I’ve been working with Petco for over a year and in that time, the company was bought out and everyone had to reapply for their position. The salaried “Assistant Manager” position was eliminated and I had to reapply for the hourly position “Guest Experience Leader.” I now do less management duties and more ringing, stocking, cleaning, walking around the sales floor helping customers and taking care of animals. I am also now responsible for “pet services” including pushing Dog Training, Grooming, Vaccinations and other initiatives. I understand why services are important, but the targets are unreasonably high to attain on a small amount of hours, online competition (except for dog food, buying on Amazon was still less than my employee discount), new local competitors, low wages and a high-pressure environment. It’s high pressure because corporate give us very few hours to get our deliveries put away, do a good job on animal care, hiring quality people, give breaks, clean, work overstock 3 times a week, computer training, provide good customer service, product resets, put up new AD promotions, price changes, inventory counts and everything else.
District Managers want to develop Assistant Managers do someday become the Store Manager, however, since the company buy-out, there has been a tremendous amount of pressure on the Store Manager to get everything done that store managers rarely take even a 30 minute lunch break. Not to mention my quarterly bonus was less than 0.5% of my pay. We’re told to pay less than many nearby jobs because we’re a “fun place to work” (don’t get me wrong, I love animals!), but you can’t employ quality people if you don’t pay them, so people are complacent, taking advantage of anything they can, stressed and continuously quitting. There are also deadlines to hire positions, so many times we just hire someone to fill the position.
