Low Pay, Unreasonable Expectations - Pet Care Specialist PetSmart Employee Review

2.0
Apr 28, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Fairly reasonable time off accommodations, work with animals

Cons

Low pay that truly isn’t worth the stress. Corporate expects each store to operate on a bare bones schedule where there is not enough staff allowed to be scheduled to properly do the job. There is barely enough hours for staff to be scheduled to help customers, let alone get all of the many, many cleaning assignments done that they expect. You spend your entire shift running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to do the work of 3 people. The animals are not cared for nearly as well as they used to be years ago because employees aren’t given adequate time to do so. Corners get cut during cage cleans because of lack of staff/time constraints and opening and closing tasks have to be rushed for the same reason. This means animals aren’t looked over or observed the way they should be and medical concerns are much more likely to be missed. Time that is supposed to be allotted for cage cleans ends up spent on customer service because of no other staff to help the customers. Yet, it is still expected to magically get done on time. Unfortunately, PetSmart has become cheap on labor and they don’t care if staff and animals suffer for it.

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5.0
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Pros

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Cons

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1.0
Jun 2, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
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Pros

The company pushes for more and more from the bottom level employees without better pay. I worked there before the restructuring and; not much can make me cry, but working here sure did, even back then. I can’t imagine how anxiety inducing it must be to work there now. Animal welfare is a complete non-concern. The only thing that’s pushed is sell, sell, sell. It’s borderline dystopian. Bad management seems to be a common issue, not only from my experience, but many others’ as well. I worked until I was an exhausted sweaty mess to make sure everything in pet care or, when I groomed, the salon, was cleaned to perfection as expected of me (and I reiterate: “me,” because these standards were not expected of my co-workers, just me) and overall felt very unseen. The only times I did feel “seen,” was when mistakes were made. Work was treated like boot camp. A co-worker that was subtley targeting/bullying me, and even started rumors accusing me of racist remarks(!!!), was promoted and anything I reported was downplayed because they were friends with the assistant manager. Working here was an overall traumatizing experience.

Cons

Employees are expected to be work-robots

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PetSmart Response
3w
We’re disappointed to hear that your experience didn’t reflect what we aim to create for our associates, and we appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback. We invite you to contact the CareSmart line at 1-800-738-4693 so we can learn more and see how we can support you. Thank you.
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