I am currently working at Van Nuys Petco 1503. I've looked on the internet about Petco employees being exploited, abused, underpaid, understaffed, etc. And haven't found anything at all. I don't want to feel alone in this, so I decided to write about all of it in hopes someone would understand my plight and maybe help out.
This is will be about two things. Exploitation of Petco employees and neglect of our animals.
Our old general manager was fired at the beginning of 2008. He always sat in the office, gave himself the most hours (much overtime), never liked helping people, and the store was never well stocked.
We have a new GM now and we are a better stocked store, she is never in the office and loves to talk (a great deal) and help customers... But we are extremely stressed. All but the managers hours were cut from 38 hours a week to 28, then 25, then 23, and now 18 hours a week. She schedules many of the employees to work only four and a half hours a day so that we do not need a lunch. We are supposed to get a ten minute break, and I would said a good 95% of us do not get it at all.
On a busy weekend (because we are the only widely known pet store close to Granada Hills, Sylmar, Pacoima, Panorama City, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, and San Fernando), our GM had myself, another manager, herself, and two of my coworkers there. Because she cut our hours so much, the two people had to leave at 11:30am. When they left, she went on her lunch for half an hour, leaving myself and a manager. Two people on a Sunday.
Lines were long, people were angry. We both had to be on register and could not help answer questions or help with animals. It was extremely stressful. My manager did not even get to take her lunch all day. She was basically on her feet/the register from 7am-4pm.
Unfortunately, when it comes time to take a lunch, we are all told to clock out to lunch and get back to work, so there are only blurred video tapes of managers and workers working through their lunch.
This is becoming a regular event at my store.
Our GM cannot schedule properly. It was scheduled that myself, herself and another manager were to leave at 3:30pm, but the next person to come in was to be there at 4pm. That is a half an hour window where nobody would be working at the store.
One last thing about the schedule... She often has the minimum of three people working in the morning until about 1pm or 2pm. What that means is that no one can take a lunch. If one person does take a lunch, there will only be two people working. One on register and one helping customers on the floor. If one person were to call out, there would only be two people most of the day! And it has happened more than a few times that there have only been two people working most of the day.
Also because of the hour cuts, there is hiring of more people. The new people that are instructed to clean cages and feed animals at the beginning of the day are not trained properly. The people that are trained and have vast amounts of experience are hardly working enough hours to fix what one person has messed up.
I have seen in reptiles: empty or dirty water dishes, no meal worms for the leopard geckos and bearded dragons, dry substrate, snakes go unfed, and the reptiles have not been fed crickets. I've seen this numerous times.
Small animal and birds go uncleaned because of cut hours and untrained employees. Aquatics has many dead or dying fish in the tanks because tanks go uncleaned properly.
When I joined Petco, it was about animals coming first. We tried to educate people as much as possible by recommending websites, giving care sheets, telling as much as we knew or getting someone who knew more to educate that person.
Now it seems that we are all about profit. Many people that are untrained give out incorrect information or no information at all about animals. They sell fish to people that do not even have a tank set up yet. They sell female hamsters to customers without asking if they already have a female, or what species they already have. They do not know to alert the customer that they need a bigger habitat for so and so animal.
I am not writing this to say all Petcos are bad. Some are, some aren't. I am just saying I do not like how Petco 1503 is currently going. Our customer service rating is in the toilet at about 30% the last time I checked. If I was a customer, I think I'd be angry that there are so few people that know anything about animals, and that employees are being treated this way.
A few customers have taken notice and spoken to the GM, but that seems to do nothing.
So it's not just animals that are abused and neglected. It's employees. I suppose there's nothing we can do about cut hours. Big stores hire twice as many people and give each person half the hours. But it's wrong to be that stressed. It's wrong to not be able to eat all day or get "mandated breaks."
We all complain at work about how we are treated, but none of us are willing to speak about it outside the store... I can see from searching on-line about Petco employee exploitation that no one speaks about it. I'm breaking the silence right now.
Thanks for reading. Please go and experience Van Nuys Petco and see what I am writing about.
Poor Faye
Van Nuys, California
U.S.A.
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