barrhaven superpet and dead fishes.

[apuppet]

this is mostly a rant. but i cant help it. i am so disappointed.

After i heard Charles post about 75% off at Barrhaven. i couldnt help but but drop by last night, to see whats on sale.

lots (7) of red-shirt employee chatting, doesnt seem to be doing much, but hanging around up front near cash register.  only a handful of customer in the whole store,   and 2 employee near the fish room, one young female employee chatting about her father's health benefits.  not doing much.  its an thursday and seemly a new shipment of fishes have arrived, and are being climatized.   but , to my surprise, each tank that are on display, have live fishy and also dead fish .  one tank has a swarm of mts snails eating a fish carcass.  another tank has a tiny pleco sucking on a carcass of another pleco.  Their discus tank had a dead flooding discuss.. its flesh seeming to be flaking off.   another tank have dead fish littered on the ground. another tank had a fish flooding and with like white hair of something. just gross. i am so disappointed. i wanted to ask for a manager, but decided not to. but just plain disappointed.

i'd was there before a few months back. and was quite impress with the fish health and how clean all the tanks were, i even remember asking once how they kept their water so crystal clear. but perhaps the merger has caused the employee to not care anymore, or its just tired and dont give a damn.

so sad.  it was depressign to have see all thoses dead fishes. and my mood from cheery goign in, to depressed leaving. i didnt speak to any manager to file my complaint, i just wasnt in the mood.   

thanks for listenign,
-a

[RossW]

I am sorry to say I have also witnessed similar dead fish in tanks there in the past

[mseguin]

All I'll say is please keep in mind that right now is a very stressful time for all the SP employees, at any of the locations. Between all the uncertainty of the transitions, how hectic the stores have been at times with the sale, training on new systems, various management staff being away for training, and all the work thats gone into re-merchandising and moving stock all around, morale can be a bit low at times. Yeah it sucks that you happened to walk into the store at a bad point, but most people are lucky that in their jobs they dont have a constant stream of people looking at their work at all times of day, but not so in retail.

[KLKelly]

I noticed the pleco yesterday too - I decided not to look around after that. There was more than one dead one and the others looked sick also.  I feel bad for the sick fish more than anything - wish I could help them all.

I think fish store employees get desensitized after a while.  I know fish go through a lot during shipping but its still sad to see.

We know the employees are going through a lot of stress especially during this period.  It is also hard on many customers to see stuff like that also (most aren't supersensitive to it like me however).

[artw]

I wonder how long the average OVAS'er would last working at a typical retail fish business.

[Nerine]

I've even been to small fish stores...where that's all they sell. NO supplies. And they will have dead fish. They even had 4 employee's. Yet I still shopped there until I moved because they had the best service and best fish in the area.

Go to the biodome...you'll see dead and sick fish there too!!!! they will not take them out as it's part of the ecosystem.

Anywhere you shop will always have dead fish unless they are horridly overstaffed that they have someone dedicated to fishing out the dead and ill and that's all they do.

my two cents!

[charlie]

I agree with most of the arguments posted in response to apuppet rant, but i have personally expereinced on several occasions a group of employees standing around discussing life`s personal trials ( not necessarily Superpet but in general), while i`m roaming around  admiring live & dead stock.
I wonder if anyone ever walked into a automobile showroom & have a salesman try to sell you a rusty, mud covered car @ a premium price and if so did you buy it?
Regards

[mseguin]

On the other hand, would yuo rather know about the rust or have him cover it up with paint and then sell it to you at a premium price?

[RossW]

On the other hand, would yuo rather know about the rust or have him cover it up with paint and then sell it to you at a premium price?

You mean this is not what they do?

[mseguin]

Dunno, never worked in a dealership :-)

[charlie]

On the other hand, would yuo rather know about the rust or have him cover it up with paint and then sell it to you at a premium price?

Point taken, but least the effort was made to present it in a appealing condition .
Regards

[mseguin]

And so was the effort to make the tank presentable. It just so happened that they missed a couple of fish, or a few died in the time in between stiff runs. And expecting staff to be in a constant state of motion all day is just plain ridiculous

[artw]

Yeah but it's easy to request it on Internet forums.

[charlie]

And so was the effort to make the tank presentable. It just so happened that they missed a couple of fish, or a few died in the time in between stiff runs. And expecting staff to be in a constant state of motion all day is just plain ridiculous

Let me clarify, i don't expect the staff at any store to be in constant motion, nor do i know if an effort was made or not to make the tanks presentable, like i said in my post i was referring in general & not necessarily S.P. but i can say with certainty having done a stint of commission sales in retail, your product better be in a presentable condition if you expect to make the sale.
I will also say that i personally visit Barrhaven on a weekly basis as part of my Friday evening routine takes me in the vicinity & have never really noticed unkept tanks or dead fish on display more than any other fish store, this is all i will add to this post.
Regards

[DavidJohnson]

I just want to point out that I have seen similar situations in almost every fish store that I regularly visit.  Last week I went to BA Kanata and they had several fish tanks with several dead fish in them.  It's unfortunate, but it happens to every store on occassion.  What we hope for is that no particular store regularly neglects their fish with dead fish being a common occurrance.  I have also seen employees linger around doing nothing in every kind of store.  Last week I was in a Wendy's and witnessed an employee skipping around joyously singing "I get off in half an hour" right in front of a crowd of customers waiting for their food (If I was the manager and saw that I'd have told him to go home now and not come back).  Unfortunately sometimes this is what you get when you hire a bunch of teenagers who are just there for the money and don't have any particular interest in the work (generalizing here, not all teenagers are this way).  That said, in general I have found the SuperPets to be reasonably good and lets hope that continues as they transition over to PetSmarts.

[artw]

just FTR neither PetSmart or Big Als gives their staff sales commission.

[mseguin]

My main point is that most people can get away with slacking off at times, as they don't have customers constantly checking on them. (it's not a coincidence that OVAS is busiest during the workday). Basically, in your car analogy, I would compare what apuppet saw as a few smudges on some of the windows left by previous customers, not as a muddy rusty car. If the employee sees them, they should eb taken care of, but a few are gonna slip away now and then.

[kennyman]

hehe good point Matt!

Ya joo guys quit hanging around here between breaks and get those hard drives spinning 

[Mettle]

Employee morale at the Barrhaven location has been an issue for quite a while now. Part of the reason why I quit working there over a year ago. The store has seen a lot of change in management in the past while (for different reasons) and there's a general lack of discipline on the part of said rotating management to instill proper work behaviours in their employees. It's no one specific person's fault but a failing at every level - mixed with good ol' internal store politics, I'm sure - and unfortunately this is reflected in poor care of the animals. People stop caring. I think we've all had jobs where we stopped caring... However, now with the switch over to Petsmart, many of these individuals may find themselves looking for new jobs, I suspect. It's sad. And nothing against the employees who work there - many of which I still keep in contact with - but things are bound to change.

I think though that there is a major point to be made about the quality of the Barrhaven Super Pet fish room. It used to be one of the nicest, if not the nicest, in Ottawa. It has really fallen from that level of quality. I hope that Petsmart can get it back on track.

[Zadig]

Everyone has made valid complaints and intelligent responses in this thread. Years ago, I ended six years of service with Super Pet. I'd like to add a few comments based on my experiences working in commissioned pet retail.

Sometimes it is helpful to state the obvious, so I'll do that right now. The owners and managers of chain pet stores are in the business to make a profit. There's nothing essentially wrong with that, but I would like everyone to keep that in mind when they look at any aspect of these pet stores.

If you love animals above anything else in the world, do not apply for a job at a pet store. That industry is not a good fit for you, and you are not a good fit in a pet store. Management made it clear to me at very beginning that I was hired to sell, sell, sell.

This is not to say that managers didn't care at all about the animals. They did care, because healthy animals can be sold.

To make a very long story a little shorter, I'll take on a few of the major points in this thread.

1) Dead fish in tanks: when you are importing hundreds of tropical fish every week, you are going to see dozens of dead fish. These fish die constantly. Every morning I would do a "stiff run". Some days were light (around a dozen corpses bagged); other days were heavy (eighty bodies). If an employee sees one floater, they might leave it until it becomes more worthwhile to do another stiff run. Does that look bad to customers? Absolutely, but I'm trying to put you into the mind of the staff.

Remember that these fish come from Singapore and Hong Kong (among other exotic locales). I have personally received feeder goldfish in bags that stank of ammonia. I almost vomited upon opening the bag. Imagine travelling in a bag with 499 of your friends from Singapore to Ottawa for days, while swimming in your own waste products. The survival of these fish is testament to their tolerance of poison.

Even the trip from Montreal to Ottawa would kill many fish. I never knew what was going to happen with any given order.

2) Self-absorbed staff: we're talking about a lot of social young employees. Retail staff band together through their similar experiences. However, we were often reminded not to neglect customers. If you really care about your sales figures, as I did, you made sure the customer felt that they could approach you.

I would say that what you're witnessing is simply an unprofessional group of employees. If they don't stop their conversation in mid-sentence to serve you, then they are not doing their job. I'm not making this up, this was an order from management. There's no excuse for it. The staff should be attending to you.

3) General appearance of the stores: again, I would blame the individuals involved. If the store looks like a mess, tanks are full of algae, you overhear the worst advice possible from a stoned employee to a young family buying their first aquarium, there is no one to blame other than those involved.

I used to blame my low salary, my managers, the owners, the customers. It's an illusion. If I did a bad job, it's because I did a bad job.

We'll see what happens in the transition from Super Pet to Petsmart. You can institute all the written policies, guidance from an American head office, new uniforms, new salaries, and still fail because you can't instill passion in your employees; or your staff never had any passion to begin with.

Having said all that, if you see good employees, clean aquariums, excellent service - praise it and reward it with your money. A nice compliment from an intelligent customer used to make my day, and sometimes my week.