The Red Factor

We had a customer come into the store today that....tried to strong arm us into breaking a policy.
I was in the back doing cleaning tasks when he apparently first came in. 
As I heard a call over the intercom for someone in my dept to go to birds.
I hadn't hoped that my coworker who was actually in that same area would deal with the customer, but it's notorious for my coworkers to not be where I expect them to be when customers need help.
So I made my way up to the front.

To see a guy coming back from the cashier, wanting to know if either one of us knew anything about the two canaries we had for sale. Particularly the "Red Factor" we had. (A red canary, the other was yellow) As he was pretty confident it was a girl, but wanted to know for sure.

Unfortunately we couldn't tell him that answer, as we'd only had the two of them in for like a week.
And with canaries, as young as they are, it's difficult to tell their gender easily. The difference is very slight, becoming much easier to tell when they're older.
So we go by the two main things with canaries.
If it lays an egg, it's a female.
If it sings, it's a male. 

The man was confident the red canary was a female.
-Which I halfway agree with because I've noticed that the females tend to have a bit of brown to them, and this canary has a patch of brown on it's head. 
But someone else had written a note saying that the red was a male....
Sooo...who knows. I haven't heard any singing, haven't seen any eggs so I couldn't say for sure what gender they were.

Regardless, the man was like: "I want this bird, but I want you to hold it for me for a week." 
To which I responded. "I'm sorry we can't do that." 
"Are you a manager?" He demanded. 
Which...."No, I'm not." but I have more experience in my department and with than animals than any of my other managers currently soooo THERE! 
But I continued with: "No I'm not, but we have a policy where we don't hold animals because there's too much of a chance of miscommunication to happen and having the animal accidentally getting sold to the wrong person, so we don't hold animals." There's also the chance the person would never come back, or that the animal would die before the person comes to get it. Sooo therefore we don't hold animals.
At most, under certain circumstances, and only with manager approval will we hold an animal, but it's never been longer than the end of the day. 
We'll also do like temporary holds because we have people come from like 4 hours away to visit our store so if a customer calls and asks if we have an animal in stock we can put a temporary "Don't sell this animal because a customer is coming to grab it." hold on it. 

But for a week?
No. We don't hold animals for that long. Ever. 

The man didn't like that saying: "I'm going to Florida for a week! I need to have this bird, else if it's gone when I get back I'm going to be super pissed off!" 

Which. Geez. Chill out grandpa. (He was older grey haired, but not a friendly grandpa, no he was intimidating) 

But I am the sort of person to help out.
And I did have the thought that we could take the canary off the floor and put it in a back room where we keep animals we don't have room on the floor for for the week. 
But I didn't voice this outloud, because a) I didn't like the guy's attitude and b)it wasn't policy.
But I played nice and said "I can't hold the bird, but I'll go double check with the manager for you." 

So I escaped away from him for a little bit to check in with the Head Manager.
Who said No. 
And stated the exact same reasons I had already told the customer.
So I returned to him again and told him that we couldn't hold the bird.

To which he finally resigned himself to it. Though I did ask him if he couldn't purchase the bird today and have someone watch it.
To which he said No, he didn't have anyone like that.

However, in the conversation that continued after that. It turns out he has a Red canary already that is a male and that he wants a female so that he can create a breeding red factor pair.

-Which my sister later pointed out....if he already owns a red male canary...why couldn't he have bought the one in the store today? Obviously someone has to be watching that bird already, so why not have them watch two?

In any case. The man left the store, with his fingers crossed that the Canary will still be there after a week. 
But not without a parting word to my cashier, that he thought the manager was a Chicken for not being willing to hold the bird. 

>.< Which. Excuse me? Just because we don't bow to your whims and wants and desires doesn't mean that my manager is a chicken. He's following policy. We're ensuring that we don't end up with a dead animal, an animal that we can't sell, or unhappy customers. We're looking out for the animal/customers. 

Honestly, I can't decide if I want someone to buy the red canary while he's out of town, or if I want it to still be here when he gets back in town. *shakes head* I don't know.

But it is interesting that he required four of us telling him that we can't hold the bird for a week before he was willing to give up on trying to get us to hold the bird for him.
As he asked the Cashier who said No. But the cashier also double checked by calling the VP manager...who also said No. Then he talked to me, and I said no. And I went and checked with the head manager....who also said No. 
*shakes head*

Geez. Some customers. 

-Sarnic Dirchi