team leader

pet bather

market leader

consultant

pet groomer

Bentleys Pet Stuff

Job security and advancement
If you don’t have a store of your own to manage or you aren’t a specialist, your job security is half based off how much your manager personally likes you and half is how soon your store is going out of business (they won’t honestly tell you if your store is closing soon either)

Management
It’s all based off of who they personally like. I was only visited by higher management a handful of times and it was mostly to introduce myself/finish paperwork and then to check up on my manager due to complaints. My manager was extremely unprofessional and inconsistent.

Overall
The job was great at first. I was hired when all of the coworkers quit or got fired. So I worked with my manager almost daily or other store managers who would fill in. My manager started off super friendly and she’d bring in her daughter daily who was always in the back and the job seemed like a second home. I started to notice my manager doing stuff that could possibly be hurting our business. Once they hired someone who had years of management experience and experience with animals I was then treated like a child. He was getting customer complaints and my manager showed his complaints to people who were around her and said she was going to write him up. Then I got written up for calling off Sick and going to the doctor and had help covering my shift. People approached me with stuff my manager was saying about me. When confronted, my manager turned clearly hostile and told me we needed to talk my next shift. She then hinted she was going to fire me next shift. I contacted higher management and wasn’t taken serious or didn’t even get a reply. The only thing I cant complain about is the joy the animals bring you and the pleasure of helping animals. This company has a lot of unnecessary drama, inside theft from management, inconsistent budgets due to poor business and poor communication with security of your job. Do yourself a favor and work for another pet shop. Or just read more reviews to confirm this isn’t a secure job.

What is the best part of working at the company?
Bringing your dog to work with you, the great insurance, and the nice customers of both the 2 & 4 legged varieties.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Completely, ridiculously incompetent home office operations staff with little or NO experience in the field.  Severe lack of communication from c-suite employees. No raises even when goals are consistently met or exceeded. Extremely limited marketing support. Hardworking and over-performing Store Managers and Store retail staff are extremely underpaid and treated as disposable by home office.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
A pizza party with a $50 limit  once a year instead of cost of living increases.  

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Thankfully, I quit and I am not being overworked and underpaid by them anymore. It was no bathroom breaks and taking a bite of lunch between customers, and if you had hot food, you never got to just sit down and eat your meal while it was still hot.  You might have had a few bites far too hot out of the microwave in an attempt to feed yourself while rushing about to get things done so you don't pass out  because they refuse to allow managers to staff appropriately to get all the tasks done while still helping customers and allowing for the appropriate breaks that humans need. It was smashing sales goals any time you actually received them, being the store with the highest rate of growth in the company for years because your team is awesome, and then still getting told to do better while never receiving reviews, nor additional compensation for all the success.  It's wonderful animals and customers, but incompetent leadership at the top.  The majority of the passionate, knowledgeable, and successful  in-store teams left.  Now it's all people with no experience and no knowledge in the field.

I will be the first to admit this job takes a certain kind of personality. I definitely wish there was more hands on training for managers and better communication for managers and everyone above, but overall, this is the best company I've worked for! Everyone I've ever spoken to at corporate has been amazing. 
You can't always tell how hard everyone in corporate works but only because they are THAT busy. Every time I've asked someone in corporate to give me a call, they've made sure to get in touch as soon as they could.
I wish that upper management checked into their individual stores more often, but I think it says a lot that when you ask to get in touch, you get a call same day if not same hour.

Unfortunately, they do have to focus on profit, but it's necessary to pay us what they do. You start higher than minimum wage and are eligible for bonuses and monthly prizes. They also don't play favorites with the prizes, which is great for general moral. I wish you were eligible for bi-yearly performance reviews and pay raises, but I was absorbed by the company 4 months before Covid, so it's hard to know if that's typical of this company. 

Unfortunately, it looks like people are reviewing the industry and not the individual company. It's a difficult industry that's incredibly small for how many pets this country has. It's very difficult to stay open in this business without sacrificing integrity and/or quality, and Bentley’s refuses to make those sacrifices which I greatly appreciate! The CEO and her husband genuinely care about their employees and even pay for a potion of our pets' food which you will not find anywhere else.

Sometimes Bentley's is great to work for: you get to see dogs, and sometimes cats, all day! There are benefits like health insurance, 401k, and a great employee discount (twice a month..). However, it is fast paced and demanding. They require you to be able to lift 50 pounds, but I have had delivery days where I've literally moved over a thousand pounds of product across the store, manually, with no dolly. Customers expect you to have complete product knowledge about the thousands of items in the store: everything about pet behavior, pet training, grooming, and nutrition but you're paid minimum wage. Store employees are responsible for writing and receiving all weekly orders, complete inventory management, updating prices accurately on every single item for every single delivery even though there is an accounting team, all merchandising, while handling constant IT issues and customers. Most of the sales are manual, so every other week you must memorize the items and sale codes and use a separate application to apply digital coupons, which confuses customers and makes them impatient. The home office sometimes send sale emails to customers before notifying the stores, too. The are chronic out of stock items, basic things a pet supply store should have like harnesses, brushes, and bowls, for months at a time. Uppermanagement is often dismissive or unresponsive. Some of the locations do not even have a break area, and sometimes you're scheduled open to close, alone, with no breaks. Make any complaints and you're met with platitudes about how positive energy will save the day. 

What is the best part of working at the company?
Getting to know the regular customers and encouraging new customers to return, learning about new products and companies, and helping people figure out which food, supplements, toys, etc, are best for their pets. 

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
Occasionally purchase orders get messed up with missing and/or damaged products, or a customer may be confused about a specific return policy or reward redemption. 

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
Overall work environment and culture is positive and edifying. Not very many employees so you get to know your coworkers and it becomes more comfortable working with the same people you know. Stores are typically brightly lit and full of colorful products, so the atmosphere is far from dull or depressing. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Average day is medium paced. Pretty always something to do, whether it be educating yourself on products, assisting customers, making sure inventory is correct, maintaining store cleanliness and organization, etc. Some days are busier than others, such as order delivery days, special sales, or warm summer days in higher foot traffic areas, but never overwhelming.

Working for Bentley's started off fun and I love working with animals and helping people to feed their animals healthy food. I did enjoy the customers and my Co workers. Which is why I gave it 2 stars. Like many others have said the idea is great, but many other things are not. 
The bad started to out way the good. They give little to no training. People definitely play favorites and there are SEVERAL bullies in management and at home office, including one of the owners who would literally tell people to quit multiple times if they didn't like how he did things and has verbally abused many employees. Which also makes everyone afraid to speak up because they might get fired or yelled at. That does not make anyone want to work harder to keep your company from failing! Home office people have no experience in what they're doing except for a few IT people who get work dumped on them because no one else know what's they're doing and they laugh it off and expect you to be OK with it. New budgets, rules, and procedures are given with no warning. 
 They need to revamp the whole home office and get people who know what they're doing. And maybe stop worrying  so much about Facebook reviews and worry more about what your employees/ex employees are saying in their reviews. You can't run stores without employees!

I was excited to work for this company thinking it was a small local one but learned it was national corporate. Which means everyone is expendable. They close store locations if they aren't doing well enough and lay off the employees. Everyone I worked with who had been there more than a few months was jaded by the job and were looking for new jobs. You're expected to do everything: inventory, orders, opening/closing, cashier, janitorial, visual merchandising, customer service, bank deposits, opening/closing alone, keyholding, daily inventory checks, and more. All for minimum wage. They cut hours where they can and avoid paying overtime like the plague. Everyone on salary takes a LOT of PTO. But associates aren't given PTO, you have to accrue it. You also don't get paid sick leave.

I never got compliments or positive feedback on the work I was doing. Only complaints and warnings from the 7 different people trying to micro manage at the same time. They blame the associates when sales are low and business is slow (even if it is bad weather out). Claim they care more about the pets and then they increase prices throughout the whole year and try to push you to sell bad food over higher quality food because the owners get better business deals with those companies.

It seems like a great business on the outside, but on the inside there's no communication from home office in Illinois, you have your district team and your district lead and that's usually it, not to mention the bare minimum of marketing home office does for your district. You're expected to take 6 hours every week to go out to other businesses and market yourself. They're not consistent with their sales, or their demo programs, and they're constantly closing stores down so there is no job security. Worst company I have worked for to date. There's so much turnover at home office and "new things" they try to do for a month and then aren't consistent with. They paid great at first, then realized they were over paying my district so cut every assistant's pay and got rid of the title.  The insurance policies they have are absolute garbage. 

I loved their food promises, and the thought of the company, how you can make your store your own until working there, when I found out one of the CEOs just acts like a baby and has meltdowns on the company's social media and fires people for selfish reasons.
I never felt like a valued employee. 

My coworkers were amazing, they made the job worth it.

This company is one that is amazing on the top level. The owners are wonderful people and do so much for charity and their community. However, the district managers are awful and don't contribute anything. They attempt to manage once every couple of months when they visit the store for ten minutes. Other than that, they just gossip with other employees and if you're not their best friend, watch out. There is almost zero room for growth because the assistant manager position doesn't exist anymore. Now it's just pet consultant and team leads. I had everything going for me at this company and was not promoted to team lead ONLY because I'd never interviewed before. The company knew for months that I wanted to be promoted and refused to work with me on the skills that then kept me from a promotion. I was then told I would be contacted to set up a game plan to get me where they needed me for the next available opportunity, but three months later, no one ever contacted me. This company is filled with lies and favoritism. Stay away.

Originally it was an awesome place to work, you get to play with dogs, there is a decent discount, you learn a lot about pet nutrition.  As time went on you realized that the priorities of upper management were skewed.  They got rid of people that actually cared about the well-being of the company and the customers only to replace them with people who would delegate rather than actually do their job.  They would believe whoever gave them gossip first and ask questions later.  The pay is decent but not worth the mental havoc that you were put through.  Our region closed all the stores one day to meet with the owners, only to be cussed at and told we suck basically and we need to make more money.  When you do start making the money and succeeding they move you around to other stores and set you up for failure.  They started out good, but things went down hill quickly.  If you choose to work for them just keep your head down and enjoy your discount, but always have a back up plan.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Team leader 1 salary reported	$40,000 per year
Pet bather 7 salaries reported	$12.68 per hour
Market leader 1 salary reported	$47,500 per year
Consultant 1 salary reported	$12.50 per hour
Pet groomer 1 salary reported	$36,000 per year

Working at Bentley's Pet Stuff: Company Overview and Reviews

Bentley's Pet Stuff

Bentley's Pet Stuff Ratings

Popular jobs at Bentley's Pet Stuff

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected