Not Comprehending

Some of the more frustrating customers I have to deal with are the ones who don't listen.

It may be that I'm talking too fast for them to wrap their minds around what I'm saying.
But it's frustrating to be talking and then have to repeat what you said earlier again.
and again.
and again.
and again.
and again.

To no apparent effect.

It's like being caught in short term memory loss with these particular customers. (even though they shouldn't have that problem.)

The ones who don't listen.....or better yet. The ones who can't comprehend what I'm saying.

Those are slightly worse.
Because obviously how I'm saying what I'm saying isn't computing to them.
And I have no idea how to change what I'm saying to a structure that they can easily understand.

Honestly, I halfway think they don't want to understand. That they purposely choose to not listen to see what they can get away with. *rolls eyes* Which you'd think once I repeat the same thing over and over again....they'd get the hint.

So.
I probably should get to the actual story shouldn't I?

It all comes down to our fish.
Where most of the communication troubles seem to happen I feel like.

You see.
We have three separate walls of fish.
Mostly because we're a bigger older store and therefore have more fish. lol.

And those three walls of fish hold four different types of communities of fish.
Goldfish.
Cichlids.
Semi-Aggressive
And Tropical Community (mellow)

And it's recommended that you don't mix the communities as fish can pick on and kill each other if you do.

Unsurprisingly.
Customers want to try and mix the different fish together.

So to try and help out the customers, we've color coded the different fish communities.
So if I say "All the Green tags will go together."
That literally means. "All the fish that have green tags will go together."
I literally point at these color tags to show them the difference between Green and Blue and Red and Orange etc.

I also tend to point out which fish will go together.
So I'll say. "This entire wall is Green so you can pick from it." It shouldn't be too hard to understand? Right? Right.

Wrong.

So. Actual story this time.
I had a family come in. Parents and child.
Who'd just gotten a tank set up.
And had come to buy fish.
Yay.

The mother was looking at our Cichlids. Which are the "We will eat other fish" aggressive fish.
Thinking she'd get one.
But I told her "They'll eat other fish." Which quickly dissuaded her from the idea.
And the husband was like. "I want fish that school! Which ones do that!"
So I moved our ladder as it's easier to create a defined 'wall' when saying which fish go together. And told them. "Okay, everything to the right of this ladder is a schooling fish and will go together."

Which was basically one entire wall of fish, plus a small section of the second wall.

Simple right?
If the fish is to the right of the ladder. It will go with the fish.
It should be obvious that the fish to the left of the ladder won't go with the ones on the right of the ladder? Right? There's enough info there to connect the dots. Right?

Ha.
Apparently not.
So I further clarified. "If you see these green tags. It means the fish will go together."

Apparently....
They were caught up in the word "Schooling"
As they thought all the fish would school together.
No. I further explained. (as I'd already explained it before...)
That the fish would only school if they were the same family.
So Platys with Platys. Tetras with Tetras. Mollies with Mollies.

That took a while to get through to them.
And then they seemed to not understand that when I said "the whole wall"
I actually meant the "Whole wall"
They got stuck looking at just platys and mollies.
When there were a bunch of other fish that they were completely ignoring.

I never got them to see the rest of that wall.
But I did get through to them schooling fish and what to buy to make the fish happy.
So there was progress there.

I probably would have put the incident behind me.
If the next customers in line hadn't basically ended up making me go through the same act.

Once more.
"Everything from this point." Gestures to ladder "On" gestures to the wall "Will go together."
"You have to stick within the same colored tags." I later add in.

This set of customers a mother with two children.
Struggled with that.
The child in charge of picking the fish kept wandering to the other colors.
To which I had to explain more than once that those fish wouldn't do well with the others.....
*shakes head*

And they couldn't remember what colors they'd picked either.
"Did we go with blue or green?" "Were they blue or green?" "We picked blue right?"
Me: "No you picked green."
"Ah"

At least this group managed to see the entire wall....
At least they stuck to one color.

But oh.
It was so frustrating that I had to repeat the same thing over and over again.
So.
Very.
Frustrating.

To the point I began to wonder if I was speaking a different language.
Because honestly....how hard can it be to pick a fish within the same family?

Hard apparently.
My guess it's like a 'kid in the candy store' sort of syndrome.
So many choices means that the brain is too caught up in the possibilities to listen to instructions to help narrow down the choices.

Yah...its probably something like that....

-Sarnic Dirchi