All of Them

 We had a customer call the store today like...ten minutes before we closed, asking if we had any mystery snails in stock.

Whcih...yah...we did.

And the dude was like "Great! I'm right here, I'll be right in to grab all of them."

And sure enough at like 9 right on the dot when we closed...I see a guy walk in and head over to the fishwall.

*exhales*

Like....is there really a good reason to walk in right at closing time for animals? No. No there isn't. Surely this could have waited until tomorrow morning. 

Or like the dude could have come in even an hour earlier.

But to come in right at close and demand ALL our snails?

Yah. Didn't like him on sight. 

Because we usually have a ton of mystery snails on hand. 

Unless we didn't get in any on our shipments there's usually a good 40 or more of them in the tank.

And to fish them all out would take time. Time that I really didn't want us to have to waste when we had already closed for the night.

*shakes head*

However.

The dude ended up only taking like 15 mystery snails. A combination of our ivory, blue, and gold ones. 

As he'd never seen 'light' mystery snails before. 

Soo I'm guessing he's only ever seen the black mystery snails? Who knows.

In any case.

He hadn't expected us to have a good 40 snails in the tank as apparently other pet stores he's visited only ever have like...ten in stock.

So he wasn't expecting to get more than like...ten of them.

It was so unexpected that we had so many snails for him that he didn't even bring in enough cash to buy the 15 snails he ended up getting and he had to run out to his car to get more money in order to pay for all of them.

*shakes head*

At least he didn't totally wipe us out of our mystery snails. So bonus there.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Last Minute

 I will never understand the people who decide to do last minute shopping.

Like...I understand that people work late shifts and such and not everyone gets off work at 5pm.

But like...I don't understand people who decide to come into our store ten minutes before we close to shop.

It makes sense if it's an emergency and you need to pick up some food for your pet because you just realized you're out.

But buying animals ten minutes before close? Impulsive much? 

And it's so stressful on us workers because we're trying to close down the store and now there's people shopping around and messing things up and needing help and preventing us from getting our closing tasks done in a timely manner because they had to come in and linger.

It's especially annoying when it's a group of anti-maskers coming into the store right before close.

Like guys...just because the sun went down doesn't mean we can't see your maskless faces in the lights that we have on in the store.

*exhales*

It's frustrating. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Review

I have coworkers who occasionally like to go onto the internet and look up our store and read the reviews posted there.

Me? 

I'm not one of those people.

Mostly because if people take the time to review a place....it seems like they're more likely to leave a negative comment rather than a positive one.

And I tend to take criticism to heart when it comes to my store. I don't like it when people give bad reviews. Especially when like...it's over something stupid that we can't control. (Like prices or variety of animals we sell) 

So it was rather surprising today when I had a customer come in looking for help for getting the right type of food for their new dog.

And I gave them a couple of options to look at and made a couple other suggestions.

And the interaction was a pretty typical one. Customer asks questions. I give answer/opinion. They say thanks. I move on to the next customer.

But this person made a point to thank me for my help. And further stated that they would leave a good review of me online too.

Like. O_o 

Uhmmm.

I mean, it's good to get good reviews and such.

But I'm perfectly happy being unknown at work. 

Like I know people know me as I do get in my regulars and such that I interact with a lot.

And I know that people have referenced me before online as my coworkers who do look at reviews on our store have shown them to me.

But still.

Being told that someone is going to say something online?

Yah. Kinda nervewracking.

I'm good not being known. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Counting Ever Counting

 So I had to count all the animals in the store. Again. Tonight.

Again because I did this 'annual' animal count last month. But due to a glitch in the system...it didn't get recorded.

And instead of being like "Oh well, guess we'll just skip it this time." Corporate decided to just 'reschedule' it and have me do the count again tonight.

*exhales*

They're lucky this was like the one weekend this month that I didn't already have plans. Because that would have thrown quite a wrench in their plans since I'm supposed to be present, as the manager over the department, for these counts.

In any case.

Out of the ordinary, my head manager scheduled one of our cashiers to stay behind to help me count the creatures once the store is closed.

-As we need to have two people present so we can verify that the numbers are accurate. 

This mostly is important for counting all the fish we have. 

And usually it's one of my petcare people that does this. Or another manager.

It's a first to have a cashier helping out.

Which can bring it's own share of problems.

Namely in that the cashiers aren't often over by our fishwall, and probably don't look too closely at the fish they're checking out at the register when people bring them up to buy.

So expecting the cashier to be able to tell the difference between multiple varieties of fish in the same tank....yah....

Thankfully though, there wasn't too much confusion with this cashier. A couple of clarifications and they were good to count the animals.

So woot!

We even managed to count all 4,556 animals in like...an hour and a half? Which is rather impressing considering it can take a couple of hours to do this count. 

It was probably helped by the fact that we are low on animals due to...well people buying them up like crazy. 

So yah, helps to have a lower than normal amount of stock too.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Skin Colored

 There was a customer who came into the store today to do a training class with her dog.

And from a distance...it really looked like she wasn't wearing a shirt.

Which would be really odd...to come in shirtless into a petstore to train your dog....

So I assumed that she was wearing a shirt...but from how far away I was standing...it looked like there was nothing there.

Which was a valid visual...because the tank top she was wearing was nearly the same shade as her skin. So from a distance the color blended in to make it look like she didn't have a top on.

It was so weird. So weird. Why would you wear such a shirt? 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Don't Overcrowd It

 Had a couple of girls come into the store today looking to get some fish for their 'tank.'

In typical fashion the girls didn't know exactly how big it was and kinda gave an approximate size to what they had.

Which seemed to be around a 2 gallonish tank.

Which usually means getting a betta fish.

But the one girl wanted more fish than that. She wanted like 10 goldfish in that little tank because she wanted 'a ton of fish' in her tank.

It was a bit of a shock to her when I flat out told her if she put 10 goldfish in that small of a space at least 8 of them would probably die.

Apparently the concept of overcrowding hadn't really occurred to her.

Probably because the customers saw our tanks filled with a ton of fish in them...not realizing that all our tanks are considered to be one big tank as they're all connected to each other. 

So yah.

The customer ended up buying '5 goldfish' to split between two tanks and then an extra 2 goldfish for a friend.

*exhales*

I couldn't argue against it. But if she does try to put all 7 together in the tank I hope she quickly realizes that I was right in saying that doing that many together was a bad idea.

-Sarnic Dirchi