Pet care associate - Pet Care Associate PetSmart Employee Review

5.0
28 Oct 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

-You get a good variety of activity around The store. The job is 50% animal care, 30% customer service, and 20% backup to other departments such as stocking or register backup. Animal care percentage is most prominent if you have the opening shifts, and lowest with closing shifts. - You handle and feed animals, receive animal shipments, give medical attention to sick animals, learn about every animal and product in the store. - You give information to customers, answer questions about products and customer's pets, bag fish/crickets for customers, get customers ready to purchase a pet. -When it comes to managers, the entirety of management (at my store) is friendly, understanding when it comes to accidents, lenient with scheduling, and supports learning. - Managers consider everyone to be a part of a team. Often times they do not shy away from the grunt work tasks that can normally be left to low level workers. They help with gathering carts, cleaning, scrubbing tanks, trash, facing, etc. -excellent entry level job to work part time.

Cons

-A high percentage of animal care is cleaning. -There is difficulty in balancing animal care with customer service. It is a fun challenge but it can also be considered a drawback. - Customer service leads to interaction with unlikable customers (as with any retail store). - The quality and attitude of coworkers varies. Some enjoy their job, some couldn't care less. - The pet care opening process is fresh for the first few months and still continues to have surprises, but the underlying procedure becomes stale and repetitive. -Job prospects are low if you are looking to stay long term. You can work into a low level management position, but general managers are *usually found elsewhere.

Explore other reviews about PetSmart

5.0
4 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Fun, welcoming, easy, flexible, growth

Cons

Weekends, slow, customers, busy, fast pace

1.0
2 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The company pushes for more and more from the bottom level employees without better pay. I worked there before the restructuring and; not much can make me cry, but working here sure did, even back then. I can’t imagine how anxiety inducing it must be to work there now. Animal welfare is a complete non-concern. The only thing that’s pushed is sell, sell, sell. It’s borderline dystopian. Bad management seems to be a common issue, not only from my experience, but many others’ as well. I worked until I was an exhausted sweaty mess to make sure everything in pet care or, when I groomed, the salon, was cleaned to perfection as expected of me (and I reiterate: “me,” because these standards were not expected of my co-workers, just me) and overall felt very unseen. The only times I did feel “seen,” was when mistakes were made. Work was treated like boot camp. A co-worker that was subtley targeting/bullying me, and even started rumors accusing me of racist remarks(!!!), was promoted and anything I reported was downplayed because they were friends with the assistant manager. Working here was an overall traumatizing experience.

Cons

Employees are expected to be work-robots

avatar
PetSmart Response
1w
We’re disappointed to hear that your experience didn’t reflect what we aim to create for our associates, and we appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback. We invite you to contact the CareSmart line at 1-800-738-4693 so we can learn more and see how we can support you. Thank you.
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All