Pros
I firmly believe that PETCO is a company that means well and is honest overall. They really do care about pets -- the PETCO Foundation helps animals all over the country (most donations go to shelters and rescues in the area where they were given), and the company spends a lot of time training management on good pet nutrition, animal care, and important health issues. They also are trying to go as "green" as possible, which is a plus. New training comes down all the time, and they do their best to see that their employees understand a wide variety of topics. Working with animals, particularly as a groomer, can be fun and rewarding. You always get to see new pets and you get to know the regulars very well... and there's always something new to learn! Since working here I've become an aquatic hobbyist as well, and I had never even thought about keeping fish before. The pet stylist training program is a great opportunity for someone looking for a career. You can come in as a grooming assistant, learn to bathe and trim nails, and eventually train up to become a groomer. I get along well with my fellow employees, and had the good fortune to have a very nice manager who, while not perfect, has been pretty much the best manager I've ever had. Most of the other managers I've met seem to share a similar outlook, and there is good communication between local stores on the management level The company has its own intranet system, with stories from around the company posted daily, and they allow all employees to log in and comment -- and while comments are moderated, they do not censor people for being unhappy or negative, only for serious trolling or profanity, etc. They also have a company survey that launches every March where employees are encouraged to give their opinions, as well as the Got an Idea system, where any employee can submit an idea to senior management for review -- and many ideas have made it into store practice! The perks are great, if you have pets. You get a 20% employee discount on everything (including grooming services, training, and vaccination clinics), 30% on Natural Balance brand dog food, and there are always other opportunities to save. Often when a new food brand launches, they'll give employees a special discount (recently we had 50% off on Merrick's for two weeks!) so that we can try the food with our pets and be able to confidently recommend it to customers if we like it. There are also contests and other systems in place for employees to win free pet food, or even sometimes gift cards or cash or even trips, though these depend heavily on how active your store is with the Caught in the Act program. You don't get sick days, but you do get a generous amount of Paid Time Off that most people use to pad their checks if they're sick and have to miss a shift. You even get a bit after only 90 days with the company (though this depends on how many hours you work on average) and more each year on your anniversary date. The attendance policy is fairly generous. It's a point system that's easy to understand. The company is VERY LGBT friendly. A fair amount of upper management is gay, and half the people who work in the stores seem to be, too. CEO JIm Myers is a super awesome guy. He's very friendly, listens to you, and seems to really care on those rare occasions when/if you ever get to meet him.
Cons
While PETCO means well, like all large companies, a lot of the good points get diluted by the desire for profit. Recently they changed our focus from trying to convince people to upgrade to natural foods (which is honestly healthier and more cost-effective in the long run if fed properly) to just trying to get them to buy their food from us no matter what it is -- and this is after spending a LOT of money teaching us all how bad the "grocery" good brands are. Trust me, if you work for PETCO and learn all the things about nutrition that they teach you, you'll never want to feed garbage like Beneful or Pedigree to your dog again. Cutting hours is a huge problem. There's constantly a push to cut, cut, cut, and you eventually end up sometimes with stores running with only two or three people on staff at a time -- and that's with the MANAGER doubling as the cashier! Yet they also expect our customer feedback scores to be high (one of which is the "availability of associates" rating, which KILLS us). They're good about encouraging us to give good customer service, but upper management seems to completely have no idea how a retails store is run. Taking care of the animals alone takes HOURS every day, and that's not including all the other tasks involved in running a retail store, and in the constant events we have, adoption weekends, etc. They don't care that we have two associates running ragged trying to do everything (including clean up dog poop that inconsiderate customers leave behind) -- all they care about is numbers, numbers, numbers. You're always pushed to pester the customer about something. You have to get them to sign up for PALS cards, get their email addresses and phone numbers for the card, work on your attachment rate, and there's almost always some sort of donation drive going on! People get sick of it. As soon as one fundraiser ends, another begins. In grooming, they talk the talk but don't walk the walk. When you train as a groomer, you're told that they prefer quality over quantity, and they would rather you do 5 dogs a day very well and safely than do 8 quickly and unsafely (corprorate goal is 5 per shift), but then you end up constantly pushed and pushed and pushed to do more more more even when it's beyond your capabilities. As a groomer, you're paid hourly or commission, whichever is greater. Your hourly SUCKS... the only reason they raised it was because minimum wage went up, and you're only making a quarter an hour more than grooming assistants who don't even do haircuts. Luckily, as a groomer, you'll get commission most of the time and can make quite good money... depending on the size of your store, the economy, the season, the weather, what events are going on in town... yeah, commission is incredibly unreliable when it comes to feeding your family. (That said, when times are good and if your store is busy, you can make excellent money. Depending on your region and local customs, you can get good tips or none at all, too.) As a grooming salon manager, your pay is inadequate. Because your manager work leaves you doing fewer dogs and thus unable to make as much money, you get a 10% increase in commission percentage... but if you're doing all the hundreds of tasks they expect of you every day to run your salon right, that 10% increase MIGHT help you break even with your regular groomers. So essentially you're doing twice the work for the same pay. Your hourly is laughable -- you barely make more than the groomers, and less than a dollar more than your fresh-off-the-street assistants despite the fact that you're a trained professional AND a manager. And once you hit the grooming salon manager rank, your career STOPS. There is almost nowhere above that level for a groomer to go, and PETCO counts on most groomers not actually wanting to advance further. If you do, you're screwed. I have met dog trainers that made it into upper management, but not groomers -- and the result is, not only do you have no prayer of advancing, you also end up having your policies dictated to you by people who understand absolutely nothing about the nature of grooming. It's very unpredictable, with animals constantly in and our, pet parents showing up early or late or not showing at all, dogs so wild that they take twice the normal time to groom... and yet there's constantly something new being added to our daily to-do list. And good luck getting any respect for what you do from corporate. The programs are in place, but unless you're at a huge moneymaker of a store, the only attention you'll get from the top is negative attention -- constant pressure and threats of EPNs (write-ups) if your numbers aren't perfect. Some of the numbers other salons turn in are so ridiculous that there's no way they can be posting those without cheating on their services, but corporate is happy to look the other way and instead chastise those who try to do things honestly, but fall a little short.