Rolando Cantú, Propietario
DAKTARI
Monterrey, México

My name is Rolando Cantú López, the work that I do on a typical day is to arrive, open the business at 8:00 in the morning so they can start cleaning up, begin to feed the animals, straighten up the store and the products. We open to the public at 9:30. My brother arrives in the morning and he takes my place at the register and I begin to take care of bills, deposits and other bank transactions. This almost takes me through the morning and then I go eat. I come back in the afternoon. Generally I take care of the books or take stock inventory or see how the animals are doing. If there is anything that I am in charge of personally... (I have people in charge of the aquariums), but I look to see if there is enough medicine, or if there are any sick animals that have been looked over, give medicine to the fish. We also have in stock some items that get used up quickly, foods, and some animals that are in demand and well you've got to be replenishing them every week or every two weeks. I am also in charge of this, and of managing the girls that we have working in different areas, some that stock animals and others in different products. I also need to be upstairs to check with the veterinarians to see how the treatments are going, why they are giving them to them, what animals are ours here at the store and what animals are our clients which have already been sold and have been returned to the store for one reason or another.

Basically now... (all of my suppliers were in Mexico), I am importing now. Early in the morning when I am interested in a product I make quite a few phone calls to the United States to see whether a supplier that I am interested in would like to distribute their products here. So, now I am importing about everything. I still deal with Mexico, like with the fish and almost all the live animals, but I try to import all the products and sell them directly. I also have another salesman who accompanies the other veterinarians to pet shops to distribute to them the products that we import directly.

What do I like most about my work? What I like most about the work is to be with the clients, to explain things directly to the client. I don't like to be above the people, to be bossing them around. I like more dealing with them, teaching them. I like it when an employee wants to learn and wants to do a good job. And I like to deal directly with the people, when a person wants to know how to set up an aquarium or wants to learn more about an animal, I like to explain it, that is what I like most. I almost don't have time for this because I am doing other things, but when there is a chance because my wife or brother are at the register, I try to do this. The most difficult part of this work is supervising the people, getting them put out their best effort.

The training that I give my employees is basically in taking care of the clients. The rest depends on as the situation arises. I have assigned an experienced girl to help the ones who still don't understand the product or the care of a certain animal, and if they still have questions they can come to me and ask me directly and then I come in to advise them. We don't have a very large or detailed training because there are many aspects where basically it is during the actual moment of doing it, when you need something explained or when you realize you need it..., I used to give training in the beginning, but they didn't remember much of what I explained to them So I decided to turn them over to the girl here who knows quite a bit and she takes care to see that other girls learn on the job.