Pet Planet Reviews

Pros

The customers are good people, looking to learn about holistic pet foods, the benefits thereof, what to look for and what to avoid. This sort of education is the main goal of employees at Pet Planet. They come to a store like this to learn how to be the best owners they can possibly be to their pets. We did our best to dispell a lot of the myths assosciated with feeding healthy, holistic pet foods (ie, it's way too expensive) and to point out the long-term advantages of feeding higher-quality foods. At the very least job satisfaction could be derived from knowing that you've sent a custoemr away more knowlegeable than when they came in.

Cons

The pay was horrific. For the amount of work they do and the amount of knowledge they're required to have, salaries are nothing short of a joke. I could have made more money across the parking lot working in the pizza parlour.

Head office does not support their staff and in fact seems to try and actively make their jobs more difficult by instigating vague and unclear policies, even on things as simple as returns, or the accepting of large bills. Ask three upper management people the same question and you'll get three different answers, guaranteed. They severely limit each location's purchasing budget to the bare minimum, making life difficult for staff who seem to spend the majority of their time explaining to frustrated customers why the more popular foods, toys and treats are never in stock. They discourage and even penalise staff for suggesting alternative places where customers may find what they need (since PP never has it in stock) and discourage staff from making friends with each other and socialising outside of work.

The benefit plans are laughable at best, though this is irrelevant because head office 'encourages' store-level management to keep staff at 39 hours a week or less so that they do not qualify as 'full time' and therefore are not eligible for benefits at all anyways. Upper management are extreme penny-pinchers and demand a full accounting for any supplies used, including cleaning supplies to keep the store neat and sanitary as required. One staff member was unfortunate enough to be the one holding the store's floor mop when the mop-head clamp finally gave out due to rusting and upper management insisted she must have broken it and threatened to fire her it if was not replaced out of her own pocket. Groomers are required to provide their own towels and cleaning supplies. Towels are required to be washed frequently (obviously) but groomers are not compensated for using their own laundry facilities and supplies. Groomers are paid on a commission basis but are required to follow a written-in-stone price list. the prices, while VERY competitive, are so low that groomers must work very long and difficult hours in order to make a decent living. They are reprimanded if business is slow for any reason, but they are given little to no support in any attempt to advertise or drum up more business.

The company has a high turnover and frequently loses skilled, qualified and passionate staff because workers are not given the tools and freedoms to adequately do their jobs, or the pay is so low that they simply cannot make a living and must move on to bigger and better things. Frustration with upper management is the #1 reason staff are jumping ship at such a rapid rate.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop treating your staff so poorly. Treat them with respect, pay them what they deserve and up your stores' purchasing budgets so they can at least keep popular items in stock. The inconsistencies in availability, as well as firing/chasing off good staff that regular customers like seeing are two of the biggest factors invovled in why the company has lost such enormous amounts of business. The last time I was in a Pet Planet store, stock was so sparse it looked like they were having a closeout sale.

Also, that stupid petition you expected staff to push people into signing? The one about getting the term 'pet owner' changed to 'pet guardian'? Why didn't you petition for something useful, like anti-breed-specific legislation, stiffer animal cruelty laws or the banning of animal sales in retail shops? You know, something that might actually make a DIFFERENCE? That 'guardian' petition was a joke and everyone knew it.