Pet Store Pet Peeves

Doing some research. Looking for that single thing that is just missing from your local pet/reptile store. What's the one thing that you wish your local guy did? Is it a product you wished he carried? A service you wished they provided? Or the one thing that makes you cringe when you think about having to go down there?

Thanks in advance,

PS Please no names. I don't want it to turn into a good guy/bad guy post. Just trying to get some ideas.

I like to see clean Cages nice and smart staff of what they are selling







http://www.tongues-n-tails.com]www.tongues-n-tails.com

overall cleanliness,... my lps has clean cages and healthy animals, but the rest of the store is gross. The ceiling has waterdamage, the floor is ancient and pealing up, the dust is pretty bad. It's so ghetto!

Other than that, good service too. THe guy who owns and runs it has no clue when it comes to service. He'll be talking on the phone to some guy who's goldfish is dieing and he'll have three customers at the counter waiting to PAY for merchandise. And he'll make us wait till he tells the goldfish guy to bring in a water sample, and then completely explain how and what to put the water in, what to do with the fish, and then repeat it all over again.

The single biggest thing that makes me cringe when I stop in the local non-chain pet store is their ball python husbandry. It's awful -- heat rocks or no heat, no water, no hides, half a dozen animals in together. The mice get hides, the lizards get housed singly, the sand boas get sand, and the ball pythons get bupkis. What it all comes down to, I think, is proper training of the staff regarding husbandry of the animals in question. The local major national chain store is actually better, due to the reptiles dept. being run by a woman with 4 dozen herps at home.

I will tell you what I like. I currently help out at a friends store, and I love every minute of it. It's clean, we make sure we are very well educated about any animals we are selling, in house fecals, quarantine, card system to take notes on every animal, keep most animals housed only one animal per a cage, show example of how big some of them really get, tons of books which we point out often, etc. I only wish our enclosures looked more naturalistic, I think the customers wished it was not 80 degrees in there, hmmmm....... thats about it. Oh, always use preventive treatment on snake mites, always!

Pet Peeves: Dirty Animal Enclosures, and by that I mean pretty darned filthy as I can understand the poop from today being in there a bit; no water, short stock of what should be stocked etc..

The biggest pet peeve though that I have though is doo-doo for brains employees and shopkeepers! Not just the ones that know nothing, nor the ones who know nothing and act as if they are experts on everything, but mostly the ones who lack uncommon courtesy. Uncommon courtesty was once referred to as common courtesy because most everyone exhibited it to one another. Now any courtesy you receive is uncommon to say the least; and heck, if I am spending my money in your shop you had best be courteous to me or I can shop elsewhere.

Of course the good thing is that some people do exhibit uncommon courtesy, are knowledgeable of what they stock, keep their place of business clean, and keep a good supply of what the customer wants. That is what I want in a pet shop, or any other place in which I do business.

Best reagrds,
Glenn B

My pet peeve, Pet shop owners who have the balls (not pythons mind you) to expect people to pay their outrageous prices. So what if they have the items in stock, and I can take them home right now and not have to wait three days to get only part of my order. I don't care that they have to pay heat, rent, employees, etc. If dr foster and smith can sell it for 20 bucks cheaper they should be able to also.

Another thing. If I have a broken item that I bought off the internet, those unscrupulous shop keepers should give me a replacement part free of charge since they sell the same brand. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Since I paid 30 bucks for my sick snake at a retpile swap and the ungratful shop keeper has spent hours trying to help me get it to eat (to no avail, the guy must be an idiot) he should be willing to give me $30.00 for it because thats what its worth.

You know what else ticks me off? I don't feed my leopard gecko for 3 weeks, and then when I go to get crickets from the pet store the guy tells me he is out of crickets and will be expecting his shipment tomorrow. My lizard hasn't eaten in three weeks, he can't wait until tomorrow. Doesn't this guy know that animals need to eat.

Oh I almost forgot, The guy won't get a baby alligator for me. They are legal in our area, and I have a 20 long that I picked up at a garage sale for 50 cents. I know how to care for them because I had one last year that I bought at a swap. The only reason I had to get rid of it was because it got to big now I just want another baby.


There are tons more, but I am sure you get the picture.

Steve Schindler

OK now to answer your question. As a shopkeeper the things I look for most when I go into other stores are.

clean cages
proper setups
healthy looking animals

I agree with Glen on the clean cage thing as well. Not everyone can be johnny on the spot and get a fresh pile of crap out af cage while it is still wet. I am willing to cut some slack on this.

Proper setups do not have to be artistics masterpieces but all the essentials should be there.

If the animals are sick or sickly looking they should not be on display. Not all animals arrive healthy if you are dealing with wholesalers. Bad looking animals should not be in view. If my new arrivals are healthy looking they will be put out on display with a notice as to when they will be ready for sale but if they are in bad shape I keep them in back.

Other than that, I really don't care what the rest of the store looks like. I'd rather know that the owner was spending his time keeping the animals healthy than making sure that every speck of paper was picked up off the floor.

As far as oders go, there are a few kinds. I've walked into stores that literally took my breath away with the stench of dead rotting animals. Ive walked into stores that smelled pretty bad from unclean cages. I admit my store has an oder that I wish it didn't. Part of it comes from the old carpet that has gotten wet many time from overflowing fish tanks. Part of it comes from the hundreds of mice and rats I keep that will smell somewhat even though I am cleaning them every 3 days. Part of it stems from the fact that the temps and humidity are pretty high and that just serves to make the smells more noticable. I have asked many customers what they think and while most of them say some days are worse than others, most of them do not find it objectionable.

Knowledgable employees are essential, but I never take the word of any one person when it comes to animal care. I will check around and get several ideas. I work by myself 99% of the time. On the off chance I do get a day off the only girl I have to work, even though she know quite a bit, certainly can't cover everything. I tell her that the most important thing she can do if someone asks her a question she can not answer is to tell them she doesn't know. She has taken out all my reptile health books in the past to try and answer the questions but she knows enough not to try and BS. Thats the type of employee that I won't tollerate. If they are honest and say they don't know, I can cut them some slack. If they give me out and out wrong advice, or hem and haw to the point where I know they are just guessing, thats when I have a problem with them.

I guess those are the main things. Interesting thread, I know why you started it and I appreciate it. I am bennefiting from it as well as I am sure many others are.

What we need now though is a chance for the shop owners to be able to retaliate. how about a thread for our pet peeve about customers. Although I guess my previous post covered most of mine.

Steve Schindler

Well, I'm trying to think of something creative...
I know if you set up a shop it would be clean, well stocked, and I bet you would be there yourself so no worries about workers that dont know much about reptiles or spend the time yacking on the phone to their friends....

Maybe doing a "featured section" and switching it each month. Either a featured species or even a featured breeder. This would bring people back to see what is new and would be a great source of educating people to what is out there in the herp world. For example a featured uromastyx month and have a number of different types of uros. Or pick a breeder that does a lot of morphs--Serpentco--and have a display of a number of Rich's corn snake morphs. Maybe people could purchase the animals but wait until the "show" is over for them to pick up even. Or, I guess they could just take them home and people will have to learn to show up when the show opens!
...even a featured locale--Madagascar month, US species of the SE, SW, etc etc...
I dont know--just something a little different than you see in any other shop.

Dana