As someone who also works at a chain pet store we do get training over the computer about most aquatic life. I spent prolly over 40 hours taking online training for our store and they continue to give us new training on various things. Having us look at pictures of what fin rot or ich looks like so on and so forth. It's more that sometimes sitting on the computer doing these classes are frustrating and people just want to get through them more than learn from them. I had one employee ask me if I would do his training. I was like, yeah no? He later proceeded to ask another employee on how to sell a fish he didn't know about. He was our "Aquatic specialist" but couldn't handle it and walked out one day.
As for the whole "I don't understand how we can't keep the cups clean" It's not that we don't want to, it's more that we just don't have enough time to. Some stores (like mine) have 4 managers and 2 normal employees. We are meant to do EVERYTHING which is exhausting and there isn't even enough time in the day to do everything. We are meant to clean and stock shelves, unpack shipping pallets, do inventory counts, handle customers, register, put up signs, make sure products are in the right places, find stuff for customers can't find for themselves, clean the animal habitats (cats, reptiles, birds, rodents, and fish). Fish tanks take the longest because we have to clean the sides, siphon the gravel, do water changes, remove dead fish and plants. Customers are meant to come first and that's why most things don't get done. People will come in and ask questions about products or animals. A lot of people just don't look around and find the products themselves so they hunt one of us down and we have to drop everything. I had a woman come up to me and says "how do I get the $10 off?" "I'm like well it's prolly a sale, do you have a rewards card?" She rustles around in her purse a bit and then gives me her number. It's not in our system and I tell her she can sign up for it. She signs up for it and the $10 doesn't come off the bag of dog food. I tell her this and run back to where she got the bag and it says it had to be the 38lb which she had the 33lb. I come back and let her know about this and she then proceeds to get upset and says "Just ring it up, I want to go home." Excuse me? YOU want to go home? I just ran my ass to the back of the store, look at the sale tag that says what gives you the discount that you obviously didn't read and YOU WANT TO GO HOME. I have been standing here and helping people like you for 8hrs and YOU WANT TO GO HOME... She pulled this three times in the last month like this is new to her so this isn't her just having a bad day. I went home and cried that day because I was that frustrated about how people just get upset with me over something corporate has decided that I can't fix.
I used to keep my bettas in 1 gallon bowls but I also would do water changes every other day. It got to the point I just couldn't carry them back and forth and got an actual tank.Some people just don't want to listen to what is best for the animal and just get the cheapest thing they can. I have tried on multiple occasions to get people to stop buying bowls for bettas but they don't care. I had a woman take her anger out on me because her baby betta died. I asked what kind of tank she had and she looked at me like I had 3 heads. She explained it was one of those .25 pour the water in cubes. I shook my head and told her she needed to buy something with a real filter and small heater. After I told her this, she got upset that the other employee said this product was fine, why would we tell her two different things?!? She was very upset that instead of spending $15 her bill was $30 some over a fish. I asked the other employee if they suggested that "tank" and they said absolutely not, the woman wanted it and she wasn't gonna budge.
Sometimes I wish that people could see past that we aren't there playing with the animals (which I thought some stores did to get them to be handle-able) but there just isn't enough time to do any of it sometimes. Retail is a pain in the butt to do which I somewhat want to leave but at the same time I can't afford to. All my coworkers do their best to educate and keep all the animals healthy but I wish customers would be a bit more polite to us sometimes. Our store tries it's best but I can't speak for any other stores. Finding your own products, doing your own research, looking at the sale and price tags and placing items back on the hooks and shelves would be a great start. Unfortunately, that would be a perfect retail world and we don't live in that.