoration" (especially with the fish). It is extremely rare that a customer comes in to the store already having done research on an animal they're going to buy! So it falls on petcare to educate them, and sometimes certain people will fail to do this. It sucks, because petcare workers are really just retail workers. We are paid like retail and expected to do everything a retail worker does, plus care for live animals. Yet we are treated like we should know every aspect of husbandry for every animal, which, like you said, there is no vetting process so this just doesn't make sense. I agree with your viewpoint Chris, this was a good video. I'd like to hear more about your career!

This video was really well thought out and very similar to my situation. I worked at Petco for 3+ years and we were on the similar boat. We were just lucky we hired people that cared, we were just lucky they had pets at home, we were just lucky they wanted to learn more but like the same as PetSmart-we really needed more support from corporate. We couldn't do what they wanted us to do by giving us a short time frame + our daily maintenance with live animals. I was the main reptile/aquatic opener + aquatic specialist, so I fed/received/ordered/did maintenance on the systems without really a second hand until they realized I was getting burned out and having melt downs at work. There's so much pressure that corporate didn't seem to understand but I *must* finish my maintenance because if I don't do it, no one can (lack of time) . Management teams really make it or break it for a store. I had a really good companion animal leader that cared, reminded us animals came first. Animal care: We strive for perfection even though we know its unattainable because the animals under our care deserve it.

How hard would it be to develop a online training course that gauges knowledge and helps them choose a candidate for a specific position

Sadly my local petsmart doesn’t use the quarantine room for fish cause literally all there fish have ick 24/7

I’m sad to say as a 15 year old I know more about how to care for fish than the average PetSmart employee

I work at petco and we are all required training and quizzes on animal care, once you get higher up as animal specialists you have to do more training and quizzes that are more in depth with certain topics. As he said most pet store employees have their own pets and have more knowledge based on the research they do on their own time for their animal babies ❤️ (also we always encourage doing your own research because not one person is going to know everything and there are hundreds of sources to get the best information from) You can never stop improving! 😊

I work at Petco now and I have dogs, cats, a snake and 8 fish tanks and I've had people treat me like i have no idea what I'm talking about and it's annoying. People come in and just say i want a bowl for a goldfish and when I explain that it's not a good idea it's always the same thing "I did that when I was younger and it worked fine" I know more than you ma'am.

My Petsmart is horrendous. Dead fish, I had to educate the “fish worker” on which was a male or female Molly. Their goldfish feeder tanks heaters were broken for a month and they were kept at 90F. They kept getting more goldfish in, and they all died. Their fish are floating dead, or bent spines. No one knows anything. Sadly it’s my only choice.

I worked in pet care for over a year, and my experience was pretty much the same as yours. My pet care team was good, but there were gaps in knowledge and everything was up to us to research. We tried to do some things to improve the lives of animals in the store and we would refuse sales sometimes to people who didnt listen to our advice, but the management wouldnt back us up.

Unfortunately PetSmart and Petco are my only option

As someone who currently works at PetSmart and has worked there for almost 3 years, I have found the petcare crew to be very similar. We all came in with our own knowledge on certain animals and have taught each other. They do now have a small standardized test for petcare associates and (in our store) we do not hire people directly into petcare without prior experience.

Thanks for sharing your story. Very interesting to hear your side of things and what you saw.

Is that the minecraft song I hear?😂

This is an amazing video and you do a great job explaining the whole process at petsmart. I too feel like our store's care is much better then some others in the area but I think that is because we have great employees who understand that we are responsible for providing the best knowledge to new pet owners. We spend countless hours doing research and learning how to care for the massive amount of animals we sell. Unfortunately we are not compensated for our efforts and are stuck in part time positions making minimum wage. The people to who choose to stay do so because we are trying our best to make a difference in the lives of the animals in our care.

My parents were cheap when I got my Leopard geckos, so they came from petco. The lady who got them out of the tank for me told me it would be best to have a 20 gal. tank with 3 females and two males, sand in the bottom and just feed them repashie....Luckily i had done two months of research before and still almost three years later do my own pet care research and have treated my two better than they advised.

I wonder whats the truth (spoiler: they don’t know crap about fish)

I honestly have worked with both companies (PetSmart and Petco). I feel like Petco trains it's employees better than PetSmart. Going into PetSmart my knowledge on fish was already experienced more than most employees. When I was brought into petco, the training was more in depth and you couldn't work the department until you finished the training. Petco is going strides to prioritize animal Care and nutrition while I feel like PetSmart has remained stagnant. People are constantly going "oh, I'm going to PetSmart, their prices are better". But sometimes price isn't everything. I agree, the stores and management aren't great. My previous PetSmart manager was horrible and took side of the majority rather than the guy who was doing all the work. Petco really kept things fair and are more considerate of others and their workers. At least, that is based on my experiences. I just feel like PetSmart is all about the money and Petco is more about the animals. If I had to pick the better of both evils, I'd go with Petco.

I work at petsmart now in the pet care section. Most employees do genuinely care about the animals, but not everyone is super knowledgeable & we do still get the occasional person who’s just looking for a paycheck. Aside from getting the proper certifications, a lot of the training i was given in my first couple of weeks boiled down to coworkers saying stuff like “well this is how you’re supposed to do it, but i dont feel like doing that right now so just ask someone else to show you later” I have learned a lot from experience, but i think I’d be able to take way better care of all our pets and help customers better if I had gotten way more in depth training right from the start.

I work at PetSmart and I 100% agree with everything you have said. Most of us in petcare know a lot about animals because we have them but along the way management has hired people who know absolutely nothing. We have to correct them before they give out the wrong info and potentially put an animals life at risk.🤷🏼‍♀️

I’m an aspiring zoologist, I want to be a conservation biologist and ornithologist. Which is why I sought out this job, thing is I soon realized that I have massive inconsistencies with fish and small mammal care. So here I am trying my best to research as much as possible

There’s hella cuties that work at the 3 petsmarts around me. Only good thing about petsmart

My Petco keeps there Bettas in actual tanks

The most important take away is that it all starts from the attitude from up on down. You said it perfectly mgmt forces betta jar sales, while holding dogs and cats to a higher standard. Am fortunate to have a good relationship with my LFS but wouldn’t mind rescuing a betta or two from Bigbox store. But my money 💰 mostly never reaches them anymore.

I work at a barn around horses just miled stuff like cleaning out their stalls, giving fresh water, and leading them here and there. I really only had a very short time of the day learning what I need to do but lucky I'm really interested in natural horsemanship and all that stuff and had a good idea what I am doing most of the time. But if someone came up to me about the care, food, minerals, meds, all breeds, cost, ect I would know shit. I think that it's interesting that dogs are really a simple animal to care for cats are a little more complex, then rodents, fish, reptiles you really have to look into their care but very few places actually have a pet store so wildly spread around the U.S and its left for them to give knowledge to the people even if it's wrong. I really want to set up a good pet store in my small town but I'm only 16 and I'm poor child.

I have two privately owned fish and animal care stores within 2 miles of where I live. They get my service. They are passionate and care deeply on how the animals are treated and cared for when sold. If someone looks like be oblivious to caring for something they want... The owners will refuse to sell. I tell my fiancé our service goes to them and them only. Not these large corporations. Outstanding video. Keep up the good fight. You are not alone in it!

I work at Petsmart now and my manager's name is Alex too. What a coincidence. I'm straight out of high school and this is my first job. I wanted this job because I really love animals and I thought that it would be a great environment for me and very therapeutic. But when I started working there, it was the total opposite and really not what I was expecting. Plus I got no training at all what's so ever and I got treated very poorly. I had no idea what I was doing and when ever I would ask for help, other coworkers would catch hostile attitudes with me and the managers would avoid helping me and ignore me. I feel like I may quit this job very soon.

My true story. I worked at petsmart 15 years ago in Southern California. I contracted rat bite fever(safety protocols were not enforced) from a rat scratching me while working pet care and ended up with a severe case that was misdiagnosed multiple times before it was finally cultured in a lab. I was hospitalized for over a week, could not walk or move and had my heart and joints majorly effected. Workman’s comp took care of it and paid the 100k hospital bill I rang up. This was at the same time that the San Diego boy passed from the same zoonotic disease. Our cases were months apart.

I’ve always found my store to be very clean in the animal department. The pet department employees were knowledgeable and tried to give the best advice. My experience shows most people working with animals really cared. They didn’t know everything but were willing to look up what they didn’t know

I hate pet stores so much even tho I work at one. It’s one of my biggest regrets because as an animal lover, it hurts encountering so many people who don’t care about the pets they get even though you help them.

I'm so glad that you took this by the wheel and went in detail about fish care. Please keep up dude cause you're my teacher right now.

Ok I am new here but I’ve become obsessed with your channel. You’re knowledgeable in this hobby I’m new to, but you also have the same millennial sense of humor as I do. Just wanted to say I love this angle in comparison to the camera being parallel with the wall. It really helps to show the beauty of your tanks!

I'm a more assertive petsmart employee, I was given the "ok" that I'm allowed to refuse to sell a pet to a customer if I feel the animal won't be going to a good home and I sometimes get people who come in and want to put goldfish in their 10gal aquarium. I've turned down a few pleco buyers who want to put their plecos in 30gal aquariums. It's frustrating and stressful to have to turn people down, because then you get a lot of unhappy customers who leave the store and most likely go somewhere else to get their baby megafish they want to put in their 10gal. But at least I feel I've protected a few of our animals.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I had a friend that worked at Petco, a fishy employee (see what I did there) had spoke with management and was allowed to put betta in each fishtank that had appropriate potential fish friends. It shocked me to walk up and see betta cruising around these 10 gallon tanks with endlers, guppies e.t.c super awesome since it also shows that betta can be kept with other fish. Side note I have a 55 gallon with 5 female betta, one female cichlid (who thinks she's a betta) two little ottos (every tank needs ottos imho, most adorable clean up crew ever!) and two glass catfish, oh and the shrimp and snails (I purposely raise snails! Poor things get a bad rep! Lol). My 75 has a bit of a mix too... all of my 20 gallon breeding tanks have one male betta too. Never had problems *knock on wood* I think it's great that Petco person is doing that in the store. Baby steps! (Not that I'm suggesting buying from them, just noting a change that an employee made that didn't come down from higher management, just ive employee trying to make a difference... and a better world for bettas lol)

Petsmart was the first place I was employed when I moved away from home. I was 18 and so naive that I didn't know different states had different min wages. Back then my home state was 6 bucks & change( same as federal back then) and the state I moved was 10. I put down the federal min as recommended by my parents so I could gain employment fast and be able to pay rent. The manager said "We're going to pay you 6.25 an hr since that's what you wrote down" and it sounded weird to me but she was older like my mom and they needed to fill positions so I trusted that they would pay an employee at least enough to remain an employee. Doing differently would cause their turnover rate & training costs to rise and it made no sense for them to hurt the company like that. There was no way that the federal min wasn't enough to live anywhere in the US and get by otherwise it wouldn't be federal (entire country) level pay, I mistakenly believed. My naivety must have looked like a golden goose opportunity of exploitation. Anyway, I ended up training a guy in college during my second month there and he was the one that told me they were paying him 10 an hr and there I was with my power off, empty fridge and an eviction notice - doing nothing each day but working and sleeping. By the 3rd month I was moving home to recover from what drs called clinical fatigue and malnutrition. They tried HARD to convince me that staying on and commuting 4 hrs from my home state to there would be worth it. I guess I should have offered to lie down on the floor so they could clean the bottom of their shoes off on me. lol

I have 2 petsmarts near me. And i trust one over the other because of how their bettas are. One store i bought 2 bettas, one had swim bladder disease, i kept him, the other was blind due to ammonia burns and an employee told me a 1 gallon was MORE then enough for a betta, and all their bettas were floating at the top, clamped fins, dull etc. I took the blind one(blink) to a different petsmart because i couldn't care for him. They had more bettas to care for yet all of them were bright, active, healthy, flaring etc. And they dont sell fish bowls there either! Blink actually immediately found a knowledgeable home with one of the employees as soon as i explained why i cant keep him. So he's now in a 5.5 gallon tank. And while i was there i got another betta who is super active and healthy

This is nice to see an inside perspective of a chain petstore. I prefer myself to support local petstores even if prices are higher and in my area when a Petsmart was built it took away all business to small petstores around me and they shut down. It was sad. There are definately pros and cons to chain petstores.

I am a simple (wo)man. I see Fish For Thought, I like.

Woah! You're a conservation biologist! I want be one :) Well, I wish you still worked there! You'd save so many animals...

I only had one Pet Care manager that knew more than I did about the department. Three managers later never knew anything. I had to train all of them and they didn't care about anything.

I work at petco. Guy is in the fish section looking around. I ask him if he needed any help and this man arrogantly said “I don’t need help from uneducated petco employees.” I told him that I am a small dwarf cichlid and discus breeder. I then told him that the gold rams in the tank were from my extra stock (I was relatively new to breeding and selling, so I had a lot of leftover stock I couldn’t get rid of, so I gave it to petco.) He shut up after that and just left the store. I have never felt so good in my entire life.

I have a local store in my area called Pisces Fish Emporium that was stared by my father's old highschool biology teacher. The staff are super friendly and they are often well versed in the fish they sell, often asking what fish you already have and how big the tank is. They will make recommendations based on that. Most of the people there are super passionate and the store owner lets his employees aquascape some of the tanks at the store and had seminars for first time fish owners. Anyways, what I'm saying that Pisces has done really well getting people from even out of province ( like 10 hrs away) there is no reason why other companies can not adapt the same ideology.

A local pet shop sold my family 3 baby KOI fish in a literal VASE when I was like 6 or 7. They told us they would stay small. Unfortunately we only found a good aquarium shop (with a biologist as owner) after 2 of them had passed. We had good intentions and wanted to provide a good and loving home for them but got so much wrong information from a lot of people, we felt absolutely horrible ( and it was such a long time ago there was so little information online then). The last one survived for 15 years. He was stunted and stayed "small" (+- 25 cm) even though he was in a 135 gallon after that. He died because his organs were failing from being so compacted. We tried to help him but our exotic vet said we couldn't. I feel horrible for ever buying them but we didn't know better. He got put to sleep before he was in too much pain. In a humane way may I add, so with medications from the vet. The only positive thing that came from this is these fish got me in the hobby. Man I loved that fish. But it breaks my heart when I think back at what we did. I feel disgusted, poor animals. Years later, my "new" fish are happy and healthy and I know what I'm doing now. I just wish that employee never told us to buy them and sold them to someone with a pond instead. They deserved better.

I work in the pet care department and with the pandemic happening. They've really gone downhill in terms of animal care. Like I do my very best to give the animals and fish what they need but now I'm rushed to do customer service since we only have three people on the sales floor.

I used to work for Petco, we had one quarantine room and it was mostly used for reptiles and not much else... sick rodents were separated but still sold at a discount, fish... no one cared they went from truck to tank on the floor... I've always found Petsmart to take better care than Petco... I went from Nursing to pet care after an injury.

I'm currently working at PetSmart, and just recently I got the flu, I called and let them know I'm sick, and I'm going to get a Covid test just to make sure. The hiring manager called me yesterday asking if I'm coming in, I told her no because I'm sick and that I told the general manager that the day before. She got upset and said "Don't worry about coming in tomorrow or next week, I'll have Doug give you a call. " So this morning, I woke up feeling a little bit better and my sister and I decided to watch some Naruto, a few minutes later I get a call from the general manager saying "so you think this is the right fit for you" I can't tell you how upset I am because it sounds like they're trying to fire me for being sick. I just started three weeks ago and they're trying to say I've been late, when in fact I've been 10 minutes early. Did anyone else have go through this?

I went to PetSmart today to purchase some aquarium gravel, and the fish tanks were yellow and filthy, and some tanks had dead fish piled on top of each other. Not even the feeder fish, the 20+$ fish. It was sad.

My grandfather used to work a few days a week at a petco. He was also working at an aquarium at the time. He totally turned the fish department around in that store, but couldn't deal with the lack of management so he upped his time at the aquarium

My 2 biggest complaints about the Petsmart in the town nearest me - they constantly had ich in their fish tanks, and their employees kept young male and female guinea pigs together. Those precocious buggers can get pregnant very young, but it's not healthy for them. I dealt with that quite often when I was doing guinea pig rescue - people would bring pregnant females to me because they bought a piggy for their kid, not expecting it to be pregnant and NOT wanting to deal with babies. EVERY time, those female pigs had been bought in the previous weeks from Petsmart, and the family had no other guinea pigs to impregnate those girls. I haven't been in there for a couple of years, so I don't know if they've ever resolved those issues. I sure hope so.

First time I’ve commented....Always like your videos! Honest, sincere and very informative. You have inside knowledge and I could see the same from the outside as a customer. If I need to go to a local pet store I go to aquarium adventure, which is about a 45 min drive but worth it. They are much more knowledgeable. Or I order from aquarium co op, etc. If I absolutely have to, I prefer Petco over PetSmart because I have found them to be more knowledgeable. Again it could be too as you said, the individual location.

I saw a petco employee trying to convince a dad from buying a green iguana for his 10 year old kid... Dad reported the employee.

My petsmart has this really nice employ who actually knows about bettas. When I got my betta she recommended me some really good tanks for bettas :)

Honestly I'm very happy you are coming forward! I'm working at PetSmart now and honestly it is my favorite job. I know that the petcare associates in my store know a crap ton and are safety certified, they go through hours and hours of training. I'm only a dog bather and cashier rn, but I'm not allowed to to anything with animals other than crickets or Feeder fish. Honestly I'm very proud of my work, we all do so much to take care of our pets.

Omg, there are 666 comments 🤣 Anyway, I was going to say thank you for speaking your honest opinion with us! I've always had a bad opinion about PetSmart, and that's probably never going to change unless they change themselves for the better. Unfortunately, my pet stores here aren't the best, but the Petcos are definitely doing better than the others. Sadly, I only have 1 LFS and it's not that great. Personally, when I walk into a PetSmart, I immediately ask about their "Betta adoptions" and head straight to the sick Betta fish. You see, Petco has a real adoption process which is helping to support millions of animal shelters every day. They'll take in other's pets, give them a large enclosure, and put them up for adoption. I've seen a pair of Blood Parrots for adoption in a clean, planted 40 or 50 Breeder! I've also seen a beautiful pair of older Comet Goldfish for adoption in either a 50 Breeder or 75, of course planted with LIVE plants and just a few artificial pieces of decor. Some adoptable animals aren't in the best condition, but you can't blame Petco for someone else's mistakes. They advertise all over the store about their adoption program and always post signs of "Think Adoption First". One of my favorite things about Petco is that they're starting to catch on about Goldfish and how big they get! The tanks for selling Goldfish are pretty big (at least a 20 Long) and they'll make sure to post and/or signs on or near the Goldfish tanks stating how "Goldfish get big, some getting more than a foot in length, and they need big tanks!" I don't remember the exact wording, but that's basically what it reads. The employees are pretty nice and, what made me absolutely ecstatic is that they've been getting more and more employees who are highly experienced in certain types of pets! I've met more experience Betta lovers at Petco than I probably ever have! I, of course, cannot leave out the more proper pet care they've been trying to provide. I'm sure you've heard how Petco switched all of their pet food products to natural? And this isn't just Dog and Cat food, this also includes food for small mammals, Fish, and Hermit Crabs! They've been promoting planted Shrimp tanks like crazy, which is great for the smaller tanks they sell. Unfortunately, I'll still find a sick Betta or two that needs in need of some extra TLC, but that's my specialty! You can clearly see that Petco is trying as hard as they can to take better care of their animals and to promote better care for the consumers! In fact, I've heard that they're even planning on getting rid of store-bought animals altogether! That's fantastic! I believe this'll come in a few years, if we're lucky. From tiny, dirty, cold fish bowls in the 80's to beautiful planted aquariums and decor, I'm proud how far they've come! As for PetSmart, unfortunately, I am still absolutely disgusted by them. Sure, their Goldfish are really impressive, and sure, they may have a really cool Betta or two, and sure, their male Mice are super sweet in temperament, but other than that, their pet care sucks. HAVE YOU SEEN THEIR TINY TAILS CAGES!?!? @Munchie'sPlace promotes good husbandry for small animals such as Hamsters, Gerbils, Mice, and even Guinea Pigs or Bettas occasionally, so go watch her videos if you're interested! When entering a PetSmart, I will not give them a dime. I take a look around, go back to the Bettas in their tiny, horrible cups, look for sick fish that need rescuing, newly born fry, or "pest Snails" to bring home for free, and I leave without spending a penny. If you didn't know, PetSmart's "adoption process" is nothing like Petco's. They don't promote good pet care, they don't support animal shelters, they don't even support bringing your small animals to the vet. It's insane just how little these people care for animals. That's not to say I've met a good apple in the dozens of bad ones, and that's also not to say I will never enter or purchase a nice tank at a PetSmart, but both are very rare. Overall, PetSmart is just a leech compared to Petco. Can you believe PetSmart bought Chewy for 8 bil when they were already 11 bil in debt? Now they're 19 BILLION dollars into debt, and yes, that's will a capital B! I've been sjopping at Chewy since 2011, before anybody even knew it was a thing. Now, it's more popular than ever, but every time you buy something on Chewy, you're supporting PetSmart and their horrific care and abuse. I'm just hoping they go out of business soon, so Chewy can get back to being great, LFS's can start rising above, and Petco can run the show to promote good husbandry! That's all I wish for 😊

Just my experience as a petstore worker, have been in a petstore that sounds much like this one (but in Australia) for almost five years: Most of the time, our employees try to get the customer to do the right thing. As you say, it absolutely depends on the particular team as some are definitely more knowledgable than others. But usually you get a few good employees who educate the others, and so the knowledge is passed around. The unfortunate thing is that the customer is always right, and we can't actually tell a customer 'Hey, you're abusing animals, I refuse to sell you this.' The customer will threaten us, call Customer Service, speak to the manager, ect. And then it's all over. I really think that if we could just tell customers NO then things would be different. But unfortunately there are too many Karens in this world, both male and female. And so when a customer says they want a pair of fantails in a fish bowl, or a fighter in a jar? We give them the information, we try to convince them as best we can, but in the end you can lead a customer to knowledge but you can't make them think. I wish we had a culture were people actually did research PRIOR to buying their pets. I am going to be getting a marine tank in the future and am doing a lot of research beforehand to reduce mistakes and to learn about the hobby. Most people simply don't do this and don't care enough about animals to put in the time to research them. Anyway, enough ranting. I enjoyed the video, like I enjoy all your videos. Thank you!

My petsmart has gotten better over the years with constant improvement. They used to not care about the tank size but now they won't sell you the fish unless you have a big enough tank or are getting one. It's really nice and when I go there for food or ask about it they tell me what they feed them and what they seem to like the most.

I currently work at Petsmart because I love animals but when I was first hired, I knew absolutely nothing about fish. my coworkers helped a good amount teaching me what I know now but for the most part I had to do research on my own. some Petsmart employees actually know what they are talking about, but sadly most don't. I have some coworkers wanting to become veterinarians but will tell customers that mites in a snakes heat pits are "boogers" or that baby corn snakes eat crickets. My store manager constantly sells multiple bettas in a one gallon bowl and does not let us refuse a sale even if we know the fish isn't going to a good home. I do wish there was some sort of test for the entry level because the "training" honestly isn't enough. I've been working there for 5 months now and have learned so much, even have animals of my own to better help customers with my own experiences, but I still have lots to learn and am willing to do my own research on more animals to make sure our babies go to good homes and will be happy and thrive for the rest of their lives.

I am a current Petsmart employee. Unfortunately not too much has changed. However, there is a different policy now when it comes to pet care hire. You start for five months outside of pet care. And you are required to learn the basic keeping of all the pet care animals prior to working on the floor. I do agree that there still is not enough experience before being thrown into Pat care. My store also actively discourages the sale of small tanks. I’m not sure if this is policy but we are told to inform the customer that the size of the tank is not sufficient. Now days as well we also have the right to deny sale of live animals. If you have any other questions just let me know.

I had experience with Animals in my everyday life and I was declined a job at the pet stores saying that I was over qualified which is bs as it was supposed to be my first real job.

There should be more training for petcare specialist 100%! I used to work for PetSmart and the store I was at really just threw bodies into the department without even training them. I'm pretty sure I learned more from my regular customers than I did from management, excluding the petcare manager that was brought in a few months before I left. She was very knowledgeable and I picked her brain alot. The Bettas made me sad. There were literally 3 of us that actually took care of the Bettas.

It is interesting to see a different perspective I currently work at petsmart and I had to take a 40 question quiz for pet care but you finally said what needed to be said that is that not everyone at petsmart is a fish person which is why a lot of the time people have incorrect info

I work at petsmart and 100% agree with this. It could actually be good if they trained us correctly. I’m trying my best to learn on my off time but it could be so much better if they hired more experienced people or took the time to train new people properly.

I'm glad you mentioned the Betta fish being put in small containers. Even my husband question that and hes not an animal a person. I bought two Betta's from Petsmart some time ago, they were sick I thought I could save them but they both died, the disease was too far advanced. It would be nice if they could concentrate in one area of the store for just bettas in 10 gallon tanks they could put dividers in the tanks. The petsmart though where I live is pretty good in the fish department they are pretty knowledgeable on the basic level I have tested their knowledge. A couple of the girls even have their own fish tanks. I mostly buy their fish products. I wish they would stock purigen so I did not have to go to Petco to get it though. Have not bought fish from petsmart or Petco in quite a while. I prefer to go to Aquatic critters in Nashville best place to buy aquarium fish in Tennessee they can answer any question. Never have had a sick fish from them. Never have seen dead fish floating around in a tank in their store. I did have one fish that died from them but I don't think it was disease I think it was stress. They replaced the fish after they tested my tank water. All in all if someone wants to compare Petco and Petsmart in the fish department I would say Petsmart in my area is the best.

I used to work at Petco. A lot of my co-workers were very passionate about animals, and at my store, all of us had to know quite a bit about most of the animals, but there were "head" people of each animal department who were experts. I agree that a lot of the problems that arose in that store came from corporate, especially when it came to like hiring the right amount of people.. the one thing I really liked about working at PetSmart was that they did allow us to refuse service to people who wanted a fish but weren't prepared for one (they didn't know they needed to buy a tank months in advance/ their tank was already overstocked or to small, etc) or who wanted to buy a bunch of feeder goldfish for a kid's school fair or something like that. It was retail and it wasn't perfect AND I developed allergies from my time there, but it was one of my favorite jobs.

As a manager of a small PetSmart in Ohio. I can agree with a lot of stuff that you have spoken about. There are many things that a lot of stores can improve on. One of the things that PetSmart has done recently has started to construct smaller stores. I am assuming it is to focus on less employees and more experience for those employees.

I had this challenge with Petco. I asked for a Siamese Algae eater & was sold a Chinese Algae eater. As a juvenile it was challenging to tell the difference. I luckily have a larger tank & have further educated myself so I can protect my tank and his other tank mates.

living in germany it's just so crazy to me how these kinda jobs are "for school kids or students" in the us or canada...like here it's an actual profession for which you have to take a 3-year apprenticeship.

I love petsmart... they gave great customer service though i feel 1 person in the pet area should be added as they take care of pets, answer calls and tend with customers... a bit too much for one person but yeah... great store

I currently work in petcare at a petsmart and i completely agree with this assesment my store is in just about the same conditions as what you have explained the employees i work with are fantastic but the corporate decisions are odd to me

Working in petcare at petsmart dude... I had to restrain myself from really going off on people. I ALWAYS asked, “what size tank do you have” at the fish wall and if they said they were about to put 5 fish in a bowl, I would say “im sorry I cant sell you any fish today” and people would get soooooo pissed. When it came to reptiles, beardies where always dying bc of malnutrition. Birds were being fed poor diets and had like no toys. Small animals had like no bedding (they are burrowers), wheels were too small, hamsters would fight. I tried sooooo hard to make small changes where I could but nobody cared at all. I just ended up leaving bc it was really starting to fuck with me watching so many animals die or suffer. The management at my store was awful and only cared about money.

When I was going to college I worked at a Walmart part-time this is before they got rid of the fish... it took me an Electronics associate harassing management for over a month to finally let me clean the fish tanks, get out all the dead fish, medicate them, ect... because they hadn't had a manager over that department for who-knows-how-long and no one was taking care of the fish there was so much f****** scum on the glass of the tanks. half of them you couldn't even see into... and more than half of them at the didn't even have working lights. They hired a new manager about a month before they announced that they were getting rid of the fish that actually took really good care of them because go figure the dude had a fish room in his basement with over 40 tanks himself... in my opinion these big box f****** retail stores like Walmart and Meijer shouldn't be allowed to have live pet sales... because most management only see them as merchandise and if you try to take care of something outside of your area you get written up or fired.

I’ve had a fish tank that was set up at work that a coworker gifted to me, when I came to bring it home I knew I didn’t have room for the tank it’s self (it was 29 gallons and mind you I have a few reptiles with 2 smaller 5 gallon tanks) so I had it lined up to bring the fish I had stocked in the large tank to petsmart. I had to teach them how to care for some fish I had in there and eventually the manager just took them home 😂

The Petsmart I work at has a few pet care employees that have done a lot of research before the job and during. One gal found out that tortoises need fresh veggies every day and they like to burrow. Thankfully the management team allows her to buy the fresh vegies from a store instead of using the dried veggies. That particular employee and a few others have animals like snakes, beardies, birds, rodents, and fish. The other employees don't put in the effort to really learn how to properly take care of the animals. I can also vouch for the training a groomer has to go through. Just the basics but a great a stepping stone into the grooming world.

My local pet store is pretty good, but it has a more limited selection for fish. It still has a bit, but not like full on fish stores. My only other options are a couple fish stores in North Dakota, but not headed there anytime soon.

I did it. I found dried leaves that have botanical properties in them I finally figured out how to control the pH in my water with aquarium salt and I think I can help this beta to recover that I purchased he's in pretty bad shape

I had a very similar experience to yours. I was a petsmart employee and worked at pet care because i had like several years of being in the fish hobby. And without my own research and personal experience on fish i feel like i wouldn't have been very good at my job, they don't train there employees on animal welfare (they only had like a quike training program with a few facts that weren't all that accurate). My fellow staff were awesome n some of them knew more about hamsters and reptiles than i did so it was a nice balance. What sucked was the hours they cut back on us for no reason and no warning. And the fish conditions were atrocious at my store. So much ammonia poisoning and i'd measure the water parameters every day but didn't have the power to do much about it . They're supposed to have one of the bosses check the water systems and add whatever is necessary to the water to keep the ph from killing off fish, i ended up having to do it because i was the only one who knew what i was doing. I loved working there but as an organization i really wish they'd stop selling live animals, the company isn't responsible enough for there welfare

I feel that, I went in raw and was learning on the job, not until I started to own pets of my own and started doing research that I started to gain knowledge but it was a dope little job though

I know absolutely nothing about Bearded Dragons, but even I know they can't live off of fish food. That doesn't even sound like it _might_ make sense, if somebody told me that, I'd call them out instantly and hit Google. Which I always do before getting a pet, anyway.

The real issues with petsmart is the overarching company. While I worked there we had to follow rules that where written long ago. Like all snakes had to be in aspen while I was there. Now most people knew that was wrong and about 80% of the employees knew their stuff. But... the 20% were loud and often screwed things up badly. One being a manager actually got mad when I broke policy by putting a BP on coco coir to combat stuck shed. Recently though the snakes are all on coco coir and that makes me happy. I also think the manager who was dumb no longer works at my store. Which are two positive things.