Name?

So I had a customer who had questions about the birds and such. 
And while I was helping them they were like "Oh! You're Sarnic! My son is {name}. 

And it threw me off....because like....the customer was the only person in the aisle.
So I wondered if their son was nearby and the two were shopping together.
But I wasn't sure why the customer felt the need to tell me their son's name.

Like....did someone talk me up and they wanted to introduce their son to me and like...try to set us up??

It was just such a nonsequir that I kinda went "Oh cool!" and went back to trying to help the customer with their bird questions.

Only to realize hours later.
-Which I was tired. So it makes sense why it took me so long to piece the puzzle together.

But the customer had told me the name of their son because their son works for us. Their son is my coworker. 

Gah.
Can't believe it took me forever to piece it together.

It was probably the phrasing in how they said that so and so was their son.

but yah.
Hopefully I didn't make too big of a fool of myself. ^^;; 
Heh.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Sale?!

Customers don't know how to read. 

It's a known fact.

They can stare straight at a sign and totally misunderstand it or not comprehend what it says.

Like they see "Buy" and "Get" and automatically assume that it's "buy one get one free."

Nope it's something like "Buy 2 get 1 free." Or "Buy one get one half off."

In any case.
The customers always seem to get huffy over the fact that what they thought the sign said isn't what it actually said. 

But like.
Read the sign?
Actually read it?

Nope.
Customers can't do it.

In any case.

Today the managers wanted us to put up our black friday prices.
That way we wouldn't be scrambling to put them up Friday morning before the potential mob comes in. 

Which in past years we have put the pricing up.
But usually it's been in the afternoon. Towards closing time that they do that.
You know.
Less chance for customer misunderstanding.

But no.
The manager was confident it would be just fine to put the stickers up this morning for the black friday pricing.

After all.
the tags are BLACK they have "ONE DAY ONLY!" written on them.
surely the customers will realize that's not the actual sale going on and they have to wait until Friday to get the sale they see.

Unsurprisingly.

Customers didn't realize that.

Because they don't read. 
Ever.
They don't read the tags.
They just see a tag and go 'oh it's a sale!" 

There were so many customers we had to let down.
so many customers who got upset that the prices weren't what they thought they were yet.

Like...gah.

I'm glad I only had to deal with it for a few hours.

But seriously.
It was a mistake to put those price tags up first thing this morning. *shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

Reflection?

So a little bit ago, we moved our aquatic turtles over to the fish wall just so that they could have access to fresher water than we could provide in their old tank.
But to ensure that no one would just walk up and grab them out of their tanks, we placed them on the top row on the fish wall.
Plus, the tanks on top are also bigger than the ones below them, so the turtles will have enough room to swim about and such. 

The fun thing about the tanks on the top row.
Is that you can look up at the surface of the water, and if the waters aren't too turbulent, you can see a reflection of what's at the bottom of the tank.
Which makes it easy to see, especially when feeding fish, if there are fish hanging out near the bottom of the tank without having to grab a ladder to check.

In any case.

One of our turtles was hanging out near the top of the tank today.

And so if you looked at the surface, it looked like there were two turtles nose to nose with one upside down because one of those 'turtles' was the reflection of the real one.

In any case.

I had a customer come into the store today with a bunch of kids.
And they were looking at the turtles.

And noticed this reflection.

But it took them a good five minutes or so to decide that the reflection of the turtle was actually a reflection.

Aloud they were like "Oh no it's two turtles, no wait I think it's a reflection...but it could be an upside down turtle...but if it's upside down does that mean it's dead? No..it has to be a reflection. Yah! It's just a reflection of the other turtle!" 

*shakes head*

Like I can get how it can throw people off. Sometimes I get thrown off by seeing the reflection as well.
But not like that. *shakes head*

At least they figured out the true answer soon enough. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Holding the Hamster

I helped a mother with two little boys today.
Because her oldest -who was probably around four or five years old, wanted to hold a hamster.

So I got the hamster out and after letting both boys pet it for a bit.

But that wasn't enough for the oldest.
So with a little trepidation, as hamsters can be slightly unpredictable and are more likely to bite.
I carefully let him hold it.

And it went well!
No biting. The boy enjoyed it.

But then the mom was like "Do you want to hold the hamster to." To the younger brother who was probably like two years old or younger.

And he was like "Yes!"

But then like two seconds after I let him hold it...he freaked out.

I think the claws felt weird to him or something.

But yah, he pushed the hamster off, screaming, and shied away from it.

Thankfully I was able to rescue the hamster quickly enough and get him back into his temporary container.

But the kid wasn't having it.
He wanted it back in the cage.

So I helpfully put the hamster back in the cage. 

And the little boy was like "CLOSE IT!"

So I closed it.

He calmed down after that.
Poor kid.

I don't think he liked the hamster much.
But his older brother still wanted one after everything.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Make Him Better

I had a customer come into the store looking for a solution to help him heal his poor sick betta fish.

Only the products he was looking for were ones that we didn't carry in the store.

While the original issue of the betta having fraying fins would be one that we could have fixed....

He was stating that the betta was also laying on its side.
And like....

He showed me the video of what the betta looked like....
And honestly....once I've seen fish looking and acting like the fish in the video....
It usually ends up...well dying. 

*exhales*

The customer was adamant that he wanted his fish to recover. 

So I showed him some potential solutions. 

But I only carry the solutions in larger bottles.

And the dude wasn't quite willing to spend the money on the larger bottles for a solution that might not work.

As I was emphasizing that the solutions might not cure the betta.
As it's hard to know for sure what the issue is. 

He ended up leaving without buying anything.
Though I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't go out trying to find some other solution to help his betta.

I hope he succeeds, but at the same time....with how he described the betta...I don't know if it will be able to recover. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fish Day

It's been forever since I've worked a Friday at work.

So it's kinda weird to not like have...a bedding change to worry about doing today.

Because Friday is Fish day.

Which means we get in our NEW SHIPMENT OF FISH!!! AHHH!!!!!

This is actually my very most favoritest thing to do in the store.

So you can imagine my disappoint of like...what is it? Three years or four years ago? When the managers decided to make Fridays one of my days off.

So the days I get to help put out the fish shipment are AMAZING!

Ah.

It was the best part of the day today. Seeing all the new fish that we got in. ^^;; So much fun.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Closing

Gotta love it when there's greenies in the department.
Because they don't always....know everything.

And if I haven't met them yet...
Which means I haven't trained them...

Things are bound to not be done correctly.

And I have no way of knowing what they have and haven't been trained on....

So there's a new worker...
Who only works in the evenings.

Which since I only work mornings.
Means that unless they come into the store on their day off or something....
I won't ever ever meet them. 

So I have to rely on others to train them.

However...something was lost in translation last night.

Because this coworker didn't properly close our sick room for the night.

As we have charts that need to be filled out so we can keep track of how all the animals are doing.

If that's not done.
There's no way to know if meds were given or the animals were even looked at.

Honestly, it feels like the coworker just turned off the lights and did nothing more.

So I had to make sure that my coworkers who are closing with the newbie tonight knew that they needed to do a bit more training on how to close, especially that sick room.

*fingers closed* that it goes better tonight.

Not Yet Fixed

So we have this fridge that stores our fresh dog food. 

But the thing is as old as dirt I feel like.

And it seems like at least twice a year it breaks down. 

Which is the case right now.

I don't know exactly what's wrong with it this time, though I'm guessing it's a problem with keeping the food cool as that's usually the problem.

As the dude that's come in multiple times this week to work on it has mentioned 'waiting for the ice to melt' so who knows. 

In any case.

While the fridge is broken we haven't been able to stock any of the fresh pet food. 

And today I had a customer call asking if we had the fridge fixed yet as it was broken last week when they came in to try and get food for their dog.

Unfortunately, I had to tell her it was still broken so we didn't have any food.

And the customer was like "Guess I'll have to go to [competitor] instead." and abruptly hung up on me.

*exhales*

I hate it when customers do that.

It's like they name drop our competitors with the expectation that if they do we'll suddenly be able solve their problem or find the product in stock.

Like.

Geez.

I'm sorry the fridge is broken.

But it's not like I can snap my fingers and suddenly have it fixed and stocked with your food.

Stores don't work like that.

We're getting it fixed as quickly as we can.

But sometimes things take time. 

Hopefully we get it fixed soon, because I hate fielding those sort of calls. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

FIlter Maintenance

Had a couple come into the store today looking to get a water test done on their fishtank.
As it was doing great...but then suddenly their fish started dying off and they've been struggling with higher nitrates in their tank for the past month or so. 

And they've done everything they can think of, half water changes, treatments, and nothing will get those levels lower.

So with a bit of conversation....I finally asked them when they had last changed their filter.
Because sometimes the cartridges could cause issues with the tanks and it's about the only thing I could think of.
Though mostly I was checking to see if a) they'd changed them recently and b) if they had removed them to do the treatments.

However, it turned out that they didn't have the over the back filter.
No.
They had a canister filter.
Which I'm not as familiar with but familiar with enough to ask them when they had last changed out like the carbon with in it as the carbon in the filter is only good for so long and if that stops working...the tank can often get dirtier quicker.

*exhales*
Apparently they haven't touched the canister filter itself in like....a year. 

So it makes a lot of sense as to why their tank would suddenly go downhill and why they're struggling to get the nitrates down lower.

My guess is part of the issue is that they need to clean out/replace most of their components.

Like I get it that the canister filter is easy to forget to maintain. We had one in our goldfish display tank when we still had display tanks at work and even we would forget to maintain the thing until six or so months later. *shakes head*

In any case.
I instructed the couple to go clean out their filter and see if that helped their nitrate levels any.
Because yah...a clean filter can do wonders for helping tanks do well. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Standards

Sometimes I forget that others need to know things.

We had a visit today from the Regional Manager along with like five other people.

And before the RM and company showed up.

My Head Manager wanted me to go through the standards with my new manager on how all the cages should look and how they should be set up and such.

Which...I didn't quite see the point at first as to why.
Since I already know how all the cages should be set up for visits.

And I was trying to make our fish tanks look good because they were probably the worst looking area in the department since they hadn't really been scrubbed well in the past week. 
*exhales*

So I wanted to focus on that instead of being pulled away to show my manager how the cages were supposed to be set up.

But then I was like "Oh yah...manager doesn't know all this."
And it is kinda silly for me to be the only one who knows things. Especially when the manager needs to make sure that the department is being held up to standards.

So I took a few minutes to show my manager how everything should look.

Before returning to the tanks. 

Thankfully the visit went well.
So yay! 

-Sarnic Dirchi

On Top

So for the past couple of weeks, one of our phones has been missing.
Specifically the Manager's phone.

It just upped and vanished one day.

At first I thought it was because someone took it home.
But apparently no one did. 

So we kinda just figured it would be lost until we found it.

Which.

I did.

Today.

I found it while cleaning out the cat cages in the adoption center.

And since we'd had like three cages emptied out,
I'd reached up to the top of the cat cages, to pull down any litter scoops up there.

And my reaching fingers encountered a rectangular object.

When I pulled it down.

It was a phone.

At first I thought it was the Petcare phone -aka the phone I usually have in my department.

But I hadn't been given it yet at that point.

And it would be weird to have it left up there from the night before.

But a closer look...revealed that the writing on the back (as we labled each phone so we could more easily tell them apart) it had "Leader" Written on it.

Aka.
The manager phone.
XD 

Lol the manager was so surprised and grateful that I'd found it when I brought it to him. XD

My guess is that one of the managers was helping with a cat adoption and set the phone down when it started ringing and put it on silent so that they could let another person pick up the call on a different phone while they continued helping in cat adoptions...and then just forgot it was up there. 

But hey.
At least we have the phone! Woot! 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fish Today

A little boy came into the store today with his heart set on getting an angelfish.

The problem?

He only wanted a five gallon tank.

Which is too small of a space for an angelfish to be able to live well in.

As they get large enough that a twenty gallon tank at minimum is much better suited for them.

The boy didn't want to get a twenty gallon tank though.
He wanted a small tank.
And wanted angelfish.

But as I spoke with him and his mom and went over everything they would need and the pros and cons and talked about different fish.

It became clear that he was less inclined to get the angelfish.

And really just wanted to get his fish and tank today. 

Which still was a slight...issue as it's not recommended to get tank and fish on the same day. 

Unless it's a betta fish.
Those usually do pretty well. 

But the boy wanted more than just a betta fish.

Which meant that he either needed to get a divided tank...or a bigger tank.

Towards the end of my interaction with him he seemed set on getting the ten gallon sized tank so he could get a betta fish and then later come back for other fish.

But the parent wanted to talk it over first.

So I left them to go help other customers....

And therefore didn't see what their final decision was in regards to tank and fish. 

But hopefully the boy ended up happy with the final choice.

-Sarnic Dirchi