Pros
Great working with the animals and if you like working retail, its actually very fulfilling. You have the opportunity to truly teach customers the real way to care for animals and its nice to know you can make the difference.
Kontras
Way too much work load, always understaffed. They consistently have cut back hours for the past year trying to save a penny, but expect the same standards. ITS NOT POSSIBLE. They basically pay minimum wage. They will give you maybe $0.10-$0.50 above and proudly tell you that they don't pay minimum wage. You get 3 reviews in the first year (well you're supposed to anyway, but most managers fail to do it), where you are supposed to be able to earn a raise. The maximum you can earn with all 5 star reviews on your report is $0.10. I had a nicer manager who told me this when I first started working here. He was very upfront about everything. The company got rid of titles, so instead of being Cashier Lead, you would be a "full-time cashier" no title. no pay raise. all the responsibility and then some. If you are lucky, you will have a manager stand behind their employees in front of customers, unfortunately it seems corporate has been systematically getting rid of those managers. You will be yelled at, cussed at, even have things thrown at you, and managers will bow and scrape and COMPLETELY IGNORE RETURN POLICIES to keep the customer happy. Customers quickly learn if they throw a tantrum, they will get whatever they want. Some managers will tell you to give people the prescription food without the RX card because they bought it before. This is ILLEGAL and I have blatantly refused and told the manager they can do the sale if they want. No one has ever talked back on that, because they KNOW its against policy and illegal. The culture is veering away from caring about the animals. Even though we all signed contracts saying we can refuse the sale of a pet to a customer if we think it is an "inappropriate home" (those are the exact words in the contract), some managers will tell you, you can't refuse. Its a great place if you can still find a store with managers that care, but as i said before corporate has done a good job of wheedling them out and bringing in managers from Red Lobster, or Outback or Lowe's (omg the Lowe's so many of them!) who know NOTHING about animals.
