Former FT Bather/Grooming Assistant. VERY high stress job! Not a job most people should do!! - Recensione dipendente - Dog Groomer presso Petco

Clueless store management who never really understands what goes on in the salon. Just above minimum wage for the first 6 months-year or more (depending on how quickly you get through training). This is definitely NOT a minimum wage job. Too much pressure to become a groomer. When hired, you are supposed to be a bather for at least a few months so you can get a feel for the job. It is extremely high stress and a lot of people (like me) don't end up liking that. I was thrown into the grooming program after only ONE WEEK of being a bather and ended up quitting because I had no idea what I was getting in to. Basically no information about the job is given before you are hired. They say it is an apprenticeship requiring no experience, so you'd think they would be able to tell you a bit about the job. I had absolutely no clue what I would be doing in the salon until a couple weeks after being hired when I started working in there. It would have been nice to have a basic understanding of my job before starting, and I don't think that's too much to ask for. You have to spend $100's on tools and supplies. Again, I was told NOTHING about this before I was hired or during training. The tools and supplies that are provided for you by the store are low quality and break often. Rude customers. Not a lot of structure. Hours were EXTREMELY irregular and unpredictable. The only time I had an actual schedule was during the grooming school. You don't ever have the same days off (and sometimes you won't even get your required 2 days off per week) and the hours are sporadic. My manager was easy to work with and was very flexible, so that made it better. If I needed a day off, she would make sure not to schedule me on that day. Or if I needed to come in later than scheduled, I could just not schedule dogs during the hours I wouldn't be in. However, it's hard to plan anything in your life out when one day you're working 8 am-4 pm, then noon- 9 pm the next day, and some other completely different hours the next, and then a whole new schedule for the week after that. Plus, the schedule is usually only made out at most a week in advance. Too fast-paced. You are expected to learn everything you need to know to groom dogs safely and efficiently within a very short time frame, and teachers/management will get frustrated with you very quickly if you don't. Even outside of training, bathers and groomers are constantly overloaded with work and there is really no room for error. Terrible computer program used for scheduling and customer information. It almost never works properly. IT always says they're working on updating it, but these "updates" never show up. Extremely physically demanding. I went home every single day sore and worn out. My ears were always ringing because the constant noise was damaging my hearing and the earmuffs and earplugs they provided really didn't work that well. Petco policies say that you have to turn away dogs who bite (they recently decided we can't use muzzles anymore for whatever reason), but nobody ever actually turns any dogs away because they want to make commission. So you are looked down upon if you end up telling a customer you can't groom their dog. Management and corporate are constantly pushing you to sell more and get more done in a day, yet they have a strict no overtime policy. It's just not possible to do everything they tell you to. Lots of ridiculous policies that are impossible to work with. There's always some new rule or exception, and many of them make no sense when actually applied to the workplace. Coworkers get frustrated with you for taking your required 30 minute lunch break. The salon is constantly busy, so it's hard to find a "good" time to take your break, but anytime you think it will be ok to leave for half an hour, it gets busy again. You are also supposed to get three 10 minute breaks throughout the day, but I think in my three months of working there, I maybe got two of those 10 minute breaks ever. Anytime you want to relax for a minute, coworkers will find something for you to do. This might just be a personal one that I had a problem with, but one of my coworkers was extremely disrespectful of my time and schedule. I would have bath dogs scheduled to be done within an hour, but because I was a bather, she would make me handle every single walk-in service that came through the door. She would have me do 45 minutes worth of nail trims, then get mad at me when my scheduled dog wasn't done on time. And if I told her I was too busy to do a walk-in service, she would check the dog in under my name, interrupt what I was doing to make me do it, and then tattle on me to the salon manager and tell her I'm not doing my job as a bather. Again, maybe that was just a problem I had with a single coworker, but I felt like, in general as a bather, you do not receive the same amount of respect for your time and schedule as the groomers get.