For Adoption?

One of my Pet Peeves at work has been the use of "adoption" by some of my managers and coworkers. 

As "adoption" of animals usually comes in regards to our cats and dogs that come into the store to be placed up for adoption so that they can find their forever homes. 

"Adoption" could also apply to animals that we sell in the store as well. Though that is a rarer occurrence. Usually animals are put up for adoption in the store if they have a health issue that won't go away, a physical deformity, an agression problem, or they got too old/big to stay in the store. When these animals are placed up for adoption we basically give them away for free to customers capable of handling the animal and it's needs as we can't sell animals that aren't 'perfect' really. 
Again. This is a rarer occurence.

Usually adoption means the process of adopting a cat or dog from us. Which does also involve people paying money to get their cat or dog. But that money goes straight to the adoption groups. It doesn't go through our store at all so no cuts are taken by us.

However.
I have people at work who like to use the word "adoption" for our regular pet sales.
At least two or three times a week I'll here "Hey these customers want to adopt a guinea pig." or "So and so wants to adopt a snake." 

And considering the adoption of animals that we sell in the store is rather rare. 
I often feel the need to clarify. "Are they adoptiong it or are they buying it?" 
Because again, if a customer is adoptiong a pet that we sell -whether it be reptile, bird, rodent, or fish- the customer wouldn't be paying for the animal. And requires some extra paperwork.
However if they are buying the pet then they are paying for the pet. 

And nearly every time it's "Oh, they're buying one." 

*exhales* So like...to save the confusion...I do wonder why my coworkers don't say "Hey customers want to get this pet" or "buy this pet" or something like that.

As adoption? Definitely has different connotations. 

It wasn't my coworkers who used the word today though. 

No, a customer called the store asking if we had any guinea pigs up for adoption.

Which. Coincidentally for a while we did have some guinea pigs actually up for adoption.
As a customer returned a guinea pig to us that was a female. (I still don't believe the customer bought it from our store) and because that guinea pig was paired with a male guinea pig...the mama ended up having three babies that we also took back with the mama.

And since my store is a male store we can't sell female guinea pigs. So once the babies were weaned we would adopt out the mom.
And because the babies weren't born to our breeders and didn't go through all the processes to certify them for sell...even though they were males...we needed to adopt them out as well.

So for a couple of weeks we did have 4 guinea pigs up for adoption.
But we'd adopted them all out like a week ago. 

Plus...I was surprised the customer knew we had guinea pigs up for adoption.
Because with the pandemic there are a lot of people impulse buying pets to keep them company while they're constantly home.
And with the adoption of animals that we sell, the customer waives the usual 14 day guarantee we give our animals. So there's a "No return" policy on them because the customer is already aware that there is an issue with the animal. 
And because we've already had to deal with customers returning pets because they've changed their mind.
The choice was made to keep the guinea pigs up for adoption off the floor, away from customer's eyes as we didn't want them to be impulse bought only to not be cared for later. 

Like I said though, we did manage to find customers who wanted to adopt them and now no longer had any guinea pigs up for adoption.

So I was like "No I don't have any guinea pigs up for adoption" to the customer on the phone. 
So they were like "Do you have any other animals up for adoption?"
And yes "We have one hamster up for adoption currently." was what I said. As one of our Fancy Bear Syrians ended up with head tilt and even though we treated it...he still has a slight head tilt and therefore needs to be adopted out instead of sold.

I was kinda curious how the customer knew about the adoption process for our animals as it's not really something that is talked about since it doesn't happen that often. Usually only like maybe two or three times a year. 

The customer was like "Oh...is it because of COVID that you are so low on animals and you can't get any more in?" 

And I was like O_o??? Because no, we still had plenty of animals in the store. Especially because due to contracts or something, we can't stop our animal deliveries to the store. 
(Which is a sore point to a lot of my coworkers who wish we would stop selling animals during the pandemic and only focus on selling food/supplies that customers need for the pets they already have) 

But remembering that my coworkers like to use the word "adopt" for animals that customers are planning to buy, I asked the customer if they were wanting to adopt a guinea pig or buy a guinea pig.

Unsurprisingly the customer was like "What's the difference."
Which after I explained the difference they were like "Oh, I think I want to buy a guinea pig then."

Which was good. I mean I still had 9 of them in the store. So the customer could come in anytime to get one if they wanted to. 

Still. 
The conversation would have been much shorter if the customer had simply asked "Do you have any guinea pigs." Because then I would have answered: "Yes, we have 9 currently." And that would have been the end of the conversation. 

*shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi