Overwhelmed and Stressed

It was a simple error.
I had a coworker clean the cages in our back rooms.
According to her....for the first time. O.o
Not sure how she managed that....but it was her first time.
And for some reason she took much longer than was normal for her to do so....

In any case, part of the back room tasks is preparing for the new animals that are coming in that week.
Which involves dating the cages so that we can give the new arrivals time to adjust to being in the store before they're put onto the floor for sell.

The problem with assuming things....
Is that you usually assume wrong.

I'd assumed that the coworker would know that the dates we put on the animals aren't for the day that we prepare the bedding, but for the day the animals arrive. (as we prepare the cages a couple of days in advance in case they show up early -as it has happened before)

So...my coworker had put the wrong dates on the cages.
Which I hadn't realized, because I thought she knew that wasn't the case.

Which meant....
That the dates were wrong.
So my other coworkers....
Who didn't seem to realize either that the animals had just come in the day before....
Put out the animals too early. The Day after they'd shown up instead of a few days later.

Admittedly, they did follow directions, as they brought the animals out on the date stated on the tag....
but surely one of them had to believe something was wrong.... *shakes head*

By the time I came back into work and discovered it....
the animals would have been due out on the floor the next day.
So it would be pointless to take them off the floor only to put them back.

yet....
We're now facing the consequences for those animals coming out too early.
They've become stressed out.
And many of them have gotten sick.
So now, our nearly empty sick room where we treat animals to get them healthy...is over flowing with animals are sick.

*exhales*

All of this could have been avoided...had only my coworkers been paying attention, had I only noticed the dates were wrong and corrected my coworker....

Live and Learn I suppose.

-Sarnic Dirchi