PetCo, count your days (TW)

Browsing my local PetCo tonight (first mistake) looking for some christmas presents for my dogs and decided to check out the reptile enclosures. I like to look, I’ve never owned one and don’t have any serious plans on owning one in the near future - to note, i would never buy any kind of animal from a chain pet store anyways - and came across an obviously dead bearded dragon. like, had been dead for days, shriveled up, borderline mummified dead. grabbed some pictures because, uh hello????? you’re fucking kidding. went and grabbed an employee and the first thing i ask is how often they check on the reptile enclosures. she goes “well we’re supposed to check them every 2-4 hours. why? is there an issue?” DUH THERES A FUCKING DEAD BEARDIE YES THERES A PROBLEM. though im nice about it and inform her of the decaying corpse and she grabs her (im assuming) shift lead. who then comes over and “accidentally” punches in the wrong code and tells us he has a 20 min timer now before he can open the right drawer to remove it, and he unfortunately doesn’t have the master key for it either (bullshit). at this point i’m pissed, say okay, just wanted to inform you, and move along. we’re just wasting time now and go and check out the mice and such and the employee comes over to us and asks us if they all have enough food and water. WHAT THE FUCK??? we circle back through the reptiles and low and behold, the dead bearded is no longer front and center.

also, their pythons have fucking mites. and are 2ft long snakes in 3x3 enclosures. get your shit together PetCo or stop fucking selling these poor things. thanks for coming to my ted talk