Petco review: store 1520 13

I have been an employee of Petco in Mountain Home, AR since they opened in March 2009. Everything about this job, company, and their corporate is a joke. They do not care about ANYTHING other than making a buck for themselves. They are morally unethical, and in my opinion, just plain evil. I have complained to management with no response, and I have complained to corporate with no response or results for quite some time. They have fired a few employees for BS reasons, and I am just waiting for it to happen to me...especially after logging all of these complaints for the whole world wide web to see.

Below are 3 different emails that I have sent to the corporate offices in California so that they could take action against the people creating problems at the store and for the company. Still nothing has been done. I hope I do get fired, but they don't pay unemployment either...even when they are wrong and have no justified reason for it.

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5/30/10:

To whom it may concern,

I am contacting you to report unethical, unprofessional, and illegal behavior by the General Manager of Petco store #1520 in Mountain Home, AR. The items that are listed below have been cause for major concern amongst all employees at the store since it opened in March 2009. The employees would like to see these situations handled internally before having to involve any governing agencies.

The primary concern of illegal activity that is currently and/or has taken place in the past is the altering of employee’s time punches to reduce used labor to stay in budget. This has taken place many times without the employee’s knowledge.

The following are some of the unprofessional and unethical concerns that employees have noticed and brought to the General Manager’s attention without any course of action being taken.

· Uses threats and intimidation with all of staff members. He has threatened to fire any employee that contacts the Petco hotline.

· Refuses to do a 2 week schedule despite the many requests from the District Manager also. All employees have also requested this over the course of time since the store opened so that they can plan time with their families and to plan child care, etc. When employees ask this of him, his response is negative and always something to the effect that “they should be happy they have a job at all”. He also rarely has a 1 week schedule done on time. For the entire month of May 2010, he makes the schedule late on Fridays for the following week so that employees have only approximately 36 hours notice of what their next week’s schedule will be.

· Refuses to close the store despite the fact that the District Manager has also told him that he needs to do it a minimum of 1 day a week.

· Puts everything else in the store above animal care.

· Harasses employees by phone on days off and while not scheduled to work. He will call some employees dozens of times a day and leave threatening, harassing, angry, and foul language messages on the employee’s phone if they do not answer, even when the employee has explained their plans to him and that they will be unable to answer.

· Refuses to support or participate in the Associate of the Month program. Most employees that have received this honor many months ago have never received the benefits from this award either.

· Refuses to participate in any store events. He has not participated in a single one, and verbally announces that he will never do any of them.

· Refuses to take responsibility as a General Manager. He places undue blame on subordinates and will not help others by saying that it is not his job.

· Rarely works all of the hours that a salaried employee should when labor is crunched under 100%.

· Takes every holiday off (with the only exception of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day in 2010), and does not allow other managers to “take turns” as he states that he will.

The General Manager has also been told frequently that the dog food pallets are stacked too high, and are in possible violation of OSHA standards.

Because of previous threats and intimidation tactics about retaliation against any employee that contacts Petco or the hotline, I am afraid to disclose my name to you in fear of losing my job. If these situations are not handled internally within the company, my next course of action will be to hand over the documentation and information to a governing agency regarding the illegal activity.

Please contact me through this email address if you need any further information.

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9/3/10:

To whom it may concern,

I am a current employee of Petco store 1520 in Mountain Home, AR. I have emailed you before regarding ethics issues with the general manager at the store, but no action has been taken.

I am writing you today to state my complete displeasure and ethic opinion at the way management has handled the latest incident at the store which caused Wesley Nesbitt to lose his job.

I was forced to make a statement about this incident even though I did not witness a thing. I know that a full investigation was not done otherwise it would have ended differently. I do not believe that Wesley should be held responsible for anything that occurred since he was not the one to feed the animal to the snake. I have also looked up the company's policy and no where does it say anything about feeding a snake or any pet that is NOT Petco's property.

I believe that this was a total rip on Wesley's character. He was the only helpful, knowledgeable employee that this store had besides myself in my opinion and in the customer's opinion. I love to help customers but I must admit that I do not know everything that I should about the animals. Wesley is the only employee to take time to explain and teach things to customers and fellow employees. I know that he also discovered solutions to many recurring problems with equipment and loss of livestock and received absolutely no credit for it even though it changed the way the company operates certain things at all stores.

The part that I am the most upset about though other than bashing Wesley's character and morals is that the people that should have gotten in trouble for this and other incidences did not even receive a slap on the wrist. Nothing has been done to the person that admitted feeding the snake and most importantly, nothing has been done about the serious issues that I have addressed to you months ago about the general manager.

I believe that since you got rid of your only decent and knowledgeable employee, you should just clear all other employees out and start fresh. 5-6 other employees, including myself, feel constantly harassed and on guard, and our jobs are a nightmare since Wesley has been gone. I do not enjoy working for Petco at all and I do not plan on staying there much longer. Everyone is refusing to work with everyone else so it is just a bunch of bad moods getting together and trying work with people they despise.

I have once again been threatened with retaliation if I contacted corporate or discussed this with any other employees. We were also all told that we are not allowed to have any kind of contact with Wesley outside of work in person, by phone, or on social networking sites or we could lose our jobs also. It is absolutely ridiculous that you continue to employee power driven people that threaten to fire over contacting a former co-worker or corporate about genuine concerns for the store...they probably think Wesley wrote the first email to corporate instead of me and that's why you fired him...there is no other reason. I will probably get fired for contacting you again, and if I do, I hope that you can do a full investigation and take appropriate actions this time.

We were also told that we are not allowed to tell customers what happened to Wesley. This is not easy to do since he basically has a fan club of loyal customers who only shopped here because of him. Word spreads fast, and at least 20 of his customers have already told me that they will not shop here anymore. It was a very hasty, non-economical, and wrong decision that corporate made to fire him. Now your left over employees can really see how much Wesley did and how little other employees are doing. We have already had a major livestock die off, lost customers, and employees refusing to do the jobs that only Wesley would do.

This is my only safe way to contact corporate to state my opinion since I will be fired if I am found out. I truly believe that you need to diligently search for new knowledgeable employees who can run a store. I don't even care about losing my job as I stated that I probably won't be there much longer. I would just like to see justice done and the appropriate actions served.

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10/11/10:

I feel the need to contact you at corporate once again about ethics and conduct problems at store 1520 in Mtn. Home. My last message gave some insight into what has happened and been happening since Wesley Nesbitt was let go as an employee.

The store is a mess now with no one doing their jobs. Several of us have reported to Derek that others not doing their job or partaking in illegal activity at work, but nothing has been done. Derek is showing extreme favortism towards the Assistant Manager, Laurie Wicker, and letting her get away with things that would surely get us fired. She has been caught altering her hours so that she is getting paid for time that she did not work. Derek is aware of this also, but he has not reported it. Laurie has also reimbursed herself for running deposits to the bank, but Derek will not acknowledge that any other employee that runs the deposit should be reimbursed also. The bank is not very close to the store - about a 14-15 minute drive each way, and the only person that has ever received mileage or gas money is Laurie. Derek gets on to the CAS's if we can't complete all of our duties in the few hours that we work, but he says nothing about Laurie sitting in the office and not getting anything done or making sure that the others are working.

Laurie also continues to bash Wesley's name even though he is not there. She came in last week, gloating that she had seen Wesley and that he is not doing well, he is not getting unemployment from Petco, and at her delight in his suffering. I have heard her tell Wesley's customers that she got him fired and that he won't be getting unemployment. She is describing him as an all-around bad person, which everyone knows is not true. Laurie moved here from AZ, and Wesley lived here all his life, so I can only hope that they know Wesley's true character and don't believe the things she is saying. I can't imagine that it would okay for her to bad-mouth an ex-employee to customers, but Derek has been standing right there when she has done and said nothing to her. I am put in a very awkward position because customers are asking me what really happened, why she is sharing this info with them, why someone like Laurie is still employed with Petco and Wes isn't, and most importantly, why the person that supposedly violated the company policy did not get into any trouble. I just have to tell them that I am not at liberty to discuss it, and I have told them to contact corporate Petco directly to complain, but I don't know if anyone has.

I can not contact you by phone and give away my identity because I am sure that I will lose my job also. At this point, I would almost welcome it if it wasn't so tough to find another job. If you are unable to do a true investigation of these matters until you are able to dig up all of the dirt, please at least contact someone about the theft and non-reimbursement at the store, and that should get the ball rolling.

I do not feel that I can work in this environment where I feel constantly threatened and the managers are very condescending to all of the employees, which in turn, makes it a very hostile working environment. If things can not be investigated and settled quickly, I will begin to contact the labor board, better business bureau, and a lawyer if necessary. All employees deserve to be treated equally, and former employees do not deserve to be slandered.