Yelling

So a customer called the store asking if we had a certain type of dog cone in stock. One of the inflatable ones.
Only it was for a kitten that she'd just gotten fixed.
So she needed the cone to be itty bitty. 

….I don't carry that size. 

But while I was trying to explain that to the customer....

She suddenly starts yelling.

Not at me.

But I'm guessing it was at her kids? 
Though at the same time I feel bad if they are her kids.
Because she was just being so....mean. Yelling at them for a good minute or two while I was on the other side of the phone.....holding it out away from my ear so I wouldn't go deaf.

Like. First off.
Why yell at kids? 
Like...she was apparently using a corded phone....or maybe her cellphone was plugged in? Idk she was yelling at the young ones for standing on the 'cord'
Second....why do you have a corded phone if that's what you're using?? O.o 

But yah.
She seemed at her wits end.
Trying to deal with kids.
And trying to find a solution for her cat. 

Which I was giving her possible ones....she just didn't want those to be her solution. *shakes head*

But yah.
Not a fun way to end the work day.
Getting  your ear yelled off....
Like I wasn't even the focus of it.
But it still put a damper on the day. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fast Fast

Giant Day Geckos are Evil. 

Not specifically evil evil.

But they're definitely difficult to work with. 

*exhales*
Because those creatures are FAST.

Like I thought Anoles were fast. 
These day geckos?

Are faster.

They're like the 'blink and you're gone' fast.

Which makes doing the bedding change for them extremely difficult.

Because I have to catch the lizard and put it in a different container so I can clean out the cage. 

And the Day Gecko we have in currently.
Is such a spaz.

Like you look at him wrong and he's zooming about the cage.

The gecko nearly escaped like four times. 

Definitely nerve wracking. 
Because the gecko was FAST.

Gah.
So stressful.

Thankfully I managed to get him out and into the container and then back into the cage without him escaping.

But definitely will be happy for that one to go find a good home.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Need $$$

I had a couple of teenagers come into the store today. Younger ones, like high school aged...maybe. They looked young. In any case. The two girls wanted to pet one of the kitties.
And they basically fell in love with the cat, taking video that they wanted to post online and talking about seeing if they could earn the money by the end of the week to be able to adopt out the kitty and if their friends would help them out.

Which was thoughtful of them.
Because they didn't want the kitty to remain there at work longer than necessary. 
*shakes head*

The main problem with that....
Is that they didn't appear to be 18.
Which is how old you have to be to adopt out a kitty.

So even if they were able to earn the money before the weekend.
They wouldn't be able to adopt the kitty without a parent being there. 

I am curious on whether or not they'll try to do it.
I hope not.
But I am curious.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Small Spaces

A customer showed me a picture of her fish that she has, wanting me to identify what sort of fish it was.

From the looks. 

It was a goldfish.

Yet. When I told her that the customer was like "BUT IT DOESN'T ACT LIKE A GOLDFISH" 

Why?

Because it just lays at the bottom of its ONE GALLON bowl all day and doesn't go up to the surface to eat food.

So she wanted to get another goldfish to give her current one a friend.

Which is a good idea because goldfish are social and like to have a buddy.

EXCEPT

the fish in a BOWL a one gallon bowl.

Already it's too small for one fish.

Especially because in the picture the goldfish looks to already be a good 3 inches or so long already.

Which means it's too big for the bowl.

And she wants to put ANOTHER one in. 

Despite my best attempts to tell her to get a bigger tank or a tank with a filter.

She was insistent that the bowl would be fine.

*exhales*

So I told her she would need to change the water more often than she had been.

Because she wasn't taking no for an answer.

And got her another goldfish.

Hopefully it does alright.

But we'll see....

-Sarnic Dirchi

Stockpiling

I'd just gotten back from lunch and was walking back to my department when I saw a customer down the filter aisle with a handbasket in well hand, standing on one of our stepstools reaching into our overstock shelves.

What was he doing?

Pulling out filter cartridges and piling them into the basket.
He must have put thirty boxes of 2 pack or 6 pack filters in there.

And wiped us out of all filters of that size...but one box.
*shakes head*

So considerate of him to leave ONE.
When the boxes of filter cartridges he bought were for our most POPULAR tanks.
Like we have at least a dozen people every week asking for them.
And he left us with ONE.

I really hope there were some on today's truck.
Because otherwise we're doomed until Saturday if not next Wednesday.

*exhales*
I don't understand why he needed to stock up with so many though.
Like I happened to pass the register when he was checking out.
And he spent $300 on those cartridges. 

*shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

Tell Me All About It

Had a customer come into the store today looking to get some sort of filtration system for his 75 gallon tank, which it's pretty easy to guide customers to the filters and help them pick out one, but he proceeded to pull out his phone -because he'd been doing his own research- and showed me this electronic filter system he'd found online.
Which appeared to be super cool! I mean electronic filters that tell you when things that need to be replaced and make it super easy to keep the filters clean and such? 
It's awesome.

Only.
I'd never seen or heard of them before.

And the customer was expecting me to give my opinion on them and tell me about them and how to set them up....

And like...dude I don't know.
I hadn't known it existed before that moment.
I don't sell it in the store.
I didn't osmosis the information needed by staring at the screen of your phone. 

*shakes head*

I did my best to tell him about the filters we DID carry.
But he wasn't sold on them.
and left to go check out other ones elsewhere. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Which Powder?

A customer came into the store today looking for a specific powder to put on his dog's nails to stop it from bleeding because he hit the quick and needed to make it stop. 

But my coworker couldn't remember what it was called and so asked over the radios if we had any "septic" powder.

They meant to ask stypic powder.

And when I asked to double check.

the manager was like "Stypic/Septic. Same thing really." 

*shakes head*
No...no its not. 
*shakes head*

But I was able to help the customer find the stypic powder he needed. So yay. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Difference?

Had a customer in the store today, who wondered if the scorpions we had were poisonous.
Which they're not.
They're venomous. 

And when I corrected him the dude was like "Eh. Poisonous, Venomous. It's the same thing."

No.
No it's not.
Poisonous things are things you injest.
Venomous things are things that bite you/sting you.

Yah.
Not sure the dude liked being corrected.

-Sarnic Dirchi

No Cats?

I happened to be by our adoption table when a woman approached.

I'd just been asking the group that had shown up with a handful of dogs if their adoption group would be bringing any cats.

To which the representative said that they weren't going to have any cats right now.

Which was when the woman basically stepped in.

"You have no cats?!"

"No, we do." I quickly disagreed.

Because we did. A different adoption group currently had cats in our adoption area as we have space for adoption groups to keep cats within the store and each group switches who's cats are in the store each month.

"They're just from a different adoption group." 

But the woman didn't seem to hear me.

"So you have no cats?" she repeated.

"We do--"

But even after repeating myself like twice more....

She didn't seem to comprehend.

She was entirely focused on the representative in front of her and wasn't paying any real attention to me because she was looking for a specific cat that wouldn't trigger allergies. 

*exhales*

Unfortunately I couldn't direct the woman to the adoptions because we didn't have any of the types of cats -Ragdolls or Russian Blues- that she was looking for either. 

But I did see her later on looking at the cats.

So at least she found them eventually. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

What's In The Box?

So I was in the back behind the fishwall when I got a call over the radio asking if I wanted to see a snake.

Which knowing that we weren't expecting any more snakes in....it had to be a customer bringing in a snake.
So it was either a visiting snake that a customer had brought in because it was their pet....

Or someone had found a snake and wanted us to either a) take it or b) identify it or c) something else.

So I go out to the main floor to see this guy with a cardboard box.
So my immediate thought was that it was a wild snake.

Nope.

Apparently the customer does a bit of maintenance for buildings like maybe an apartment complex or a house that's been rented out or something.

And while he was there....

He discovered a snake under the fridge.

O.o A random place to find a snake.

But said snake was in the box.

I was half expecting it to be a wild snake.
Like a garden or gopher and really hopefully not a rattlesnake.

Nope.

It was a ball python

A good sized one too.
Not like full grown.
But it was nearly as wide around as my wrist (though I have thin wrists) and was a good two to three feet long.

So a nice big snake compared to the babies I get into the store. 

And the dude was wanting to know what sort of things he would need to be able to care for it. 

Which makes sense. He hasn't been around snakes much and we have.

lol but apparently he was afraid to handle it because it had 'eaten in a while' from what he'd gathered.

-Not sure how long the owners had been gone....but the snake was now his to keep.

Generally though ball pythons are pretty mellow, so I had no fear in picking him up.

Poor thing was shedding and such.

But seeing me handle the snake so easily gave the guy the confidence to handle it as well.
As he hadn't really done it before that point afraid that it would bit him.

lol by the time he left the store he definitely was enamored with the snake.
Holding it confidently with a big smile on his face.

It was a great moment. ^^;;

-Sarnic Dirchi

A New Theme

Apparently my manager is looking to redecorate our breakroom.
Repaint the walls.
Do different decorations.
Buy new chairs---as two of the old ones we had ended up getting broken by the third party crew that we brought in to help with our reset like three weeks back. 
so we're down a couple of chairs.

In any case.
The manager wants to redecorate and was like "What theme should we go with? We have under the sea currently, we want something different." (More of a beach theme really)

He wanted to know what my ideas were...

And naturally my mind went with 'opposites' 
Water/Land
So Sea/Forest

So I was like "We could do a forest like theme"

And we have a bit of forest fish decorations.
So I was like "We could also do China, Greece, Pirate---"
Because those are the types of fish decorations we have. 

But the manager seemed to love the idea of forest theme.
And has been talking about commissioning one of our cashiers to paint a mural on the walls.
He was thinking maybe doing 'fox and the hound' themed (like the Disney movie) and creating a giant papermache tree to hang the associate of the month pictures on and get some soft comfy charis and---

lol I'll be curious to see what actually ends up happening.
But it was fun to see the manager get so excited over my simple "Forest theme" idea. ^^;;

-Sarnic Dirchi

One or Two?

Had a customer come into the store today wanting a guinea pig.

Though she was undecided if she wanted just one or two of them.

As she'd heard that they do best in groups.

Which is true. 

But she wasn't certain she wanted more than one.

So I suggested she try the one for now and helped her pick out which one she wanted.

But then after like fifteen or so minutes.

While she's at the register, she ended up deciding she wanted a second guinea pig after all.

So I adjusted the paperwork accordingly, and grabbed the guinea pig from the cage to place in the box with his buddy.

Hopefully she enjoys both of them. :)

-Sarnic Dirchi

Did I Say Medium? No.

Had a customer come in the store today and ask me if I could grab him some crickets.
Since he didn't specify what size he wanted...
I asked him the age old question: "Large or Small?" 

To which I got the typical response. 

"Medium." 

*exhales*

Did you hear me say "Medium?" 
No.
I said Large. OR Small. 

Aka.
I don't have Medium.
If I had medium I would have asked you "Large,  Medium, or Small."

*shakes head* 

Seriously.

So I was like "I have large or small"

Which only seemed to confuse the poor customer further, having denied him his Medium crickets.

But he eventually decided that he wanted the large ones.

Honestly....
If people tell me 'Medium' I really should just grab large for them.
Because that's what they usually go for in the end.

And it will save me the extra two minutes it takes the customer to figure out what size they actually want. 

At least he got his crickets in the end. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Cages Cages

So at work we have 2 endcaps of reptile cages.
So like 21 reptile cages total of varying sizes divided between the two spaces.

And a while ago my manager was trying to get rid of one because most of those cages had been empty for like....ever.
Because for whatever reason our breeders weren't sending us snakes....and so we had like 7? cages meant for snakes and only like 2 or 3 filled at a time.

But with some creative juggling.
I actually got to the point where only 2 cages on one side were full (so like 8/10 cages were empty)
Which the manager wanted me to do so we could show that we weren't getting much use out of having 2 endcaps of reptiles.

Which like a week or two later...
We ended up getting a ton of reptiles in lol. So we now actually use a lot of the cages. 

In any case.

We have this one large cage -meant for tortoises that was part of those 'we don't use this any more' cages because it's....well the lid is broken. So we can't fully utilize it. 

And pricing it out.
The cage costs like....$500 to replace. 
O-O So expensive.
I understand why previous managers haven't done it.

But today.
The manager was looking at that cage and musing about potential things we could do.

and he was talking about getting rid of all three of our larger cages.
-Like 4 feet long large-
Because we don't really use them to their full potential.
And the bigger bottom ones are just...hard to clean and hard to see into. 

So we talked about replacing the three large ones with slightly smaller ones so that we could fit two medium sized cages in those slots.
And thereby be able to use them more effectively because most of the animals we get in are tiny/small and don't need that full 4 feet of space.

-It was meant for tortoises, turtles and Chinese water dragons.
But currently only the tortoises are being used in the large tank.
2 of the others remain empty.

And those 2 are still empty.

But we got in the reptile shipment today.
And what was inside?

Two more tortoises.
Meaning that we now have 3 in one cage.
Meaning that we do need the larger cage to house them lol. 

The manager was semi frustrated with that lol. XD lol
Everytime he talks about doing something with the reptile cages, we end up needing to use what we already have lol. 

-Sarnic Dirchi 

Run?

Had a customer come up to me today asking how old their puppy has to be before they can tolerate longer walks/runs.

O.o

Having never really gone on 'long walks/runs' when I had dogs...it wasn't anything I had actually considered.
Like...you go until they get tired?

I didn't tell her that.
Basically said "I'm sorry, I don't know, I'm not a dog trainer." 

Sooo I think she left to find someone else to ask? *shrugs* Dunno.

Come to find out later -when she was long gone and I couldn't help her-

Usually you want to wait til they're 9months to a year old....sometimes longer depending on the dog, to go on longer walks/runs with the pup to help protect their joints/bones etc. 

*shakes head*
I learn something new every day. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Number?

A customer came into the store wanting 25 large crickets.
So I bagged up 25 for her.
Handed her the bag.
And went back to doing my thing.
But noticed after a bit that she was standing a bit away from the registers staring hard at the bag and shaking it back and forth.

Which...you shouldn't shake crickets back and forth like...you're stressing them out?
So I approached her to make sure everything was alright.

-_-
She didn't believe that I had put 25 crickets in there.

Which halfway makes sense because quantities never look like the amount you think they should. 
I've gotten similar reactions when fishing out goldfish.
The number doesn't look like the number it is.

However.
Most customers don't make me recount the crickets.

She insisted.

So I went ahead and opened up the bag, and pulled out the cardboard so I could see the crickets in their entirety.

And while I was unbagging them, she was like "How do you count them anyways?"

Every coworker has their method.
For me?
"I count by 3s" I told her.

You know 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27 etc. 

I know it's weird lol. Most people don't count like that but I do find it easy.

She thought I was crazy.

In any case.
I demonstrated it out loud for her.
And showed her that she actually had 27 crickets in there instead of the 25 she wanted.

-As above 24 I usually add in an extra or three to account for possible ones dying.

*shakes head*
She was mollified thankfully. 
So I rebagged the crickets and she went on her merry way.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Insect Demon

The crazy waxworm lady came back.

A lady who insists that her waxworms keep dying, and last week brought in the bodies and made me count them.....

Came in today claiming that 30 of those waxworms had died.

Apparently because they were 'too cold?'
Didn't know that was a thing really.
But like the temperature in our fridge hasn't changed at all.

But I felt bad for the poor manager who had to deal with her. 
Because she spent like a good twenty minutes trying to appease the crazy lady who didn't bring in those 30 dead ones.

Honestly.
I don't see what the big deal is.
Yes. Some of the waxworms will die.
They are INSECTS.
They don't LIVE long.

Under the right care they can be good for like a month or so.

But I have no idea what sort of care this lady is taking for these wax worms.

Not good enough.
Because like.
We haven't really had anyone else come in complaining about their waxworms all dying quickly.

So my guess is the issue is more on her end.

But in either case.
I don't think we're going to see the end of her yet.
Though I do hope we'll eventually reach a point where she stops coming in.

Maybe we'll be lucky and the head manager will be in next time she comes in and he can politely tell her to buzz off.
Because she's done this at least every week for a month now.
If not longer.
*shakes head*

Seriously.
Some people are so concerned about 'getting their worth' out of things.
Like it's a bug.
Those die.
Stop stressing us out over them.

-Sarnic Dirchi

More Noise

Had a customer come into the store, who had bought a couple of birds from us a little under a week ago.
And he was complaining mostly because the birds weren't making as much noise as he expected them to.

Which...is an odd complaint as usually people want pets that don't make noise....
But no.
He was playing videos and everything to try and get them to chatter more.

And eventually came up with the solution that he needed to buy more birds in order to get them to chatter more.

Which...I suppose could work in theory.
But also like....birds do have their downtime as well.
I mean even in the store they have periods where they're all asleep and quiet.
It's not like they're up at chattering and making noisy every second that we're open or anything.

Plus the parakeets are all babies. Like 3-4 months old. 
So who knows how much noise they make at that age as to opposed when they're older.

-Which the dude was like "How old are mine?! I have the receipt. Can you tell me how old the birds are from my receipt?!"

Uh. No.
It's only a guestimate really on our end that they're 3-4 months old. Some may be older. But like....I have no idea what their age is. 

In any case.
The other difficult part was that the dude wanted the 'active' birds.
Only he came in at the wrong time.
Because literally every single bird was sleeping.
So it was sort of a 'helpless gesture' sort of moment for me because dude...I can't tell which bird is most active.

To make it even more difficult.
He wanted a boy and a girl parakeet.

but like....at the 3-4 month age is when they're just starting to get the coloration to their beaks that lets us tell the difference between the genders.
So a lot of the birds I couldn't tell if they were a boy or girl...

In the end though.
He finally picked a pair.

I can only hope that having four birds gives him the chatter and noise that he wanted from the original couple.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Soft Like...

Had a customer hold the chinchilla for the first time.
She was totally in love.
Had never felt anything so soft.

Lol but usually people describe Chinchillas as like...petting air, or the clouds, or you know other soft fluffy things.

This customer was like "This is like....holding Fur!!" 

….Um yes. Chinchillas are covered in fur so you are in fact holding fur. lol. *shakes head*
She later amended her statement to 'petting cotton' 
Though I would think the chinchilla's fur is softer than cotton.

But yah. It works.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Nets?

So for a little while now, we've been really low on fishnets in our fish aisle.
Which is weird, because like...I would have expected them to restock those.

Only I hadn't thought much about it until a customer came up asking if I had any smaller nets.
So I double checked the section...and nope still empty.

But then I had a thought...
What if they were in the overstock?

As with the reset that had happened in the store last week...came also a new set up for the shelves above the product, where the name cards hide the shelf above.
So if things are smaller...they tend to be hidden from view because they wouldn't poke up and over the new sign tags. 

I ended up grabbing a step ladder real quick to check and make sure no nets were hiding up there....

And what do you know?

I found at least four different varieties of nets, including the smaller size the customer was looking for.

*shakes head*

Note to self. 

Check the overstock section a little more carefully from here on out.

-Sarnic Dirchi