I completely understand the concerns both as hobbyist, and as someone on the other side who is responsible for assisting hobbyists and newcomers in successfully caring for their fish.
However, I'm getting increasingly tired of hearing the whining from people that complain about "stupid" lfs employees, and how its the lfs' fault that someone failed in keeping their fish alive. How about a little personal responsibility.
Yes it is the lfs reponsibility to provide customers with top quality assitance and information, but it is the customers responsibility to research, to know about the products before they even start picking them out, and to ask the proper questions. Some customers come up to me and say, "I'm thinking about getting this ten gallon tank, could you show me what kind of fish can go in there and how to properly care for them," at which point I begin asking questions and formulating the best solution for this particular situation. This is the way a customer should go about business. When they are done, I send them home with some written information and suggest good publications for research. I have had many customers who have done research before even coming into the store.
Then there are the morons, the people who come into the store, buying for the first time, or maybe not the first time, but are just plain dumb, and they in no way indicate what their current situation is. Lfs employees are not detectives, and they are not mind readers, and it is not their job to babysit the customers. If the employee is doing a good job, they might ask a couple questions to get some indication of the fish's destination and future care. If the customer does not ask the proper questions or does not give answers that indicate they need additional information, then it is the customers' fault if anything should go wrong.
Just yesterday I had a customer that brought me a dead guppy. It turns out he had a new tank, but without getting into specifics, his setup was all wrong. He also had never heard of the nitrogen cycle. I explained it to him several times with defferent approaches and he just could not comprehend how there could be toxic levels of ammonia, "in a brand new tank." I refused to give him another fish and he became angry. I sent him away with some informative reading and told him if he had questions at any time to contact me for assistance. He said I didn't have to worry because he would never come back to this store.
This is another fault of customers that often gets blamed on the lfs. I know, from my own visits, and from contact with customers, what lfs' in the area have to offer. There is only one person that I know of personally, and that I have met, that knows more than I do (which is not that much) about the aquarist hobby, who operates within 25 minutes of the store I work at. It also turns out that this person, although they have the proper knowledge, lies to customers about fish. So this idiot I dealt with last night has just cut himself off from almost any chance at being successful in the hobby, and he will now be visiting other stores beleiving that they have the answers that I do not (which I did give him but he could not understand)
Now he is assuredly telling others not to come to this particular lfs because I do not know what I'm talking about, which means that more people will cut themsleves off in the future from getting quality service and information, and that really pisses me off. The next time someone would like to bash an lfs employee, try thinking twice, try to imagine how stressful and hectic their job may be, and not only is not their job, but they do not have the time to babysit customers. Grown men and women should have the ability to ask the proper questions, and to use crytical thinking when making purchases. If, after the first time complications arise in the care of a pet, a living creature, an individual with intelligence would think, hey maybe I should do some research and find out just what is needed to care for aliving creature, because obviously putting them in a box and leaving them doesn't work.
However, many people in the US lack this critical thinking ability(I would not know what the situation in the UK is) and also lack the ability to improve themselves as human beings, they only posess the ability to blame others in order to disguise their own faults.
I am extremely annoyed by the constant lfs employee bashing. I, as well as my fellow employees do an excellent job in assisting customers. Lfs employees will never be perfect, and mistakes will be made by even the best employee. The sheer volume of work and customer load, as well as the rediculous degree of ignorance in the populace, and societies encouragement of that ignorance, assures that lfs employees will always be blamed for the mistakes of customers. But I would like everyone to know that some of the people that are slandered, work extremely hard to bring even the most unnapreciative customers the best possible service and information.
When society as a whole abandons its nurturing of ignorance as a means to personal gain, and instead encourages taking responsibility for one's choices, and encourages a questioning of surroundings in order to gain a depper understanding, then we will see more responsible customers and lfs employees.
EDIT: I just want to add that I did not mean to offend anyone on this forum in any way, and that I am not trying to discourage anyone from saying anything they feel, even if they still feel like making negative remarks about lfs employees, and I would also like to make clear that I agree with many of the complaints about lfs', I just wanted to get my thoughts out there from the other side