A Holey Bucket

I had one of those customers today.
Where talking to them was like trying to fill a holey bucket.
Because it definitely felt like whatever I told the customer went in one ear and straight out the other.
Like it took five or six repetitions of the statement before the customer actually comprehended what I was saying.

Like. I'm pretty sure it was mostly the customer was just like "I must get fish for my kids!!!" 
And not much else was going through their head.

As they'd bought a ten gallon tank and had it all set up.
And now had come to buy fish for their kids.
But they knew nothing about fish and so wanted to know which fish would go well together.

So I did my best to explain how the fish worked on the wall.
How we had them organized and how the customer could tell which fish would play well with each other by the colored circles on the tag. Because if the fish have the same colored circles in the corner, then they can go together, but if they didn't they shouldn't go in the same tank.
Of course I had to do the explanation of the glofish and how some of those fish were more aggressive than others.

And like time and time again....I ended up repeating myself.
Sometimes multiple times in the space of like five minutes.

Like at one point I told the customer that the fish to the right were non-aggressive and the fish to the left were aggressive and that the customer shouldn't get those fish.
And the customer went straight to the tanks on the left with the more aggressive fish and was like "What about this fish? Or this fish? Or this fish?"
Like NO. I said those are AGGRESSIVE meaning they can KILL your fish and you shouldn't GET THEM. 
I don't know how many times I told the customer about the colored circles. 
I don't know how many times I told them to go look at the fish on the right wall and to avoid the fish on the left wall.

And like.
With a ten gallon tank you can usually get 5 or 6 fish in the tank and have it be happy.
But you only want to buy 2 or 3 fish. Wait a week and then come back and buy 2 or 3 more. 
So I told the customer to only focus on buying two or three fish today.

But when they were finally ready, after talking to their kids over the phone and taking a thousand pictures.
The customer was like "Okay I'll take these five fish."
To which I was like "You only want to get three of them because you can only have 5 or 6 fish in that tank but you only want to buy two or three today." 

And the customer apparently took it to mean two or three of that type of fish today. Not just 3 fish total today.
Because they then proceeded to be like "can I get two of these other fish along with those three fish."

No.
"What about two of these other fish with the three fish?"

No. 
Dear customer. No.
You can get five fish yes.
But not today.
You should only get three fish today and then three fish next week.
You don't want to buy all your fish at once because that can stress your fish out and kill your fish. 

Apparently the customer was really set against only getting three.
Because they kept at it until they were like "what if I get just four of these fish?"

Sure.
Fine.
Whatever.
You just wasted an hour of my life with your inability to listen to me.
So yah we can get you your four fish and if they die and you come back tomorrow with a dead fish then don't blame me.

But yah.
It was the most irritating customer today. Having to repeat myself a billion times and know that the customer probably retained none of the information I gave them.
Definitely not the best way to start out my shift today with this being my first customer for sure.

-Sarnic Dirchi