Petco: Treated Like A Dog

The poor turtles have been neglected for awhile. Their filter has been a lemon from the beginning and desperately needed replacing; their full-spectrum light burned out awhile ago and we hadn't replaced it. So today we put Petco on our errands list.

Our local Petco is kinda cruddy, so we drove farther to a different one. From the outside it looks big and nice. But they lost brownie points right off because they had no carts anywhere to be seen. I had the toddler on my hip and the diaper bag on my shoulder; Jared was carrying the Floppy Seat; we were looking to buy a large filter and large bulb-- we needed a cart. I asked the nearest cashier, "Excuse me, where are the carts?" She looked at me, raised her eyebrow, and said, "Outside?" Unspoken P.S.: Duh, lady. "There aren't any," I replied. She looked around and shrugged. "We've been busy."

Okay, if there were really 30 carts in use, I can understand that. But the store was almost empty and there were STILL no carts. And of course nobody cared to find one for the lady lugging the baby.

Anyway. Jared went to inspect the filters while I looked for the bulb. There was a very distinct smell-- so I kept discreetly sniffing my kid's diaper. (Okay, I lied. There is no way to discreetly lift a child above your head, stick your nose near her crotch, and inhale.) But the diaper passed the test each time. Then I realized there was a very LARGE pile of dog crap right behind me-- I'm lucky I didn't slip in it. It was in FULL VIEW of the cashiers AND the guy in the fish department, and nobody was doing anything about it. Just charming, really. (Not to mention the owner of the dog who did it-- where was s/he?)

I grabbed the bulb and met up with Jared, who was lamenting the fact that the only filter left was in a battered box that had obviously been opened and returned. He was hesitant, but I told him we could always return it if it didn't work or turned out to be missing parts.

Then we decided to give the cat scratching posts a quick peek, for Schrodinger's benefit. (Translation: if Schrodinger keeps scratching the carpet and walls, we will kill him. A scratching post will therefore benefit him.)

So, lugging our loot and the baby and the bags, we made our way to the cat section, this time nearly slipping in a huge yellow puddle of dog pee. Okay, I REALIZE that pets are welcome in the store, but this is getting ridiculous.

Didn't find any posts (that is, didn't find any NOT shaped like a castle priced at $60) and headed to the check-out. As I put the bulb down, Jared said, "Oh, that's a UVB light, not full spectrum." I looked; he was right. I asked the cashier (Jason), "This is the only kind I saw-- do you have full spectrum bulbs?"

He replied, "Uh, I don't know, I just started working here. I buy mine somewhere else."

I blinked. "Do ya think you could ask someone and maybe find out?"

"Oh, okay," he replied. He picked up his register phone and paged Greg. Then we all stood there in awkward silence. A growing line was forming behind us. Greg was nowhere to be found. As Jason paged Greg again, I noticed It.

Underneath the word "Jason" on his name tag was the word "Manager."

I burst out laughing. I pointed it out to Jared (while Jason was looking over his shoulder vainly for Greg.) ONLY ME. I rubbed my temples. "Never mind," I told Jason, and we left without making a purchase.

We ended up back at our cruddy local Petco, which actually had the filter in a nice new box, had the proper light, AND had cute baby ferrets the lady let me hold.