pay

The animals they work on are really well looked after and go home looking, clean and trimmed fairly nicely. Not a job I would pay 80 dollars for..but I would put out the 50 they are charged. A lot of the problem is actually owners who bring in dogs matted to the skin and there is only so much anyone can do. The last girl..chop shop..but steps are being taken to help her fix the problems with her grooms.

My boss..AMAZING, truly the kind of woman you would do anything for. She truly works for her staff. She covers shifts no one wants, rearranges schedules to please everyone, helps boost dogs, cleans kennels, mops floors and would never ask anyone to do anything she would not do herself, and on top of that is a darn good groomer. She is patient, takes on the aggressive dogs and calms them down like..magic. I adore her. She is a better boss then I ever was or could be.

As for academy. I have a spot coming up. It is booked and I can't wait. I have no problem working for them for 2 years or 10. They have everything I want or need or could desire really. A competative wage, health benefits, I can and will extend my training on my own, they also cover your butt if you mess up or so I am told. Six sick days a year, 2 discretionary days, a clean safe work enviornment and a group of people I enjoy working with.

In 24 years..That is the very first time I have had all of that in one package. I am not niave enough to think every single location would be so good..but mine is, and I have been thankful every day for the last 60 that I needed a job and rabbit food that day.

evan in Waterford, Michigan said: once you become a groomer however you get a base hourly rate ($8.00 at my store) PLUS 50% commission on all grooming you do. So, work 40 hours in a week and do $1000 in grooms and you just made $820. That comes out to $42,640 in a year. To the Banfield employee who said they thought it was not possible I would guess they did not know that the commission existed and that it was 50%. Pay is lower for the bathing position and you have to do it for at least 3 months before you can go to the academy to be trained as a groomer. If you have prior experience grooming pets you can take a test and get hired in directly as a groomer without spending time as a bather or going to the academy (by the way, PetSmart does not make you pay for the academy, they pay you to attend it).

ACTUALLY you get either your hourly OR your commissions which ever is higher. Which means if you work 40 hours and only make say 8 an hour you would have to make over 640 for the week. Sounds easy but when you dont have support from the Marketing Team and you are trying to make the difference alone IT SUCKS! If you go to groom school you have 8 weeks to finish your 100 dogs including 5 technicals. BUT if you dont get the dogs you need because you have 50 (over estimation) groomers and only 4 dogs a day HA forget it. The Kit was nice but now you have to rent one on your own because this was becoming costly for PS seeing as people would work there till they got to GS and quit within 2 days. I am surely not a fan of how they have been treating us groomers. I feel like i am suppost to be a groom factory with an open window for owners to distract thier dogs so i cut off a schnauzers nice angled eye brow. If you have a problem then YOU are the problem not the system or the other person. If you do decide to go that way i can not stress the importance of working WITH your Salon Team. We can only make changes if we work together!

Pupgroomer in Arizona said: ACTUALLY you get either your hourly OR your commissions which ever is higher. Which means if you work 40 hours and only make say 8 an hour you would have to make over 640 for the week. Sounds easy but when you dont have support from the Marketing Team and you are trying to make the difference alone IT SUCKS! If you go to groom school you have 8 weeks to finish your 100 dogs including 5 technicals. BUT if you dont get the dogs you need because you have 50 (over estimation) groomers and only 4 dogs a day HA forget it. The Kit was nice but now you have to rent one on your own because this was becoming costly for PS seeing as people would work there till they got to GS and quit within 2 days. I am surely not a fan of how they have been treating us groomers. I feel like i am suppost to be a groom factory with an open window for owners to distract thier dogs so i cut off a schnauzers nice angled eye brow. If you have a problem then YOU are the problem not the system or the other person. !

This is correct. my daughter works in a new PS salon and is having the same issues with her managers. She is under a lot of stress because of this....also the thing about the commission...you only get an hourly rate UNLESS you get enough dogs to 'commission' for the week. So, its not hourly rate and 50% commission. They only allow her to work 36 hrs a week and won't give her 40, but she HAS to work 36 hrs, so they mess with her schedule and send her home early, make her take longer lunches, etc. She works when people call off sick and they make her take a day off...if she does commission, they accuse her of overbooking for herself, if she doesn't commission she is talked to about that.....PetSmart needs to look at how their managers are operating in their stores. I agree with the previous entry that the management team needs to improve their management skills. Their groomers are an asset if they are treated properly.

Attention anyone that has any feedback on status of trainers! I would appreciate any feedback anyone has to give. My store currently and has almost always had two part time trainers. One works four days a week and the other three. Training sales have picked up and as of next week, one will be full time and the other part time......one working two days a week and the other five. What is to be expected from here on out? If the part-timer quits, will they be likely to just continue with one full-time person? Will they be likely to look for another part-timer willing to work two days a week at only 6 hours a week to start? Does anyone out there work in a store that has two full-time trainers? What is there schedule like? How many dogs do they average per class? Any idea what the current enrollment is? Any comment will be appreciated!

Doglady good news that your store is doing so well. I wish we were. I am the only trainer and only get 25/30 hours a week. My manager has said he will hire additional trainer but has not done so. I am puting in most of the time on Sat and Sun and I am burned out because I have no back up. I need a vacation and I have no one to take over. I can not be sick because no back up.

Is there another store anywhere near you? I know that some stores will have trainers come from another to store to cover for trainers if they are sick or if they are on vacation. The full-time trainer in our store doesn't do JUST training. About half of a shift is spent either in class or selling, and the other half is cashiering, stock, and sometimes petcare......but also friday, saturday, and sunday. Hopefully it will continue to grow and be just full-time trainer. About how many students do currently have enrolled?

all i have to say is pick your store carefully, my first store i was at was nice. my manager was very much protect the dog, the way she put it hurt yourself before the dog. this new store however lets this same girl cut dog after dog after and nothing is done because she is the managers favorite, and im in the process of figuring out a good way to tell corporate because its not right, i take every precaution of not cutting a dog and ugh.

doglady, the big problem is that my manager wants me starting about 12 / 13 classes a month. I am training about 18 - 20 hours a week. Selling usually 5 /8 classes a week. Sometimes less. Clocking in about 25 hours. Many classes have only 1 student. I try to get the manager to list fewer classes so that it increases enrollment in each class. What he wants is to get them enrolled and talk them into swithching times. Most will not do that. Most like being the only student. They get one on one and there dogs does not have to deal with heavy distractions. It gets very boring to stick to the ciriculum for 8 weeks and only 1 student.

My store has constant no call no shows. I am never absent, never late, and stay if needed. I am fine with less hours. He can split the training hours with the other trainer if he would hire one.

I have just read all your posts. I consider myself a professional groomer, I have been grooming for 8 years. I am not certified. I have groomed in Maryland, Georgia , Arkansas and now South Carolina. I am grooming from my home now and have been part time for 5 years. I have never used a bather. I am having a hard time getting enough dogs right now so I applied at Petsmart which I said I would never do. I am have always gotten customers from Petsmart, and heard horror stories of things that have happened from, sedation of the pets without permission to serious injuries caused by groomers. Pets mart in every state has had the worst reputation in the industry amongst groomers. I am deciding to go to the interview only because of last resort. No other grooming shops are here, except one man operations that are not hiring. I hope there is an hourly rate and commissiom like some of you said, but I highly doubt this. I believe you will either have to choose or it will be like the one person said and which ever is higher you will get. Petsmart in my opinion needs to pay better, get some professionals in store, and have people apprentice for longer under direct supervision. When I first started grooming I was thrown into it and I was mobile alone after 2 weeks. (Aussie Pet). I was never trained at any formal training because the owner of the franchise didnt want to pay. She sent one girl and had her teach me. None of us had any experience! I was in tears many times. It takes a good many years to be able to say you are really experienced to a decent degree.
Good luck to all, I will let you know the outcome of the interview.

In your opinion PetSmart needs to pay better and apprentice longer but you also know nothing about them. You made an awful lot of assumptions. You got thrown into the job by Aussie Pet so you assume that is how PetSmart is? Grooming Academy is 4 weeks long (40 hour per week). Then you have to properly complete 100 grooms including numerous specific types and breeds. That is a process that takes another 8 to 12 weeks and you are only allowed to be in the salon doing this when the salon manager is present. After that there is continuous on going follow up. The pay and benefits are the best in the industry. The commission is 50% of everything you bring in. How much longer do you think the apprenticeship should be? How much more of the money do you want? How did your interview go?

Forgot to add that before you get to go to the 4 week academy and then take 8 - 12 weeks under the guidance of the salon manager to do your first 100 dogs you also must complete 6 months service as a bather. During that time you must demonstrate you can be consistently safe, good in your handling of the pet, and good in your communication with the pet parent. So, from hire on as a bather to a commissioning groomer it is a minimum of 9 months. Again, how long do you want the apprenticeship to be?

I have worked for both Petsmart and Petco. I have managed salons for both companies and I have to say that there are definite pros and cons to working for a corporation! I have made a personal vow to myself to never work for anyone but myself again! I will say that I was lucky enough to work with some fantastic groomers and i learned so much from them! Any Salon can have great people working in them its the few bad seeds that can give any salon a bad name. When I worked for Petsmart as Mgr I NEVER let any pet leave the door without a quality inspection! Unlike a lot of poeple in our industry I actually care about the quality of my work and expect my employees to do the same. There are a lot of people out there that only care about the quantity of their dogs and how big their check gets... unfortunately these corporations go along with this as long as the customer complaints are low and their bottom line goes up! I cant tell you how frustrating it is when you have a store manager breathing down your neck to get you add-ons higher! They will drain every ounce of blood out of you unless you put your foot down! I have NEVER worked for worse management in my entire life and I have worked for several different stores across the country so Im not just flapping my gums here! I'm going on 10 years grooming and I know how many dogs I can handle in a day...but the geniuses working upstairs think its a great idea to use a computer program to tell you how many dogs you should be doing per day... per hour.. per minute practically! After 10 years my body just cant physically handle 8-9 dogs in a 8 hr shift! Especially when you dont have a bather washing and dying your dogs! It's ridiculous! All they care about is the money and it makes me sick! I could go on all day! And as far as making 35k-50k a year... thats closer to a salons mgrs pay! You better hope you're lucky enough to work in a busy salon and work your little kiester off!

Um, just a word from a former company groomer- you do NOT get 50% commission PLUS hourly! You get 'the greater of'. You get your base pay of your hours for the week, at whatever hourly rate you get, and above that you get the DIFFERENCE between that, and the total of your commission.

For instance, I had an hourly rate of $8.49 as a stylist, and worked 40 hours. I averaged 6-8 dogs per day at average of $49/dog, 50% commission. SO, I got $339 hourly per week for 40 hours guaranteed, BUT, if my total commissions for the week were (6 dogs @ $49 for 5 days) equal to $735, I did not get $339 PLUS $735, I got $339 hourly plus $396 (the difference between the hourly and commission) SO, you really are only getting your 50% commission, with a base hourly guarantee if you do not 'break commission'. You will get the same pay rate of 50% commission at almost all other grooming salons, private or corporate. It is industry average. So, you really aren't going to make more just by working corporate.

You can indeed make about $35k as a groomer, however, the way your schedule is restricted to only safely allow 6 dogs per day (though some of us could safely do 8) the likelihood of you doing that is pretty slim, especially if your salon has an abundance of groomers. That was the problem at my salon- we had too many groomers and not enough business. This is a common problem corporation wide, so beware.

I did 8-12 dogs at my private salon prior to switching, and brought in $600-900 weekly because I was not restricted to the insane appointment time arrangements and an 8 hour work day. I could come in at 8am and work until 6pm if I wanted to, and not worry about overtime or getting yelled at for going over hours. I was also allowed to do bath and brush dogs to fatten up my check if I needed to. You are not allowed to do bath dogs at Pmart as a groomer.

The thing about Petsmart is since its a cooperation it has more rules and regulations than a private shop does. You have to take tests, you have to be certified to do anything in that store. You learn about diseases, illnesses, parasites, what pets are more prone to certain health issues than others. The associates and groomers at my store are wonderful.

As for cooperate YES they care about numbers $$$$$ which is what I hate. They do pressure you to sell add on packages, to do more dogs around the holidays, and even over book the poor bathers. They don't realize each bather and groomer have their own pace. They think because one groomer can do 10 dogs another can also. That is not always the case.

The thing about Petsmart's rules and regulations on their groomers is that THEY ARE NOT MADE BY GROOMERS. They are made in a corporate office by people who have never picked up a brush let alone groomed in one of their cramped, overworked salons.

Don't tell me the training is 'incredible' as I saw someone said. Just because it's a 'week long' vs other stores doesn't make it crap.

Bottom line is, you do NOT make what they advertise, doing a steady 8 dogs a day I only made $26k, you will be burned out within months, and you are either over or under staffed. Also, when you quit or get fired, and went to their grooming school, GOOD LUCK getting hired elsewhere. Petsmart trained groomers have THE WORST rap in the industry.

Just look at a Notes from the Grooming Table, or The Foundations of Dog Grooming, or pretty much any other dog grooming educational book, then look at the 'guide' that Petsmart now supplies their salons to show pet parents what their dog is 'supposed' to look like. C'mon, do it. You will be disgusted. Even for 'pet trims' they are horrid and poorly executed examples.

They actually are made by groomers. Every one of those Policies and proceedures is there for a reason.

Sucks for the groomer grooming 8 dogs a day and making 26k...I groom 5-6 and am at 42k a year.