Restocking

It's always a good feeling when I can fill the cages at work.
Especially after I've been waiting like a week to do so since Christmas totally wiped us out of many many creatures.

And while we're still low on reptiles birds and getting even lower on fish....

Today I was able to bring out all our small pets -the hamsters/guinea pigs- to the floor to place in their nice clean empty cages.
And it just so happened that i had enough hamsters and guinea pigs to fill every cage! 
Which is awesome!
I love it when things work out like that. XD lol.

It's also nice because today marks us going back to using our Carefresh bedding that we used for forever before switching to a different brand....
That brand ended up with far too many complaints.
So they switched us back to the good old carefresh.

And it was nice to work with it again.
Made the bedding change go easier and quicker I feel like.

SO yah.....
Small pets are out on the floor and their cages are clean! ^^;; lol

Now...if only I could get my reptile shipment in.
That would be great.

We'll be able to replenish our birds on Thursday.
And Fish will be replenished on Friday.
But Reptiles?
Still unknown. :S :S :S hopefully it's sooner rather than later. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Waiting

It's weird to have people waiting outside your doors before you open.
I mean....it's a pet store.
What do you desperately need at a petstore right first thing in the morning? *shakes head*

Like I get it for Black Friday. That makes sense.

But today.
randomly.
There were three white pickup trucks. All parked in the front of our store with their lights on.
Waiting.
Waiting for us to open the doors.
So the people inside could come in and shop.

I have to say it was a bit intimidating really.
Like what are the odds that three trucks, all the same color, would be waiting together for the doors to open.

*shakes head*
So weird. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Big Bone

I had a customer call the store today from our sister store to check and see if we had a certain type of Holiday Rawhide bone in stock.

Since Christmas is over all our Christmas treats/chews/toys/clothes/etc have gone on clearance. And like everything is basically somewhere between $1-$5 in price. 

And this particular customer was working with an animal rescue group and so was claiming all the larger bones for said group. 

But like...we have a bunch of different rawhide chews to choose from.

So the person was like "Oh I have the SKU! Will that help?" 

Because otherwise the customer was like "well it's a big white bone and the packaging is like blue and white" 

And like....do you know how many bones I have fitting that description? *exhales* You couldn't say "Oh it's the large rawhide bone. White. It has a red bow in the center. It's about the length of my arm? Looks like a bone shape, no other shape." 

That would have been easier.

In any case.

The customer read off the SKU which matched our largest white rawhide bones.

To which I had a good dozen or so still in the store.

The customer was excited to hear that and was like "great! We'll be right over! Can you hold those for us?" 

Sure.

So I enlisted the help of my coworker and we carried a good two dozen giant bones up to the front of the store for the rescue group to come buy.

Only....

When they got there....apparently I'd grabbed the wrong size of bones.
They were "too big." 

Come to think of it the customer had mentioned the like "12 inch" or maybe it was 18 inch bones?? 

Apparently they wanted our 'Medium' sized bones instead of the large ones....despite reading me the SKU for the large bones. *exhales*

Ah well...

At least they found the bones in the sizes that they actually wanted.

-Sarnic Dirchi

But You Have It Online!

We had a customer come into the store today looking for a specific kind of prescription food that comes in a can.

However, upon showing the image on their phone to my manager, my manager stated that we didn't have that specific kind in our location.

To which the customer stated that they had purchased that food from us before.
But upon looking at the shelf, there was only dry dog food of the type that the customer needed.
Not wet.
There were no locations for the wet food either. No empty spots. 

So the customer ended up leaving the store empty handed.

Only for them to call back a while later.

Which is how I came into the story, because I'd only been briefly aware of the situation as I'd been by the manager when the customer originally approached.

But the customer on the phone stated that they were looking at our website and that our website claims that we have the product in stock and so they wanted me to double check and see if we had it in the store as the customer had been in the store earlier and had been told that we didn't have it.

So, dutifully I went over to the wall of prescription food to look.

And yep.
No food.
We had it in the dry dog food.
but not in the wet.

The customer wasn't happy to hear this at all.

They were like "BUT IT SAYS YOU HAVE IT ONLINE!!"

Like....yes? But guess what?
Not everything you read online is true.
And it's possible that there was an error somewhere on the website or in our system to indicate that we have the product...when we don't.

After all there was no sku for the product on the shelf. No places where it could be.
Plus we did a reset recently.
So the customer's "But we've bought it from you before!"
Could apply to them buying from us (or from a different location as different stores carry different types and amounts of dogfood due to the store's size) before the reset happen.

The customer's spouse came on the line then and was like "Why would your vet" -as they'd gone to the vet that partners with our store- "prescribe us a prescription you don't sell?!" 

....Because not all stores sell the exact same types of prescriptions?
And again we could be out.

They both were like "So why aren't you carrying it!?"

There could be a thousand reasons.
Like maybe we never carried it, maybe it's on recall and we can't get it in, maybe we're going to start carrying it but we haven't received any, maybe there's a shortage at the factory that makes the food, maybe the vet wanted you to buy directly from them and not from our store....

Honestly.
Who knows.

But I ended the conversation feeling rather irritated.
Because like....dude. Just because the internet told you it was there doesn't mean it is there. Especially when I'm standing right there looking at our shelves and don't see it.

*exhales*

-Sarnic Dirchi

No Cleaning

I probably could have done the bedding change today at work.
I mean, it was only four bird cages.
Pretty easy to clean and such.
Plus I had the coverage today to like...take myself out of the equation and still have people around to help customers that came into the store.

But at the same time.
I elected not to.
Because today was the day after Christmas.
And it's pretty common for parents to bring their kids into the store the day after Christmas in order to buy the animals for the cages/tanks that they were given on Christmas Day.

Though with today being a weekday...it's hard to judge exactly how busy it would get. Since not everyone has the day after Christmas off.

Overall...
I think it ended up being busy enough...
But not so busy that I couldn't have done the bedding change.

Still.
I didn't want to risk it because knowing how the system works, the moment I tried to start the bedding change, we'd get this huge rush of people and I would be stressing on getting the cages cleaned before my shift ended.

So I elected to play it safe.
And just focused on helping customers get their birds, hamsters, leopard geckos, and fish etc.

So yah.
Wasn't too crazy of a day, but definitely a busy one. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Bigger Tank

We had a customer come into the store interested in buying a turtle because he saw them swimming around in one of the tanks in our fish wall.
Only he scoffed when we showed him the type of tank set up he would need to properly care for the turtle.
As he wasn't wanting to 'spend' that much on a tank and wanted to get a cheaper fish tank in order to get a turtle for his kids.
But like...even though the fish tank was cheaper because it was on sale....with all the added things you'd have to get for the tank in order to properly care for the turtles.....it would end up costing about the same.

He did eventually change his mind after he asked how often he would need to do a water change on the turtles and I told him once a week because Turtles are meeeessssyyyyyy.

Yah no.
He ended up getting some glofish instead for the fish tank he'd already bought earlier. 

Which good.
fish are a bit easier to care for than turtles.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Birds

Had a customer come into the store with her son, excited because for Christmas her son was getting her some birds.
So they'd come into the store to buy the cage and get the birds and the Mom was sooo excited to get them lol.
She picked out two parakeets that were sitting next to each other in the cage. 
And made sure that she had everything she needed before heading up to the register with her Christmas present. 

I hope they continue to bring her happiness :D

-Sarnic Dirchi

Need More

It sucks when animals don't show up when they're supposed to.
We were supposed to get in a reptile shipment yesterday.
And one showed up....
But it only had like...two bearded dragons in it.

Which is....bad.
Because we desperately needed more snakes and tortoises and yes bearded dragons. 

But of like the dozen animals we were expecting to get....
Only two showed up.

That's not good.
Not right before Christmas.
Not when everyone is wanting reptiles.

Gah.
The next few days before and after christmas is not going to be fun.
I hate telling people we're out of things.
And our reptile cages are just getting emptier and emptier. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Cardboard Living

We had a grandmother come into the store today to return a couple of guinea pigs on behalf of her Daughter.
As one of the guinea pigs had unfortunately passed away and the Daughter was worried that the other guinea pig would catch whatever had caused the first guinea pig to die and so she wanted both returned.

The return process was slightly complicated because the customer hadn't been given a receipt and didn't have their phone number in the computer to be able to look up the receipt.

They did have the paperwork though which proved that the guinea pigs were bought from us.
So the manager gave the okay to do a receiptless return.

And because the customer was planning to buy two more guinea pigs to replace the other two.
It made it easier to do the exchange so the customer didn't have to pay anything.

However.
The grandmother was ill prepared to actually care for the guinea pigs.

As she revealed as I was getting the new guinea pigs ready that she wasn't going to be heading back down to her daughter's place for two more days. 

......
And wanted to know if the guinea pigs would be alright being left in a cardboard box for that amount of time.

*exhales*

I don't know person. Would YOU be okay being left in a box with no air holes for TWO DAYS? 

*rolls eyes*

What people think is okay for animals always just...is crazy.

In any case.
I set the customer straight.
Saying that the guinea pigs would need water and food and a container that they couldn't chew their way out of.

But the grandmother wasn't willing to buy a cage, especially for 2 days.
So I eventually was like "Do you have an old plastic bin?" 
Because at least the bin would keep the guinea pigs from being able to chew their way out of it. 

But yah.....
I hope they do okay for the next two days. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Kitty Adoptions

It feels like I spent practically my entire shift over in the Cat Adoption Center we had in the store.

It started early in the morning when I was cleaning cat cages and noticed that one of our kitties...wasn't acting too hot.
She was all congested breathing, and lethargic, and for the first time she actually stood up and moved towards me, purring, with watery eyes and moving soo stiffly. Her breathing looked rather labored too.

And it just felt like she was going "Sarnic, Help Me." 

I'd noticed that she seemed a bit lethargic yesterday.
But today she looked a ton worse.

So I had my manager contact the adoption group to come pick up the kitty.
As I was worried that if the kitty wasn't seen today...she may not make it the night... :S 
She looked that bad.
And it had me super stressed because I didn't want her to die on us. Like. I'd been keeping an eye on the kitties but this particular one was always very skittish and didn't want to come out of the cage. So it took me longer to realize something was wrong because this kitty was always in the corner.

Thankfully, the adoption group was there within a couple of hours to take her away. And I hope that she'll get feeling better soon.

Beyond the slight kitty drama with the sick kitty.

I also ended up adopting out three other kitties to their forever homes today.

Which involved its own set of drama as I literally had two different people wanting the same cat and I had to check with the first person to see if they actually wanted the cat because the second people definitely did. 

First people didn't. So second people got the kitty.

But gah.
So much time spent in the cat adoption center today.
So much time.
Had a bunch of people come in to look as well. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Tank Set Up

A grandfather came into the store today, looking to buy some fish for his grandkids as they said that they wanted a tank and such.

Only he didn't have anything he needed for fish care.

So I told him that he needed to wait for at least 24 hours after he sets up his tank before he buys any fish to put in it. 

I ended up helping him get the bare basics of what he needed. The starter kit tank, some water conditioner, gravel and a couple of decorations.

And when it came time to ring him up at the register...

He didn't have an account with us.

And when I tried to sign him up for it....he didn't have an email address.

Which makes the whole signing up thing moot because the store now requires the email address before giving discounts.

And like...the dude was getting all this stuff under the belief that it would be less than it was.

Luckily. I was able to find an override key to get the customer their discounts without having to sign up.

As I'd been shown how to do so like last week because we end up getting some grumpy customers into the store (i.e. grandparent age people) who don't have email addresses and complain when they can't get their discounts.

So thankfully I was able to get the customer his sale prices without him being a member.

Else I think that would have blown up in my face. :S 

And I hated to think that he would end up unhappy because he was trying to keep the cost of things low. So yay for making him happy in the end!

-Sarnic Dirchi

Noise Makers

I was called over to birds today.
Because there was a couple there that was interested in buying one.

However.
The bird they were interested in getting was a conure.

Which I had to tell them that we don't have any currently.
And that we won't be getting anymore in until next year in the spring.

Why? Because the conures are a bit more sensitive to the cold and so they aren't shipped during the colder months to keep them safe.

Though I also kinda think that the breeders only hatch so many conures at a time and once they sell through them all stop sending them to us until the next breeding season comes along.
As basically all the conure's hatch dates show early spring dates. 

In any case the customers were disappointed and they were like "Well what about this one?"
And pointed to our Winged Bee Bee cage.

Which again same situation.
Because it's a type of small parrot as well.
And they only send us those in the spring too. 

So yah had to tell the customer no twice.

The poor customers were so sad at this news.
They were like "Can we put one on hold? Reserve it? Buy it now and come get it when it comes in?" 

Ha.
No.
No I cannot.
Because I can't guarantee when the bird will come in.
And I can't guarantee that people will remember by the time the bird does come in...as that's at least six months from now...that the people had purchased it.
And who knows if they'd actually want the bird at that point.
And we only do refunds up to 60 days. So 2 months. Not Six months.

So yah no.
No holds. 
No reservations.
No buying. 

They were definitely not happy about that.

But there was nothing I could do.
So I left them up to their own devices....

Only to be called back to their sides like five minutes later.

As they'd decided to get two parakeets instead. 

and they were like "Are these birds noisy?"

Yes. Yes they can be but i was like "It depends" 

Only for them to be like "Do you have any noisier birds?" 

O_o???

With me being rather sensitive to consistent repetitive noise. I honestly don't understand why a customer would want a noisy bird.

But I guess some people like the constant chatter and noise they bring.
It's probably a good background noise or something.

So i was like "The parakeets are the noisier ones." 

The birds quickly proved it. At least one of them, screeching her head off when I caught her and clipped her wings.

So hopefully the birds are noisy enough for them. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Santa Photos

So every year my work ends up doing "Pictures with Santa."

Where Santa comes to the store and pet owners can get free pictures taken of their pets with him. 

Said pictures being photos we take on our Ipads (it used to be an actual camera we'd have to like...get developed so yay for not having to do that for like the past five years) 

In any case. They're taken on Ipads and then usually emailed to the people.
Though this year they've done it where people can download an app and then we can take pictures on their phones too and then they can get them faster? Not sure.

But it's funny how people can get so particular and demanding about pictures.
Like guys
This isn't a professional thing. 
We're doing this as a FREE service.
So like...chill? It's not going to be one of those fancy $200 photography sessions or anything like that. 

Honestly, I think if we could do away with it we would.
Like even my head manager doesn't like the event that much. 

But it's our most popular event of the year.

And this year we're doing it both this weekend and next weekend which means double the trouble really. 

And already people are like...super 'excited' for it?

Or expecting it.

Because literally. And I mean literally. 
From the moment we opened.
Each and Every phone call I answered was a customer wanting to know if we were doing Santa Pictures today, when the event started, how long the event went for, if we would be doing it tomorrow as well, if we were doing it next weekend too.

Seriously I took like 20 phone calls personally and every single one was questions about Santa. *shakes head*

We had quite the steady line up throughout the event with a few breaks inbetween. 
But I only expect it to get more crazy next weekend. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Quick Return

We had a customer come in pretty early this morning to return a mouse.

Which it's not surprising to have customers return pets, especially mice.

And the reasoning for the return made a lot of sense.

Because the customer was like "It smelled a lot more than I expected it to."

Which is also true.
Especially for Male Mice.
Their urine tends to stink up the place. And can become pretty potent if the mouse decides it needs to mark its territory.

So I'm not surprised when they're returned because if the owners aren't aware of how bad mice can stink...it can come as a nasty smelly surprise.

What was surprising though....is the customer hadn't had the mouse even like...twelve hours before returning him.

Like I had three mice in the cage yesterday when I opened and I wasn't aware of any mice getting sold before I left which meant the mouse was sold sometime in the evening after my shift.
And then was returned first thing in the morning.

*shakes head*
Like that's really quick to decide the mouse is too smelly. 

Still.
When the customer knows.
They know.

Since it was less than 24 hours since the mouse left the store, once the customer got their money back, I simply placed the mouse back with his buddies. I think he was happy to see them again.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Feeding Fish

I taught my coworker something new today.
Which is easy to do when half of my coworkers in my department are new and I don't always have a chance to train everyone on everything as the day they come in and how much time we end up having can influence what we cover and what we don't when I'm teaching.

Today it was Brine Shrimp.

As I had noticed that my coworkers weren't really feeding brine shrimp (or bloodworms) when they fed the fish.
And that's because I hadn't taught any of the new people how to do so.
As I'd left that step up to my other coworkers because I ran out of time to teach the newbies.

So today.
I had time to tell my new coworker this step.

And they were like ()_() HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS BEFORE?!

....Because I hadn't taught you that's why. 

So yah I spent a good ten or so minutes showing my coworker what to do and how to feed and yah...

Gotta love those teaching moments. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Chinchilla Fever

Had a customer come into the store today who was interested in getting a pet because they'd been looking after a couple of Guinea Pigs for the last little bit.
But the Guinea Pigs weren't going to be in the house much longer as they were being taken as...I think the customer's kids...were heading back down south to stay with....possibly their other parent there?

In any case.
The customer, who hadn't wanted guinea pigs in the first place--ended up falling in love with them and now wants a pet of their own to take care of since they won't be taking care of guinea pigs anymore.

But they weren't sure if they wanted to do a Chinchilla or A Guinea Pig or maybe a Hamster and wanted to know the pros and cons to them.

Which...it's hard to explain those when the customer is just so excited about getting a pet in the first place that they're hardly paying attention at all to what you're saying.
As this customer was constantly interrupting me and such to ask more questions but wasn't waiting for a answer before asking more questions about a different animal. *shakes head*

In any case.
One of the pets the customer was interested in was a Chinchilla.
But they got a bit skittish about handling them when I mentioned one of them liked to nip.

-As a different customer had been bit by one earlier today.
-Which this was one of the customer return chinchillas that had been returned for nipping children.

But after a bit of convincing.
The customer decided they still wanted to try holding one.

So I grabbed the chinchilla I figured wouldn't bite.
-Which I was right in that.-

But the customer really didn't want to get bit.

So when I tried to hand the chinchilla to them the first time...
They freaked out and didn't want to hold it.

So I offered to hold it while they petted it.
And they loved petting it.

So again I tried to get them to hold it.
No dice.

But then I was like "I could put it on your lap?"
To which the customer acquiesced. 

It was a moment of touch and go when I placed the chinchilla there.

But the customer quickly warmed up to the little guy.

And by the time I put him back the customer was back to potentially wanting to buy one though they wanted to do more research on them and other pets first before doing so. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Delayed

It was one of those days that just...ended up getting away from me.

Because for whatever reason, it seemed to be the day where people wanted to come adopt cats.

Which it's great that we had three of our kitties find their forever home today.

But when I'm the only one scheduled in my department until I'm basically off...
It makes it difficult to get opening done in a timely manner.

And considering that each cat adoption can take up to thirty minutes or so to complete....

That's a lot of time away from doing the tasks I need to be doing.

Especially when they happened one right after the other. *shakes head*

I ended up being like two hours behind. *exhales*

I didn't start the bedding change until after noon.

But luckily it was the back rooms today and they were mostly empty.
So I was able to quickly get it done and get back on track.

But I can only image what it would have been like if the rooms had been filled.
I don't think I would have managed to get them done.
Nope nope.

Yay for an unexpectedly small task today.
Because it allowed me to catch up far quicker than I would have otherwise. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

No Brine Shrimp

Had a customer come into the store wanting to get some fish.

Which it was easy enough for me to grab them as I'd been right there feeding all the tanks some frozen brine shrimp as we'd had a package come in damaged and we didn't want it to go to waste. So all the fish got a treat today. :) Yay them lol

In any case.

I fished out like five different fish for the customer.
And at the end I was like "Anything else I can help you with?"

And the customer was like "I don't want the brine shrimp in there."

Because I had literally just fed the brineshrimp to all the fish and so while fishing out the fish the customer wanted I ended up getting some of the food into the container too.

It was an odd request, but not fully unexpected as the customer had noted while watching me feed the fish before making a decision, that some fish would go after the shrimp and some would not.

So I think they were worried that there might be something wrong with the shrimp because not all the fish would eat it.

-Honestly it's not that weird. I mean not every person likes all the same food. It's the same with fish some fish are pickier eaters than others. 

In any case.
I was like "Sure." I could totally fish out the brine shrimp so there was none in the customer's bag of fish.

So I grabbed a small net and scooped out a large amount of the brine shrimp.

And not wanting it go to waste.
Placed the net in the nearest tank to give the fish there more shrimp to eat.

And the customer was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

My guess, as there was a bit of a language barrier where English isn't their first language, the customer had thought I misunderstood what they wanted and that I was putting the fish back in the tank.

Nope.
"I'm fishing out the brine shrimp." Is what I told them because that's what they had wanted me to do in the first place. Like not even a minute had lapsed between the customer's request and me fishing out the shrimp.

*shakes head*
In the moment I was like "Did you already forget what you asked me to do?"

But yah I can see their concerns with me not understanding them and such. 
As they kept a rather close eye on the container to make sure all the fish stayed there and weren't put back in the tanks. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

He Like To Scream

It's always interesting to get in animals around Christmas time...as well...we get in a ton of them in in preparation of customers wanting to get pets for their kids as presents.

And I always enjoy getting in the small pets just to see the different colors and such.

Today we got in our animal shipment, though unsurprisingly I was missing half the shipment.

As once again we didn't get in winter whites or russian hamsters.
Which it's so weird that the company has such a shortage of them going on as in like the last six months I feel like I've only gotten them in like...once or twice?
And we used to get them in almost weekly.

So it's weird that they're still struggling to stock us up on those.
And then like with the birds we didn't get the society finches we were expecting. Again not surprising as it takes them like three or four months if not longer to get them in when they sell.
Dunno why.

And like they were randomly planning to send us a Conure. Which was totally out of the blue and I wans't surprised at all to not get it because we don't usually get Conures in during the winter. Basically as soon as the snow hits, BAM no more conures until the late spring.

But the amusing part is that we got in like six short haired syrian hamsters.
Which since I was missing half my shipment, meant that I had the space to divide them up into two cages of three so they wouldn't be as over crowded.

Usually the syrians are a pretty mellow group.
You'll get the occasional vocal one that complains about being picked up.

But rarely do we get in the screamers.

We got in a screamer today.
And a little follower with him.

As when this particular syrian would start screaming....
He had a buddy that also would take up the cry too.

*shakes head*

And it wasn't like the AH! sort of scream that the syrian was giving off. 
No it was like.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

poor buddy. He can scream for like ten minutes straight.
And i'm like O.o dude? What's your problem. I haven't touched your cage for a good five minutes now stop the screaming.

But no he's just like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*exhales*
Like you even twitch the cage open and he's at it again. *shakes head*

Hopefully he'll mellow out a bit more once he gets used to his new temporary home here in the store.
But we'll have to see. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

This Parakeet

So I had a customer come into the store, who had come in like...yesterday? Day before yesterday? To look at our parakeets as her son's been wanting one and so she came to check out what she would need to get for the bird. Cage, perches, food, toys, etc. 

And she became quite taken with one of our white and blue parakeets. 

I told her that we would be getting more birds in next week so she should have plenty of selection as we tend to sell through birds quite quickly in my location. I end up getting more parakeets in every single week.
Honestly it's a rare week that I don't get parakeets. 

In any case.
She basically would have to expect that the parakeet she liked wouldn't be there when she came back to get the bird because of how quickly we sell them.
And I couldn't guarantee that I would get in another white and blue parakeet with similar patterns in the meantime. 

But.
She ended up deciding that she wanted the parakeet she'd seen originally.
So she came back today to get it.

She plans to keep the bird elsewhere until Christmas.

But yah.
I spent a bit of time talking her through everything she would need to get for the parakeet as well as helping her decide if she wanted to clip the bird's wings.

Originally the customer was against it.
But with the knowledge that she wanted to try and tame the bird down, I convinced her that clipping the wings would be the best thing to do.

Like the feathers will grow back anyways.
But this keeps the bird from flying as well.

Her concern was that it would hurt the bird.
It doesn't.
It's like cutting your fingernails or your hair.
So long as you don't cut too high, the bird feels no pain. 

She couldn't watch me cut the wings.

But yah.
She was quite happy with her purchase.

Hopefully the bird does well and the little boy is excited when he gets the parakeet for christmas. lol

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Small Tank

I came across one of my newer coworkers attempting to help a customer at the fish wall.

Which...I could tell at a glance it wasn't going well.

-turns out coworker wasn't feeling well--

But as I approached I heard the customer say "I've done this before, it's okay, I just want one small goldfish." 

And my coworker being the good new coworker they are was like "but the goldfish need a 29 gallon tank" -which is true when they're full grown, but as babies they can temporarily go into smaller tanks. 

And I could tell from the customer's tone of voice that they were heading towards being irritated.
So I volunteered to step in and take over so that a) my coworker could go sit down because they weren't feeling well and b) I could hopefully make the customer happy and satisfied with their purchase.

As they were wanting to buy a couple of plecos and a goldfish to put in a little two gallon tank.

Which is a bit small for three fish.
But the customer had stated before that they had done this multiple times before and the fish had been fine.

Which basically when a customer tells you "I've done this before it's been fine." You basically just shut your mouth because they're not going to listen to you anyways. 

Turns out the customer keeps the goldfish for a while and then when they get bigger they move the fish over to their friend's larger tanks.

So yah. Seemed like an alright situation.

But I suggested buying one of the smaller goldfish as they'd probably work better than the bigger ones and the customer would be able to keep them in the tank longer.

Of course the customer had to point to like the sickly looking one. *shakes head*
-The goldfish have been having a problem with getting hook/anchorworms for whatever reason recently and the customer pointed to a goldfish that had one of those worms on it.
-After the customer left I caught that goldfish, removed the worm, and isolated it away off the floor so it could recover.

I managed to catch a similar color shade of goldfish that looked much healthier for the customer. So yay!

And convinced them to get our little otocinclus because they eat algae and stay small.
-The customer wanted one of the regular plecos that gets like 2feet. Ha. Not good for an itty bitty tank.

But yah.
Our interaction ended with me suggesting some algae crumbles for the customer to feed to the otos because they didn't have a ton of algae in their tank.

And...yah...I think I ended the interaction on a positive note so woot!
At least the customer seemed really happy when they left. ^^;;
Yay for saving the day I suppose. ^^;;

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Cashier

There's a thing about working in the mornings.
I don't often interact with the night crew.
Like occasionally we'll overlap for a couple of hours.
But the people who work the evening shifts...I often don't get to know that well.
So my impressions of them are fleeting and I'll often hear complaints about things that have happened in the store with other coworkers and I'll just be like O_o??? Because I can't see it.

Though I do wonder if people change their behavior while I'm around.
Which is interesting...very interesting.

In any case.

We had this cashier.
Who from the words of one of my managers 'begged' to get a job.
And so like...we hired them right?

And it seemed alright at first. 

It was easy to give them a little slack because they were new and still learning and didn't know everything yet.

But their personality to me was rather....loud?

Like the few times I interacted with this cashier they kinda came off as angry or just of low patience?

And there was more than once I would encounter them before their shift practically yelling into the phone.
And I couldn't tell if this cashier was just...like loud in general because I have had coworkers who just naturally speak loud, or if they were genuinely angry and yelling over the phone to someone.

In any case.

I've been hearing about....incidents. In the closing shifts.

Complaints.
Like the cashier getting upset when a piece of their personal property they left at work went missing. 
-Like?? If you don't lock it up, expect it to go missing dear coworker, because people aren't all honest. 

Or the cashier refusing to do tasks.
Getting into arguments with the closing managers. 

And jumping down the throats of my coworkers for not doing something, or doing something like being on their phones....

When from what others tell me....this cashier would often be on their phone, would often have headphones in listening to music so it was difficult to get them to answer over the radio or understand them on the radios, and like...they never did anything.

"I'm the best and quickest out there!"
....when they are the slowest at getting tasks done. 

*shakes head*

Apparently things came to a head over the weekend.
-I had it off, so I only became aware of the situation during today's shift. 

Where the cashier asked that they be given the number of our head manager.

And like....the managers don't give out their personal phone numbers to coworkers.

For good reason. I don't think they want to be bugged with work related things when they're not at work.
Especially if it's a coworker on a warpath.

As they apparently were trying to get more hours to work and didn't like that the managers were all refusing them their request for more hours.

They had apparently been under the impression that the managers on duty were taking 'all the hours' and it was upsetting them.

Which is...silly.
Each week our work is given a certain amount of hours for the entire store. 
So the managers have to sit down and like ensure that we have the coverage throughout the day in management, stocking, cashiering, and petcare. 
And they have to do their best to not go over hours.
Because...idk why...but that's their goal.
Which means if they're already at max hours...even if a person is available to work longer, we still will send them home after their shift because we can't 'afford' to keep them on longer that day because we don't have the hours alotted to cover it. 
Really the only leeway is if a coworker ends up sick and can't make their shift, or the DM decides to give us more hours to help things out. 
But if you work more hours one day...often the managers will have you cut those hours a different day to make sure you don't get overtime and don't go over your scheduled hours.

In any case.
Apparently this coworker threw a legit tantrum right there at the register that the managers on duty wouldn't let them have access to a different manager's phone number. 
And wouldn't listen when the managers on duty were like "these managers told you that there were no more hours you can't get any more hours." 

But they were yelling and making a scene at the register. Basically saying "I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying here! I'm doing my job! And I'm doing it good!" 

-In the time it takes this cashier to ring up one person we can ring up like three other customers at a different register. 

But the cashier was causing enough trouble that they had to open a second register and move all the customers over there. 

And despite the managers on duty's best efforts....
The cashier refused to go home.

Until they called one of the higher up managers on the phone and managed to convince the cashier to go into an office where they, the manager, and the manager on the phone had a very long...'animated' conversation which resulted in the manager on the phone telling the cashier that they needed to leave the building.

*shakes head*

Like.
Yikes.

I've had crazy coworkers before.
But this one may just take the cake.

-Sarnic Dirchi