Pros
Some of the clients are very sweet people.
Cons
The owner lied to me from the beginning at the interview, where she promised me health insurance for full time work and bonuses for extra sales. I never saw either despite working sixty hours a week for the better part of a year and breaking sales records. She also said many of the employees have been there for years, making it look as though it is a good place to work. The truth is that there are two people that have been there miserably for years, and otherwise people are quitting usually within one week to a few months. Be prepared to work ten to twelve hour days while being required to do a lot of cleaning and paperwork and driving for free, while receiving the lowest commission percentage I have ever heard of in the industry: 25%. Even with the ever inflating prices customers are charged, you are still making less per groom than you would at any other establishment. The only reason I was able to eat was due to client tips, which average out at about 30 dollars a day, and most will unfortunately be given by debit or credit card, which means the owner will be dipping into that. Expect all of your paychecks to be mysteriously $50-150 dollars short of what you are owed. It is shocking and insulting that the owner steals her employees wages in chunks and expects no one to notice on top of the thousands of dollars in profits per day these same employees are making her while handing over their lives with twelve hour shifts. On top of this, expect the owner to yell at you about not making her enough money . Expect to be reemed and harassed by not only the owner but the dispatchers if you cannot defy traffic and be exactly on time to every appointment. As much as you are assured that the owner and dispatchers will "go to bat" for you in case a client has a complaint about you (which is inevitable in grooming, where owners seldom know what or how to describe the cut they want), you will always be blamed regardless of whether you did anything wrong. If the client complains, expect a nasty group email, text, phone call, and in person dressing down per incident. Expect threats from the owner to punish you in illegal ways, such as docking your pay for equipment, mistakes made, or customers cancelling appointments (all illegal on a federal level). The working area is not ergonomic, and you will get back problems from stooping over the low tub for hours a day and lifting heavy dogs into the vans. Expect vans that frequently break down while you are expected to run errands for free for the owner, taking vans to and from mechanics. Expect to be so exhausted at the end of your long shift that you have no energy to get anything done in the two or three hours you have before you have to go to bed. Expect to be required to service (and thus enable) animal hoarding clients with literally dozens of neglected and sad little caged pets because the client pays a lot of money. Expect to hear comments from clients about how they have been using this company for a year but they have had eight different groomers because people keep quitting. Expect to be miserable and get further into poverty for all your efforts.