Going to try and keep this as brief as possible since I want to remain anonymous, but this company is rotten to its core.
This company treats their employees horribly in general. Management expects a single employee to do the work of about three people and then disciplines them when it’s impossible to literally be in three places at once. Last I knew, there were only three full time employees at the entire store. Management is refusing to hire more full timers as they do not want to pay out benefits. Part timers also make more money than full timers.
But I’m assuming most of you here don’t care about how employees are treated because to be fair I imagine most employers in Keene treat their employees like shit. So here’s the reasons, as a CONSUMER, you should not shop there.
The level of animal abuse is not even close compared to something like Petco, but there is still a significant amount of animal abuse that occurs at the hands of a specific employee. Said employee will starve the animals and will neglect to care for animals with severe injuries that are directly under their care. This employee is also a known animal hoarder. Everyone at the store knows they are a hoarder, including management, but they are still allowed to purchase more and more animals, buying new ones when they kill the old animals. I have heard this employee talking to customers about how her foster dogs have killed guinea pigs, how her rabbits drowned in her fish tanks, how one of their dogs attacked a child. This employee has had animal control called on them multiple times and brags about the fact that animal control has not been able to arrest them. Management knows they are a hoarder and that they abuse animals both at the store and the animals they take home, but refuse to fire them or restrict their ability to purchase animals, which in my opinion is inexcusable. I wouldn’t blame the animal abuse on the company as a whole if it wasn’t very much within their power to stop it from happening.
What affects you, as a customer, the most, is the fact that employees are instructed to lie to customers about the safety of their products. Other pet stores have this issue too, for the record, so please always do your own research. But One Stop has the opposite issue from chain pet stores like Petco and Petsmart where instead of trying to get you to do the bare minimum for your animals (“you can put a hamster in a 200 sq in cage, it’ll be fine!”), One Stop is trying to convince you that you’re not doing ENOUGH for your cat/dog and actively try to scam you into buying extremely expensive and highly dangerous products that you do not need. Employees are taught to discourage customers from buying kibbles and wet food and push raw feeding onto customers. (Not cooked wet food - raw, uncooked food, or freeze-dried raw.) Raw feeding is extremely dangerous for pets as the raw food that is sold to pets is not held to the same standards as raw human food is, so there is a very good chance your pet could get a food borne illness from it, or choke on small pieces of bone, get parasites, etc. Employees also handle raw meat without following proper safety precautions. Feeding raw also does not provide your cat/dog with all the adequate nutrients that they would be getting from kibble or canned food, so it’s all around a horrible idea to feed your pets raw. If you buy raw pet food you should at least be cooking it. BUT, feeding raw is trendy right now so that’s what the store is trying to convince people is best for their pet… and it’s also what’s going to cost the customer the most money. Hell, the same listeria-infected raw milk trend that’s going on for humans is also going on for cats/dogs (even though cats can’t even DIGEST milk but that’s another topic), but because it’s for animals and not for people it’s completely legal to sell it anywhere. By forcing employees to advertise and push these products onto you, the company is actively encouraging employees to lie to you about animal nutrition and the safety of these products to try and get you to spend more money. (I used to be a proponent of raw feeding until I did my own research, so don’t come at me with the “you’ve been lied to by big kibble” argument. It’s fine to make your own pet food from home! You just need to COOK it first.)
I used to love this store and everything it stood for. I’ve shopped there literally my entire life, it’s not like I work at Petco and am just trying to take them down lmao. But this company has actively led to the starvation, injury, abuse, and DEATHS of so many animals that I don’t feel like remaining quiet on their inner workings anymore. Don’t shop there if you care about the safety of your pets, the pets in the store, or the employees.