Locked Out?

On occasion when I arrive to work in the morning, before the store opens, I find that they're locked.

Which for the first three years or so I worked here, was a common occurrence. We had those doors locked so you almost always had to ring the doorbell we have to be let in.
But with a policy change to keep the doors open so Grooming customers could enter the store to drop of their dogs/cats before the main store opens easier.
The doors ended up staying unlocked, which made it much easier for me to enter the store.
On occasion though, now and then, the doors will be locked when I approach. 
Why? Not sure.
May depend on the people involved with stocking duties that morning. *shrugs*

In any case.
Today would have been one of those days.
Where I would have had to ring the doorbell to be let in. 

Except I arrived at the same time as a manager. So they had keys to unlock the doors and let me in.

Which shocked one of my coworkers when they saw me walking up the aisle to go clock in. 
"What are you doing here? How did you get in?! I locked the door!" 

Obviously, it was my master lockpick skills. lol *shakes head*
I shrugged and said "SoandSo let me in." 
The coworker was like. O.o "I didn't know they were here." 
To which I said. "We arrived at the same time."

But really...it would be cool if I had lock picking skills. lol. That would probably be a handy random talent to have. ;) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

The BabySitter Purchase

A customer called the store today, why?
Because apparently over the weekend, his son had come home with a lizard.

Which by the way the customer was speaking...meant that this wasn't a good thing.

So I was frantically trying to figure out how a minor had gotten a hold of one of our lizards...

When the customer clarified that the babysitter had bought it for him.

The problem? The parents weren't equipped to keep a lizard as a pet. They didn't have anything for it, but also didn't have the receipt. 
And the customer was positive that the son and his babysitter had gotten the lizard from our store because the son had said "that it was the store we got the hermit crabs from." which had apparently been our location.

However, I searched through a couple of days of paperwork to see if I could find a record of the lizard being sold....and could find nothing. Which lead me to wonder if they'd actually bought the lizard from our store. Maybe it had been one of our sister locations.
Honestly, I would have just called the babysitter and asked her which store they'd gotten the lizard from.
But it turns out that the customer is divorced....and that it was while the son was at the ex's place that they had got the lizard. So there was very little information to go off of....

Plus...just from the description of the lizard. "Green with spots." ....it didn't sound like any lizard we sold. 
And in the past couple of days the only record for a reptile that I could find was for a "Leopard Gecko" Which while spotted...isn't green. And the name on that sale was not the name of the baby sitter....

So I couldn't do anything to help the customer with their lizard problem because I can't accept pets that we didn't sell...and I couldn't prove that we had sold it in the first place.

So the customer plans to take it to a local pet store and give it to them. 

In any case.
I'm so confused why a babysitter would do that.
Like...if I wanted to keep my job I would NOT go buying live pets for a child without the parents permission. That's just asking for trouble, for the possibility to never work for the family again.
Definitely something I wouldn't do myself. *shakes head* 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Make it Blue!

It was the end of my shift. Technically, I should have been off already but I wasn't yet because my coworkers hadn't yet shown up to replace me. And so as I was walking back to the department, I noticed a woman sitting on the ground by one of our display tanks with her little dog -maybe a Yorkie?- struggling to put a harness onto it.
So I asked her if she needed help.

To which she was like. "I was wanting this style of harness." She held up a different harness a pink one, where it only involved slipping the dogs legs through the loops and clipping the harness together on the back. "But this blue one is a different sort and I can't figure it out." 
The blue harness she'd grabbed? It's the older style where you have to slip the dog's head through a loop and then one leg through another section of the harness before clipping it together. 
Definitely not my favorite type of harness. I was with the woman in that the pink harness was much easier to put on.
Her problem? "I just don't like pink on her. My dog isn't a pink sort of girl." 
"Alright do you want me to try and find another one in blue of that sty--"
"No, no this one I bought will be fine if I can just get it to work!" 

Soo...I attempted to show her how it worked.
Only I'm pretty sure she grabbed a size too small as I couldn't get the harness around the dog without fiddling with it, but as I was trying to fiddle with it she lost her patience. 
"I can't deal with this! I just want it to fit! I don't want it to be pink!" 
And she broke down.
"I'm sorry, I'm just having a bad day, my family is being so mean to my sister, and it's horrible and it's just awful and I just can't deal right now!" 

Which :S 
Ah. 
I could sympathize a bit...I've had my own difficult days before (not with family but difficult days) where I couldn't deal with people, where minor inconveniences suddenly became intolerable.

And the poor woman had reached her breaking point.
So I tried to help....though I honestly figured the woman should just call it a day and go home to snuggle in some blankets and eat some ice cream.
Instead I tried to find her the easier harness in the blue color she wanted.
Only unfortunately....we didn't have any in that size.
I only had one in black that color.

And when I brought it back to the woman.
She was like "I don't like Pink, but Black is much worse."
Ohhkay...then.

So she ended up going with the pink one. -even though she didn't like it.

So I returned the blue harness, got her the pink one, and had her pay the difference -which nearly resulted in another breakdown when she had to press one too many buttons. *exhales*

But hey...at least in the end she got what she wanted if not what she liked....

-Sarnic Dirchi 

Come Fix It?

A Customer called on the phone today, asking if we had technicians that we could send out to people's houses/work places to check out filter systems and figure out why they aren't working.

Which....would be really cool. 
But unfortunately we don't do that. 
We're not like an electronics store where there's a 'geek squad' a...'fish squad?' that comes out when things go wrong.
We don't install tanks into people's houses, don't set up the tanks, don't come fix them when things go wrong.

I mean it would be totally cool if we did. I would love to be on the team if we did that sort of thing.

But the woman on the phone was like. "Then who do I call to get this fixed!" 
And I was like..."Have you tried these solutions yet?" 
To which she was like. "Would I need to try those solutions if the filter is only a month old when it stopped working?"
And I was like. "Well...yah....might as well try them since it isn't working, but if you can't get it to work you are still within our guarantee return day. So you could bring the filter in to return it if it still doesn't work." 

Dunno if she'll take me up on that...but hopefully one of the solutions I suggested will work out.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fish Where?

There was an older woman standing at the fish wall today. Grandma age. 
And when I approached her asking if she needed help,
She said that she wanted to get a fish.
"Alright which fish?"
But instead of just saying "A goldfish." 
She led me without a word towards the fish she wanted....

Or so I thought.
As she walked straight past the last of the fish in the fish wall.
Past the frozen food,
Past the empty tanks/stands we have for sell.
Past the doors to enter our store...
And paused nearby the registers/grooming area.

I'd followed along silently.
As she determinedly marched through the store.
Mostly because I was wondering if she was wanting a fish from our display tanks,
Or perhaps she'd already gotten a fish and she wanted me to help her check out?
Or she'd left a dead fish at the register and needed me to see it?

I had no idea.
And I was curious as to where she was going.
Like...was she even needing my help for a fish at all or had I misheard her?

She looked around, turned around and asked me. "The fish don't go this far do they?"
"No...they don't." I responded.
So she turned around and returned to the fish wall to the goldfish where I fished out a black moor for her. :) lol

Not sure why she thought the fish lasted further along the wall then they did....
But at least in the end we were able to get things figured out.

-Sarnic Dirchi 

Pull

It's surprising how customers get so confused when confronted with automatic doors that don't open.
Especially when they're in the store...and they're trying to leave it. 
They usually stand there in confusion as to why the door didn't open, or else fiddle with the lock trying to get it to open....
Not realizing that the door is usually unlocked. you just have to pull them apart to get them to open. *shakes head*
It probably confuses them because people don't know how to shut doors apparently.
Our automatic doors aren't automatic before the store opens, but are unlocked for grooming customers. And often those customers will open the doors and leave them wide open.....
Like...we had them shut for a reason....why not shut them after you opened them? Do you think you're helping us out by leaving them open? Or are you thinking they'll automatically shut behind you? Because they don't. 

*shakes head* 
I don't get customers. I really don't.

-Sarnic Dirchi

To the Rescue

So I was walking to the back of the store with a cart full of things to set up cages for our animals that would be coming in later this week.
And as I turned the corner, there was a grandmother and her grandson there.
She lit up as she saw me. "Maybe you can help!" she glanced at the cart and was like "You even have a stick!"
-Because I had branches on my cart to set up bird cages. 

And I was like. O.o ....why would you care if I have a stick? 
She did have a dog...so I briefly wondered if she was looking for a stick for her dog to catch and chew on....

But no.
She wanted a stick because her grandson had rolled his little toy car underneath our shelves and it was too deep underneath for them to be able to reach it.

Which...I was skeptical that you'd need to have a stick to reach it....I figured you'd just have to go to the right side of the aisle and if you couldn't reach from one end....go around and reach from the other side. 

Still, I took one of the branches and gamely followed them to where the lost toy car was.
I knelt down, saw that it wasn't that far in.
And reached underneath, easily grabbing the toy car without the branch. :) 

Yay!
lol the little boy was ecstatic to have his toy back. :D

-Sarnic Dirchi