Why don't people just clean their tanks?

confusion: I'll say the pay isn't all that wonderful (I've worked there 3.5 years and make more than half the management) and most of the people hired don't own fish tanks or care about fish.

AnnetteG: to be honest, that's where I'm at. I give warning and if they ram right over me, I tell them about the lack of a guarentee, and if they still keep going I tell them I'm praying for their fish. Some days, I just don't ask because I don't want to know. The except being bowls and certain fish like koi, cichlids, needlefish, and pacus. No one seems to care that pacus grow to 3' and get like 40 lbs. Thankfully our store doesn't sell clown knives anymore. Now if only we'd not carry those Violet Gobies...

One day I was so annoyed and said: Glad you picked out those fish; I hope the one you like more wins.

The management and I had some words over that :grinyes:
 
Good old holiday-eve's...almost lost my job wednesday night over an Ahli cichlid. My superior (another manager) smoothed things out with the customer so i kept my job but it broke my heart when the **** brought back my fish dead. we'd had that fish for 5 months and he and his fellow Ahli tankmates have never shown any signs of illness. Said there was something wrong with my fish and he was never shopping here again. Good thing my friend/manager was there to deal with it and politely inform the customer there was nothing wrong with the fish but he was thinking the right path in not returning to the store.

lol good luck on not turning your house into a small petsmart. Now that i'm babysitting my bf's chinchilla while he finds an apt that will accommodate his dog (his brother-in-law is creeped out by chinchillas) my animal tally adds up to 1 cat, 3 rats, 1 chinchilla, 2 male bettas, 4 female bettas, and 2 10G community tanks. Soon the dog will be added as well :) My coworker and I made each other a deal, we could only get one animal every 6 months ( so far she has a conure, dog, cat, hamster, 75G tank, 30G tank...). it doesn't help that her fiance and my bf also are managers at petsmart....the animals are so cute how can we resist taking them home :)
 
Devils advocate warning!! ;)

In any customer service position, there will be people who make you crazy. However, there are definitely two sides to every story, and in defense of the “nutty” “irritating” customers - who typically pass at least one display of Bettas floating in an inch of unfiltered water in plastic cups (which I’ve seen in every chain store and all but one LFS I’ve ever visited in my life) - they are asking ‘dumb’ questions because they don’t know any different. As mentioned above, goldfish are won at fairs - when’s they last time anyone you know won a puppy with a quarter and a ping-pong ball???

I love my fish, and I commend any salesperson who educates customers. That said, people who want too many fish in a tank, an algae eater to do all their work, incompatible fish, etc., etc, aren’t necessarily lazy, cruel, morons, and seeing your customer base as such can’t possibly be helpful. We all started/learned somewhere, and a little kindness goes a long way.

Should people research before they buy a living creature? Absolutely. Do they? Not very often. Do pet stores cater to the long term customer or the impulse buy... like fish in a cup? Hmmm… Is buying a 20g coldwater set up at $400.00 a sign of a good pet owner or a sign that the customer didn’t do his homework? I bet no one at the store educated that customer about pricing :)
 
Re: pricing - actually, when I notice someone hesitating over price, I whisper to them to go to wal-mart for their tank and come back to me for their fish. :-) But if they're not balking on price, I'll help them get whatever they want, I mean, why not? Sure wish I made a little commission on tank sales though.

It's not that I think everyone who wants an algae eater is an idiot, I just can't understand why a person's FIRST thought when their tank is dirty is to go buy another fish to put in there to clean it. I am always very gentle about talking to them about that. I had a guy in tonight who had a 5 gal. hex tank with a betta in it and wanted an algae eater. I talked to him about why not to buy a pleco or for that matter, any of the smaller algae eating fish and convinced him to get 2 mystery snails. Then I told him about feeding them sinking wafers and zucchini to supplement their diet and he was so excited to take home the little food clip and his snails to try out giving them zucchini to eat. :-) Same thing with another guy who had a larger tank and one gold algae eater in it and was buying another gold algea eater because the first one wasn't eating all his algae. I told him how much his fish would enjoy the zucchini and he was all excited to go home and give them some. And he did buy algae wafers and a food clip.

I started out guilty of being in a hurry to buy fish myself, so I think I'm pretty nice to everyone who is obviously new. I'm still pretty new myself. My first post wasn't intended to slam customers so much as just express my confusion over why the first thing a person thinks of for algae isn't just to clean it. LOL

Anyway, I still love working there. And now I'm off to do some research on how to raise specific gravity in my puffer's tank so I can keep him happy! :-)
 
Rant...........
I work at petco, i LOVE the 5% that know what they are doing, the 20% that listen and take advice to heart. But i HATE the 75% who are liars, inconsiderate, ignorant, irrational...the list goes on.

Just last night some people wanted a clown fish so badly for their kids, yea yea they had a salt water tank "this big" (motion with hands). I could tell they were lying, "oh cool what kind of setup do you have?" "yes we have it" "reef? fish only? how much live rock?" "yup lots". (*&^%$#######@..............later i found them with a BOWL and a little thing of salt mix (i was waiting for them to do that, unfortunately my manager will not refuse sales sometimes, but i informed the cashiers and wasn't gonna see them leave with the fish). But i confronted them and they gave it back.

I love the "cleaner" fish thing...

"I NEED one of those fish that eats poop"

Cichlids...
"Yea my tank IS SO BIG, its a FIFTY FIVE GALLON with two oscars and some of those chicklids"

I would rather not even think about other things i have heard and questions i have answered, it will just make me in a bad mood.
 
Oh and the hardest part of the job, describing the nitrogen cycle in a manner that customers will understand. I always get the deer in headlights look, or they act like they understand, but have no idea. I think most people don't believe me that it exists.
 
Oh and i also loathe it when customers refute and get mad at me when they ask a question about mixing certain fish, don't ask if you are going to insist on doing it anyways. Why do people get mad, its my job to sell you fish for YOUR tank, not a bigger one that you don't have.

Some people should prepare and practice their lies before they come into the store, maybe then they won't be so obvious. Although i can get them to say some funny things.
 
at least your store is good all the petsmart/petcos here are HORRENDUS petsmart feeds the fish too much and dosent clean there tank often enough and petcos saltwater section i AWEFUL everything dies in those tank or has some disease and they are small tanks but the petco managers say "we dont need any live rock in our tanks" SO THERE IS NONE and they you carbon based filtration there so their nitrates are THROUGH THE ROOF i forced them to test there own water by telling them i would report them to AHS if they didnt ( LOL cant believe it worked i thought theyd just kick me out LOL) nitrate 40ppm amonia 60ppm and nitrite 30ppm. and the worst part is THEY DIDNT CARE
 
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