PetSmart Reviews

Pros

The bonus program. Work life balance. Seeing pets everyday. Most Customers are great. Plenty of communication from home office.

Cons

Do you love cats? Great! You can be a VP. Unbelievable favoritism. Store Managers were termed left & right. They preach job security & positive work environment, but Store Managers are discarded left & right. DM's love to come in & beat up your staff on your days off or vacation.

Advice to Senior Management

Get a clue.

Pros

Great benefits and people who really love animals. The customers are generally happy, and not rude or very demanding. Having a good salon manager is key, if you're a groomer.

Cons

Constant pressure to sell additional packages and services to customers. In the salon we were not allowed to sit down or rest - we often skipped lunch.

Advice to Senior Management

Encourage getting outside education, such as grooming seminars and supporting the growth of employees. Training is often PetSmart made videos, and all the employees I knew "tuned out" of those.

Pros

Flexible shifts and time off
Potential for upward movement
Great contact with customers
Interesting work
Great management
Willingness to train you

Cons

Political-tough to get into the inner circle
Difficult to fire employees who aren't up to par
Can be challenging to have management listen to advice
Lots of policies/procedures that aren't followed

Advice to Senior Management

Stop moving all of the managers around. When you build a team that works well together including managers, leads, and regular associate, keep them together instead of firing people or changing schedules.

Pros

PetSmart is a great place to work. They provide good benefits to full-time employees, ample paid vacation, and opportunities for advancement. They care about their animals and are constantly updating and improving their policies to try and make caring for the animals better and easier for employees. Managers genuinely care about employees - when I had family problems come up unexpectedly, they worked with me to cover some shifts so I could take care of things at home.

Cons

They don't seem to trust their employees when it comes to ordering animals -- the only ones we can order ourselves are reptiles, everything else is automatically sent to us, which often results in us either having too many animals or not enough. Part-time benefits are poor, and full-time positions are limited. Wages are often low for the amount of work required, and yearly raises are poor.

Advice to Senior Management

Offer better performance-based raises. Allow stores to order their own animals, or at least provide easier ways for them to change the minimum on hand quantities.

Pros

The staff works as a family, and some days are harder than others, but at my store we know we all have each other's back. It's a great place to work as a student in college and promotions are given to those who show initiative.

Cons

Raises are minimal for the responsibilities of the job and there are instances of difficult situations with customers, but that is something you will find in any job in retail. A lot of the time, we are educating our customers on the needs of their pet, so this can be time consuming.

Pros

Tons of experience working with animals! You learn a lot about different types of animals as well as gaining experience treating sick animals.

Cons

Very low salaires, lots of work for little pay. In petcare department you are constantly cleanning cages everyday except Saturday and Sunday in which you still have to clean fish tanks. Have to deal with rude people who ask for your advice then tell you that you don't know what your talking about.

Advice to Senior Management

More hours and more pay would be nice

Pros

Stable job security
builds team work and friendships
Good management great store flow
coaching and guidance to improve bad habits
great rewards in store and to bring in customers

Cons

Mostly from customers that have bad attitudes
Poor management (but they usually don't last so that becomes a pro)
More education for management in the Salon and Pet Care would help with a lot of issues

Advice to Senior Management

Things have improved since I first got hired in but there's still negativeness in stores and grumpy managers which makes for negative employees

Pros

Good place if you like seeing animals everyday. Some of the employess can be great to work with. Employee discount and ok benefits.

Cons

Don' open your mouth to complain about anything or you will be asked to leave. And if an employee doesn't like you all they have to do is call the "Care Line" and no matter what you say you will be targeted. They say they want you to "coach" the employees but when and if you do and the employee gets mad at you, forget it, you will be gone without due process. You constantly have to watch your back. There is no such thing as a work/life balance. You have no personal life. You can never truly leave work as you get phone calls all the time to solve problems. There is no leadership or guidence from upper management.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire more professional store managers. Get people in there who know how to lead and don't just spit back out what they read in some leadership guide. Listen to managers when they suggest ways to make the company operate better instead of shutting them down and making them into corporate robots. Let the managers manage!

Pros

If you are full-time the benefits are okay. There is an employee discount of 15%. Always something to do -- in fact time goes by too quickly. Some employees really care for and about the pets - not just playing with them.

Cons

Managers speak more than listen. Blame is the name of the game. Employees receive much more negative than positive feedback. Trying to carry-out daily tasks while providing good customer service is next to impossible. Triage must be used on a daily basis and since the customer always comes first, care of pets takes the back seat. You are criticized for going above and beyond because time is money. Many employees are burned out from trying to do everything that is asked of them. Lots of stress and/or apathy in the stores. Pets are just products to many managers.

Advice to Senior Management

Corporate - Spend some time in the field learning what your frontline is asked to do. Require all managers to understand the different nuances of each department. Provide more hours so employees can "really" get tasks accomplished and service customers. Find betters vendors for small animals/birds/reptiles/fish or hold your vendors accountable for delivering healthy livestock. Feed store pets higher quality food and provide supplements to pets as their health depends of it. Don't cheap out on the lighting and heat for reptiles. In other words - follow the advise you provide in your animal care guides! Hire qualified pet care associates and give them time to actually take care of the pets -- or get out of the pet trade. Be more positive and less punitive. Give feedback. Realize that critical and important can often times be the same.

Pros

-You get to meet new dogs everyday (good and bad)
-Ok benefits

Cons

-You make about minimum wage as a bather. The same as a cashier. Except you have to clean up after groomers and dogs, clean windows and mirrors, get bitten, get scratched, get pottyed on, answer phones, help out in the store when it's not busy, and get yelled at for not doing it fast enough.
-They don't care about your life. You work wen they want you to and you leave when they want you to, regardless if you have a ride home or not.
-If it isn't busy, they make bathers leave, even though they are paid by the hour. And they make groomers stay, even though they're not getting paid for it.
-Because of new rules, bathers have to do all walk in nail trims and baths, leaving groomers with no dogs and bathers getting overbooked.
-Bathers have to share a table and "cannot get overbooked" On the weekends they have to finish 10-20 dogs per day all within 3 hours of their arrival
-There are RIDICULOUS "safety" rules, thought up by someone who has obviously never groomed a dog in their life.
-They will dangle "grooming school" over your head like a carrot, making you work harder, and then snatching it away whenever they feel like it. Oh and their grooming academy is A JOKE.
-They make you sign a No-compete contract, keeping you from working at any other pet store within about 10 miles of petsmart, 6 months after you leave.
-If a customer complains because that customer is misinformed, stupid, or just a jerk, managers will side with that customer and you will loose money you worked extremely hard for.
-They consider not overcharging loyal customers "stealing from the company" But will kindly give free services to mean customers who will complain when they don't get their way.
-You have to work in a cramped tiny little room with not enough space for everyone to groom their dogs safely

Advice to Senior Management

-Actually care about your employees. Send your bathers to an actual grooming school and then don't try to sue them for money when they leave the horrible store before 2 years.
-Don't swear and scream at your hard working employees for frivolous things, without them, you would have no business.
-When your employee grooms a very bad dog, getting bitten and crapped on in the process, and the dogs owner doesn't like the haircut because it "looks choppy" side with your employee, not the customer who doesn't know anything about grooming in the first place.
-Don't change your employees schedule at the last minute and then get mad at them when they come in at the wrong time or don't come in at all because they weren't informed that the schedule changed.
-DO NOT give customers a "like it or it's free" grooming policy. Groomers spend a lot of time and hard work grooming dogs. It is not fair to them to take away their hard earned money because idiot customers don't understand that a dogs hair will not flow perfectly the way they want it to, and that its nails will not be cut as short as they want them to be when they haven't gotten the dogs nails cut in a while and the dogs quicks have grown out too long.
-Explain to customers that when they do not brush out their dogs hair and it gets matted, we cannot do a years worth of brushing in 3 hours. We must shave the dog, and it will not be easy. And they will still have to pay for the groom despite thinking the dog "looks ugly" afterwards.
-Finally, do not put us behind a large glass window. It makes us feel like a freak show and is dangerous as the dogs we are working on get distracted and/or scared by the people and other dogs outside the window. It also makes the groomers nervous. Would YOU want people watching your every move as you handle a scared or bad dog with dangerous items?