Petco has a lot of great slogans, including “Petco: Where animals come first,” “Petco: Where the healthy pets go,” and “Healthier Pets. Happier People. Better World.” Unfortunately, they’re just marketing.
The Problem with “Petco: Where Animals Come First”
While shopping at Petco, you’ve probably heard birds squawk or a cat meow over the P.A. system before a male voice says, “Petco: where animals come first.” According to a training video, this is an hourly reminder for employees to check the animals, reptiles, and fish to make sure they’re alive and well. At Westgate Petco, these welfare checks only occur at 1 p.m., when an employee clocks in to join the employee who’s been feeding the small animals (hamsters, guinea pigs, mice, and ferrets) since 8 a.m. and the employee who’s been manning the register since 9 a.m. [Management will deny this, of course, but corporate could easily send well-trained mystery shoppers into the store to see what happens at the top of the hour at random times on random days.]
The problem, the store manager said, is that, “There is no second anymore.” Corporate expects Westgate Petco employees to greet customers when they walk in the door, talk to them about nutrition, cart heavy items out to their car, answer phone calls, put umpteen pallets of stock away by 1 p.m. on Mondays, change prices, keep track of inventory, mop the salty floor during winter, and care for the animals, reptiles, and fish. But at any given time, there are only two employees and one manager on hand to do it all—and some things fall by the wayside when you have to smoke and check your phone.
The Problem with “Petco: Where the Healthy Pets Go”
In 2011, Adweek poked fun at Petco for changing its slogan from “Where the pets go” to “Where the healthy pets go.”
“[This] is meant to suggest Petco cares about your pet’s health but almost sounds like the opposite—that if your animal isn’t in tip-top shape, he’s S.O.L. and should go elsewhere,” Adweek said.
At Westgate Petco, being S.O.L. depends upon your price point. If you’re a French bulldog, the only breed the 26-year-old inventory manager finds cute, you’ll leave the store with nutritious food and a treat. If you’re a hamster, mouse, or one of the other small animals he has said are nothing more than inventory to him, you may leave in a black plastic bag, Petco’s equivalent to a body bag, after sitting in a deep freezer for a month.
During my four months at the store, at least one mouse, one gecko, one snake, two birds, and several hamsters died in addition to a slew of fish. I say “at least” because a) I wasn’t there every day, and b) I rang registers for weeks until the manager of the small animals department got into a shouting match with the store manager and quit, and I was trained to take up his slack until he was replaced.
The morning I teared up because a mouse was struggling to breathe, the store manager placed her in a tank in the so-called Wellness room; gave her bedding, food, water, and millet; and scheduled a vet appointment for her but warned me that she probably wouldn’t make it till Monday and the inventory manager would be ticked about sending a $4 mouse to the vet. Both he and the district manager were reportedly “pissed” about spending $270 to help a $4 mouse who felt pain like everyone else on the planet. I heard this story time and time again as one hamster after another became sick with wet tail, a fatal form of diarrhea that hamsters get when stressed.
And that’s my problem with the slogan “Healthier Pets. Happier People. Better World.” This world isn’t going to become a better place until people become more compassionate. If your raise or bonus at the end of the year is your only concern about a mouse or hamster suffering a slow, painful death, you shouldn’t be working with animals.
Westgate Petco Kills 