Petco Corporate Is Clueless

This company used to operate like a well oiled machine. Not anymore.
In the past year or so after we became subjected to new ownership, the stores are declining. As an associate, I am always needed in 3 places at one time due to short staffing.

Corporate does not give us the hours needed to run the store efficiently nor do they care. It's all about the bottom line & selling more widgets or services like dog training.

Profit & keeping stockholders happy is more important to them than anything else. Sure I get it,- they are in business to make money. However, they are actually losing money & customers due to the way corporate shortchanges their managers & associates & leaves them without a way to maximize those sales/profits which keep the stores from running efficiently or succeeding.

Employee morale is down.
If you have overworked, underpaid employees who need to do the work of 3 while customers get angry at them for something they have no control over, like empty shelves or no staff to help them on the floor, your workers will slowly stop caring & cut corners just because they are overwhelmed.

Heck, we are so short staffed there are days/nights that some of us cannot even be covered for breaks. Our 30 minute meal breaks are automatically deducted from our pay. However, we have so few people working & lines of customers out the door, phones ringing, customers needing fish and crickets, stock needing to be placed on shelves, planograms to be completed, small animal care, customer questions, services needing to be sold, janitorial duties, etc that we do not have enough employees to cover other employees to take their breaks.

Now, I can call up Human Resources & complain, but I am afraid to because my store's General Manager is a sweetheart and she will be fired. Many days I see her break down & cry because she wants the store to succeed but she cannot manage with the little she has. She will be punished even though corporate only gives her X amount of hours for staff per week which isn't enough to get anything accomplished, let alone staff breaks.

So many co-workers are fed up with that & they keep quitting and we keep searching for new candidates to work for us who end up being hired & quit soon thereafter. It's a revolving door here.

The small animals are being neglected & so are the fish. We do not have enough people to handle all these responsibilities & the animals are often left in filthy quarters & on some days are even left unfed or have no water unless a customer points it out. Our managers are so overwhelmed with an imploding store that is getting more and more decrepit by the day, that they are unable to even oversee the care of the animals. More times than I care to admit, I have worked off the clock after my shift ended to quickly run into the wellness room (sick animals are kept there) to medicate & feed the animals that need special care.
My co-workers try their best to do this as well.

The store has become a filthy mess & the shelves are always barren & things are thrown all over the place. Everyday it looks like a cannon shot merchandise all over the place or like hurricane Irene came barreling in.

How can you stock shelves when a shift consists of a manager on duty and one cashier? More times than not, the manager will spend 70 percent of his shift on register as a back-up cashier while the line snakes around, customers yell and complain and there is no-one on the floor to assist customers or handle important things that need to get done to have a store function properly.

Customers are constantly fuming mad, walking out empty handed in disgust & no longer coming back & sales are dropping. When they do a store survey & they complain, guess who gets yelled out and threatened by corporate? We do. Even though we are not able to make the store more successful due to the limitations we are handed by corporate, we are to blame.

We can't win for losing!

We are expected to do so much with so little tools to succeed. It's never enough profit for them. They are constantly upping the expectations & expecting so much from a skeleton crew who tries so hard that all of our needs fall on deaf ears.

All of us work our hearts out, but the lack of associates and manpower has the store looking and operating miserably. Instead, when the DM walks in to grade our store we fail and get yelled at and threatened. Good, hard working managers and associates keep getting fired or written up because of un-empathetic, clueless corporate bosses.

We try to explain that we need more staff/hours but the District Managers tell us to basically suck it up and get it done.

We cannot effectively operate a store like this and everyday the mountain of unfinished work, filth and un-stocked items piles higher and higher.

Petco has been bleeding all of it's workers dry because the bottom line and profit is their God.The animals are suffering too for it. This company is failing miserably and needs to give the associates the tools to keep the company successful in order to prevent it from heading to bankruptcy court.