The Bulbs

It's always the little questions that mess me up.

It's the questions that question my actions when I'm doing things that mess me up actually.

Especially when it's put to me by a manager.

So.

For the last two months (not much of an exaggeration)

I've been bugging the managers to order more light bulbs for our reptiles.

Particularly the Heat bulbs for them.

as I'd run out, and I had light bulbs going out all over the place.

Which meant reptiles were going without their heat.

Finally.

Finally.

I got the manager into such a position in which they finally ordered me the lightbulbs I desperately needed.

And today.

A handful of them came in.

So as quickly as possible, I set out to replace the lightbulbs I could with that amount. (only about half of them)

And the manager who ordered the lightbulbs walked by as I was in the middle of that.

He paused to check out what I was doing.

And happened to be observant enough to notice.

That the size of the light bulb I was taking out wasn't the same size as the light bulb I was putting in.

-As we have four possible lights I could put in.

Smaller White. Smaller Red. Larger White. Larger Red.

Out of the ones I'd ordered.

Only the Smaller White -the daytime heat bulbs-

Had come in.

But 3 of the 5 bulbs I needed to change were Larger White.

So obviously his question was. "Why aren't you replacing it with the same size?"

Obvious answer was I had no other light bulbs since the others hadn't arrived yet. And some heat was better than no heat.

Easy answer. I mean the smaller bulbs are meant for the more tropical environments. The tanks of reptiles that need temperatures in the 80s-90s and not the 90s-100s. Also smaller bulb for smaller tank. Larger bulb for larger tank.

Of course... answering that "Some heat is better than none" opened the flood gates of other questions.

Mostly along the lines of "How do you know which size bulb to put in which tank? What happens if more bulbs come in tomorrow on your day off? How will anyone know what to do?!"

With me already being sleep deprived, stressed, and with a headache.

It wasn't a good combination of questions to throw at me.

How do you explain something you already know?

It's like trying to explain the color red to a blind person.

How do you do that?

Okay, not so difficult.

The answers would be: "The desert reptiles need the larger bulbs, the larger tanks need the larger bulbs, the tropical reptiles need the smaller bulbs, smaller tanks need smaller bulbs."

"We have guides listed here" *points to small card holders*

"They can switch out the lightbulbs by that."

But it didn't come out quite that elegant for reasons stated above.

I struggle to explain things when I figure people already should know them and the fact that they don't them throws me off.

Thankfully the manager got distracted and basically decided "Okay, if we get bulbs in tomorrow we'll just wait for you to come in on Saturday and have you change them then."

Yah....that works too. *shakes head*

Note to self.

Work on explaining things better.

Teach my coworkers what bulbs go with what tanks of reptiles....

-Sarnic Dirchi