Well I tried to quote people but it didn't work...
I've seen posts like that on my Facebook thread and in other places and it upsets me that people don't do their research. I also worked at Petco for quite some time back when I had reptiles last and it's very true that people don't listen no matter how much you try to beat their head into the wall. I read a post where someone said their store was glad to see them go because they spent to much time with the customer and that is ridiculous (not you, but your store). As a supervisor at my store I wanted people to spend as much time with their customers as possible and we even trained employees to multitask that way they could help other customers while still talking to one customer about whatever it was they were talking about. We noticed increased sales by those people who were just sitting there listening to people talk to others, sometimes it's not about talking to that person directly but just talking so people can hear.
We had a lot of very educated employees at the first store I worked at and it was great. Transferring to the new store and having to retrain and "save" the store on the other hand was a task beyond belief. I think after that experience I could successfully start, train and run a pet store on my own. But not all big chain employees are bad, most just are not educated and are only told the information corporate passes down to them. My friend who is very big into tarantulas is constantly educating people in the pet stores about housing them properly and caring for them properly. Most do what they can to accommodate the animals within the restrictions of the business. But that's the key right there is convincing the higher ups that these changes need to be made.
I try to educate the people who are doing it wrong by just pointing it out and as positively as possible explain why it's not a good idea to do something like that and supply some cheap temporary (or permanent) solutions to fix the problem. I've found by not sounding upset, frustrated, or mad that I get better results than basically yelling at someone that they are doing something wrong. Sometimes it feels like you are beating a dead horse but if we don't stand up as advocates of our animals then it won't get any better. Even if it's directing them to more information so they can see or read up on taking care of their animals. There will always be people who don't give a crap, but if we can reach out to those who do then we can make at least that much of a difference.
