Wanted Dead

 So there's this customer that comes into the store.

That is rather obsessed with well...'saving things'

Pretty sure they come from the great depression era where you use a thing until it's completely dust and save everything 'just in case' it comes in handy later.

For a long while this customer would come get the eggs that our Finches and Canaries would lay and would ask us to save them so that they could then take them, freeze dry them?? do something to them to make them 'collectable' and like make dioramas or whatever to give to schools? I honestly don't know.

But it's been around a year or so since we've done that for that customer.

Mostly because we started selling the birds in our store faster and therefore didn't give them time to lay eggs. But also because the customer stopped asking for them. It could be that they had enough of it...or else enough new people are now working in the store that don't know about this that the customer gave it up.

In any case.

I've also seen this customer try and save cardboard images of like dogs and cats that were headers on displays we were no longer needing. And yah....basically if they see anything getting thrown away they want to double check and make sure they can't use it or repurpose it in some way first.

It's about 50/50 with this customer on their success rate of convincing us to give them things. Some items we're like 'sure have at it' but others we're like 'no we can't do that.'

Today's event included our crickets. 

As apparently the customer is now caring for a spider and needed to get some crickets to feed it. 

When I found the customer they were peering into our small cricket bin. Like lid up head stuck into the bin peering inside.

And I was like "Can I help you?" 

And they were like "Do you sell the dead crickets?"

Because I'd received in a cold shipment of crickets earlier and hadn't yet swept up the dead that had come in as I was waiting to see if any of them would come out of hibernation as sometimes the cold doesn't kill them just makes them sleep.

But most of the time customer want the live crickets because the creatures that eat them like to hunt for their food.

So I was like "No we don't sell the dead ones."

I mean...we do sell the freeze dried dead crickets. There's canned versions and bottled versions of them that customers can buy.

But sell dead ones from the live cricket bin? No. We don't do that. 

Mostly because it can be a biohazard? As we don't know what the creature died from and we don't want to risk getting a person sick from handling the dead creature, or have their pet get sick from eating the freshly dead creature. Plus like...the ammonia that the dead crickets give off can stink rather bad. 

And the customer wasn't fazed at all. They were like "Oh, if you don't sell them can I just have some? My spider will eat them."

Again no. For the reasons stated above. It's a safety issue. 

*shakes head* It reminds me of the people who want to buy the dead goldfish on occasion. Most want it for filming but occasionally they want them for other reasons and like....No we don't sell them and we don't give them away just for safety and public image and such.

So yah, this customer didn't get their dead crickets.

But I did catch them like 5 live ones to go feed to their spider. *shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi