The things you hear at the pet store

I was walking through a store; to protect its identity, I'll call it P-Smart... no, wait, that's too obvious... Pet-S-yeah, that's better.

Anyway, I overhear a woman wanting to buy some schooling fish talking to an employee. The woman asks how many she should get, and the employee says "I'm not sure, let's ask _____, she knows everything about fish." They ask, and ____ responds with "Well, the perfect school is three fish."

After this, things started looking up, because the employee started talking about tank size and adult fish. Too bad she didn't bother actually listening to the customer. The lady was Asian, and English probably wasn't her first language. I understood what she was saying, but the employee, from her answers, didn't, and was giving wrong info. She was understocking the tank, though, and I'm really soft-spoken, so I couldn't bring myself to speak up about it.

 

Gosh I would have said something but that is just me. 3 fish is a perfect school, eh? lol
Maybe the employees at places like that should start reading the books in the store.
In fact anyone who works in our breedery store has got to have knowledge of fish. Good thing all the people who are helping us are fish keepers.

 

I tried giving advice to a customer at a P*****T ( ) once after they got bad advice from the employee and got an attitude from the customer. I don't bother to do that anymore lol.... Some folks are very sensitive and do not like someone assuming they don't have enough fish keeping knowledge.
I learned my lesson that day

 

I tried giving advice to a customer at a P*****T ( ) once after they got bad advice from the employee and got an attitude from the customer. I don't bother to do that anymore lol.... Some folks are very sensitive and do not like someone assuming they don't have enough fish keeping knowledge.
I learned my lesson that day

I really don't care if people get an attitude, just well if you don't trust what I am saying, read a book or . Some people need to realize this about the proper care of fish, notcriticism on their intelligence. Egos are amazing thing.

 

I agree. It's just not in my social skills to be able to approach people like that. I stick with writing letters to companies and limiting the amount of business I give to places that have poor practices. It's been over a year now, and I still haven't given a penny to Petco.

 

I agree. It's just not in my social skills to be able to approach people like that. I stick with writing letters to companies and limiting the amount of business I give to places that have poor practices. It's been over a year now, and I still haven't given a penny to Petco.

I only seem to get opinionated when it comes to animals. I am not a people person by any means.
Now my friends notice when other moms don't have a hat on their kids at the right times. Boy do they get their mouths flapping...I just sit back and watch.

 

I only seem to get opinionated when it comes to animals. I am not a people person by any means.
Now my friends notice when other moms don't have a hat on their kids at the right times. Boy do they get their mouths flapping...I just sit back and watch.

Everybody's got their buttons.
I'm more with you. Kids are pretty resilient. They'll bounce back from a missing hat or gloves (usually, presuming it's not freezing out). Further, they can accurately voice their discomfort. Pets don't have that ability.

 

Everybody's got their buttons.
I'm more with you. Kids are pretty resilient. They'll bounce back from a missing hat or gloves (usually, presuming it's not freezing out). Further, they can accurately voice their discomfort. Pets don't have that ability.

Exactly. Animals don't speak our english language so they cannot tell us anything. Betta: Turn up the heater it's cold in here.
Don't get me wrong. My best friend's kid was getting in a fight with bad kids in our parking lot here. My mouth was flapping in 2 seconds. I defend who I care about. God forbid anything were happen to my niece Brooklyn.

 

She was understocking the tank

What is understocking? Does that mean keeping fish that like to be in numbers by themselves or in small numbers?

 

What is understocking? Does that mean keeping fish that like to be in numbers by themselves or in small numbers?

Not putting enough fish in the tank. Or not enough with individual species getting 3 tetra who shcool...a school would be 5 or more, more being the better for the species.

 

What is understocking? Does that mean keeping fish that like to be in numbers by themselves or in small numbers?

it means that if you had a tank that can hold a certain amount of fish you purposely put less then that amount in.

 

it means that if you had a tank that can hold a certain amount of fish you purposely put less then that amount in.

Is that harmful to the fish?

 

Both what Allie said and what kieley said, and in this case, it applied to both. Because the woman seemed intelligent, hopefully she'll do her own research when she gets home and learn exactly what she can do. In the meantime, the three fish will likely do alright in their new huge home (compared to where they were).

In the case of kids, I'll stand up for them if they're getting actively hurt. If I see a kid out in the street when it's -20 and he doesn't even have a jacket on, I'll try to help out (this usually gets the kid to run home, which is a good response when a stranger approaches, and it gets the kid inside, where it's warm) because that can kill a kid pretty quickly. I've seen kids who I don't know fighting and I've stopped to break up the fight. But a kid on a slightly chilly day without a hat, or some kids just rough-housing and shoving each other around, big deal. I wear sandals until there's snow on the ground, and my friends and I practice martial arts with shinaI and staves, no padding. ;D

Edit: To answer the last question; it's not harmful to the fish if you keep them in proper schools. I purposefully try to understock my tanks (right now it's not working except for in my molly tank and my betta tank). It keeps the nitrate levels low and the fish tend to be more active and less belligerent. However, if you kept only two tiger barbs in a 20 gallon tank, they would fight each other for dominance and keep each other constantly stressed. Most pack animals need a group of five or so. This way, the fighting is spread out among more animals, meaning less stress on any one individual, even the omega animal.

 

I've seen kids who I don't know fighting and I've stopped to break up the fight. But a kid on a slightly chilly day without a hat, or some kids just rough-housing and shoving each other around, big deal. I wear sandals until there's snow on the ground, and my friends and I practice martial arts with shinaI and staves, no padding. ;D

No padding
I believe we hijacked your thread, but I guess since it is your thread.

 

No padding
I believe we hijacked your thread, but I guess since it is your thread.

Precisely. I'm fine with people hijacking my non-serious threads, no matter who does the hijacking. It's when someone hijacks a "help, my fish are dying" or "How can I build this DIY project?" that I get whiny.

And yep, no padding (oh, except for gloves, cuz broken fingers hurt). Of course, we're pretty careful, and we've practiced at low speed for long enough that we know how to pull our strikes if a defense misses. It's still pretty scary when SenseI swings a bo at me, or worse, tells me to swing a bo at him, full speed. I always worry that the defender is going to miss and the other will end up in a hospital.

 

this whole post brings me to what I said in the walmart post. that if anyone works with animals, sells animals they should know exactly what they are doing, what kind of home the animals need, etc. There should be no exception because there are those people out there that do not know better than to ask the lfs workers...

 

this whole post brings me to what I said in the walmart post. that if anyone works with animals, sells animals they should know exactly what they are doing, what kind of home the animals need, etc. There should be no exception because there are those people out there that do not know better than to ask the lfs workers...

I agree. Do you have a guy who knows nothing about choppers working in a custom motorcycle store?
If a guy doesn't know about coffee, do you put him behind the register of a coffee shop the first day? (Not counting Starbucks or Caribou, who generally encourage ignorance of real coffee)
Do you put a guy who doesn't know anything about fishing in charge of the fishing section of a sporting-goods store?
No. You take the time and money to teach them, then you set them loose in your store. Why don't pet stores do the same?

 

I agree. Do you have a guy who knows nothing about choppers working in a custom motorcycle store?
If a guy doesn't know about coffee, do you put him behind the register of a coffee shop the first day? (Not counting Starbucks or Caribou, who generally encourage ignorance of real coffee)
Do you put a guy who doesn't know anything about fishing in charge of the fishing section of a sporting-goods store?
No. You take the time and money to teach them, then you set them loose in your store. Why don't pet stores do the same?

I don't understand why they do. Its actually really bad for the business in the long run, when the people buy a fish, go home the fish dies they say I bought a "sick fish" from that place and won't go back. Duh! they just lost a customer.
The customer isn't going to know that hey, I was supose to cycle my tank, I shouldn't have put that fish in a 10 gallon tank it belonged in a 55, or it should have had a filter and a heater if the fishstore/petstore didn't tell them, and I am speaking in majority because a lot of customers that buy fish do not get into the fish as much as they would a cat or dog as a pet. They are a decoration to them, the lfs, pet store should be a intervention that can give them the proper advice.

 

I think that part of the problem is the lack of spread of information. Because this hobby is such a thinly spread thing, someone who starts an aquarium and loses all of their fish may not find out why their fish died. They'll go to the pet store, ask "why?" and be told "well, that sounds like ammonia poisoning. We've got a product that gets rid of ammonia from the tank. Here you go, here are your new fish. Good luck." In this way, the blame gets kind of subtly shuffled off to the customer (who is not blameless, as he did not research his new pets).

If more people thought to search out places like this when they started having problems with their aquariums (and it's happening. Unfortunately, people are also going to Yahoo Answers), they'd learn that the fish store lied to them, and the stores would have to start changing their tactics in order to keep their business. It's happened in other areas of business. An informed customer keeps a business honest and forces the business to become informed, as well.

 

Also a lot of times people don't go to work in pet-stores b/c they want to make a career out of them. They probably have a fairly high turnover rate in most cases so teaching them a whole lot losses the store a fair amount of money.

 

Also a lot of times people don't go to work in pet-stores b/c they want to make a career out of them. They probably have a fairly high turnover rate in most cases so teaching them a whole lot losses the store a fair amount of money.

I'm not working in a coffee shop because I want to make a career out of it, but I spent my first three days learning about coffee.

In general, a place with a relatively extensive training program will keep its employees for longer, and the ones that do leave early will leave very early in the training program, rather than after a couple of weeks (which ends up being much more expensive). When Taco Bell (my last job) overhauled its training system, we saw a pretty big difference in when the losers left. They didn't want to wait it out through the training, and went to find a job that they would just be thrown into and ignored so they could text and rake in their minimum wage.

 

True enough. However there is a difference in how trainning affects someone who cares and someone who just needs to get through it to get the paycheck.

 

My whole point being if you are selling a animal then you need to be responsible knowing about the animal, how to take care of it and so on.

 

True enough. However there is a difference in how trainning affects someone who cares and someone who just needs to get through it to get the paycheck.

I agree, but both people will be far more knowledgeable at the end of training than someone who's never been exposed to the subject matter. Plus the training tends to weed out the people who are just doing it to get the paycheck. There are easier jobs out there, and those kinds of people seek them out.

My whole point being if you are selling a animal then you need to be responsible knowing about the animal, how to take care of it and so on.

I agree.

 

lol.

 

Most of the people who apply to petsmart really have no intention of working with fish...it's all for the dogs and cats. They end up in that department without knowing what it means. Then they follow the book by what they say....hence the 3 fish schools. The book petsmart employees are SUPPOSED to read says schooling fish should be in groups of 3 OR MORE...so they did what they were told kinda

 

I agree. It's just not in my social skills to be able to approach people like that. I stick with writing letters to companies and limiting the amount of business I give to places that have poor practices. It's been over a year now, and I still haven't given a penny to Petco.

I am exactly the same. I am very soft spoken and have trouble making friends or talking to people that I don't know at parties, let alone correcting someone at a pet store. I have boycotted a few stores and refuse to buy from them anymore. However, it makes things hard on me because I have to drive a long way to buy fish. I am slowly getting more assertive, but not much. My job as business manager requires me to confront people in certain situations, but I still try to make my husband do it as much as possible. I just hate confrontation.