PETCO Reviews

Pros

Get to work with animals
match 50% of first 6% for 401k Package

Cons

Unrealistic goals
Never happy with the job you do
Always find something wrong
no positive feedback
have to watch your back
no clear communication
EXTREMELY HIGH PRICES

Advice to Senior Management

Lower prices
Positive feedback

Pros

Bring pets to work
Around lots of animals
Pay is pretty good

Cons

managment should care for employees better

Advice to Senior Management

Praise more often

Pros

if you have a pet you can bring it to work

Cons

if you don't have a pet you wld hate working in that building

Pros

Good benefits for full time employees.
You earn Paid Time Off for the hours you work and you earn even more the longer you work there and also what position you're in with GM's getting the most.

Cons

Corporate does NOT care about animals, empoyees or "going green" they only pretend to care so they look good to consumers. They only truly care about padding their pockets.
They don't give stores enough time(payroll) to take care of animals properly according to P&P, It's liking moving mountains just to find time and payroll to take sick animals to the vet .
We don't have time to thoroughy help and/or educate customers and we don't have enough time to do the never ending tasks involved in everyday retail and the ridiculous projects corporate wants done.
Corporate is constantly pushing stores to "sell, sell, sell" and to provide "excellent" customer service while they deny the stores the proper amount of payroll to meet these demands.
Corporate decided to "go green" by not turning on all the lights until 10 am. While this is great for the environment, it is not the real reason. It was to save themselves money. Which again, is all corporate cares about.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want stores to provide excellent customer service and to sell more "attachments" perhaps you should get it through your thick neanderthal heads that stores need more payroll!!!! It is NOT possible to help EVERY customer that walks in the store with the amount of empoyees currently staffed. That's money YOU ARE losing! More helpful employees on the sales floor can sell more products for you corporate!
If you really want to go green and save yourselves millions of dollars, than once and for all STOP having us take down and put up the same exact sale ad every 3 weeks! Freakin ridiculous you morons. Just make the ads run for 5 weeks instead and you'll save a fortune and time and payroll and trees! Why won't you start recycling already? I'm tired of seeing a dumpster full of cardboard getting thrown away from truck every week.
Most importantly stop PRETENDING to care about the animals and actually START caring. Once again this means more payroll for stores (because your employees actually care about the animals unlike you) and a larger store use budget for their supplies and vet costs.

Pros

Working with animals.
Softer side of sales and mostly friendly customers... it's a pet store.
Decent discounts that add up when you keep pets yourself.
Decent pay.

Cons

Lack of resources, time, and personnel.
Poor time management.
Unreasonable goals and time constraints.
Poor feedback from district managers.
Poor feedback from store managers.
No compensation for going the extra mile... unless you reeeally enjoy a pat on the back.
Little possibility for advancement unless you obtain a certain position. Becomes impossible to move up without a transfer when managers become comfortable with their position.
Inventory technology is archaic at best.
Getting a raise was an act of Congress.

Advice to Senior Management

Please look into PetSmart's technologies and time-saving procedures. You're at least five years behind them in most aspects. Though I feel like our store had better informed and passionate employees, that can only take us so far when there's only 3 employees in the whole store due to hourly constraints and both of them are cleaning enclosures. This would not occur if we had better technology that wasted less time. Like the time I wasted daily printing labels on a LaserJet from 1993 on Windows 95 on a 10Mb connection with an inventory program that only updates the numbers once at the end of the day. That's time that could be better spent on customer service, promoting sales. Simply cutting costs at every corner won't help your bottom line in the long run.

Also, please throw us a bone with ad sets in the store. I felt like I was constantly two weeks behind simply because of signs and shelves lost in receiving or en route. Poor scheduling (no stockers on my shift) and poor training (nobody, including myself, ever really knew what was expected of themselves) made the job extra difficult.

There is also no tangible sense of goal-setting and positive reinforcement. Caught-in-the-Act cards? Please. I couldn't motivate anyone with a card unless it was my credit card and it meant free McDonald's for them.

Finally, how about we go public with stocks, PETCO? I'd love to buy some shares and I'm sure the funding would help you catch up with you-know-who.

Pros

- Being around animals all day.
- Request offs generally approved even with short notice.
- In general, wonderful co-workers and associates.
- If willing, you can learn a wealth of knowledge from other workers and managers from dogs to reptiles.
- Several online training courses including extensive dog nutrition.
- Customers seem much more friendly and polite than in most other types of retail, and when you help you get genuine thank yous from them.
- A wonderful job to talk animals with customers if you share the interest.
- Donations help local shelters

Cons

- Request offs are generally approved even with short notice.
- No set schedule, and you don't know what you are working on Sunday until Thursday or Friday evening. (Not just this location. Seems at the very least district-wide.)
- Little to no communication from senior management. Even on critical issues.
- No management training at all for associates moving up and are new to management. Assistant and up may get a few days crash course, but not much. The trend seems to be sink or swim, figure it out on your own.
- Drama, excessive gossiping.
- Favoritism from DM and GM.
- Relies heavily on negative reinforcement with almost no positive.
- Donations are encouraged negatively as well. Resulting in poor performance write-ups for those who cannot raise enough in a day.

Advice to Senior Management

- Defend and stand up for your staff instead of throwing them under the bus and scapegoating.
- Communicate, leave notes, print emails.
- Focus on the whole, not the parts.
- Follow P&P more closely.
- Focus on morale more than numbers.

Pros

My ability to lead.
My knowledge I can bring to others.
Benefit package
Animal interaction
Schedule flexibility
Variety of services

Cons

Senior management inability to communicate effectively.
Favoritism amongst DM.
Drama
Lack of leadership
Lack of community connection

Advice to Senior Management

Stand behind management
Listen to what associates say in their surveys and customer relations
Open your eyes as to who is truthfully connected with the company

Pros

If you are a cashier, the job is much like being a cashier anywhere else–long hours on your feet, ringing people up and answering phones. However, it is easy work and the systems PETCO uses are simple to learn. If you are an animal specialist, each day is a little different as you are constantly tending to companion animal enclosures, answering customer questions, and helping stock product. I found this job to be interesting and rewarding in the sense that we got to make sure the best possible care was given to the animals and the customers.

Cons

There is no overtime, so if you find yourself working 8 hours plus one minute, you better believe somebody will be making you clock out. I was part-time so I don't know about the benefits insurance-wise.

Advice to Senior Management

More recognition of employees for the hard work that they do. Provision of more opportunities for advancement within the company.

Pros

Grt to work with animals

Cons

Not much room for advancement empoyees talk negatively about others hoping to get ahead

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees fairly and you would not continue to lose them

Pros

Good hours, play with animals, decent pay, upper management is good with giving time off that you need, other coworkers are cool.

Cons

I would just think that I would get paid a little more then i am now, they dont allow over time which is good and bad.

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership so far has been a good experience both upper manager will hear you out before they let you know if it was right or wrong.