Yip Yip Yip

 I don't understand people who just let their dogs bark/yip/yap incessantly. 

Like...maybe they've dealt with it so long they tune it out?

Or maybe they just like having noise constantly around them?

Who knows.

In any case.

Today we had a yippy dog in the store.

One of those little white poodle mix dogs that can sit on your lap and such.

And the freaking dog would not shut up.

It yipped and yapped the entire time it was in the store. 

Which considering the dog was in the store for a training class....meant that it was in the store for at least an hour. Maybe slightly longer because I saw the dog outside of the training class for a little bit after the class had ended.

But like.

For that entire hour.

The dog would not shut up.

And on more than one occasion its yipping encouraged the other dogs in the class to start barking too.

Which barking dogs is part of the job. 

Having it last for like an hour straight? Not so much. 

Especially when the yip is at such a tone that it echoes loudly through the entire store.

Not as bad as the border collie bark, but this yippy mini poodle mix made it difficult to speak and be heard because the bark was so pervasive. 

It just. Echoed. 

Constantly.

Echoed.

And when I'm noise sensitive...having a dog constantly yapping makes it easy to trigger a headache.

Which a headache it did trigger.

But like....I didn't understand the pet parent themself.

Like why in the world would you allow your dog to yip constantly for so long? 

If it were me I'd be making more of an effort to shut the dog up. Like...at least try to hold the dog's mouth closed or cover it's eyes or something to get it to be quiet.

Especially when you're in a training class.

Like yah...a training class would probably mean they'd be teaching you how to get your dog to be quiet. 
But at the same time. It wasn't that sort of training class, at least I don't think it was. 

But how inconsiderate is it....to let your dog bark the entire time you're sitting in a class. To have the dog barking so loudly that you can't hear yourself talking halfway across the store, let alone within three feet of the yipping pup. 

I can't believe the pet parent would just sit there and let the dog bark without trying to quiet it.

But that seemed to be the case. And even the dog trainer said it was a 'bad class' because of it. Because they could barely make themselves heard and such. 

Like...how do you expect to learn anything if you can't hear anything the trainer was saying? 

It's frustrating.

Like me and my coworkers were talking about writing off one of those 'sonic eggs' hand remotes and using it as we walked past the training area to get the dog to be quiet.

We didn't do it. 
As we didn't want to interfere with the class, nor cause any potential problems because we knew how any of the dogs would react to it.

But gah.

So. Annoying.

I was so glad when yippy dog left.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Pull not Push

 I had a customer approach me asking for help with our tag machine.

As they had looked away 'at the wrong moment' while the machine was finishing engraving their dog tag. 

And when they looked back...their dog tag had vanished.

And so they figured it was 'stuck' inside the machine somewhere and therefore needed help getting the tag out.

Which was rather easy.

Because I simply lifted the flap -like you lift a flap to a candy machine- and reached inside...felt around. And tada! There was the tag. *shakes head*

I handed it to the customer and they were like "Oh."

Because apparently they thought that the little flap that you need to lift to get the tag...was a "push flap" where you push the flap inward in order to access the tag within. 

Kinda surprised they didn't try to lift the flap and just automatically assumed it had 'locked.' 

Silly customer.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Are Those Fish?

 So there I was, unboxing our bug shipment.

And there was a father with his child nearby looking at the fish.

As the fish wall is a popular destination for parents with young kids as it can be quite entertaining to the kids to watch the fish swim around.

In any case.

I was finishing unboxing all our various bugs.

And the father looks over and asks me "Are you unboxing fish?" 

...

Like...I suppose that's a legitimate thing to ask. Since our fish do come in boxes....Much much larger boxes....

Plus I was standing by the fishwall at our cricket podium and unboxing things.

But like...most of the mini containers I was unboxing....were clear.

So you could see the sawdust and some superworms and such if you looked. 

And like...the containers I was pulling out were rather...small? Not really large enough to fit fish inside them. Not unless they were little fry or something. 

But yah no, I told the dude. "Nope these are bugs."

Because what else could I say?

I mean most of the boxes  said "Live BUGS" and there was no signs of water anywhere in said containers. 

*shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

Late Night Visit

 We had a larger family enter the store tonight about fifteen minutes before closing. 

Which after a long day at work, the last thing you want to deal with at the end of your shift right before close is a bunch of energetic kids running around.

It's also weird because like....it was nearly 9pm.

What family goes "Oh hey let's buy a couple of betta fish as our new pets!" at 9pm at night? 

Shouldn't you be trying to get your kids in bed?

Why would you want to put them in a car, drive in the dark, to a store...to buy fish?

*shakes head*

I don't understand it.

But I'm grateful the family's visit was short and that they were in and out before we closed for the night as I wasn't looking foward to trying to kick them out.

-Sarnic Dirchi

The First Customer of the Day

 It's not the best of starts to the work morning to have your first customer of the day be an anti-masker.

A mother came in with her three young kids and their puppy. None of them wearings masks. And while the three kids were young enough to not necessarily need to wear masks. The mother was a different case entirely.

So I approached her, asking if she had a mask to wear.

To which she replied that "We have a medical condition." 

Which...I'm pretty certain that it's unlikely that your entire family has medical conditions, though again I wasn't as concerned with the kids not wearing masks.

But I had to restate our policy that "Everyone in the store is required to wear masks." and that "If you cannot wear a mask, then we do provide curbside pick up for you, but you need to wear a mask while in the store."

And the customer was like "Oh."

And went to get a mask to wear.

-_- 

It's rather frustrating. How many people try and use the 'medical condition' as an excuse to not wear a mask when they actually don't have a medical condition preventing them from wearing a mask. 

Like there are legitimate people who have breathing issues and can't wear masks and such. But I'm pretty sure most of those people are edging on the side of caution and taking advantage of the curbside pick ups and such.

Because like...if you can't breathe while wearing a mask....then you definitely won't be able to breathe if you catch Covid.

*shakes head* 

It's so crazy how many customers choose their own self interest over the health of others. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Renting Out

 So we have these carpet cleaners at work that we rent out to customers. 

And like...I've been well aware that we have carpet cleaners at work.

And that there's extra forms the customer needs to fill out in order to rent out the carpet cleaners. 

But in like the 8 years I've worked here....I've done like...three forms with the carpet cleaners?

Aka I'm not familiar with them at all.

And unfortunately....a customer decided to rent a customer....right when I was the only manager on duty.

And none of the workers were familiar with renting out the cleaners either. *exhales*

So yah.

Fun times figuring out how to do all that when it's been a long while since I've had to fill out the form.

Especially when I had to figure it all out when also trying to juggle like ten other things at the same time in the middle of a rush. *exhales*

At least it seemed to get rented out okay...hopefully the return went without a hitch as well. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fish Fish Fish

 So yesterday we had three boys come into the store. Probably in their early teens. And the three of them together got a 37 gallon starter tank, some gravel, and a couple of plants to put in it. 

No parent in sight.

And like. It was a surprise to have them confidently hand me two $100 bills to pay for everything. 

Like where do three young teens get that sort of money. *shakes head* I could only assume that their parent was waiting outside or something.

In any case.

They tried to buy fish right after taking their tank to their car, but we refused because they weren't 18 or older. 

Today they tried the same thing again.

And again we stated they needed their parents. -I'm pretty sure 2 of the 3 boys were the same from yesterday, especially because they mentioned they 'bought a tank yesterday'

Though funnily enough they were like "we have a 50 gallon tank" and like...No, I know you bought a 37 gallon instead.

In any case they did manage to bring in an adult to consent to them buying fish.

Though being typical boys hearing "No" meant that they were like "YES!" 

Because one boy got really into the concept of getting a koi fish. Despite being told that they would get 3 feet full grown and would need a larger tank and that getting other fish would be better. 

But no. 

Kid was set.

He wanted to try his luck with the koi.

Ugh. Rolled my eyes so hard.

But yah. Kid ended up with two koi and a black moor. 

*exhales*

I hope the fish do alright. But who knows at this point.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Oh No Response

There are some customers -who are semi regular- that come into the store and I have this automatic "Oh, No. You again." 

They're also the sort of customers where while you recognize them...you don't see them often enough to remember exactly why they give you the 'oh no' response. 

That situation happened today.

Where I had two people come into the store. 
And I recognized them. 
But I also had the "Oh No" response. 
But it had been long enough since I last interacted with them, that I wasn't quite sure how they'd been difficult in the past.

Mostly because I got the sense that I've had to run the gambit with them in helping them with problems with various animals. 

In today's case.

The customers were wanting to get a bigger fish tank.

Or...at least a fish tank with a different sort of lid on top. Because apparently the cats they have keep drinking from their 40 gallon tank and apparently throwing up in it?? O_o Who knows. 

They were wanting a new 40 gallon tank, but we didn't have any that size in the style they wanted. So they ended up upgrading to a larger 55 gallon size. 

Thankfully I didn't have to interact with them for as long this time.

But yah...I was grateful when they left the store. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Long Lost Twin

So towards the end of the work day, a while after the sun had set, I ended up going out to gather up all the carts in the parking lot as we'd gotten rather low in the store. 

And apparently a customer saw me gathering carts outside.

Again. It'd dark out. So the only light is the light from the parking lot lights or cars driving past.

And when they entered the store....they saw my coworker who was walking by.

And like stopped dead. And pointed straight at them.

My coworker was like O_o?? "Can I help you?" 

lol and the customer was like "Weren't you just outside gathering carts?" 

And then proceed to ask if this coworker was my twin. XD lol.

Which I could see how people might think we're related.

As we're similar build, have similar hair color, and wear our hair in the same hair style....

So in the darkness of outside I could see how people would think the two of us were twins.

Though standing side by side? Not so much.

Still. It's amusing to think we confused a customer. lol amusing to think I have a twin in the store too. XD 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Finally Heading Home

 So for the past two...maybe three weeks? now we've had a customer calling our store practically every day.

Why? Because they'd returned a guinea pig to us to be treated as they'd noticed he'd been injured in his side. 

Which if a customer returns an animal to us and they want to buy it back after getting treatment...they can't buy it back from us until the animal has recovered from whatever reason it was returned for.

So with the guinea pig, we couldn't return it until the wound on the side healed and the fur in the area grew back.

Already I could estimate it would be like 2ish weeks for the wound to heal and for the fur to probably grow back.

And we told the customer that we would call them when the guinea pig was ready to be taken home.

But the customer....i don't know if they just didn't believe we would call...or was just super worried about the state of their pet...but yah we ended up having to talk to them basically every single day.

Which like....the customer has to realize that wounds don't just heal over night....

And that by calling daily there won't be much to report right away beyond 'we're treating it'

But ah.

It was so nice to be able to call the customer today and tell them that their guinea pig was ready to go home.

As the fur had finally shown signs of growing back, and while I usually would want to wait another day or two to have the fur be a bit longer. The moment that the new growth covered the bare skin...I decided it was time for the guinea pig to go back.

If only to save our sanity as this customer was driving all my managers to annoyance with their constant calls to us to check in despite our repeated assurances we would call them when the guinea pig was ready to go home.

Yah. There was palatable relief when the customer came in and finally took their guinea pig back.

Hopefully they don't continue calling with other concerns...but only time will tell.

-Sarnic Dirchi

1 Part Per Million

 Dealing with customers who like to do 'technical' speak is always 'fun' because half the time you have no idea what they're talking about.

The most popular sort of techno speak is when customers ask for Elodia or Koridorous. Which the former is known as Anacharis in the store and the latter are just our Cory Catfish.

But customers often insist on speaking more sciency when they're wanting those particular things.

It's more amusing though when the customer tries to sound smart but obviously doesn't know what they're talking about.

I had a customer come into the store today who said that their ammonia levels in their tank were 1 part per million.

Which I actually had never heard of the ppm for ammonia until that moment. 

And the customer was freaking out over it because they tested their water and their levels were the 1/1,000,00 which was 'high' to them because they'd had their tank cycling for a couple of weeks? And had apparently put a betta fish into their tank and had it die in like two days.

Which...if there had been no fish in the tank before the betta...and the betta lived only two days...that's not enough time to have toxic amounts of ammonia show up in your tank...not unless the water you used to fill the tank with was already high in ammoina.

No. What was more likely was that bettas aren't always as hardy in the winter time. So more than likely they picked a betta that wasn't as healthy and it ended up not doing well with the stress of travel. 

But the customer wasn't hearing it.

They were convinced it was the ammonia levels.

And like...I have no idea how to read ppm compared to our regular water tests.

but if for every MILLION particles in the water only ONE of them is Ammonia....it sounds like the levels are rather low. Aka there should be no concern there, especially when the customer said that their nitrites and nitrates were fine.

Yet, when I tried to show them the tests we use...the customer was insistant that despite me showing them that they were more likely on the 'fine' side of the spectrum, they were under the impression that the 'low' side was the 'bad' side.

*exhales*

So I ended up recommending a couple of different fish for them to try -they decided to go for platys-and then suggested they do a 25% water change before putting the new fish into the tank.

As most problems within a tank are solved when you do a water change. So if the ammonia levels were actually the cause, the water change would help that.

Hopefully those fish do well. :S Guess we'll see if the customer shows up in the next handful of days with more dead fish....

-Sarnic Dirchi

NOT Self Serve

I don't understand some customers.

Like...we're in the middle of a pandemic....and yet there are some individuals out there who think it's okay to touch things that they shouldn't be touching.

Like today I discovered a customer at our cricket podium...bagging his own crickets.

Which is not something we ever let customers do. It's not a self serve station. We bag up the crickets for the customers.

Mostly because many customers lie. And they would probably bag up 100 crickets and then claim they were only buying like 10. *shakes head*

But yah, this guy just went a head and gave himself 6 large crickets while I was like "Dude, you can't do that."

Did he care? Nope. 

He didn't even properly put things away. Just left them willy nilly. XP 

It had me seeing red.

Like...dude...I don't know if you're new here, but the cricket podium is NOT self serve. DO NOT TOUCH. And like we have a button on said podium that lets you call help to you.

And it was even more infuriating because like...I'd been gone from that podium for maybe two minutes? You couldn't wait 2 minutes to have someone help you? 

Plus it meant that I had to go through and wipe down and sanitize everything he'd potentially touched to be safe.

Yah. Did not like this guy. At all.

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Teaching Moment

 One thing I do enjoy is helping customers who want to learn and are anxious to learn.

Like when the day is slow and there's not a long line of customers waiting to need help. I do love taking the time to guide and teach new pet parents in how to take care of their pets.

I had a customer come into the store for fish. Though they were waiting for the rest of their family to show up.

As they'd bought fish from our competitor in the southern part of the valley (their first mistake as fish from there nearly always die) and the customer wanted to know what they'd done wrong as they'd thought they'd done everything correctly.

So I did my teaching thing and we ended up guessing that it was mostly the fish...but that the customer also has too soft of water and that they needed the water to be harder before adding in more fish.

This was confirmed when the customer had their family bring in a sample of water and I was able to see that yes their water was soft.

But yah.

It was kinda fun -until a rush hit- to help this customer and their family out in picking new fish that would go well in their tank and guiding them in how many to add and other measures to take to protect their fish and such.

Hopefully the new batch does better than the first batch...we'll have to see. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Busy Busy

 Tuesday has been one of those days that just...gets super busy lately and I don't like it.

At least it wasn't as crazy busy as last Tuesday where we had like a rush for three straight hours.

But today we had a good hour rush from 5pm-6pm where suddenly everyone was in the store needing help and we had to have 2 registers going while also having 2 people at the fish wall catching fish because if people weren't standing in line to check out it seemed like they were waiting for us to get them fish.

So annoying.

Like....I don't know how this hive mind forms. But I don't like my calm mellow tuesdays turning super busy. It's stressful.

Especially when I end up catching the same creatures over and over and over like I had to have caught 3 sets of frogs in a row for 3 different customers today....

It was nice when the rush finally faded away.

-Sarnic Dirchi

$99.99?

 So over the weekend we had a weird occurrence happen at work. 

Where our inexpensive ornaments. The ones that are like $9.99 were suddenly randomly ringing up for $99.99

And we had no idea what that glitch was happening on some of the ornaments but not all of them.

*shakes head* 

Well. 

Apparently...those ornaments, the ones ringing up for $99.99, were the ornaments we were supposed to be using for the fish wall reset that we're doing this month.

Where we're replacing all our old ornaments and rocks with varieties that we sell off the shelf.

That way customers can see what the product looks like when it's wet and 'get inspired' or whatever.

In any case. Apparently the $99.99 ornaments were ones that had been coated in a special coating of whatever they coated it with to help them last longer in our tanks.

But we didn't discover that until today. *exhales* After we'd already sold like a good dozen of said ornaments after adjusting their price. 

It's annoying.

Like...why didn't corporate just have the DC place the 'special fish wall reset ornaments' in a separate box and have said box be labeled "STORE USE ONLY"

That would have saved us a lot of confusion. *shakes head*

-Sarnic Dirchi

Specific Breed

 I had a customer call the store today asking if we had any male calico kittens for sale.

Which it was rather strange...because he was quite insistant that the cat be a male calico kitten and infact repeated those three descriptors a good dozen times during my phone call with him as I tried to explain that a) I don't have any cats in the store currently and b) we don't control what type of cats come in and c) that male calico cats aren't that common....

Like....seriously. Male Calicos are Rare.

To the point that they can be worth thousands of dollars sort of rare if they have the right sort of markings and such.

So like...while it does occasionally happen with our adoptions that we get them in...it's rare...like maybe one a year. Maybe. 

I do wonder if he'll find his precious male calico kitten....though I'm betting it's not from us. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Small Bright Moments

 You know, I'm rather grateful for the customers who take the time to approach us after we have to deal with an anti-masker and compliment us on handling the situation or give us their condolences for having to deal with such individuals. 

It's just...somewhat nice to know that not all customers are against us.

Which in general they're not.

But when we have to deal with an uptick in anti-maskers....especially the ones that get more confrontational and loud about their dislike of our mask policy....

It's nice to have other customers take the time to approach us and tell us that we're doing a good job. 

I had one such customer do so today after I had a family of anti-maskers take offense to our policy that they have to wear masks to be in the store and had the man get rather loud at me for 'treating him like a second class citizen' *shakes head*

The customer who came over afterwards was like "I don't need help, but I want to say you handled the situation remarkably well and I'm sorry you had to deal with it."

Yah me too.

Though unfortunately having had to deal with such individuals for the entire pandemic...I'm rather used to it. *exhales* 

I wish people would just learn that wearing a mask is a sign that you care about others and that it's not a political agenda. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Name

 Gotta love the naming techniques of kids. lol.

I had an adorable child come into the store today wanting to get a 'blue fish'

Why?

So they could name their fish "Blue Waterfall." 

XD lol.

Hearing the names kids call their pets is the best.

-Sarnic Dirchi

In Stock?

 I had a couple flag me down in the store today, asking for help finding a specific prescription dog food as they had called us yesterday to see if we had it in stock...but they couldn't find it on the shelf.

Which I was like "Oh yah! We have that particular prescription." because I was the person who went and checked yesterday to see if said prescription food was in stock. And we had plenty of bags and canned food on the shelf.

However....when I went to check the spot.

Both spots where the dry and wet food were....were empty.

()_()

Which like...there had been ALOT of food there.

So it was rather crazy to discover that the shelf was empty. Like who came in and wiped us out?? *shakes head*

And these customers were like "We drove 3 hours to get here." 

As apparently their online orders have been delayed so they needed to get food now.

Which...if you had called yesterday why did you not come yesterday to get the food?? *shakes head* 

In any case. I said that I would go double check in the back to see if I had any extra of that prescription food back there.

Thankfully. I did. 

I was able to find 2 bags of the specific dog food that the couple needed. So woot for being part of a success story and that the customers were able to bring dog food back home to their pupper and not have wasted 6 hours driving to and from our store.

Still crazy that the food on the shelf vanished that quickly though. :S 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Too Many Fish

I had a customer come into the store wanting to get fish.

"A lot of fish." in their words.

Which is never a good thing to hear when dealing with aquatics. Because if people try to add too many fish into their tank at once...there's a higher chance of them dying. Just from the stress and the sudden increase in ammonia and the like.

And I knew that this might be a problem when the customer started off by saying that they wanted 8 red wag platys.

Eight is a big number. And with the customer gearing up to tell me more fish that they wanted....I had to double check.

How big is the tank?

The customer seemed to think they had a 75 gallon.

Though when I mentioned at one point that I had a 125 gallon they were like "Oh yah! That's the size of tank that I had when I killed all my fish."

As the customer was coming to restock their tank with fish after doing a water change that killed their fish because they made the water too hot. 

In any case.

I tried to tell the customer that they should only get between 8-10 fish for their 75 gallon tank as they don't want to add too many fish at once because again, like I stated above, it could stress out and kill their fish.

The customer brushed off my concerns though. Stating that they had 'multiple tanks' they can put the fish in.

*exhales* Pretty sure that was a bald-faced lie. But I can't really call a customer out on it when they tell me they have other tanks. But like...when the customer makes no indication as to which tanks they want their fish to be in or like which fish can go into the same bag together...yah...pretty sure they only had the one tank.

*exhales*

And like they ended up having me grab around 50 fish.

6 Red Wag Platys. (originally 8 but they decided to do 6)
5 Tiger Barbs.
4 Bala Sharks
8 Giant Danios
6 Red Minor Tetras
4 Turquoise Guppies
4 Red Tuxedo Guppies

I feel like there was another batch in there somewhere. *exhales*

But needless to say it was a lot of fish.

And kinda annoying though because I told the customer a 75 gallon tank should only have around 30ish fish.

So of course instead of listening to my first advice of getting only 8 fish this week and waiting a week before coming to get more fish, they only heard my other info of the fact that if you divide the size of the tank you have in half -75 gallons- that's around how many fish you can have. 

So of course they got around 38 fish for a 75 gallon tank.

It's just...annoying. When customers have selective hearing. *exhales*

Honestly, if their fish die I won't be surprised because like dude...I told you that wasn't a good idea. But did you listen? Noooooo.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Don't. Sit. There.

 So I had this couple come into the store.

Apparently wanting to adopt a cat.

Problem was...we didn't have any cats available for adoption because our adoption group hasn't brought in any more as the rest were adopted for Christmas.

And apparently this was a huge wrench in the couple's plans. As they were expecting to find cats and to not find cats...was bad for them.

To the point where they needed to find a place to regroup and figure out who in the valley actually carried cats that they could go look at and possibly adopt. 

This regrouping....took place with both couples sitting on the floor of our store by our display fishtanks.

Which....*exhales* Like One. They were blocking the aisle so that customers were having to move around them in order to get to and from the fish wall.

And like Two...they decided in order to properly get on the phone and call other places and figure out their plan...they needed to take off their masks.

Which no. You don't take off your mask in the store. That's why there's a mask requirement.

And Three.

Never. Ever. EVER sit on the floor of a pet store.

Especially one that allows customers to bring their pets aka their dogs into the store.

As said dogs....don't always behave themselves.

So yah. Our floors have been peed on multiple times.

And we do our best to keep those floors clean. 

But like....even if we kept them sparkling...it's not a good idea to sit on the floor of a petstore.

Not when you have no idea what has been in the spot you're sitting on before you sat there.

I was glad when they finally left....

As it was kinda stressful just watching them sit there.

-Sarnic Dirchi