- Hi, I'm Cedee and I was a pet care lead specialist
at a pet store for three years.
And I have seen some stuff.
- My very first job was at a pet store,
and I worked there for two years.
We were 15, you know, so most of the time
people weren't gonna hire us, and the one place that did
was this pet store that was in need of help,
and I was like, "That's awesome!"
- I was very excited to get the job
to work with all kinds of different animals.
Almost immediately I figured out
that it's not what it seems.
- Within like six months I really hated it. (laughs)
You could only clean so much blood stool
before you just say, "No more!"
- I wanna make it very clear that rats are amazing animals.
They're sweet, they're loving, they're literally like dogs.
They can learn their name, come to you when they're called,
learn tricks, they are awesome.
I had 12 of my own at one time.
I was a crazy rat lady.
This story, as there always exists,
there is just the one little (beep).
We couldn't sell it.
We had to have it in the back room in a cage
because it was so aggressive.
This one would literally bite your hand off,
so we had to wear these insanely thick
rubber welding gloves, because she would bite it,
and eventually bite through it.
My position at this time was to get up really early
and clean all the cages before the store opened.
So I was responsible for cleaning her cage,
which literally was the scariest thing every time I did it.
So I put on my gloves, which mind you,
it is very difficult to pick up an animal.
Big gloves means no dexterity.
I picked her up, put her in the critter tote,
closed the lid, and went to clean her cage.
When I turned around she was out of the critter tote.
This rat, she was smart.
She was very smart because rats are incredibly intelligent.
It is incredibly hard to get out of a critter tote,
but some critter totes have a little thing at the top,
and she knocked it up, pushed it out, got out.
Which means she was loose on the floor,
and I had to pick her up.
My heart was racing, I was so scared.
I couldn't pick her up, it's like picking up a coin
with huge welding astronaut gloves.
So in this moment I make a decision.
I'm going to take these gloves off.
It's the only way I'm gonna get this rat.
I went in for it, grabbed her first try,
immediately moved her over to her clean cage,
and she bit the hell out of my finger.
So much so that it cracked completely through my finger nail
all the way up to the cuticle.
It was the most terrifying thing.
I was bleeding a lot.
Didn't have to go to the hospital, I ended up being okay,
rats do not have rabies.
I still love rats, just not this one.
- There was this one time that we had
this male rabbit and this female rabbit.
They were having sex, but it really didn't feel like
the female rabbit wanted that,
so we had to keep separating the male rabbit,
but he was horribly aggressive, it was a lot.
So we had to put him in another cage.
The next morning I went back
to clean the female rabbits cage,
and we have this little igloo thing,
this little plastic igloo that she can kind of
play in and go through.
I lifted it up and out drops these baby rabbits.
And these things are just born.
Like I'm talkin' they look like a naked mole rat,
soft, look like little gummy bears with fur on it,
and one of them was dead!
And so I call my manager, and he automatically
just takes the baby rabbits out of the cage
because for some reason I guess
the female mama rabbit I guess could get an urge
to eat her babies, and that happens a lot,
so I'm just standing there paralyzed like,
the animal kingdom is a (beep) up place.
- We had a king snake, which is something
that we regularly sold, but this one in particular
was a little (beep).
And so bad with the reputation amongst us coworkers,
none of us wanted to be the one to take it out and show it,
so I got asked, "Will you take this snake out,
"I wanna see it."
I had this one coworker, who happened to be working with me
at the same time, who is very nice, very kind of flirty,
so I asked him, "Please do this for me."
And he did, and he regretted it immediately.
If you're watching this, I'm so sorry.
What ended up happening when he took the snake out
is it coiled and attacked him, bit him,
and was literally not detaching his jaws from his hand.
We started freaking out,
the customers were like, "Nevermind."
I had to find my manager, we were literally Googling
how to detach the snakes jaw from his hand,
and we couldn't figure it out.
So eventually we were just kind of cooing the snake,
I say we, I wasn't doing anything, it was my manager.
I was told that it doesn't necessarily hurt,
it's just kind of like, get this out.
And so pulling would make it hurt a little bit,
so we were trying to massage it's head to release the jaw,
and it was a very busy day, and poor coworker was having to
walk around with it, and talk to customers and be like,
"Look, I have a snake, I can't help you."
After 20 minutes or so, the snake finally released its jaw.
My coworker had blood from the bite marks, he was okay,
he was able to bandage it up and keep working,
but after that I never opened up
that cage again to any customer.
The snake eventually did get sold, thank god.
- When you're taking care of a lot of animals at once,
they're bound to get sick, they're bound to get messy,
things are bound to get really gross.
So a lot of times I would have to clean up dog poop
and a lot of the dog poop would be really disgusting.
I'm talking blood in their poop.
I'm talking diarrhea, I'm talking unknown substances
in their poop.
So for me it was just like, I could only do so much of it
before I wanted to puke.
I remember this one day that I decided
to wear a white shirt to work.
It wasn't on purpose, it was that I was wearing
a white shirt at school, and then I got to work
and I was like, "I have no clothes."
There was this one cocker spaniel
that was such a sweetheart, but so annoying,
and that was the one with the bloody stool,
that was also a little bit yellow.
So that day, I wanted to try to pick up the poop
with the newspapers that was in his cage.
He just got so excited that I was opening the cage,
and he just jumps on me, and doesn't stop jumping on me,
so on me is just almost scratches
of yellowish brown reddish poop
all over this white shirt I'm wearing.
And I just got so mad, I just put the dog on the floor.
You know, normally, as a normal human
you'd be like, "Oh, well it's just a dog,
"they don't know what they're doing."
I was pissed. (laughs)
I was so mad, I was at the point
where I didn't give a (beep) about animals anymore.
I was done, I was ready to go, that dog meant nothing to me.
That dog might as well had been a giant walking rat to me
because it had gotten it's yellowish brown poop all over me,
and I just gave zero (beep) at that point.
I was ready to walk.
- I actually very much valued the time
that I worked at a pet store because I got to help
and care for a lot of the animals.
- I mean a pet store was my first job,
I'm glad it was my last time working at a pet store
because that was a really crappy experience.
- I think it's a okay job for young adults.
I mean, you learn a lot.
- If you get a chance to work at a pet store,
I'd say if you want to, definitely take it,
but definitely realize that there's a lot of grunt work
that comes with it including cleaning up poop,
cleaning up bloody poop, and cleaning up yellow poop.
- Low pay, and you might get bit by a snake,
but it's a good job.
- If you wanna get an animal from a pet store,
do your research, make sure that you're not getting a pet
from a pet store that works with breeders
and that you're exploring all of your options.
(calm music)