Frustrated

It's frustrating when I'm not able to help customers out.

I had two such encounters today.

One was with a grandmother aged lady. 
Who had a puppy she was trying to find a doggy gate or pen for to a) keep the puppy confined to certain areas of the house and b) prevent the puppy from getting into the front yard when she went outside. 

And it was frustrating.
Because the customer ended up taking a phone call halfway through our interaction.
Leaving me to play with her puppy as she was a bit too distracted trying to hear the voice on the other end to pay attention to her dog who kept trying to jump out of the cart to go to her.
Plus I hadn't finished trying to explain how doggie pens would work and what size they were and such.

Which when she finally got off the phone, I continued to help her.
Except she wasn't impressed with the pens.
Mostly because you couldn't stake them down.
And she was worried her puppy would knock it over. 
>.>
Not sure...it was like a four pound puppy. But okay.

So I led her to the gates. 
To which she was very specific. "It had to be eight feet wide outside" because that was the distance between the houses.
Unfortunately the gates don't go that....long. As they're meant for more normal doorway lengths.

-And at the same time there was another customer at those gates too who wanted help so I was multitasking between the two. 

*exhales*
In any case. I was getting frustrated.
Mostly because I couldn't figure out how to explain things properly to the customer. Couldn't make the words come. 
So I finally requested my manager to come help me.

As by this point my maybe 5 minute interaction had become a twenty-five minute ordeal and I just wanted to get back to finishing cleaning the reptile cages.
-It took me an hour to get back to them because of course we had a rush then.-

But the manager came just about the point I was trying to explain getting a tie-out for her puppy so the dog could be on a leash and the leash would be staked to the ground so the puppy couldn't go out into the front.
And he took over.

And I....I walked straight into another customer.
Who was desperately tryin to find some protection for her service dog.
As she'd come from out of town and hadn't even thought about the winter weather and was taken off guard by how cold it got this week and was worried ordering something online would take too long and she didn't want her dog to get too cold/wet/etc because the dog is often outside for long periods of time.

So she'd come in for a raincoat.
Which we have....seasonally.
Specifically she was looking for one that had a hood, and would protect both the back and the stomach of the dog. 

We didn't have anything like that.
I had a handful of winter coats....without hoods.
And I had hooded raincoats....that didn't really cover the torso.

And she kept staring at me, expecting me to be able to wave my hand and give her the specific coat she was wanting.
Only I can't do that.

I think she ended up buying two coats and layering them.
Not sure. 

But yah.
It's been just a frustrating day customer wise.

Culminating with a customer being unhappy that I told her she couldn't have her dog in the cat adoption area because not all cats like dogs and we don't want to stress them out. 
And she was like "They love the dog!"
And I was like "It's policy still."
"Where?!"
And directed her to the sign we had on the glass that said "NO DOGS INSIDE" 

She wasn't happy with me.
But hey.
I'm just trying to look out for the animals here. 

*exhales*
I'm so ready for it to be the weekend. 

-Sarnic Dirchi