good riddance, petsmart 👋

TLDR: Long story short, I found a job that's not only remote, but is also in the field of work I went to college for (yay game art) and as of today, it has been exactly one week since my last shift at petsmart and I've never felt so much peace lol

I don't know if I'll ever get past the guilt of leaving petcare while we're facing severe staff shortage issues, especially since I was really the only full time petcare associate who knew all the deep cleans and did said deep cleans. But I talked to my CEL, and although she was very sad that I was leaving, she told me that no matter what, petsmart isn't the hill to die on.

Store lead on the other hand did try to convince me to stick around, and I told him that I can't stand witnessing the mistreatment of animals anymore. Customer service will always be a shit show and I can handle that, but I can not fight every customer on poor animal husbandry on the daily. I also can't stand watching our own animals get injured and sick because corporate keeps pushing irresponsible animal care onto us so that a little kid can have more hamster options to choose from when they build their tiny tales torture chamber. He said "well you know, every job is going to have something that you have no control over and won't enjoy" But quitting for a less mentally damaging job is in my control, and damn right I'm leaving

I've made a couple of posts on here before, and I'm still very disillusioned with the company as a whole, and coming to terms with realizing just how many people mistreat their animals due to their own willful ignorance or laziness. (On my last day, a woman returned a 10 gallon tank and 4 dead betta fish, all of which were male. And Of course she got her damn money back)

Without this job I don't think I would've ever fallen so deeply in love with the 'exotic pet' hobby, and now I've got my little rescue betta fish and my crested gecko living like kings.

But Good Riddance, Petsmart. I will never work for this shit show again. If you're still hanging in there, best of luck to you! I hope a better job will come your way soon, and if you're thinking of quitting- do it! Thanks for reading