deputy manager

assistant store manager

store manager

pet groomer

retail sales associate

Pets at Home

I worked for PAH for almost 4 years. I loved it for the first couple years and dreamt of it as a kid. Until I realised the lies we were being told to excuse bad practice, how the animals welfare is always second best and when head office started getting ridiculous with targets and procedures etc. Here are just a few examples;

1.You are given 12 work books for training, that contain info thats very outdated. You have to read through them yourself and learn from them. But a lot of the information is too basic, incorrect or the managers dont even know the answers, if you need help! 

2.The animal welfare is lacking! 
Animals come from bad breeders. Most Rabbits and Guinea pigs would come in from the delivery smelly, with dirty, urine/poo matted bottoms, genitals and feet. A lot of the animals are sent in with Mites which the breeders deem acceptable. It's not uncommon for poorly, underage, neuroligically deformed animals to come in from the breeder. You can tell the animals are not bred for temperament or health but for quantity and frequency. The animals are terrified of humans when they come in and clearly aren't well cared for at all by the breeders. Yes the breeders and PAH have regular inspections, but they ARE announced! Giving the breeders chances to clean up their act. 

A lot of the animals PAH sell are classed as 'exotic' animals by vets. Yet PAH head office dont allocate each store an exotic vet, they get normal dog/cat vets which often misdiagnose animals, get medication dosages wrong or euthanise animals who would have survived should they have had a more knowledgeable vet. Whilst they do let the colleagues take animals to the vet, as a colleague you have to fight to get them to do it urgently! And are made to feel like a pain for noticing! I would often bring up sick or 'not right' animals, only to be told 'oh. Well no one else noticed, I can't see what's wrong with it, I don't have anyone to send to the vet so let's just wait and see' only for me to go into shift a few days later for said animal to be even worse and managment then blaming all the colleagues for not getting it seen to! It was impossible to push a vet visit unless an animals leg was literally hanging off! 

Rabbits often died of coccidia (a parasite spread by stress and unclean husbandry) and stress related issues. In my last year of working there I witnessed over 10, 8-16week old rabbits die in just 4 weeks. This is because pets at home breeders are so disgusting and because there is just too many animals in such a tight space. 

A lot of hamsters died of wet tail because they couldn't handle the stress of being in a pet store and aren't from good breeders. 

The quiet and isolation rooms out back are far too small and over stocked that its easy for cross contamination to take place, especially for airborne contractable illnesses. The cage minimums are far to small for the amount of animals they have in each. But they get away with it because 'they meet minimum requirements'. Whoever makes those requirements has no idea what animals actually need and it shows with some of the other ridiculous practises PAH staff have to follow. 

Most people nowadays are really good at pretending theyll be good owners but you know they're just saying what you need to here, but your not allowed to refuse these people animals unless its for something really obvious. An example of this: Animals such rabbits, rats, chinchillas etc NEED to be in pairs. A bit of research online can tell you that, but you weren't allowed to refuse single animal sales even if they state they dont have intentions on ever getting a companion! 

3. Targets and deadlines.
Your given such unrealistic time frames to clean out all the animals you cant possibly health check each animal properly each day, which is part of what you sign to say your doing, even though it's impossible because of the amount of enclosures you have to clean vs time allocated. This makes it very easy to miss poorly animals. And your punished if you go over their timeline, also made to feel bad if you do then miss a sick animal! When theres over 100-150 animals in the store at one time and your given the job of cleaning them out but have to rush because of time, it's obviously going to have a negative affect on animals! 
Your given such ridiculous sign up/order targets, you can only try your best and a lot of times it's just luck as to how many people where willing to sign up that day! Yet you are punished if you dont reach these. 

4. Customers.
Naturally in pet store retail environment, you will come across the 'karens'. Those customers who know EVERYTHING, but will ask YOUR advice just to tell you, your wrong and they know better because they dont like your advice which you expect but you will even come across owners smacking or shouting at their dogs, but are told to ignore it and if you do speak up, are punished because you've done so! As 'customers always right'. Customers are allowed to talk to you like trash, often leaving you in tears of frustration because you cant speak back. Your managers dont have your back because they're so concerned about getting a complaint from head office if the customers complains. I've had customers reduce ME to tears... only to see them in the store a few days later with free coupons because they complained to head office about service, after being awful to me! And head office or managers have rewarded their ill behaviour, because customers always right! 

5. Job progress. 
Right from the job advert to the end of my job I was garuntueed there would be chance to go on further training and multiple different types of job roles to work towards. If you want to be a manager great, you might stand a chance, although then it's a game of favourites! I've seen it myself with colleagues who worked their 7+ years and were asking to step up for a bigger role, but were turned down because 'it's not what the manager envisioned for you' despite us all telling them where we wanted to progress. I wanted to progress to 'pet specialist' but was informed there were no longer courses for this and unless you want management there isnt Much worth doing. I was then trained as a dog groomer 1 day a week in store, to keep me happy but then had to fight to further the training and keep my 1 day a week in the groomers! Only to then see on my rota I had a whole month out of the salon! The manager never thought it was a conversation needed, just took me out of the groomers because they were too quiet. 
Your told youll have regular appraisals and reviews, but your manager never gets round to it! But if you step out of their ridiculously drawn lines your slapped with disciplinary procedures immediately! Always ready to throw you under the bus at any given opportunity. Your regularly made to feel like your not good enough or bad at your job. Your always told that you just need to wait for more to come up to progress, but it never happens! 

So in summary.. if you truly love animals and want job progression and good pay for the work load. Give this company a huge skip. You'll like it for the first couple years maybe but eventually your conscience will kick in and you'll just feel bad for being a part of it all. It will wear away at your heart over time and leave you with PTSD when you do finally get out.

A short summary of this role for any would-be applicant is to expect a lot of hard work in a fast paced environment that goes far beyond mere shelf stocking and animal handling. You will have to advise customers on a myriad of different topics, perform various animal routines, and amass a great deal of knowledge and time management skills in the process to be able to do all of this effectively. The people you will work with on a store basis are often second to none, and you will thoroughly enjoy the teamwork and camaraderie that develops over your time in the company.

However, unfortunately, this is where my praise ends. As stated in the title, firstly, you will never be paid enough or recognised appropriately for your performance, or the level of knowledge and experience you have accrued as part of a store team. A fully signed off new starter will be paid exactly the same as someone who has been working here years and who has far greater experience and ability to do the job for instance, and this is also true regardless of what targets you may or may not hit. 

Where there indeed used to be options for longer serving store colleagues to learn and earn more, such as "aquatics expertise", "reptile expertise", "puppy expertise" courses and so on- as well as the old "step three" pet expertise programme, these options have all inexplicably been scrapped with nothing to replace them.

This means that the only option available for progression on the store side of the business is to move into management, which I would argue is not worth it either monetarily, or stress/work-life balance wise. For example, an assistant manager (salaried) can often earn less than a keyholder (hourly rate) when working the same hours, despite both roles being effectively asked to do the same job. You will also have to know the right people and be friends with them to even get that far, because the entire promotion process is incredibly clique-like and gossipy. Time of service is not factored into this process whatsoever as a result, and you will often encounter absurd situations where newer starters will be promoted before those who have been seeking promotion for years, despite having the same or even worse performance. They will also quite often remain in the same store to boss around those same longer serving colleagues on top of this, despite the official policy being that promotion should mean moving to another store.

Furthermore, from day one, you will also be constantly pressured into chasing KPI (Key performance indicators) such as having a certain percentage of customers swiping with a VIP card, with very little in the way of recognition or reward for achieving these targets. Often, the only reward is simply a moving of the goalposts to a few percentage points higher for the next business period- meaning there is no reason whatsoever for a store colleague to even attempt to hit said targets in the first place, other than to avoid being disciplined for it.

You will also be constantly expected to work far more hours than your contact states, on every single bank holiday, for no extra overtime rate or acknowledgement. This also goes for management too. You will also find it nearly impossible to have your contract hours updated to the actual hours that you've been working regularly, since the company would much prefer to leave you with no recourse when your normal 40 hour week is suddenly dropped down to your basic contracted hours- something that does happen now and again for no apparent reason.

Making this even worse, current store colleague (as of June 2022) pay rates are only slightly above the bare minimum national living wage, for context. Do not be fooled by the wording on the official pets at home advertisements implying that it is far more. Monetarily it is simply not worth the expertise required and the amount of knowledge required to do the job properly, despite their assurances otherwise. 

Following on from this, the on-job training is very poor as well, and any new starter today will be simply given a glitchy (and often never loading) app to use on their phone to complete dozens of online courses on various topics, rather than being coached through and trained on a person-to-person basis. There is precious little time allocated in store to do these online courses too, and even if you are lucky, you may only get an hour or so of uninterrupted time to work on these. The rest of your shift will have be on the shop floor, and so you are essentially expected to learn mainly from reading these online guides- and often in your own time as well, completely unpaid. Everyone else will often be far too busy to train you personally apart from in the odd quiet period, as store managers are not allowed to exceed store hour quotas to assign someone specifically to train you. 

Essentially, if you do not learn well by memorising things from a screen, or if you aren't good with computers and such, then it will take a very long time to become proficient enough to perform the role properly. All the while, you should expect to be constantly chased up by management and encouraged to either skim read or skip through these online materials as fast as possible, just so that you are "signed off" quicker.

The final insult to top everything off is a complete disregard by higher management as to what happens in store, constant indifference to whatever it is that we have learned works well in our particular store and what doesn't, and arbitrary decisions and changes are therefore made by them with seemingly no forethought or consultation with anybody that actually has to work on the customer facing side of things. To say this is frustrating would be the understatement of the century. 

It is, as you might imagine, a constant struggle to get anything changed or improved upon that does not meet their preconceived idea of what is happening in stores, or what they think works well or not. I have personally talked to visiting company directors and gone through the "Tell David" company suggestion scheme time and time again, in vain, to try and resolve issues such as certain pets being sold that do not have the proper equipment available to buy in store, improper stock planograms, stocking levels being too high (minimums) for items that are not good sellers in our store leading to items constantly going out of date, and many more issues like this. All of which has fallen on deaf ears and been ignored. 

And so, to summarise very plainly, if you simply want a job that pays minimum wage and decent hours (but no higher rates for overtime), then this would be a good job for you. If you are passionate about pets, customer service, and are wanting to use your knowledge and experience to better the company, yourself, and your customers, however, this would probably not be a good fit for you in the long term due to the lack of flexibility and the harsh repression of any kind of initiative on a store level that deviates from what the higher management wants.

Furthermore, unless you are willing to play office-politics (befriending the right people in higher management), work extra hours unpaid, and climb up the management ladder this way, then you should expect to remain trapped at the store colleague level indefinitely, with no other way to progress.

When you think of working for PAH you will probably imagine spending time with lots of animals. Wrong. Unless you are cleaning out in the morning, taking a store pet to the vets or selling a pet you will hardly spend any time with the store pets at all. You will however get to meet customers pets, some which are more unusual than others which makes the job interesting. In reality you will spend your shift doing delivery, working on the till, picking/finding customer orders and advising customers on nutrition and products for their pets.

The company would like people to think that they put pets at the forefront of the business but this just isn't true. Store pets come from terrible breeders and sometimes are ill on arrival in store. Advising customers on what is needed for the pet they are purchasing is made difficult by some of the awful, tiny cages and fish tanks they sell, which are labelled for types of animals that need much bigger housing. This causes customers to get angry because 'why can't I have a Syrian hamster in that (tiny) cage? It says suitable for Syrians on the label!' and so on. Very frustrating and embarrassing for colleagues.

No breaks for shifts less than 6.5 hours, 30 mins for over 6.5 hours and 1 hour for over 8.5 hours (breaks are unpaid). More frequent breaks for under 18s. Shifts for colleagues tend to be around the 6 hour mark as you will have a part-time contract and it's a long time to be on your feet without a break if you're not used to it. You will not get to sit down unless you have a break during your shift, you even have to stand whilst working the till.

KPI's are at the forefront of the job and there is no yearly bonus if they aren't met so the managers (who benefit most from bonus) will be on your back about these. One of them is that you have to get so many VIP sign ups a week and when you are serving on the till you need to reach a 70% target of customers who swipe their VIP card during their transaction. This is hit and miss and just depends on the customers you serve (and some are extremely rude about it) but if you don't consistently meet the target you will be pulled into the office to discuss it.

Most customers are great and you can have a laugh with them and they will truly appreciate your help. Some are extremely rude, entitled and will treat you like a servant. These customers, although might not be present every shift, are the ones who make you just not want to go to work. 

In my experience the majority of managers and colleagues are great, you can have a laugh in work and as long as you're doing your job there are no problems. This is what will get you through your shift. There is the odd manager or colleague, however, who can ruin your shift, especially managers who sit in the office all day barking out orders whilst you are rushed off your feet on the shop floor or colleagues who are skiving off at every chance they get.

Working hours can be between the extremes of 6am and 10pm and colleagues are expected to do a mixture of early and late shifts so it is hard to get a routine going. You could realistically be on an 8.30pm finish and then back on shift at 7am the next day but it is likely that your shifts will be varied week to week. Cover is regularly needed for illness and stores are often understaffed which puts a lot of pressure on whoever is on shift.

During school holidays and sometimes at weekends there are pet workshops which parents can book their children on to. These are half an hour to forty-five minutes long and have different themes. The guidance is sent to stores but no actual training is given to colleagues for these so you will generally just be winging it. You'll be told when you arrive for your shift that you are doing the workshop, no discussion. Most children are only interested in handling animals and not in what you are saying to them, the parents just want a babysitter for half an hour and they are generally at a time when the store is ridiculously busy so you are a colleague down for that period of time.

The money is ok, especially for young people, the pay rate is around £10.50 to start with, regardless of age, you can increase your hourly rate on completion of training courses and the holidays and benefits are good. On saying that, I still don't think the pay reflects how hard colleagues have to work.

There are opportunities to progress as long as you are good at your job, good with customers etc and there is a chance to do some training in the groomers if you want to. 

They pretend to care about the pets because they give adequate care while they’re at the store but what really matters is the homes the pets go to and often we send them off to rubbish lives! We can refuse sales based on obvious no-nos (eg if a customer comes in asking about birds but then they want a hamster and then a rabbit and then a Guinea pig and then actually no a hamster, you can say sorry you need to think about it more), but most of our cages in store are WELL below requirements- in our store only one hamster cage that we stock is above the minimum recommended and we only ever have 1 of it in stock at a time so it’s not like we can even sell many of them. The guinea pig 80 cage is absolutely ridiculous, claims it can have 2 young Guinea Pigs in it. It’s barely big enough for a hamster! Rabbits being sold to the rabbit 100 when really not even the 120 is big enough! We don’t sell any of the larger hamster/rabbit/rat cages in store so it’s not even like people have the option if they want to buy the pets and the cage on the same day- they must buy the smaller ones. People can buy rabbits in hutches and cages without buying any runs or play pens to go with. You can’t refuse single rabbit/guinea/rat/gerbil sales even though these are SOCIAL animals. As colleagues you have to find loopholes in order to keep social animals in pairs rather than letting them be sold separately (eg telling people the remaining pair have bonded now). Rabbits in adoption being split if they start fighting rather than just getting them neutered and keeping them together (the company gives adoptees a voucher for it anyway so price wise it makes no difference if we do it ahead of adopting them out... I think they just want to make sure the customer uses the voucher so they’re forced to register with our vet, even if that means though that we have to split a pair of bunnies that would’ve been fine together if they were fixed). I do my best to educate people properly about pets and I’m proud of all the times I’ve made people realise they need pairs when necessary and the times I’ve made them get far larger cages than they initially said they wanted to buy, but you can’t convince everyone unfortunely and as long as pets at home has these rules and products in place it means there’ll always be customers that incorrectly care for their pet regardless of what a memeber of staff recommends because some people would rather spend less and have the animal take up less space than care for it properly and pets at home makes that easy for them to do. It’s important that TRUE animal lovers work here so they can do what I do and properly educate people because if not then it’ll just be colleagues who allow customers to buy whatever they want without encouraging better pet care, but if you do truly care then be aware that it’ll probably quite negatively affect your mental health as it is really upsetting when you’re forced to sell animals that you know are going to spend their lives very unhappy. Also we had an outbreak of something contagious with one of the species in our store and it never felt like management above dealt with it properly and they didn’t keep us in the loop even though we were the ones having to deal with the sick and dying pets every day which was really sad and difficult. 
Other than that the job is retail so yeah it’s pretty boring/repetitive/customers can be horrible. For a retail job it has its perks- customers bring their dogs etc. Though that also means you have to clean up a lot of poo and wee as customers nearly always leave it. 
The shift patterns are all over the place and sometimes it feels like you’re always there and have no life outside work. Rotas don’t get put up 4 weeks ahead like they’re most to, it’s rare. 
I like/liked nearly every person I’ve worked with. Guess that all depends on luck and will be different at each store.

To start off with, the company, the work, the training etc seems fantastic. You’re lulled into a false sense of security and happiness. The work itself is great because there’s so much variety, but you do not get enough hours or colleagues in a day to complete all the work that’s expected from you. I have worked for the company for 5 years in different stores and in different regions. Very experienced colleague with maximum training behind me.

The company slogan is “pets before profit” time and time again I have seen that these are just words, words that the company does not believe in. Many former members of pets at home stores, that have done any independent research on pets and animals, would and have said that the company definitely puts profit before pet every time. They hide behind vet bills for in store pets being the reason that “pets are put before profit”, then why are they selling unsuitable items for animals? They go against the ethical minimum requirement for most animals- RSPCA lowered their minimum requirements from the ethical minimum standards to even lower standards when they partnered up with Pets at Home.

The information that you’re taught pushes convenience as apposed to pet welfare. Managers do not care about animal welfare- that of in store pets and animals in general. They think they care, but they do not do any kind of independent research and just mindlessly regurgitate company policy. The odd manager out there will actually care and will actually show their passion for animals. But it’s rare.

If things are challenged, absolutely nothing is done about it. Multiple people in one store can put in formal complaints and absolutely nothing will be done about it. If anything you’re made to feel uncomfortable for not keeping your mouth shut and not conforming.

Every store I’ve worked in and from other colleagues experiences that have worked in other stores, it has been made clear that there is no overall agreement on standards. Such as some people will sell you a Syrian hamster to a tiny bean cage and some people will not. Some people will sell you goldfish and orandas to tiny tanks and some will not. There should be consistency, but there is not. And that’s a company wide problem.

Don’t even get me started on the fish and pets that arrive from the supplier. It’s a miracle if they don’t end up dead or ill. When will the company learn that selling animals probably shouldn’t be a thing- hence why so many other pet store companies have stopped selling pets. Oh wait yeah it’s because pets at home think they’ll get more profit from selling pets and then the customers will shop at PAH for their animal supplies because that’s where they bought their pet from and that’s where they got forced to sign up to the vip card and got roped into registering at the vets. So now they have a guaranteed returning customer… at the expense of animal welfare.

KPI’s are drilled into you. To the point where the KPIs are made more important than what’s best for the individual. The individual being the pet, the customer, the colleague etc. 

Honestly if you’re just there for a job and for money, it’s a great place to work. If you’re not opinionated and you don’t have a strong belief in all animal welfare then go for it. If you’re someone who won’t care about work place inequality and won’t care about management being an absolute joke, then it’s a great place to work. For someone who isn’t there for the animals (such as wanting what’s best for each customer’s pet) this is actually a decent job, because it’s fast paced and varied.

For myself it made me hate the pet industry. I am extremely passionate about animals, that’s why I joined the company. Because I really care about animals and what’s best for them. They don’t have a voice and if we are going to keep them as pets then we should learn to understand them and provide the best care possible. It’s our job as a colleague to pass that information on. But that’s made impossible within a company like Pets at Home.

As with every job, there are ups and downs. I'd like to start with the positives. I'd say that pets at home have a pretty good pay, better than previous jobs that i've had. I enjoy working in an environment with animals, and I care about their welfare. However that is where the problems start. I do care.

I've gotten the impression that the people working there do not care about the animals. Those in higher positions are there just for the money, especially the managers who just sit in the staff room most of the day. The animals aren't taken care of properly. They aren't exercised, there's no daily health check ups and the only time the staff try hard to clean out the animal cages properly is when there is an inspection due. Other than that, almost no effort is put in. All they care about is getting it done at an unrealistically fast pace. It doesn't matter about doing the job properly, making sure all of the animals are checked. It's just ridiculous. Especially with the poor animals in the quiet room. There are far more hamsters than there should be shoved into relatively small cages. It shouldn't be that way. These animals barely get interacted with. I don't think they live happy lives in the store at all, no matter what the requirements say. It is very easy for them to bluff on about how animals come first but reality is that no, they don't.

Another point that I have which has been a huge negative for me is that the staff already there are VERY unfriendly and unhelpful. When I first started out, I was pretty much thrown in the deep end. I struggled with learning things, and felt as if I am a burden for simply asking for help! I was expecting to come into an environment where the management care about training staff efficiently, and so they are suitable to do their job the way they are meant to. It is appalling. There is favouritism and staff members who mistreat those who are new. It's unbelievable that such a thing could be present in a store where most staff are grown adults! Unfortunately, that is the case. I never had someone training me. I didn't get any help - I was self taught in a way. The managers didn't do any check ups on me. Obviously, it was very stressful and I felt helpless. It is not welcoming. Unfair treatment - it would make anyone lose their mind as time goes on.

There is a lot of stress associated with meeting targets, such as VIP sign ups, swipe rates and orders in store etc. It is ridiculous that the company focuses so much on something that most of the time depends on luck. It is not the staff member's fault if customers simply do not want to sign up for VIP. There are so many scenarios where nothing can be done. For the amount of pay that we get, I truly think it is not worth it to stress ourselves out over something that can't always be helped. It literally is just down to luck, whether we have enough customers who are registered or willing to sign up. On some days, there are mainly grumpy customers who just want to buy their stuff asap and get out.

In conclusion, I wouldn't recommend working here for a long amount of time. It is a decent job to gain experience and valuable skills - but not something long term. It is especially not a job for people who deeply care about the welfare of animals and hate seeing them in distress that can be prevented. It might be just my store that is awful, but I know that other stores have same/similar experiences as me. It's all down to the people who work there and the effort that they put in. I do want to believe that there are stores out there with friendly, welcoming staff who care about the welfare of animals. If you join, it is only a matter of time to find out which it is!

When i first started working for the company it was great, everything was kept at an incredibly high standard due to a great Deputy Manager. 
Targets were easy to achieve the first year but there after became almost impossible unless you "cheated" prompted by management which would only then make targets even harder to make the following year. Colleague turnover was insane and you ended up with people not properly trained because they would leave before you could train them and you'd have to start all over again with someone new. Working hours changed each week and holiday was impossible to book, we usually had to try book everything a year in advanced and then when it came around to your leave, management would say they needed you in and that because you signed a contract to say you would "work for the needs of the company" it was expected of you to work your time off. Sick days were non-existent, you was expected to work no matter how ill you felt.  Management is a massive issue, I had 1 decent manager and eventually lost count of how many bad ones rotated through the store, most are office dwellers and refuse to get stuck in and do any work themselves. The company claims to win awards for "best workplace" but the reality of it was that you had your manager stood behind you whilst you filled in the survey to make sure we rated them highly. 
The biggest strain on my mental health was the "pets before profit" policy that the company claims to go by. Every day you would have sick and dead animals that you had to deal with, that was so frequent that colleagues acted like it was just normal. Animals would arrive sick, but because they were claimed to have been health checked before their arrival, you could not refuse them and so sickness would spread due to the numbers that management would order because "customers like choice". Sure the company would pay massive amounts on vet bills for the animals but there should never have been that many sick animals in the first place that required treatment. There was few colleagues that genuinely cared for animal welfare and we struggled with colleagues that would cut corners by signing paperwork to say that they had given medicine as required but generally wouldn't, prolonging the animals sickness/suffering - The ones that care the most tend to leave. It became infuriating having to sell animals to people that wanted to buy the smallest cages/hutches/tanks that the company itself supplied in the hopes that customers would return and spend more money by getting an "upgrade". You would get regular abuse from customers that would kick off because you would try to put the animals welfare first. If Pets really came before profit, the company could help rehome/adopt on behalf of local rescues rather than be part of the problem - the majority of small animals sold end up in the rehoming centres once their new owners got bored after an impulse purchase. It all weighs very heavily on the soul if you genuinely care about animals.

Pros:
- further training on different subjects
- helping customers with advice/care for their 
pets and very satisfying when you'd get feedback from them saying your advice helped. 

Cons:
- No work/life balance 
- No consistency to shift patterns
- Poor pay for what is expected of you
- Sick/dead animals 
- Abuse from customers regarding animal welfare. 
- Selling cages/hutches/tanks far too small
- Trying to force customers to sign up to loyalty card/subscription service/charity donations to meet impossible targets.
- High Colleague turnover & terrible management. 


What they tell you: 

Pets are put before profit
That you matter
They work like a family/as a team
They work with integrity
They make work fun (RIP old values)
In 2018, they were voted the 5th best company to work for

The reality:

The benefits of working for the company increase with how much you kiss management's butt;
-You can get away with turning up to your shifts late
-You can go for frequent cig breaks on shift
-The hours you work suit your lifestyle
-Get first pick of the easy tasks
-You can chill around in the office doing nothing
-You can stand on the till or at the back of the store playing on your phone in blatant view of the cctv cameras
-You can get an extra 15-20 minutes added onto your break for getting your manager a burger
-You can get a half an hour break even though you're working a 4 hour shift
-And more. If you aren't part of the Bum Kissing Brigade, good luck to you. 

Pets are not put before profit;
-Fast cleaners are chosen over thorough, considerate ones because staff are needed to hound the customers for VIPS. 
-Checks are not done properly, as long as it 'looks okay' it's deemed done. Despite the strong smell of urine or piles of faeces.
-Struggle to meet the five welfare needs. For example, a full dish of food for one hamster and then 10 nuggets of food for 6 rats. Overcrowding the animals in the cages. Water bottles being propped between the cage and a wall, allowing them to be knocked off and left without water over night. 
-There are members of the team who aren't trusted to do pet clean outs ... Why do they work there? 
-They have pet field managers who visit all stores in a region and conduct very *relaxed* pet reports. The stores all phone each other up to let them know they are coming so they can fix all their errors, at the last minute. 
-Changes made to pet routines constantly in order to have staff on shopfloor. These routines are largely ignored anyway. Unless you're one of the hard workers, in which case they are HEAVILY enforced.

Threats of disciplinaries if you don't hit VIP swipe rate targets. They will belittle you, and make you generally mentally unstable.
-The target is not feasible when the majority of customers coming in are buying a 99p bag of bird seed. They don't want to give their details so they can get 50p off a huge bag of food for a dog they don't own. 

They will force you to work more hours. You can ask to work your contracted hours and this will be ignored. 

Colleague of the period was corrupt. It was given to the managers mates. 

Cuts to hours meant you could find yourself on shift with just one person, who was more often than not hiding in the office. 

You complete surveys based on your view of the company... The results/outcome were never shared, no communication with regards to future action. Pointless. 

Allowed customers to treat you like dirt, and I don't just mean someone who's disgruntled because their flexi lead broke. I mean threats of violence, verbal abuse, physical abuse. Cleaning up after their dogs, their children. 

Shoals/meetings on your days off that you had to attend. The point of which could have been jotted down on the back of a receipt, they were so drawn out.

Toxic managers, toxic colleagues, toxic customers.

When I first joined Pets at Home, it was great. I was learning new things, meeting new people and I got to work with animals for a living. The honeymoon period is very, very exciting, but as someone who came into the business not having worked with animals before, the more I learned about said animals, the more I realised how poor the standards at the company were. Not just for keeping the animals in store (we were constantly told to tell customers ‘it’s just temporary housing, they won’t be there long’, however some animals weren’t and we weren’t selling into cages much bigger some of the time), but for selling, too. The more outside research to help me get better with pets sales, the more I realised that Pets at Home’s standards for selling pets were very poor. They have all the power and potential to set the bar high for selling animals into the best set-up (not just the minimum size in order to get the customer back for an upgrade), but they simply choose not to do it for the monetary benefit.  

They’re a greedy corporations who profit off of ignorance (both customer’s and staff who simply go with the information they’re spoon-fed which is extremely outdated and designed to get returning customers), and I can tell you the colleagues don’t see a fraction of the profit either. The pay, compared to other store assistant jobs, is extremely poor considering you’ve to do ten times the amount of tasks as a normal store assistant (e.g. pet cleans, vet visits and medication administration for in store pets, pet sales, intense training for those sales and all the knowledge you need to advise on every product in the store - including nutrition and welfare information, dealing with arrogant customers who think they know better about the pets you’re trained to sell and the abuse they hurl at you that you’re trained to take without question). And don’t even think about progressing unless you’re the manager’s favourite, because that won’t happen either. 

The colleagues at Pets at Home bond very strongly with one another, mostly because they’re all in the same boat, struggling to get through each shift without having mental breakdowns (and that’s not hyperbole either). Stores are consistently affected with absences because of mental health issues caused by the stress the job brings from the ridiculous policies and rules that could easily be altered to stop this from happening, yet head office just don’t do it. They end up losing their best colleagues because there’s only so much someone can take working themselves to the bone for little to no recognition or reward. The higher-ups don’t care. You’re easily replaced because everyone wants to work with the animals and all the effort you put in is forgotten as soon as you leave - so save yourself the hassle and find somewhere different to work for. 

Training is very dependant on the management you have,  people can be very rude if you don’t know something even if you are new. Some management are happy to let certain staff get away with everything but breathe down other’s necks for the slightest mistake. 

Had multiple instances where customers were given conflicting advice which caused more issues in the long run. Customers can be horrible to you just because they feel like it. Animal sales can be frustrating as you are constantly having to sell to people who haven’t done an ounce of research and they aren’t interested in anything you have to say.  You will get a lot of customers who will tell you to just sell them the animal as “it’s just a goldfish” or “it’s just a hamster”. 

Some management were lovely and some not so much, all just depended on the day really.  There can be a lot of backstabbing and gossip in stores and a lot of this can stem from managements behaviour. 

Day to day tasks were a lot for what the pay was and the knowledge you need to have on top of this was not worth the pay. You get paid more in other retail jobs without needing specialist knowledge and having to care for animals.

Lots of opportunities to work in different areas of the business which is good but you will encounter the same issues you face on the shop floor as well. Not much room for progression as this only happens for favourites. 

All people at every level of the business are micromanaged by those above them which is extremely grating and the KPIs are quite frankly unattainable depending on the store you work in. You are expected to give the best customer service possible while trying to run on skeleton staff when the shop is extremely busy. This is not possible but upper management seem to be on a power trip and  will make sure to harass store management which then has a knock on effect on all colleagues which furthers the toxic culture. 

The only real benefits are the staff discount which is decent especially if you already have pets, there is an annual bonus scheme but it is dependent on the whole stores KPI performance which isn’t fair as not everyone pulls their weight and colleagues get pennies in comparison to management when they are the ones expected to do the bulk of the work needed to meet targets. 

The store I worked in really cared about animal welfare and the company has started to do better things like producing larger cages, updating welfare policies and guidelines for customer sales. However this doesn’t mean that customers will agree or staff will actually follow them. 9/10 times management will back you up if you have a concern, but a few will just go over you to save themselves further hassle even if it goes against advice/guidelines. 

Overall, the pay you get is NOT worth the amount of work you are expected to do and the knowledge that is expected of you. You will feel downtrodden very quickly. If you aren’t the type of person to live, eat, and breathe a company you’ll not enjoy yourself. 




Top Job Titles	Average salary
Deputy manager 4 salaries reported	£28,750 per year
Assistant store manager 31 salaries reported	£24,232 per year
Store manager 3 salaries reported	£39,500 per year
Pet groomer 6 salaries reported	£13.06 per hour
Retail sales associate 14 salaries reported	£12.89 per hour

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