Quit if they won't do it right...

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OnlyGenusCaps

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I thought because this generally fits the ethic espoused here, folks might enjoy this. I saw this post from a Reddit thread about quitting a job on the first day and thought I would share it here:

"I'm a fish hobbyist, and I got a job in the fish department at a well-known pet store. On my first day, they wanted me to take out all the substrate rocks from each tank, scrub them, and put them back in the tanks — one tank at a time. Moving substrate releases bad bacteria and can get the fish sick or kill them. I explained this to them and said that it was best to just do a water change for 20% of each tank. They said it is what corporate says and I had to do it. I was like, 'Okay, I'll do it after lunch.' I never came back from lunch."

I recognize the details aren't spot on, but the ethos is there it seems. Anyhow, thought it might be good for a chuckle here.
 
People unclear on the concepts. Retail tanks are designed to empty within 2 weeks, and to showcase objects for sale. They aren't long term habitats for fish the way our tanks are. Heavy water changing tries to compensate for overcrowding if they are well run, but as tanks, they are rough places. They exist to sell.

If the fish sell slowly, they die. If the fish sit there for a long time, the store dies.

Moving substrate causes no problems if the tank has been well cared for. I wouldn't scrub decor, unless I sold it. I would have fired Mr Reddit, as a failed know it all, probably in their first 2 weeks. Well, I doubr they would have gotten through the job interview. That's taking a stand on principle when your principles have no basis in common sense.

I've seen people with practical knowledge and experience do great things in aquarium stores, and we need more of them, and fewer corporate pet stores. But that person wasn't suited for an aquarium store. It would be like taking a job in a florist and refusing to cut stems on flowers.
 
I feel as though it wasn't clear enough that I posted that as a light bit of humor, @GaryE . I certainly didn't mean to cause any one any frustration. My apologies, as it seems to have done so.

I would have fired Mr Reddit, as a failed know it all, probably in their first 2 weeks. Well, I doubr they would have gotten through the job interview. That's taking a stand on principle when your principles have no basis in common sense.

Yes, there seems to be a lot of people very confident in their way being the only correct one. When I worked in a pet store, we avoided "over cleaning" the tanks, as the view there was that the lack of stability in fish population in these tanks (from all of that turnover you note) meant the tanks themselves needed to be robustly stable. And scrubbing the crud out of everything didn't help with that. Obviously, if something got through our QT, we'd need to seriously clean a tank, but that was uncommon. Then after the cleaning, that tank got extra attention for the next 3 months until it was once again considered to be fully ready for the vagaries of store stocking. Of course the big box stores had a different system. This was just a mom and pop place, and they were pretty set in their ways. Clearly, the corporate way leads to good profits or they wouldn't be so prevalent, so I suppose the owners shouldn't have been so sure theirs was the only way to run things. But it's hard to convince people once they've decided to assert things in absolute terms.
 

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