“Sir...this is not PetSmart...”

[ralitza]

Hoo boy. How is everyone doing? I’ve got a funny little story to make your mornings.

My boss gets a call around 7:45 AM yesterday morning. Our shop opens at 7am on the dot. This lady is calling us to say her husband is standing out front but the door is locked. My boss gets his number to contact him, and contacts my coworker B. My boss is of course freaking out because maybe B had slept in or got in an accident and she was the only employee who opens on slower days like Tuesdays.

B is super confused saying she had been there since 6:30 to clean and prep, and to her knowledge there was no man standing outside. So my boss calls the man. He is LIVID saying he had an appointment set for 7am and it was very unprofessional of us. She asks him exactly where he’s at, address and landmarks, car make/model. Eventually we get down to why he can’t seem to get inside and why we can’t find him.

He went to PetSmart. The closest one to us is about 2 miles down the road. Totally different shopping center. Things happen though, but my boss can’t help but pause for a good few seconds and calmly state “....sir...you called XYZ grooming salon....you are at a PetSmart...” He hung up. Didn’t hear from him or his wife after that. Needless to say we had a good laugh at that one.

 

[knr80]

@ralitza This makes me laugh on so many levels because, even though my experience with this type of situation is far and few in between, it’s always funny when someone makes this type of mistake and blames the store or the groomers.

When I was at PETCO (we had a Petsmart probably about two or three miles down the road, again, in a different shopping center entirely, completely different landmarks) a woman with her two standard (in rough shape) poodles came in for her appointment, an appointment that we did not schedule, after going through the whole “I’m sorry about this, who did you talk to? We can squeeze you guys in and give you a discount for the trouble”, blah blah blah, we realized that the woman had made her appointment for Petsmart, and not with us. I knew the manager at that Petsmart because we both worked together previously, so I called her, let her know, and the woman left.

I’m not sure exactly what happened to the fullest extend, but it seemed the lady decided the time I gave her was the time her original appointment was for Petsmart, waited a couple hours to go over there, was told “your appointment was two hours ago, unfortunately we do not have the space today and we will have to reschedule you”, so she came back to my store, and I received the biggest attitude from her. Blaming me for her mistake in the first place, blaming the stores for “not having a joint computer system even though they’re the same company”, telling me that she wanted to use coupons, on top of the discount I already agreed to, which btw, were from PetSuppliesPlus... it was this whole thing.

In the end, I decided to put her on our “do not accept” list because of how nasty she was about the whole situation, when we all tried to appease her.

We ended up getting a really good laugh when she came in the following week because she made the same mistake again. Haha.

 

[macb]

@knr80 We have this happen all the time!! I currently work at a Petco and petsmart is not far away. They get so angry saying “I made this appointment a month ago!!” Most of the time, in the system, it says they have not been to Petco in a matter of months or years. Rather silly of them to go somewhere they haven’t gone in a while..you would think they would know who their regular groomer is! We also have two other Petco locations that are not too far and people make the mistake of coming to us and insisting that they are right and WE made the mistake! Very frustrating. Very hard to be professional when people yell at you for something that isn’t even relatively YOUR fault -_-

 

[jmcd]

@macb This used to happen at my first store ALL THE TIME. Petsmart two blocks away and a petco on the same street 10 minutes down the road in both directions. It would have been nice to have this new system where we can see appointments at other stores! We had petsmarts number at our desk so when we asked people what number they called we would know it’s petsmart. I hate how quickly they blame us and how fast their anger escalates. Like, I’m trying to help you, yelling and being rude isn’t going to fix anything.

 

[macb]

@jmcd We had one person refuse to give us his number to look up his account bc he INSISTED that we already should have it ridiculous

 

[knr80]

@macb I used to get those people all the time when I worked at Petsmart and PETCO, lol. I’m like “dude, I do not know you, I am not your groomer.... I don’t even know my sisters phone number”. People are so crazy sometimes!

And yes, the anger level they have, just blows my mind. I can’t believe some people do not have the decency to understand that: 1) people make mistakes, and it’s okay, and 2) when someone is trying to help you fix said mistake, it doesn’t mean you should go off on them and treat them like dog poo on the sidewalk.

 

[paulcyp1]

@ralitza My favorite: "Well the other store has my pets vaccine record just pull up their file!"

We are 100% not petsmart or petco thus have no access to anything, and 9/10 their rabies is expired anyways.

 

[imagebeastmarkbeast]

@paulcyp1 I had a phone call with some woman months ago which involved me saying “PetSmart and Banfield are separate companies. PetSmart does not have access to Banfield computer systems. Banfield does not have access to PetSmart computer systems. I cannot log into their system and find your pets vaccine records. They cannot log into our systems and add information. We are two completely separate companies.” at least five times. The woman could not wrap her mind around it. She even brought up how she had the wellness plan with them and asked me to cancel it. She kept calling me a b**** then hanging up only to immediately call back and ask to book the appointment. She would not allow me to speak every time I offered to call Banfield for her. I guess one of my coworkers just called them after I left because I came in the next day to find the appointments booked that day. The woman no showed, and our calls went straight to voice mail. As it turned out the salon she meant to book at was a good 1hr drive north of my salon.

 

[wanderedhome]

@paulcyp1 the rabies is always expired

 

[paulcyp1]

@wanderedhome wHy DoEs hE nEeD rAbIeS?!?!?!

because it's literally the law, ma'am. Do you want his head chopped off if he bites me?

 

[melindapurcell]

@paulcyp1 I had one contact me thinking that because I’m a mobile groomer they wouldn’t need to have updated vaccines

 

[jasonodavis]

@ralitza I used to work at an independent place that had another shop in the plaza across the street. We had so many clients mix up the shops! We would always direct them over to the other shop but they would just take our clients if they showed up without appointments! I saw what came out of that shop, I know why they always had time for walk-ins!

 

[yazzy]

@ralitza Lol, I had a similar experience at the start of quarantine. Family ordered takeout from a Mexican place. I was sent to pick it up. Never been there before, but I just typed the address into my GPS.

When I got there, manager said there was no order waiting. Puzzled over it for 5 minutes, before I realized there was ANOTHER Mexican place in the same complex.

 

[ralitza]

@yazzy It wouldn’t have been a deal if he wasn’t such a butthole about it lol. Shit happens!

 

[veritas238]

@ralitza We’re a petsmart salon a block down from a petco in a different shopping center and this happens to us AT LEAST once a day. About half the people share a good chuckle with us, the other half become infuriated with US that they went to the wrong place.