Tell Me About The Bird

I had a customer come into the store today, who got it into their head that they wanted one of our parakeets.

And I'm pretty sure that this customer only 'wanted' the bird for their 'grandchild' because the parakeet was by itself in the cage.

Does this grandchild actually want a bird? Who knows. 

But yah...the customer wanted to know 'why' we had this parakeet by itself when there was another cage that had half a dozen parakeets in it.

The answer is simple.

We have 3 types of parakeets we sell.

Greens. Blues. and Fancy Parakeets.

And we usually keep the Fancy parakeets in separate cages from the blues and the greens because the fancies can be blue, green, yellow, white or any combination and shade of them. 

And that can cause for confusion in which 'type' of bird we're selling if they're all mixed together.

So we keep the fancy's separate.

And unfortunately for the single Fancy Parakeet...all it's friends got sold a couple of days ago.

Honestly with the pandemic going on, we usually sell through parakeets within the week. 

I was actually surprised that the single fancy was still there this morning as the Fancies tend to be more popular than the blues and greens.

In any case, the customer decided that they wanted to get the bird....only they know like nothing about birds.

Okay. That's probably a lie. They probably had had birds in the past because this customer kept asking me about things that most beginner customers don't think about. Like things to help keep the nails on their feet trimmed and their beaks trimmed and the right kind of diet food and asking how long we quarantine the birds before bringing them out onto the floor and how old the birds are.

*exhales*

Most people you tell them "Pick a cage. Grab some food. Grab a cuttlebone and millet. Grab some toys. You're good to go." 

But this customer had me walking back and forth -as our bird section is stupidly divided up into three different aisles. *exhales* So it was like "Walk to the bird cages, walk to the bird food, walk back to the bird cages because the perches are there, walk back to the bird food because the cuttlebone is there, walk back to the bird cages because the customer asked about seed guards."

-_- Gah. I walked back and forth with this customer like a dozen times because I had no idea what thing they would ask me about next and they only seemed to remember the question they needed answering after I had left the area to show them the answer to their other question.

*exhales*

It would have been fine if the customer actually ended up buying the freaking bird.

But nooooo.

Basically the only thing, after all the relentless questions, that stopped the customer from finally purchasing the single parakeet....

Was the fact that our smallest and cheapest cage.....was white.

*exhales* The customer didn't want to spend $10 more to get a cage of a different color.

Nooo the customer wanted our cheap $20 cage.....but didn't want it in the only color it comes in.

So I basically wasted a good 45 minutes of my time with this customer who wanted to get things for the bird as cheaply as possible (surprise surprise) 

Only to leave to go 'find a better cage' with the intention to come back later. 

*exhales*

I never saw the customer come back.

Who knows if they will actually come back or if they ended up changing their mind after all about this 'gift' for their grandchild. 

-Sarnic Dirchi