stormbind
Junior Member
Joined: 19 Oct 2009
Posts: 19
Career Advice: +0/-0
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 Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2009 3:23 am Post subject: |
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Hi Margarett,
I am much older now but to recall my early experiences. At the age of 12, I tried working on a small farm. When I was 15, my Saturday job was working in a busy pet shop. When I was 18, I worked in aquatics with fish at two of the larger businesses.
Working with animals is not the same as keeping animals!
I will tell you the truth and the truth might upset you. However, if you understand what the jobs are really about, you stand a better chance of convincing an employer that you deserve a chance to do the job!
Working with medium to large animals is a very bad idea because its very heavy work. For example, the employer might expect you to move horse manure with a large metal shovel. Believe me, doing that is really hard physical labour and it really hurts your ribs.
The pet shop idea is also quite physical. For example, food for one parrot is not heavy, but the parrot's food is delivered in large sacks. I cannot remember clearly but those sacks might weigh 25Kg each. The back of pet shop is full of heavy sacks that might be difficult for you to work with. For example, you might need to move heavy sacks to restock the shop. Most of the work is cleaning cages and refilling containers for loose food, sand, etc.
Work in an aquatic centre can have even heavier work, such as moving buckets of water or sacks of gravel weighing 100Kg. However, those tasks do not usually take place on a Saturday! Instead, Saturday requires cleaning the glass on fish tanks and catching fish for customers. The water is normally very warm and you have to hold fish using the cloth of a net (the skin on your hands is dangerous to fish). Also, the items on the shelves are not as heavy because they will be mixed water - in other words, most things have been dried to make them lighter in transport.
My suggestion is to try aquatic shops because they are busy on Saturdays, and they are busy in the winter! In other words, they are making more money at this time of the year!
The sad fact of working with animals in shops is that the animals are not in the shops for very long. They might arrive one week, and be sold the next week. This transport can medically exhaust the animals. For that reason, the first task of each day (before the shop opens) is to look for dead animals and remove them. Another possibility is that some animals must be fed living things such as crustaceans, worms, large insects and small mice.
You could visit the shops on a morning. You could explain to the shop owner that you understand the worst parts of the job (as I have told you), and that you want to learn how to keep customers happy.
I hope that this has not put you off working with animals because it represents an important industry that contributes to social well being. |
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