Petco Workers

April 17, 2020

As the death toll mounts from the coronavirus pandemic, governors in 42 states have urged more than 300 million Americans to stay home.

So it shocked some Petco employees this week to see shipments that are almost guaranteed to draw in more customers: Guinea pigs. Hamsters. Parakeets.

“Why are we getting betta [fish]?” an employee wrote on Petco’s internal social media platform. She posted a picture of a purchase order for more than a dozen fish while other workers reacted with frowns and crying emoji. “This will just bring more people in.”

The outcry was just one example of the fear, anger and uncertainty that have become fixtures for many of Petco’s 25,000 workers since the start of the pandemic. Because Petco sells necessities like pet food and cat litter, some of which can’t be found in grocery stores, most of its 1,500 U.S. locations are deemed “essential” and are open for business.

But some of Petco’s retail workers feel the company is treating them as less than essential. In March, as its stores saw what one executive called a “massive surge” of pet owners stocking up on necessities, many Petco employees clamored for protective gear and warned the company of dangerous crowding in their stores. While some Petco locations have converted to having curbside pickup only, many are still welcoming customers inside.

Workers fear their employer is gambling with their health to push products and services no one needs in the middle of a pandemic. The company has attempted to keep pet salons open in places where pet groomers have been ordered to close. And this week, Petco executives approved new shipments of birds, small mammals, reptiles and aquarium fish to select stores — even as retail employees, posting on the company’s social media platform, describe hiding their fish tanks “to protect us from people who think we are a zoo.”

It’s an apparent reversal of Petco’s mid-March decision to stop restocking pets, which caused, in the company’s own words, “unnecessary traffic in our stores.” Petco says the change is meant to accommodate its suppliers, who have more animals than they can handle and would otherwise euthanize some of them.

Petco is scrambling to supply its workers with additional masks, and some workers felt compelled to rig their own protection. A photo posted in early April to Workplace, a private social media platform for Petco employees, showed checkout clerks in New York surrounded by clear plastic shower curtain liners.

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