The Crooked Finger

I had just started to gravel vacuum some of our fish tanks as part of our daily maintenance of the store, when I heard my name from the cashier. I looked up, as more often than not, my name is said in conjunction with the other coworker pointing me out to a customer. I was correct. There was a woman in a purple shirt standing by our display tanks.
But instead of coming towards me, now that I had been pointed out to her.
She instead crooks her finger towards me in the universal "come here" gesture, and then disappears out of view. I thought she'd just taken a step out of range, but as I put the gravel vacuum down, faintly irritated that her demeanor was one of a mother calling to a naughty child, I went up to the display tanks...and she wasn't there.
What is it about customers and not being able to stay put?? If you want me to come to you, stay put. I don't want to have to spend time hunting for you all over the store.
In any case, I finally found her five aisles over, with another one of my coworkers who was opening up a hamster cage for her.
So more irritation, are you so impatient that you can't wait the four seconds it would have taken me to walk over to you and went and found someone else?
No.
Apparently she just wanted to have everyone in the store at her beck and call.
I'm guessing she was showing her son a hamster or something.
But when I got within range, she in a 'I expect you to obey me right away' voice said. "I need a bag of small crickets. The tiniest ones you have."
"Okay." I said waiting for her to tell me how many I would need to bag for her.
"The teeniest tiniest teeny ones alright?" She repeated, using the 'itty bitty' finger gesture to ensure that I understood her. Which I did the first time.
"Okay." I said.
"The tiniest." She repeated.
Obviously....she'd never shopped here before. So I finally asked. "And how many do you want?"
She gave me this surprised face. "You mean they aren't pre-bagged!"
*exhales* "No."
I mean, we do -if we have time- pre-bag up crickets for customers so that we're not always called over to crickets to bag them up. But even if we had had some already pre-bagged so early in the day. (which we didn't, that usually doesn't happen til after lunch time.)
I would still have had to ask how many she wanted because the pre-bagged ones come in different numbers as well.
"I can bag you up as many as you want." I continued.
She stared at me like I was crazy. "How many do I need? How much are they?" She asked me in rapid fire.
"They're 13 cents each, and it depends on what type of reptile you have." I told her.
As different lizards eat different amounts. A crested gecko usually only eats like 10 a week, but a Bearded Dragon could eat like 60 crickets in a week.
"It's a lizard." she said. "How long do the crickets live?"
Lizard doesn't tell me much lady. "They live around two weeks if you take care of them. Just give them food and such."
"So how many should I get?"
"It depends on how big your lizard is. What kind he is."
"I don't know. It's a lizard!"
"What kind of lizard?"
"I don't know. It's a small mountain one my son caught."
Also very not helpful. *shakes head* It could be a variety of lizards, but more than likely it was a Horny Toad as those are the most common wild caught animals to come in the store.
So I finally told her that 24 should be enough for the week. It's a nice common number for the smaller numbers.
She agreed to it.
And I gladly left the woman to go grab those crickets.
And did I get the teeniest, tiniest crickets?
No.
I gave her whatever small crickets I happened to catch.

So hopefully the lizard was able to eat them just fine.
Because I was totally done dealing with this woman.

-Sarnic Dirchi