A friend of mine took me to Walmart to help her with school supplies and we ended up in the fish section. I usually check up on them their betta because they get pretty decent stock and usually keep up with water changes pretty well.
We were browsing through their betta and community tanks when I saw something horrendous. Someone had decided to be funny and put a betta into the neon tetra tank, where he was being eaten alive by the fin nippers and blown everywhere by the filter's current.
Furious, I went to the closest employee who told me "It's a fish. If it dies, who cares?" and angered me enough to start spewing out facts about fish and animal abuse. She finally (and grumpily) called in the department manager to get me some help. I waited 30 minutes before someone showed up, and it wasnt the department manager. Instead, some guy who worked in the grocery section saw me standing there for forever had come over to help, asking tons of questions and just overall being curious and nice. (He wasn't all there though, haha.)
Then, finally, the dept. manager showed up and scrounged around for an empty cup (and sloshing around the other fish with the way he grabbed their cups! ) and dumped the traumatized betta into a bag while pouring in a random assortment of medicines for fungus and whatnot. I told him he had no clue what he was doing and promptly told him I was taking this fish home with me. He told me it wasn't an employee but pranksters who did this to the fish and that I should respect the people who work there. After arguing with him about price (no way was I paying 7 bucks for an abused fish that could die) the guy sold him to me for a dollar.
It's been a whole day since I brought him home and already he's looking better. Lost a lot of his fins and he's still scared of fast movements and his tank ornament (a rock) and has finally started eating. My friend named him Finn; partly after Adventure Time, partly after the trauma of losing his fins.
And now, here are all of my fish tanks (that are at my college with me)
top shelf from left: Yukon Cornelius, Lemon, and Finn.
bottom shelf from left: Pongo and the guppies (Flippy, Jaws, and comet), Neville, and Azul.
That's so horrible how much Walmart doesn't care about their fish at all. I would've argued with the guy until he gave it to me for free just to get me to shut up. I know the big manager at my walmart and his phone number is posted everywhere inside the store... (and his son is in my class.) I wouldn't stop at the department manager. I can't imagine how angry you must've been >:/
Anyways, I love seeing posts like this, because I am a senior in high school and I have four fish tanks that are definitely coming with me to college. I've told my parents flat out that I WILL NOT go to a college that won't allow me to have my fish, haha. I'll make it work, somehow. And I like seeing others here who have also made it work :)
Oh my God! That is a reason to call 1 (800) wal-mart (925-6278) if I ever heard one! Raise cane hun and make them pay for their rudeness! Say lots about the fish and all the meds you had to buy to save his life (and out of pocket expense), but also lots on how the staff treated you. Use details and say exactly what they said. Try to find out names and discriptions of them before you call if you can. Also, if they are in bad condition, discribe that too. They should at LEAST give you a giftcard for your trouble and chew some people out. Hurting their pocketbook is the best counter to their actions. And if you raise enough hell, they will have district bigwigs down to give them earfulls! Best of luck hun. Give um hell Posted via Mobile Device
Kudos to you for giving them a piece of your mind. I despise Walmart sometimes. I went there a few weeks ago and needed help getting a tank kit off the top shelf (it turned out to be broken anyway). There was not a single employee around, so I sent my twelve year old brother to customer service on the other side of the store to get them to send someone and they flat out told him "no."
Thankfully, they seem to have stopped carrying bettas. They were kept in plastic cups half the size of small cups of coffee and the water was always yellow and cloudy. In fact, they don't really have any fish left; the tanks are always empty except for a few dead and dying fish...
Does your college limit how many fish tanks you can keep? I'm going to be off to college in less than a year and they have strict regulations on pets. Quoting housing rules, "Fish are permitted with mutual consent of roommates. The maximum capacity for a fish tank is two gallons." (Although, it doesn't specifically state a limit on number of fish tanks... Loophole, maybe? xD)
I'd be screwed in that case because I have two five gallons, a four gallon and a ten gallon >:/ I don't have any tanks 2g or under except for my QT tanks. But I do believe I read another post here where someone used that loophole... The rules stated no tanks bigger than 5 gallons but didn't mention a restriction on the number of tanks.
I remember when I told an employee at walmart not to stack the cups because they breathe air and he was like, "Oh, I didn't realize they were doing that. I bet it was someone in the pet department. I'll tell them not to do that." I came back a few days later and they were stacked again, right after I un-stacked them. But the same guy was the one who helped me later on when I had been waiting for them to get thermometers in for like a month... He informed me that they were out and the warehouse was out so they couldn't order more. -_- really, walmart? Not only that, but they were out of almost every other kind of thermometer in the store (like in the housewares section).
It's a sad fact but WalMart doesnt train their employees (I work there). So electronic kids dont know anything, pet department employees know squat...so on, so forth....and they don't give a damn. If my Walmart had a fish section I'd fight for that management job and I'd make it the best damn fish department Walmart's ever seen. But then I could see myself interrogating customers before letting them buy a fish. >.<
I don't think I would interrogate customers... Plus, I'd have to educate myself on the other fish types. I only own bettas... but I do think customers would respond better if they knew that I owned fish, myself.
When I went into petco it was nice to talk to an employee who owned a 50 gallon tank. However, this doesn't really mean she knew anything, but it was nicer to have a conversation with her as I was looking for what I needed. She must have known SOMETHING because she suggested getting Seachem Prime (she didn't see that I was already holding a bottle of it in my hand. I did my research before going in there...) But this was the same lady who told me that stress zyme was going to basically insta-cycle my tank. -_-
I think I'd get more ticked off with customers that insist that they don't have room for a tank larger than a half gallon and that they had bettas or knew people who had bettas live for years in tiny unheated tanks... But it wouldn't hurt to inform them that with all the bettas that I have owned, they are much more active and fun with larger, heated tanks than small unheated tanks and they are generally healthier than bettas who don't have tanks that meet those requirements... Plus, I think walmart might get mad at me for sending them to petco to get heaters that are actually adjustable, since walmart only sells preset tetra heaters. :p
But I do find that people generally listen better to employees than they do to random people that walk into the store and tell them that their betta needs that $30 5 gallon tank instead of that $7 one gallon kit... I think most people who actually know something and give a hoot would go crazy dealing with these customers that think they know everything about fish care. That's why you usually see the people who don't know a thing selling them...
Although many of us are customers, there are probably many more careless customers who don't know a thing and a willing to argue with the facts. I bet none of them would ever join a site like this... The thing thats shocking is that those people can walk into a store like walmart and purchase a male VT with such severe fin rot that they look like a female and still have absolutely no idea that the fish isn't healthy, and then they move them to a 1/2 gallon and wonder why the fish died shortly after they purchased it.
I don't have patience for people, especially not the ignorant ones.
I'm a backroom employee for a reason. I'm not people friendly, lol. I tend to give them the brutal truth and expect them to either choke or swallow and move along. I find 'nice' ways to explain things to stubborn customers are really hard to come by.
But not to thread-jack, lol....sorry OT.
Agan, very glad you saved the little guy. I woulda verbally assaulted the employees had I been there. Especially if I worked there.
The Petsmart employees at the one near me are really nice. It's right next door to Walmart (well, down the road, but you can get there in less than three minutes walking) so I hardly ever go to Walmart anymore for supplies. Especially since the brands they carry are of very poor quality (I am a hundred percent Chinese with so that's saying something... lol, jk :S)
But anyway, I hope he recovers. Poor boy. People that have no regard for a fish because it's "just a fish" make me sad. He's still a living, breathing creature with basic needs and the capacity to know fear and pain, even if he does not understand them the way we do. In my opinion, if you dp not have enough decency to try to provide a small defenseless animal with a comfortable existence while it is alive, you can't be expected to respect any life at all. Just my opinion, of course.
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) and dumped the traumatized betta into a bag while pouring in a random assortment of medicines for fungus and whatnot. I told him he had no clue what he was doing and promptly told him I was taking this fish home with me. He told me it wasn't an employee but pranksters who did this to the fish and that I should respect the people who work there. After arguing with him about price (no way was I paying 7 bucks for an abused fish that could die) the guy sold him to me for a dollar.
