Back Again

So yesterday we took a couple reptiles to the Vet to get check out for a couple of problems that were concerning to us.

And I halfway expected (but wasn't surprised that they weren't) for them to have been picked up yesterday as well.
But apparently...when they tried to call to see if the reptiles were ready to be picked up....No one answered the phone. It just rang and rang and rang on hold for ever until the managers gave up.

Which meant....they needed to be picked up today.
But when I called to see if they were ready....they weren't. O.o The receptionist (after putting me on hold for forever) said that the Vet would call us back when they were ready.

I never got that call....unless someone else picked them up.

But we did get a call close towards the end of my shift that we could go grab the reptiles.

Which should be a simple process of grab the animal, any meds, and their clipboards and head on back after paying the vet bill....

The manager stated that they weren't that organized this time around, having to double check which reptiles were ours and such. O.o (kinda skeptical but okay) 

But the main thing was....the manager returned without the clipboards that track treatments and how long we've had the animals in our sick room....

and when I was like "Where are they?"

Manager was like "They didn't give it to me! Gah" and proceeded to rail against the incompetency of the vet office...

Though considering said manager has been working for us for multiple years now and has taken animals to the vet multiple times....you'd thing they'd remember to ask for the clipboards when they're not presented upon checkout.

Apparently not though.
So we'll have to make a trip at some point over thataway in order to get the clipboards back.

Hopefully they can find the as the vet does lose them on occasion. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Price?

Had a customer call on the phone today asking how much our Turtles were.
So I double checked if he was wanting our Aquatic Turtles or our Land Turtles as their is an extreme price difference there.

He said Aquatic.
So I told him that they were $25.

However,
Somewhere in there where I said "Twenty-five Dollars"

He heard "Five Hundred Dollars."

O.o
Not sure how he managed to hear such a major difference.
Like it's one thing to mistake Fifteen with Fifty which I do on occasion.

But 25 with 500??

Didn't make a lot of sense.
Though I did tell him that if he didn't have a cage setup and such that to get everything and the turtle would be around $300-$400.
But the turtle itself? Yah. Just $25.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Joker

It's always a trial and error sort of thing when you place the small pets together on the floor.
Because sometimes it's just perfectly fine to introduce a new group of hamsters to the current group of hamsters on the floor...
And other times its not.

Today though, it was Guinea Pigs.
And usually the guinea pigs are fine together....
Until one gets a bit too big for his britches and decides to be dominating and agressive to new comers if they're seen to be a threat.

*exhales*
Which is what happened today.
I had five guinea pigs on the floor.
And brought out three more.
Which usually isn't an issue.
But we have a red eyed guinea pig that's about twice the size of the others that's apparently reached that "I don't like others." stage when we bring in new guinea pigs.
because not like...fifteen minutes later.
I walked by the cage and noticed one of the new guinea pigs was bleeding as the lower jaw was all red.

Which meant fighting.

So I quickly rescued him out from the cage, and upon examination saw that there was a wound at the corner of the mouth....but I couldn't quite tell how bad it was.
So I ended up taking him over to our vet to double check.
Because with it being near the mouth....there was a chance it could get infected and I didn't want that.
Nor did I know if it has sliced the mouth open wider or not.

So better to be safe than sorry.

But it also meant that I wouldn't be able to put that guinea pig back on the floor --when he's better--until after we sold the aggressive guinea pig.

And considering we've had him for a good three or four weeks now...if not longer....
I wasn't hopeful....

But surprise of surprises....
The next customer who came in to look at the guinea pig....actually wanted the red eyed bigger one. O.o

Lol that was unexpected. 
But I'm grateful because he gets a new home...and i can hopefully safely put the guinea pig back in with his buddies once his mouth wound is healed. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Age?

Had a customer come into the store looking to possibly purchase our Conure because they wanted a companion pet to keep them company and such, but they were slightly concerned because they were like "Is the bird actually 16 years old?" 
O.o
Huh?

And then I realized.
We'd done this thing a while back where people could name the animals in the cage.
And so we had stickers on the cage that had the name of the pet, the person who named it and their age.

So the conure wasn't 16 years old.
The person who had named the conure was 16. 

The bird itself is only 3-4 months old. ^^;; 
Still a baby.

So that was easy to answer.
Other questions like "How loud and noisy" is this bird are harder to answer.
Because like...they can get loud and very vocal if they're not getting the attention they need.

And when the customer revealed that they would be sharing a room with a roommate....
:S Yah....
Probably not the best idea to get a bird.
Because those things can get noisy.

I think they ended up talking about potentially getting a fish tank instead.....but I think the customer ended up leaving the store without buying anything. Probably planning to do more research. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Soda Everywhere

A couple of customers came into the store today, looking for a blue/black light that would help them look for urine stains.
After I'd done my best to find a good solution for them, one of the customers asked me if we had a soda machine.
Which we did. 
So they went back to buy a soda....
And had a mishap while leaving the store. 
Where they ended up dropping their soda inbetween our two sets of sliding glass doors.
And that thing spilt everywhere.
Shooting out like a geyser getting the entire area where we keep the carts soaked in soda.
-Thankfully it was on the far side away from all the shopping carts we have.
But the walls, doors, couple pamphlets holders, floors, etc were covered in the sticky liquid.

However, cleaning up was a bit more difficult than it should have been. 
Because the friend of the customer looking for the blue light, was....well acting off.
They'd plugged their phone into an outlet there and were having quite the conversation....and were very defensive about us being in the same area as them.
So we had to hang out and wait until the customer finished their phone conversation before we could go in and clean up the sticky mess. 

*exhales* Seems like they were having a bad day. 
Hopefully it got better afterwards.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Skinny

*Shakes head*
I don't get my coworkers sometimes.

So in our Iso room there's a leopard gecko that's been back there for over a month now.
He's not eating on his own, and was originally isolated because his tail was skinnier than the others. 

-I don't really think that a 'skinny' tail is a reason to isolate leopard geckos. Because it takes forever to get those tails fat and some leopard geckos eat easily enough but don't get their tails fat....

In any case. 

We took the leopard gecko to the vet once, and were given meds to treat him, but nothing changed. The leopard gecko's tail remained skinny, he still refuses to eat without being forcefed. 

But otherwise he's remained stable. Not getting fatter, but not getting skinnier either. 

He's stable. He moves around the cage and appears active enough.

So we're mostly playing the wait and see game to see if we can get him to eat on his own. Because if we can then we can get him back onto the floor.

But every single shift a particular coworker works, they end up leaving a note that the leopard gecko needs to see the Vet. 
Despite being told at least twice by our Head Manager that a vet visit isn't necessary because he's in a stable condition.
Besides what is the vet going to tell us?
More than likely to keep force feeding the leopard gecko. 
Soooooo

Yah.

And I came into the work this morning to find...Yet another note from the coworker about the leopard gecko needing a vet.
Despite being told multiple times that he's fine as is. 

I get wanting to get him good care and such.
But sometimes there isn't anything you can do but play the waiting game. 

I do hope we can get the leopard gecko better sooner rather than later. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Mice?

A customer came into the store this morning looking for some of our Fancy Mice.
Unfortunately, (Fortunately?) We didn't have any on the floor at that exact moment.
Though I did have one in the back that I could bring out to the floor, and I knew we would be getting more mice in later this week as well.

However, because people do occasionally try to buy mice to use as a food. I was like "Oh, you want one as a pet?" 

"Something like that." was the answer. 

....That wasn't a good answer. 
That's a suspicious answer.
That's a "I might actually be using this mouse for food." sort of answer.

So I asked another question, something like "Oh? What do you mean?" 

Turns out the person is a falconer.
Who is helping a friend to capture some Kestrels I believe it was.
And they need some mice as live bait.

Yah no...
I don't sell mice for bait. I don't sell mice for food.

Therefore. I instead told the customer of other locations that sold mice that they could go to instead. As the local stores sell feeder mice and such. 

So hopefully they found what they were looking for in a different location.

Kinda cool though. Haven't encountered a falconer before. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Discount Me

Had a customer come into the store looking for waxworms first thing this morning.
Her first question was "Did you get any Waxworms in?"
To which I responded "No." Because we hadn't gotten any in last week in our shipment.
So she was like "Well get me the freshest ones then."
Ha. Jokes on her. All the waxworms we had were from two weeks ago, because we didn't get in a shipment last week and hadn't yet received in this week's shipment because our various worms only come in on Thursdays. 
So i grabbed her the container.
She was like "When did these come in."
"Two weeks ago." Was my response.
"You don't have any from last week!?"
"No, I didn't get in any last week." -AT this point I could tell she had thought my first time responding was for 'this week' instead of the 'last shipment' we received. *exhales* 
But i was like "Our shipments only come in on Thursdays." to her "Why not!" Because we only get replenished for what we sell. So guess what?
If picky customers don't BUY the waxworms, then we don't get more in until we SELL them.

So she was stuck with waxworms from two weeks ago unless she wanted to wait until Thursday this week.

She didn't want to wait.
And instead asked me if we would discount the waxworms because "the other girls would." 
*rolls eyes*
I honestly don't know how we got onto this 'discount the waxworms' kick but it is super annoying.
Like they fill the containers with more than 50 waxworms so it's okay if some die.

But noooo customers want them ALL alive.

So I was like "A discount?"
She was like "Like 20%" 
So I double checked with the manager to see if the one on duty would do a discount.
He was fine with it and was like "You can do 25%"

Ha.
No. If the customer is expecting 20% then I'm going to give her what she wants.
No need to make her get more greedy in future purchases.

So I told her we could do the 20% off. 

*exhales*

At this point I think we're practically selling all our waxworms at a discount. Because people are freaking picky. I don't know why its suddenly a problem now.
We never had this issue before the past couple of months.
And now its practically every customer with waxworms is having issues with them when nothing has changed with the shipping or what we do to care for them.

*shakes head* 

Like I do get that you don't want to buy things that are already dead. I understand that.
But still. There's more than 50 waxworms in the container of 50 so it should be fine. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Together? I Think Not

I was called up to the front of the store just after I got off lunch to help a customer who was doing a small pet return.
Well...two small pet returns.

I had noticed this morning that our two cages that each had a single mice in it were empty.

Well, apparently the same customer had bought both mice.
And was told by a coworker that mice would do well together and that two mice...who had been by themselves in their cages for a long long time.....would be fine.

They weren't.
The customer had bought them both yesterday.
And came back today with one mouse dead and the other injured ---though I couldn't see any obvious injuries to the mouse that lived beyond possible stiffness in their limbs.

But the customer was rather upset...and probably traumatized that his pets had killed each other.

So. He returned both mice.
And ended up buying a hamster instead.

He went with a winter white after looking at every hamster we had and deliberating about which one would be best for him.

And hopefully the hamster does well with him and he doesn't have any issues.

In the meantime....
I had to explain to my coworkers that yes, mice can go together, but its best to try and place mice together that are in the same cage.
A mouse that's been by itself in a cage is more likely to be aggressive when introduced to other mice.
But if two mice have been together in one cage then yah, it's fine to sell them together because you already know that they do well together.

*exhales* Hopefully we don't have that happen again. :S

-Sarnic Dirchi

Cottage Cheese

Had a customer call the store today asking if it was okay to feed her goldfish cottage cheese.
Which....I had no idea really, because it's not a typical food I've heard of people feeding fish.
But to be on the safer side I said it would be better not to.
To which she revealed that her son had dumped a bunch of it in the tank.
:S :S :S
Well...even if the cottage cheese was fine....it wouldn't be fine in huge amounts.
After all putting too much flake food in the tank can kill fish.
So random people food? 
Yah no.
Told the customer that she would need to get all the cottage cheese out and do a water change to make sure the fish would stay okay. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Which Pet?

Had one of those customers come into the store today where they wanted to get a pet for their child.....but wanted to do the bare basics of getting everything. Trying to get everything as small and as cheap as possible.
It started with them wanting a tortoise and trying to put it in a smaller cage, moved to lizards---but the live bug concept wasn't ideal, and then over to Guinea pigs...where there was again the problem of a bigger cage.....so they were thinking more hamsters, as they had had a hamster previously....only it had died after 9 months and wasn't very nice.
Soooo they were wanting a nicer hamster....
But then ended heading over to the kitties to look at them....before I think they circled back to the fish maybe? And I saw them looking at the birds at one point. Though I had stopped helping them when they went to go look at the cats as I could tell they were indecisive and possibly wouldn't be buying anything today....

Which I think I was right.
I didn't ever see them purchase anything....so I think they're going to go do more research and decide what kind of pet they actually want.....

-Sarnic Dirchi

As Many As I Can Catch

Had a customer come into the store today looking to get some feeder goldfish.
Only when I asked him how many he wanted.
He was like "However many you can catch." 

Which is a great nonanswer.
Because I can totally catch all the fish. 
The question is do you want me to catch all the fish?

Because I know how the tanks look.
And I know that most people miscalculate how many fish are in the tank.
They see a bunch and think that it's only like thirty when in reality there's like 75 fish in there.

It's a thing I've grown used to. 
And glancing at the tanks in question.
I knew there were probably at least 100 if not a 150 fish in the two tanks that were our 'extra small' goldfish.

So I told the customer. "There's around 150 in there. How many do you want?" 

Because I can catch all 150 goldfish no problem.
But most the time when it's 'as many as you can catch' the customer is thinking of a slightly smaller number otherwise they would have specified. 

Turns out. I was right.
The dude only wanted 20 goldfish. 

Though after I caught the 20 he decided that he wanted 20 of our larger goldfish and after I caught those he decided he wanted 20 more of the small goldfish for a total of 40 small and 20 large which fully equals 60.

So he wanted 60 in the end.
Probably again, the 'look' of how many 20 is.

Hopefully the fish do well for him. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Spitting Puddles

I came into work today to find that the fish system was doing the "turn on turn off turn on" thing it usually does when a) the water has been turned off for too long and the water levels are having trouble getting high enough to properly flow through all the tubes or b) the fish filters hadn't been changed out.
Answer was probably both. But definitely the fish filters hadn't been changed. :S 

In any case.
As soon as I clocked in I went into the back and turned off the fish system as that things probably been trying to turn fully on all night long, and let it rest for a few minutes while I went and pulled out the grimy definitely hadn't been changed, fish filters out and replaced them with fresh ones.
Then flipped the switch.

And walla. System was back to normal.

Though the floor around the fish tanks themselves had gotten a bit wet.
As in its effort to turn on the fish system had been spitting water with more force therefore spitting water out of the tanks and onto the floor.

So I had three nice puddles going.
Which with the amount of water on the floor, told me that the fish system had been attempting to stay on for most of the night.

Thankfully we were able to get the puddles cleaned up and gone before the store opened.
And the fish system stayed on the entire time I was working on shift. 
So yay. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Need Air?

So the 'lizard guy' came into the store again today.
The one who usually ends up buying another anole or a green tree frog.
And then proceeds to ask me a hundred questions that are really specific and detailed and I wouldn't have an answer to because I don't a) breed the animals or b) raise them to maturity. I just sell them. 

In any case.
He wanted me to bag him some crickets.
Which thankfully I'd already prebagged the amount he needed.
But he wanted me to put some 'food' in the bag so that they would live longer because 'that's what the girl last time did.' 

But in the middle of him untying the bag. He was like "So how long can these guys stay in the bag." And I was like "Not long. They need fresh air and can eventually chew through it." 

And the dude legitimately was like "Wait! The crickets need to breathe!" 

Because he apparently couldn't figure out why the crickets kept dying on him.

--Hint: Crickets will die no matter what you do. 

But he'd apparently been leaving the bugs in the bag this entire time.

*exhales*
Like the guy has been coming to us for the past twoish? months and only now does he realize that crickets need to breathe air? *shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Third

Had a couple customers come into the store looking to buy a goldfish for a little boy's birthday as that was all he wanted. 
So they ended up picking out two of them. A gold one and a red & white one. 
I bagged them up.
And sent the customers on their way.

Only a few minutes later they came back, having decided that they wanted a third goldfish, in case one of the other two died before the birthday.
Good thought.
Though I do wonder what they plan to do with the third goldfish if the other two do live....

-Sarnic Dirchi

Normal Water Fish

So there I was, working on cleaning the reptile cages.
When a couple of girls come up to me asking if there's anyone who can help them grab a fish.

At the moment, I was the only one scheduled in my department which meant that I would be the one needing to catch the fish.
So as I was finishing up the cage I was cleaning, I asked them what sort of fish they wanted.
You know, so I could prepare to catch however many fish they needed. Whether that was goldfish, or more like a pleco or something. 

And the girl was like "I need a normal water fish." 

….ummm k. What was a normal water fish? 

Did that mean a betta? Did that mean a goldfish? What was considered 'normal water?' 

Apparently.
Anything that's not saltwater. 

But that still didn't tell me what kind of fish they needed.

The girl refused to give me a direct answer though.

It made sense later on, when she showed me the fish, because she called it 'this blue fish' which ended up being a Gourami. A name not always easy to pronounce. So that made sense.

But it's still slightly irritating to just get vague answers. Because I do like knowing what I'm getting myself into. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Pets Hotel

I had a customer call the store today asking if we had Doggie Day Camp there.
Which is a service that I know some of our sister stores provide....but only stores that have Pet Hotels in them.
And unfortunately...the only two stores in the states that do that are in the next valley over. Which is often too far away for most of the customers who call the store asking if we have one. 

The customer was all too aware of this...I'm guessing they had brought their puppy dog there before or something?

In any case.
They wanted to know 'when we will be getting a pet hotel.'

Ha.
Probably never.
I mean our store has been open for like....multiple decades at this point. 
If they were going to do a hotel....they probably would have done one by now.
Like there was talk of trying to get one put in back when I first started nearly 7 years ago. 
But since that point. No. Nothing has been brought up.

Currently the only 'remodeling' plans we have is to expand out the Grooming Salon and get rid of Register 4 in order to made room for the grooming salon. 

Customer wasn't happy to hear that we had no plans to expand and wanted to know who they could contact in order to petition that we get a pet hotel.
I told them corporate...

but honestly, this is the company that took like 7 years to approve a work order to paint the outside of the building.
So even if they did decide to include a Pet Hotel in our store....I highly doubt it would happen for another 3-5 years anyways. *shakes head* 

Yah...customer didn't like that.
Didn't like that I couldn't tell them any local doggie day camps.
And asked to be transferred to our vet....I'm guessing to see if they could board the dog... which I'm certain they don't do that.

So yah...
An interesting conversation.
I am curious to see if they do end up petitioning corporate to get a pet hotel in our location.....

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Difference

Had a couple of customers come into the store looking to get some goldfish.
And while I was bagging the fish,
One of the customers asked me a question I hadn't been asked before. 

They wanted to know....what the difference between Guinea Pigs and Hamsters were.

Because apparently they'd been trying to explain the difference to a friend the other day and then realized....that they didn't know the difference.

….Not sure why they didn't just go wander over to the cages full of hamsters and guinea pigs...
Or you know...pull up Google and google images of them.

But it took me a moment....because like....I haven't been asked to tell the difference because usually I'm right by the cages.

But I gave a few differences.
Like the hamsters have tiny tails and guinea pigs don't, and guinea pigs get waaaaayyyy bigger than hamsters do.

But yah....not sure if that helped at all. 

At least I got them their fish. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Too Early

Accidentally ended up showing to work half an hour early.
Which thankfully it's early and not late.
But it's been a while since I've misread my work schedule for when I come in.
Sometimes I misread when I'm off. But not when I come in.
*shakes head* 
Lol but yah I ended up getting to take a short nap before clocking in.
I could have just clocked in early....but the managers have been more particular about not going 'over hours' and so I was good and clocked in on time instead. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Turtle Problem?

I had a customer come into the store today wanting to get like 90 goldfish for her turtle.
Only she was rather specific that I catch 15 of the largest goldfish I could in our tanks.
So that she could release those fish first into the pond for the turtle to chase after.
As the last batch she'd gotten from us had more smaller ones than normal and so were 'quicker' than the turtle could catch.

Which may have frustrated the turtle to no end.
Because apparently....the turtle actually somehow ended up attacking and drowning a bird yesterday---in front of a bunch of kids traumatizing them.

Apparently he was hungry. O.o 

In any case the customer wanted those 15 larger ones.
And the like 75 of whatever I could scoop out of the large tank so that she could freeze those ones --as she often feeds the turtle via frozen goldfish on the tip of a skewer....

Yah....it was interesting.
Though I did catch all the fish for her. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Sealed Properly

Had a customer in the store first thing this morning to exchange out a tank.
Because the father had bought the wrong one.
But at the same time the two tanks before that point had been....broken.
As in they leaked.

And the customer...couldn't find the correct replacement tank on the shelf.
I ended up having to go find it in our overstock steel. 

But at least we had it!

As they loved the style of tank, having purchased one a while ago. 
But when they went to get another one for a different fish--that's when things went wrong. One tank sprung a leak, another was already sealed---the husband grabbed the wrong tank on the third go around---
And so this, the fourth time coming to the store. 
They wanted us to fill up the tank with water to make sure it actually would hold water before taking it home.

Thankfully they did this like first thing in the morning so I wasn't busy with customers.
So I was able to pull the tank out of the box and fill it up with water.

Success!
It worked. :D

So once the tank was empty of water, they happily took it home. 
Hopefully it stays sealed for them once they get it set up. :D

-Sarnic Dirchi