The Goldest

 It's always frustrating when a customer ends up being indecisive when it comes to making a decision. Like the choice shouldn't be that hard of one. Just pick and go. And yet customers end up paralyzed with indecision.

 Which gets rather frustrating when a customer is struggling to make a choice, and yet they're unwilling to let you leave their presence so you can go help other customers while they make up their mind.

Today I had such a customer.

An older woman came into the store wanting to buy a couple of goldfish for her bowl.

-Yes I tried to talk her out of it. She was persistent and I barely managed to convince her to just choose one goldfish and see how that one survived before trying to do more than one in a bowl.

As in the bowl she'd need to do water changes like...every day to keep the goldfish alive.

It didn't dissuade her much.

As she was very focused on her vision.

Said vision? Was to have the 'goldest goldfish' in a fish bowl so that she could tell visitors that she had a 'pot of gold' at home. 

Which I give credit for the fun concept. A "pot of gold" is a fun idea. 

But honestly if I could reliably have 'gold' betta fish I would have directed her towards them instead because bettas do much better in a bowl than any other fish even if the environment still isn't the best for them.

In any case.

The customer was fixated on finding the 'goldest' goldfish from a particular tank.

Which the customer's definition of "gold" is that the goldfish had to be a nice deep shade of orange.

*shakes head* Hardly gold at all. But *shrugs* what can you do?

The problem was...we had like a dozen goldfish in the tank she was looking at. And at least nine of them were all the exact same shade of orange.

Which happened to be the shade of 'gold' that she was looking for. 

Only she couldn't decide which of these goldfish was the 'goldest'

I tried multiple times to step away so I could help the other customers I could see hanging out waiting for help while she tried to settle on a decision.

But the woman was persistent in that she was 'ready'

And just left me standing there awkwardly waiting for her to pick one.

And when she finally picked one and I fished it out...

She wasn't satisfied that it was the 'goldest' and so had me fish out two other goldfish -with long staring periods of watching the tank before indicating which fish she wanted me to fish out- before she decided to look between the three goldfish and pick the 'goldest' of those ones.

*exhales*

It was a long process. A frustrating one too considering I had no one to back me up and I could feel the other customers getting antsy waiting for me to finish up with this customer.

But at least I got the fish bagged up and handed to the customer without further difficulties so yay.

Hopefully the fish does alright....but honestly I won't be surprised if it doesn't do well....

-Sarnic Dirchi