store manager

supervisor

retail sales associate

Petbarn

A typical day includes a lot of face to face customer service and sales, cleaning up the store after customers, merching in new products and replenishing stock, maintaining aquariums, scooping out dead fish from the aquariums, chatting to people with varying levels of animal care knowledge about their pets, meeting customers dogs (or sometimes cat or bunny or rat!), doing water tests and convincing customers that they should wait for the toxic water levels to subside before introducing fish into their new aquarium while their 4 year old is screaming about how they were promised a fish right now.

There seem to be two different store manager styles at Petbarn. The manager that is on the floor working with their team for the majority of the day and the other which is your office manager who stays in the office for 80 per cent of the day and comes out an hour before closing or leaves early claiming to be sick every other week. 

I have nothing to say about upper management or the team at head office that hasn't already been written about. Its mostly negative. 

The hardest part of the job is when you get stuck with a store manager that doesn't care about their staff members at all and it shows. Dealing with customers who have no interest in learning about fish keeping but want fish anyway.

The most enjoyable part is developing relationships with local and loyal customers and their pets. 

Un paid team meetings and training nights. Casuals get their hours cut on a whim. If they end up not liking you they will force you out by cutting your hours down and telling other mangers not to give you shifts at other stores, watched it happen many times.

Upper level management care little for even the hardest working of employees, and nothing says that more than the amount of jobs piled on while alot of hours get cut. Employee discount is next to nothing. 

A typical day includes tons of customer service, which is company policy to put first even though your manage expects you to get ten other jobs (usually away from the registers) done. 

Tons of stuff to learn about customer service and animal care, except you're expected to do all your online training in your own time. There's probably around 100-150 hours of it all up. 

Stock control is an absolute joke, with no flexibility to adjust amounts in orders, resulting in large excess amounts of unwanted goods and no way to order more stuff on sale until whoops the sale is over and customers missed out. Unreasonable demands such as unpaid staff meetings and working the late shifts the managers don't want to work is normal. Managers themselves all have to work 45 hour weeks with no way to take their owed time, so they're all stressed and taking it out on their team. Oh and they might loose their bonuses if they put too many staff on and go over budget, so guess how often a store is properly staffed.  

Most of all it's very sad to see animal care sacrificed to try to make more time in the day. Petbarn are a typical large company who only care about profits not their team. Which is sad because there's alot of good customers, brands and services on offer, they could achieve so much more.

Working with my salon manager at Petbarn was great! We worked really well as a team and helped each other grow as groomers. She made it really great to come into work! 

As far as the company goes their employee discount is hardly worth working there for as most customers get coupons equal or greater to our discount. Because I was a casual employee I only got superannuation and discounts as benefits. As far as wage goes, they didn't pay groomers as "groomers" but rather "retail staff" so I don't feel I was compensated for my education and experience. There's also no motivation to "move up" to salon manager as the pay is not worth all the work that the promotion entails. 

I also feel that the company as a whole has an unrealistic expectation of the groomers. The communication with the company about our concerns never were addressed . 

Grooming in general is a pretty full on job. Seeing people who neglect their pets is always hard. Then on the other hand it's hard to deal with people who are so picky about their dogs! It's a very hard job but can be rewarding for the right person.

I really enjoyed working at Petbarn when I first started because of the team at my store. They were all young and hard-working animal lovers like me, including the manager. Once the manager left however Petbarn hired externally. Countless managers and ASMs left quickly often saying the store had more problems they were led to believe. There is zero care or support from upper management. Serious suggestions or concerns were only listened to if they were from my male colleagues. Everyone in my store operated a forklift for a long time without a licence because they didn't want to pay to train anyone. Shifts were constantly cut yet we were expected to do more work. 

The pay is not too bad especially on Sundays and public holidays. It is ok on the floor when you are just serving and running stock. If you want to work there I would suggest only working as a retail assistant because it is not worth it if you have any responsibility. They usually hire good staff to provide good customer service and run most of the store. Managers and ASMs tend to delegate jobs rather than do them.

Management expects a lot of overtime and meetings outside work hours to be taken up without pay or they threaten to cut hours ) fire you. Highly incompetent management in general to the point that they are either conveniently "sick" every weekend with no repurcussions or elsewise simply leave early when they feel like it, leaving junior staff to open, close and operate the store without management - which infuriates customers (and staff) to no end. 

Anyone that isn't management will be treated like dirt by the head office and managers. Be expected to pull not only your own weight but that of the lazy managers as well. Pay is as low as you would expect from a retail chain.

The Petbarn group as a whole needs to reassess their company culture and their approach to stock management, customer management, and treatment of staff. 

Would absolutely not recommended.

Working at Pet Barn offers a dynamic and engaging environment where you assist customers with pet-related needs, provide advice, and handle sales. You learn about pet care, products, and customer service. The management is supportive, and the workplace culture is friendly and teamwork-oriented. Dealing with customer expectations can be challenging, but the interaction with animals and their owners is the most enjoyable part of the job. Overall, it's a rewarding experience for those passionate about animals and the pet care industry.

Booking in pets, getting owners to sign consent forms.  What I learned, managers are out for themselves. Management do not understand emotional strain in running a salon on your own handling 50kg size dogs, matted dogs and trying to groom them whilst they are trying to bite you. When something goes wrong with customers due to their poor communication and disrespecting your workplace, you get a customer complaint-you are judged and told off before you have explained your side. When this happens to you you're frozen out by the other staff members. Companies with this type of culture don't care about you, they only care about the bottom line ($$$$)
With my good grooming work was able to get over 120 clients with the majority returning. I meet lovely clients that appreciated my grooms on their pets.

A typical day at work would be stocking shelves in the morning and facing up all the products to make sure the store is tidy. We also feed the fish and check on the cats (if we have any). Helping customers is the number 1 priority and you have to drop what you're doing and see if anyone needs help. The customers can be challenging at times but we always find ways of laughing about it later. The community in the workplace is great and the team of workers are always lovely. The hardest part of the job is the problem customers, I have been yelled at many times and some of my coworkers have been threatened but that is just the area I worked in. The most enjoyable part is definitely the dogs that come in. I also did puppy school and that was an absolute blast.

When working at pet barn it was good space and I enjoyed every single moment working at pet barn. the customers and workers were really nice to me and I did the same back. I learned many things that can help me in the future such as keeping clean and tidy in every way and how to succeed to not be so nervous and just to be the nicest you can. the manager was very nice and determine to help me the best me I can be. it was very good working their and hardly any of the animals died because of the care I gave them. the hardest part of the job was really nothing is was all easy to me. I really enjoyed when we had fish deliveries and I could do every fish, and washing and feeding the livestock and making the place look very presentable to the customers.

First I'd like to start off that I was employed as a dog bather at the Kedron Petbarn and the Salon team there was top notch and would take dogs that every other petbarn wouldn't take. After it closed down due to reasons I cannot say, the store manager at the time kept me on floor/retail which was good as I still wanted some experience on the retail side of things while I also helped another store with their salon team. Everything was great until the new store manager came. They wanted to change so many things in the store in the few weeks they'd been there as well as give less hours to team members older than 24 and would even give 0 shifts a roster. Lost a lot of respect from long time employees who most have decided to leave due to the amount of change and management from the new SM.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Store manager 4 salaries reported	$67,250 per year
Supervisor 3 salaries reported	$28.00 per hour
Retail sales associate 3 salaries reported	$27.33 per hour

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