Let Me Put My Stuff Down First

 So there I was, coming out of the clock in room, having just clocked in for my shift.

But I was still 'undercover' in a way as I hadn't yet gone back into the breakroom to put my purse and my jacket hiding my uniform from view away. 

Like nothing about my look would indicate that I 'worked' there and wasn't a fellow shopper besides the fact that I had just come out of a door that wasn't marked.

And this customer standing nearby was like "Do you work here?" 

Which...yes..I do work here. But like dude....can you not see that I just got here?

I'm literally standing there with my purse over my shoulder and a jacket hiding my work shirt.

Does it look like I work here? No. No it does not. 

Honestly....I don't know why the guy would assume that I worked there when I still had my purse with me. Like has he ever seen us wandering around this store with our purses over our shoulders? No. 

*exhales*

But he wanted to know if we had more of a certain type of canned dog food in the back.

Which easy enough to check. (We didn't) 

But still. I wish he would have waited to ask for help until after I put my stuff down or asked someone wearing a visible uniform. 

*shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Training Class?

 Sometimes you gotta wonder about people's sanity.

So today is Black Friday right?

Crowds of people thronging everywhere hoping to find good deals on things to buy for Christmas.

It's been even more...well...stressful with the pandemic going on. Since tons of people gathering together could mean another uptick in cases in the next couple of weeks. 

So it's expected for it to be like a really super busy Saturday.

And like...I'd hope that people would choose to shop online instead of coming into the store.

But towards the middle of the day. 

One of my coworkers asked if it was okay that someone was holding a random dog training class within our store.

Which we have people come in all the time for like general obedience sort of training. Usually one on one stuff to get the dog used to interacting in the real world, so we don't really mind that.

But apparently it was a whole group of people (unsure how many people but more than the one on one) holding a training class in the back of the store.

Which A) you can't do that in our store. We only officially allow training classes to be taught in the store by our own dog trainers. 
And this is mostly done for safety purposes. Because if a dog gets hurt within the store we can be liable for that. So to decrease any potential issues we don't allow random people to hold random classes in our location. 

and B) Why would anyone think it would be a good idea to hold a class on Black Friday? Like aka the BUSIEST day of the year? With so many people thronging into the store... it's gonna be loud. People are gonna be wanting to access product and if the class is blocking said product That's not good.

But also like. C) We're in the middle of a PANDEMIC.

Why in the world do you think it's okay to hold a class on the busiest day of the year in a pandemic especially when we have cases skyrocketing? Like No. No. No.

Our Dog Trainer ended up telling the unofficial class they had to leave.

But like still....I don't get it. Why would anyone think that it's a good idea to hold training this day? *shakes head* 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Ads Ads and More Ads

I ended up clocking out over an hour late tonight.

Because it took my coworkers and I longer than expected to set out the black friday ad after we closed today. 

Though I wasn't surprised it took us a couple of hours as that's how long it took us to put out an ad a couple of weeks ago. 

And if we'd been able to start the ad a bit before closing it probably would have gone quicker.

But nope.

Took us 2 hours to get it done.

So we all clocked out an hour later than expected.

*exhales*

So tired.

So very tired. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Can't Press That

I got stuck on register helping customers for a bit. And I had a customer come through the line who wanted to pay for a nail service that was done for their dog. 

Only they weren't happy because they'd been told on the phone that the service would cost $13 but they were being charged $15 for it.

After checking with the Head Manager, I got the okay to adjust the price. 

And it should have been a simple transaction after that point.

Only the customer apparently was a germaphobe.

Because they refused to touch the pin pad in order to complete their transaction.

But like...I couldn't see why they were being so paranoid about it because I had literally cleaned off the pin pad seconds before they were to use it because the customer in front of them hadn't been wearing a mask so to be safe I was doing a deeper clean on everything that customer had touched.

But this customer was like "No one ever cleans the creases though!!"

Like...because people don't have to? MOST people just touch the middle of the button. 

But the customer was acting like a stubborn 3 year old 'trying' to press the button but 'failing' to press the right one to finish the transaction.

I finally had to press the button for them in order to move the line along.

But like if you're that paranoid about touching things why come into the store at all? Were you like this when you touched the door of the grooming salon to enter and exit it to get your dog? Why weren't you wearing gloves if you were so worried about it?

*exhales*

It was annoying. So very annoying. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Grooming Appointment

Gotta love the stress of a Saturday morning.

I had a customer call the store wanting to know if they could get their dog into the salon for grooming.

Today.

And well..the groomers were quite busy and even though I informed them they had a call on hold like twice...they couldn't get to the phone. 

But I already figured that they wouldn't be able to get someone in for a groom today.

Because this is the Saturday before Thanksgiving, and from what I was told by the Groomers is like the busiest Saturday of the year. -i would think around Christmas would be busier...but who knows.

So I ended up getting on the phone with the customer and telling them that there were no openings.

But instead of being uncomplicated and going "Okay." and hanging up they were like "What about tomorrow? What about next week?"

*exhales*

I ended up telling them that the groomers were booked out through at least Mid December.

Though the Groomers themselves were like "til the end of the year!" 

So who knows.

But basically it's kinda amusing that people think they can get their animals in for a groom on the same day right now.

As due to the pandemic we can't have as many groomers in our grooming salon to ensure that social distancing is being done.

Which means we can't schedule as many appointments....

Sooo many people have to schedule their dogs to be groomed months in advance. 

Yah....I don't envy the people who want to try and get their dogs groomed last minute. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Guinea Woes

So we got in some guinea pigs yesterday from our supplier. Just like three...which is semi concerning when we have Black Friday around the corner and who knows what sort of animals people will be wanting that day.

In any case, upon opening the back room this morning, I noticed that one of the guinea pigs was acting...off. Very lethargic, hardly moving from it's spot.

Picking him up, I knew right away that this guinea pig wasn't doing well as he was pretty limp in my grip. Hardly struggling at all. And I noted that when he tried to move, it was rather shaky, like he couldn't stand up straight. 

It wasn't a good sign.

And I was already semi preparing for the worst case scenario being that he wouldn't last the day.

I took him over to our head manager and they agreed that we needed to get him to a vet.

So I called our regular vet asking if they could see him today...but they couldn't.

So I tried calling our back up vet...only to discover that they no longer had an exotics vet at their location...

So last resort was I took the guinea pig to the vet in the store, which they don't normally see exotics because none of the vets there are familiar with their care, but it was better than nothing.

And the vet on duty decided that we probably should try and get some baytril into him, but he would need time to create a dosage specifically for guinea pigs.

So I took said guinea pig to our iso room to wait for the meds...but checking on him a little bit later, like I don't think an hour had passed...I noted that he was lying on his side now...barely moving. Kinda struggling to breathe...and I figured that that he probably wasn't going to make it.

Like if he lived the hour I would have been surprised.

I ended up flagging down the vet and informing him that I seriously doubted he was going to live.

And the vet was like "Well maybe we should just inject him with straight baytril, bring him over."

I didn't think it would do much, and upon bringing him back over to the vet and seeing the state he was in--which the vet was shocked at how quickly the guinea pig had gone down hill, he agreed that at this stage -where he was lying on his side barely moving and hardly breathing....that we should go ahead and euthanize him because he'd passed the point of recovery.

*exhales* :( I hate it when we have to euthanize pets...especially when this guinea pig had been in our care under 24 hours. Like...that's quick for him to go downhill especially when he'd looked okay in my brief glimpse of him when he came in yesterday.

*exhales* Not easy...but hopefully he's resting easier now. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Spider!

 Kids can be funny sometimes.

I had a little boy come into the store to look at the fish and such and pick out ones that he wanted---which turns out the fish 'tank' they had was like a 'fish bowl' instead and they wanted to put 2 glofish and 2 goldfish in that bowl...so I ended up talking the parent into buying a bigger tank with a heater ad filter to help the fish live better.

But while they were looking at the fish, the kid happened to glance over to our wall of care guides -just pamphlets on how to take care of various fish/creatures/animals.

And he proceeded to scream and freak out (in a none serious way, kinda having fun sort of way) over an image of a tarantula that was on one of the pamphlets. *shakes head* 

lol the parent was less than amused by the kid's antics, but I found it rather funny.

Especially when the kid was like "I told the lady I talked to earlier that I hoped I wouldn't see any spiders here and she told me we wouldn't but I just did!"

lol....probably a good thing I didn't point out the cage where had the actual live tarantula sitting. *shakes head* The kid probably would have screamed a lot louder. XD lol. 

-Sarnic Dirchi