Lfs Serious Problems Anyone?

 Your two quotes from earlier:-
 
Mikey1 said:
it doesn't matter, if they have bala sharks for sale in the store, they are there to be sold, thats why they have them in the store,
 
if i go into a grocery store and buy chicken, does the store make sure i know how to cook the chicken properly before i leave? no, they dont care, as soon as i buy the chicken they dont care what i do with it even though i could die from poisoning if its not cooked properly, will they refuse to sell me the chicken because i dont know how to cook? no, its a sale and money made for them, and cooking the chicken is my own responsibility, not thiers,
 
fish stores can not make sales under certain conditions, such as, you treat the fish properly for the fishes lifetime, your tank is adequate size, your tank is properly cycled, you have the proper foods and knowledge, etc etc,
 
if that was the case they would rarely ever sell a fish and be out of business in no time,
 
 
customer "i love bala sharks, and so do my kids, i will take 6 please"
 
employee "how big is your tank?"
 
customer "30 gallons"
 
employee "tank is way too small for bala sharks"
 
 
what does this mean? it means the customer leaves the store and buys them down the street at the next store, it means a lost sale and a lost customer for the store, it means a very angry owner and possibly a fired employee, not the way to run a business,
 
don't get me wrong, i am all for treating fish well, and i do for my own, but business is business, and a sale = profit
 
 
Mikey1 said:
it is a business, a LFS is there to make sales and make money, just like any other business,
 
im not agreeing or disagreeing with you,
 
but you have to remember that the "fish scoopers" are there to do just that, bag fish for people,
 
i dont know about you, but if i owned a fish store and one of my employees talked a customer out of a sale, i would be fuming mad at that employee....the customer is not going to wait and come back in 6 weeks time when their tank is cycled, they are going to go to the next closest LFS and buy their fish and supplies there, which equals a lost customer and lost $$$$$
 
In both of those, you are basically saying that the salesperson is there to maximise profits.
 
Then when I said
 
the_lock_man said:
So, you could argue that the saleperson's duty is to maximise the profit for the business owner, and you wouldn't be wrong. But, I ask you this:- which is a better strategy, long-term? (A) To sell an expensive item once. (B) To sell appropriate items on multiple occasions.
 
You argued with me.
 
SO enlighten us, what is the salesperson's role?
 
Salespersons role is to milk as much money out of the customer as possible. At the end of the day That's about it really.
 
TallTree01 said:
Salespersons role is to milk as much money out of the customer as possible. At the end of the day That's about it really.
 
Which is what Mikey appeared to be saying, until he argued with my question.
 
Mm, I agree, he's arguing with.... Himself? ????
I'm confuzzled
 
the_lock_man said:
SO enlighten us, what is the salesperson's role?
 
to make sales, sell inventory....
 
their job is not to turn customers away and talk them out of a sale, then the customer will just go elsewhere, to another store, i believe i have said that all along
 
Yes, but in this case the customer was asking for advice ("what fish would be suitable for my tank?") and was given some ("bala sharks") which was completely wrong. He should have recommended fish that were actually suitable; it's not like there aren't huge amounts of fish, carried by every LFS in the world, that are suitable for 20g tanks..
 
It's simple, clear cut case of poor advice being given out and, as Tuxyu says, that wouldn't be acceptable in any other industry; at least not to the same extent that it seems to be in LFS.
 
If sales persons thought in the long run they would be going good advice so that the customer doesn't give up on fish keeping after having all his/ her fish die in several weeks. But alas, most salespeople aren't the sharpest tool in the shed.
 
Mikey1 said:
SO enlighten us, what is the salesperson's role?
 
to make sales, sell inventory....
 
So what's their best strategy? One large sale or multiple reasonable sales?
 
Mikey1 said:
What about the salesman blatantly lying about the car to get you to buy it?
 
if i have done enough research about the car in advance (like i should have) then i would know the salesman is lying to me
Wouldn't that just turn you off from buying something from someone you know is lying to you?
 
I mean with fish, I'll go to the LFS, scout out some fish that I'm interested in, write them on a paper, come back here and research them before going back to the LFS. But I would never do that at a car lot or even any other industry because the people there are so pressuring to buy a car that I would fear I wouldn't be able to leave to go research it. Which is part of the gambit of getting the sale, getting someone whose unawares of the product to be able to manipulate them into buying it.
 
Well, I dont know about others...
 
But making money is the object, generally, 90% of working hours are taken up with a ridiculously long list of things to clean, algae to scrub, glass to spray and wipe to remove kid nose prints and snot marks, gravel to clean, weirs and pipe work to clean, light trays to keep clean, floors to hoover, water changes to be done, dosing tanks and systems to be done, maintaining display tanks to be done, treating fish, moving fish, labling up fish, replacing lables when halfwits keep stealing them, acclimatising new fish and changing over lables, death checks every 15-30 minutes, pond plants to look after by trimming, changing water, moving about... then you have stock rotation, new deliveries and pricing up and checking off invoices, planning new orders with all the codes and item names painstakingly found found from the long item lists. Oh yeah... aquarium plant tanks need regular water changing and plants need rebunching and moving around and algae wipe those tanks too.
 
Pretty sure that covers a day or twos list of jobs....
 
THEN there is the customers.... (of course, the above jobs are done with interruptions every 5 minutes because customers walk right past staff waiting at the till and ask the person cleaning tanks to catch fish because they are either too stupid or too lazy to walk the 20ft back to the till).
 
You do NOT turn customers away with the exception of them blatently not having suitable tanks according to the companies standards. So most would say... all tanks must be filtered... p@h for example insist the tank must be 'cycled' for 3 days, other companies dont have a length of time set in stone as it doesnt work like that. And you obviously wouldnt sell marines to a freshwater tank or vice versa etc. Other than that... its pretty much up to the member of staff's discression, though bearing in mind that if they want to keep their job, they wouldnt want to be turning away customers and losing sales. This is also a case whether or not the said member of staff has any experience or training.
 
Few companies provide training and those that provide basic training cant provide experience or in depth training. I mean... when you stock hundreds of speies of fish, how can you quickly train a member of staff in all of their details and requirements?
 
That said, the staff have to be motivated to learn and they can only do so by experience, member of staff has to be SERIOUSLY motivated to go out and learn all of this information for themselves and work for very basic retail wages. It is a hobby and a job, not a career that is fulfilling and you can support yourself financially on. But some days... there is a customer (seriously.. like 1 or 2 a week if you are lucky and they are usually the regulars!) that make you think thank god somebody out there appreciates the work done by the average lowly 'slob' working in your LFS because honestly, fishkeepers can be the most apalling people to work with.
 
Interrupting the work being done to spend hours telling member of staff how it ought to be done, how they would do it, how people on the internet say it should be done. Where they can buy it cheaper on the internet (like its our problem? You can find it cheaper on the internet... go buy it cheaper on the internet! or ask if shop does price matching or just shut up and put up and take into account that the extra money pretty much covers the time you have just wasted in whining at the member of staff).
 
Fish keepers all want something for nothing, far more than any other hobby involving animals I have worked with. Exclaiming "how can such a small fish POSSIBLY be worth £2!?" (bearing in mind said fish could live as long as some of the large breeds of dog and how much do you pay for one of those!?).
 
Fish keepers also vandalise things as much as anyone else, by allowing thir children to run riot, smacking tanks, pointing at fish that are already clearly stressed out without people waving hands in front of tank, moving stock from shelf to shelf, knocking things over without picking them up, breaking things, stealing fish lables and stock and I dare say even fish too.
 
I will never understand why fish keepers always seem to think they know best and have a real attitude with no real consideration to all the other factors, its always they customers that start with "well on the forums they said..." or "I read on the internet" and straight away you want to just shove them in a pond and run away just to make them stop with those comments.
 
And your worried about a couple of silver sharks? Unfortunately the aquatics industry is NOTHING like the rest of the pet industry and whether you like it or not.. that is a fact. If you had to do 15-30 minute death checks in a pet shop with fluffy animals, you'd have long since been closed down and yet this is a norm for working in aquatics. Its pretty soul destroying to be honest!
 
But generally silver shark conversations go:
 
Customer: Can I have 3 of these please?
Staff: Certainly, but you do realise how big they get dont you?
Customer: Yes, I have kept them before and they lived for years!! They died recently of old age!!
 
Then you have to think at this point, is it worth contradicting them and pointing out they couldnt possibly have died of old age when they were only 3 years old and about 4" long? Because you would effectively be saying to them "you are an idiot and managed to kill your fish through neglect". Ironically... it is usually the exact case and would be wonderfully theraputic to actually be able to say!! But generally... it would be deemed inapropriate. You dont point out to customers they just murdered their pet.
 
Staff: You do realise they ought to be growing to about a foot long and need a much larger tank to live in?
Customer: Yes yes, we'll get a bigger tank for them when they get big, we were planning to get a bigger tank anyway... so can we have 3 of the sharks please?
 
By which point... short of flat out refusing to sell the fish and risking losing your job because selling those fish breaks no laws and doesnt break the companies stated rules... what can you do but sell the fish?
 
In the eyes of the law, whilst fish have the same rights of any other animal, this is impossible to police and therefore they dont bother. Legislation rarely covers fish and inverts and therefore you need to bear in mind that shops have to work with this fact.
 
For example, once you have exchanged money and purchased a fish, it belongs to you, its care and welfare are down to you, if it dies... it is your fault and your problem. Aquatics shops are under no legal obligation to replace any dead fish because there are so many different factors that it is impossible to put laws in place.
 
So any shop that replaces your fish for you are doing so off their own backs, not through ANY legal obligation.
 
Fish are seen as an item, a product and so on. You cant compare aquatics shops to pet shops. They are more like a supermarket selling fish.
 
You dont ask some tenager stocking shelves in a supermarket how to cook a meal using products they sell and then berate them for not having the knowledge or an answer? Why is it their problem if you dont know how to cook?
 
MBOU, while I sympathize with you in dealing with the average customer, that's not what happened in the OP:
 
"Today I was in the shop to buy some dechlorinator, so naturally I went to nosy around at what fish they had in. They are usually really good for giving advice IME but I was completely disgusted to see one of the workers down there talking to a completely clueless woman about her 20g tank.
She said that she had set it up THAT DAY and had come to get some fish, the man said ok great! Which made me listen closer..
I then watched him walk her over to their larger tanks with the bigger type fish in and point out BALA SHARKS! He then proceeded to tell her that they stay at around 3 inches and 6 would be fine for her tank!"
 
I highly doubt you would suggest to a customer with a 20g that bala sharks would be compatible, or any large fish for that matter. That's where the problem lies in this scenario. And while I still can't quite find fault in the clerk's actions, I CAN find fault with his superior for not giving him the correct training. He probably received a couple hours explanation of the store hours and opening and closing procedures and a layout of the store, nothing about actual fish care short of the basics.
 
I guess because you can't actually snuggle with a fish that they're considered more decoration than living creature and are treated as such.
 
And by the way, "poor slob" is just an Americanism and not meant to put anybody down. 
 
I highly doubt you would suggest to a customer with a 20g that bala sharks would be compatible, or any large fish for that matter. That's where the problem lies in this scenario. And while I still can't quite find fault in the clerk's actions, I CAN find fault with his superior for not giving him the correct training. He probably received a couple hours explanation of the store hours and opening and closing procedures and a layout of the store, nothing about actual fish care short of the basics.
 
I do understand your points :) my post was aimed more at those "so what does the member of staff actually do?" comments and I maybe have given in to the rant a bit ;) Still... you'd be horrified at the things i have seen people do :( like I actually get to see the results of people 'popping' a fish with dropsy (only to find it was a pearlscale goldfish...), or people claiming all their fish died so were replaced out of good will only for it to happen again, someone else replaced out of good will but with doubts.. then customer used member of staff to do tank maintenance and we found they still had all the fish they claimed had died... or people who steal little bits of sponge out of the packets... with a few pounds at most... or the animal rights activists who dont believe any animals should be kept in captivity and so when noone is looking, pour a bottle of any household chemical into a system to kill thousands of fish.
 
People horrify me! Swear by the time i'm old i am going to be a complete social recluse! More so than i am already ;)
 
I am dissapointed that the member of staff would sell those fish but to be honest, we dont know if he has had any training (personally i think we should be fighting to make that a legal obligation! not berating staff but the laws!), we dont know if he knew anything about the fish or whether he even cared, he might not even like fish, a job is a job for money whether your selling fish or selling chips and McDonalds ;) as sad as that is... until we can make people realise that fish deserve more rights... its not going to change at all.
 
And by the way, "poor slob" is just an Americanism and not meant to put anybody down.
 
I didnt really take offense ;) sorry... I have a weird sense of humour that is impossible to convey online :p
 
People are a strange lot, no doubt there. I agree with you completely that the laws should be changed to require a minimum of training for those who are employed for the care of animals, any animals, and that should include compatibility and living conditions. We're just now in the U.S. starting to regulate puppy and kitten mills, as well as livestock animal conditions. I imagine the care of fish is at the bottom of the list for regulations, as well as cold-blooded creatures such as reptiles.
 
It's difficult in a sense, the people who would be policing the care would be the RSPCE/ASPCA/whichever is local lol but the trouble is they arent trained for fish or reptiles either and they are just way too under staffed to deal with what they have to already, let alone the mess that is the aquatics and reptile trade.
 
Not enough money is put into those charites or organisations but the trouble comes with... where does the money come from in a struggling economy and really... if the money was available.... there are far more urgent things it would need  to be used for before animals.
 
Shame really as I dont see a solution to that :( short of printing a whole load more money... that would help lol
 

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