Pros
You get to interact with animals (for sale and customer's). Been in retail a long time and
Cons
no clear direction by upper managment. Things are often seemingly done on a whim, and direction is changed so often, expecations are hard to figure out, with the excpetion of a few metrics, where the company's expectations are so high, it is impossible to achieve their 'minumum expectations'. Communication between corporate and stores is the worst I have ever seen. There are lots of conflicting priorities between the stores and corp as well, which makes it very difficult to achieve results. Poor training and morale is the cause of the highest turnover I have ever seen in a retail company. And this turnover at store management level makes it extremely hard to create any lasting partnerships with peers. Also, because of the turnover, most of the store managers are so new, there is no one to for them to turn to for advice or guidance as they are often told by their supervisors they'd 'better figure it out'. Morale is so low, as managers have been flat out told that in this economy where else are you going to go, so you better perform to their unrealistic expecations. They thrive to be the industry leader in customer service, and have even said "we can't afford to not give good service" as they reduce the labor hours gven to stores. Annual pay increases are almost non-existant. Petco has stated that it's the economy and all retailers are doing it, yet brag about record sales increases and EBITDA (profit).
