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

Covering Register

I ended up getting stuck on register for like...an hour today pretty soon after I came into work because our cashier needed to take their lunch and I was the individual who was the 'most free.' at the moment.

And like...I don't mind covering the register for a lunch break. It's only 30 minutes of having to interact with people. Nothing too crazy and I can handle having nothing to do for that long if it ends up being a dead period.

But like. I tend to plan on how much energy I'm going to be spending doing certain tasks.

So if I'm planning to only be on the register for half an hour...and it takes longer...than my irritation ends up getting triggered as I'm forced to be someplace that I wasn't expecting to be for longer than I wanted to be.

This ended up being the case because our cashier -who is usually a stocker- went to our head manager and asked if they could be off register for a little bit longer and help out elsewhere in the store before they went crazy.

Which I hear you.

If you have any experience elsewhere in the store besides on register...then cashiering shifts are the worst shifts ever. Just having to stand there and wait for people to come to you to buy things. 

And the head manager granted my coworker's request and had them work on a 'single pallet' in the back to get all the product out on the shelf.

And like....H.M. made it sound like it would only be another 15 minutes or so. That this would be a 'quick task' my coworker could do before returning to register.

Nope.

Took them like 45 minutes to get back to me. XP 

*exhales*

I can't fault them.

But I really didn't appreciate being stuck in a place I wasn't planning to be stuck at for over an hour. 

Not. Fun.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Greetings

 Gotta love the customers who are just random.

We had an older gentleman walk into the store and say to our cashier: "Welcome to Starsmet!" 

Which...it's us the workers in the store who are supposed to greet the customers with that. We're the ones who are supposed to say "Welcome to Starsmet!" to them. 

*shakes head* lol

It definitely threw my cashier off a bit before they responded back in kind. "Welcome to Starsmet." 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Waiting

 It's amazing how many Saturday's have passed by in a person's lifetime...and yet customers seem to forget the fact that Saturday is a 'shopping' day for most people who work 9-5 M-F jobs. 

So of course the store is going to be more crowded, more busy, you'll actually have to wait in lines in order to buy the things you decided that you needed to get today. 

 It's also amazing how many people think that they're so much more important than all the other folks waiting in line and want to skip said line and be served first. *exhales* Like yes. I get you don't want to wait. But too bad. Everyone else is waiting too.

I had a customer come into the store today to return a hamster that had...well died. 

And instead of wanting to get their money back they decided they wanted to go look at the hamsters first and see if they wanted to get a new one.

And unfortunately for them, in the time they were looking....the line got really long. Like really really long. 

Because people have this amazing herd mentality of deciding to all check out at the same time.

And unfortunately it was just me, my cashier, and the petcare person in the store at that point.

And I was busy trying to catch a bird while my pet care person was catching fish and my cashier was trying to ring out people as fast as possible -which is near impossible when people decide to be complicated with returns and purchases and asking a ton of stupid questions.

And the customer who decided to wait to get a new hamster didn't want to wait in line to get their money back.

Which they had to wait in line to get their money back because I had already marked the receipt and taken the body of the hamster and therefore the customer needed to get their money back today because we can only honor things within a certain time frame and since I'd already marked the receipt...they wouldn't be able to get that return if they left.

Which yes. The line was long.

But it didn't seem like they had to wait that long because as soon as I was done catching the bird I jumped onto the register to help back up cashier and they were at my register soon enough.

Still. Kinda frustrating how impatient people get. Especially on Saturdays.

Like it's not my fault you all decided to come in on the same day at the same time and spend your stimulus check here. That's on you people. I just work here.

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Jerk

 The thing about working retail during a pandemic...is that you have to choose which battles to actually fight and which ones to just...let slide by.

Which is unfortunate when you have to consider your own safety when it comes to dealing with people.

Especially dealing with the antimaskers. 

Today a guy came into the store, wearing all black, no mask in sight. 

And like. Our policy has been since July that all people within the store have to wear a mask as that's our policy. 

Add on top of that that there's a mask mandate that's been in place since November requiring that people wear masks inside buildings....

It's kinda ridiculous that people still are coming into the store without masks on. 

And while many of them just forget to put theirs on, or are willing to go grab one of our free ones...

We still get the antimaskers who don't care at all about anyone but themselves and refuse to wear a mask.

Most of the time we inform the customer that without a mask they cannot be in the store. Aka. LEAVE.

But this dude?

Yah he ignored me telling him that he needed to wear a mask.

And being the only manager on duty at the time...it would have been my duty to follow up with him and be like "Sir you either wear the mask or you leave."

But then I saw what was hanging from his hip.

A gun.

Dude was openly carrying a gun in the store.

Not wearing a mask.

Like. Who knows how volatile this dick was gonna be.

He'd already refused to wear a mask.

Had a gun on his hip.

I could all too easily picture the dude being a complete idiot and drawing said gun and at minimum threatening me with it and at worse shooting me with it. 

So yah. I wasn't gonna touch that. 

Which is frustrating because it would be nice if we could just rely on people to be considerate and kind and helpful to one another. Where you can approach everyone without fear of getting hurt because of it and kindly remind them of our policies without the risk of violence possibly occuring.

*exhales*

It's so frustrating. How after a year people still are refusing to wear masks.

How after a year the fact that a person has a gun on their hip and is showing it off along with their maskless state makes it so that half of my coworkers vanish away from the guy just to ensure that they're safe.

I mean. The fact that the dude was maskless with a gun had one of my cashiers so shaken up that they needed to go take a fifteen minute break and like...the cashier never interacted with them directly.

Can people seriously not understand or realize how traumatized many retail workers have become over this past year because they've seen first hand just how many people don't care at all about the safety and protection of others?

That they have to deal with the fact that people don't care if they hurt others while we are trying our best to make sure everyone who shops in our stores is safe?

It's so frustrating.

So frustrating that this jerk had the gall to come into the store with a weapon visible and act like a dick because he can't follow simple directions and put on a mask that policy states needs to be worn. 

*exhales* 

It's frustrating.

Honestly I should have continued to talk to him and be like "Sir, we need you to wear a mask in the store if you don't want to wear a mask we have curbside pick up available for you but to be in the store you need to be wearing a mask."

At the same time though.

I really didn't want to get shot. 

*exhales*

I hate these moments. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Needs More Socialization

 I know that a year of isolation has messed with people's ability to be social. There are customers where you can tell that they don't 'get out much' because of how they latch onto you and just want to tell you their whole life story while you're helping them find their specific brand of cat food. 

Of course there's others that seemed to have forgotten their manners during the pandemic. Who are less patient. More quick to anger. And overall difficult. Etc.

Today...I had a customer was that was probably part of the former category. 

My coworker and I were first made aware of this old man's approach by my other manager speaking into our radios.

She was singing the jaws theme. "Dun. dun. Dun. dun. Dun. dun." 

Which of course you automatically look over your shoulder to see just why someone would be singing the jaws theme at you.

And there was this old guy coming at us. Grandpa age. Seemed friendly enough in the face.

But definitely needs a lesson on well...how to socialize with people and what is appropriate to say to workers in a store.

As the first words out of his mouth were "Do you have any pretty girls here?"

Like dude? You're looking right at me and my coworker. We're both girls. Are you trying to get us to admit that we're pretty? Are you trying to be funny? What's with you?

I was like "Well, we're both pretty but I suppose it depends on your aesthetic." 

*shakes head*

Honestly. Men. 

In any case. The dude wanted to know if we had any cats for sell.

Which we had one cat up for adoption but because of the pandemic only the adoption groups can interact with the cats and customers wanting them. So I could show this guy where the kitty was. But I wouldn't be able to open the cage or anything for him to see it closer. Nor would I be able to adopt it to him.

I don't know how clueless this guy is about cats. But considering he didn't know what "Orange Tabby" meant....he's pretty darn clueless.

In any case I led him over to the cats and he proceeded to grill me with dozens of non work related questions. "Are you going to school? Where did you graduate from? Are you single?"

Like dude.  You're two or three times my age. You don't ask a girl like me if I'm single. That's creepy. So creepy. I'm no gold digger and I have no interest in someone like that.

-Honestly I'm glad I was the one to take over this customer as I don't think my other coworker would have liked this sort of attention.

Like. It was general Q&A sort of things questions you could get in normal conversations...if the dude was closer to my age. *shakes head*

but yah. It was the "are you single?" and then a soon follow up statement of "I live alone." that had alarm bells ringing in my head.

Like dude. I can believe that you're probably just lonely and don't talk to a lot of people if you live by yourself and therefore you don't realize that talking to girls at work this way is rather creepy.

but at the same time....yah....it was an awkward conversation. I ended up lying to the dude saying I had a boyfriend just to get him to back off because he seemed rather...intense. 

Again it could just be the "need to talk to someone" vibe that a lot of customers have had over the past year.

At the same time......it's just...weird. Creepy weird. 

I hope he doesn't come back anytime soon.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Cleaning Up

So it's a common occurrence to have 'accidents' in our store. 

I mean...if you let people let their dogs come in...of course there are going to be messes to clean up.

And it's interesting to see how various customers handle their dogs when such calls of nature happen.

Like you have the responsible ones who either a) go find an employee and tell them about the spill or b) find the cleaning stations we have around the store and clean up their mess themselves.

or you have the customers who halfway clean up a spill, realize it's too big and just...leave it. Or ignore it completely. Some because the customer is completely unobservant and not paying attention to what their dog is doing. Others because they don't want to have to pick up after their dogs.

But yah...you see all sorts of responses from customers when they are confronted with the mess.

What is different though...is how some of my coworkers handle unpleasant situations.

Like today, I had a coworker who got a bit too close to an overly excited puppy and said puppy ended up peeing on their shoe.

And my coworker was like "Uh...what do I do? I don't have a change of shoes or socks and I have to go somewhere else after this...." 

And I was just left kinda.....confused? Like "What do you do?" What do you do if a dog pees on your shoe?

Well...for one I would hope the shoe had a thicker covering to prevent the urine from seeping into said shoe.

But like....there's cleaning sprays and papertowels at the register?

You could wipe it off?

Or like we have a bathroom in the store...you could go rinse your shoe and maybe sock off in the sink?

Or like....you could take it home (after cleaning off said urine) and then go throw it in the wash/dryer or something.

It just..."What do I do?" Surely you can think of a few solutions? Like...it's not like us managers can do much for your shoe problem beyond quickly switch you off the register so that you can clean off said shoe...but we don't really have anything else we can do to help.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Focus

 It's often a good thing when you have coworkers who are eager to help out. Eager to learn.

As it makes it easier to get things done, to finish tasks, to have an extra pair of hands.

But at the same time...we sometimes have coworkers who are....well too energetic?

Like they're an eager puppy ready to jump to the aid of whoever needs help...but like they have a two minute attention span and if they're easily distracted by the next 'shiny' new thing they see.

Which is what happened tonight.

I had a coworker who had a couple of hours to help us out and I directed them to help us with a particular pallet in petcare.

As we have inventory later this week and we have to work a truck and get it all out onto the floor before said inventory happens.

And the pallet was huge. Like taller than I was. 

And I set my coworker to go get as much of it done as they could before they had to be elsewhere in the store.

Only....it seemed like every two minutes...I would catch the coworker elsewhere.

Namely, in the petcare department.

Which yes, it's easy to get distracted there as we're constantly doing things, talking to customers, catching animals, etc.

And this coworker is so very eager to help out in petcare. Wanting to catch fish and bag crickets and do water tests and such and basically stick next to my petcare associate like a shadow and follow them wherever they went to see what they were doing to learn from them.

*exhales*

It got frustrating. To constantly have to be like "Hey, we really need you working on this pallet. Can you go back to the pallet, we need help with stocking." Like FOCUS person FOCUS. 

In the end I think they only managed to get like...a third of it done? Maybe half? I'm not sure how tall the pallet was to begin with.

But it was still pretty huge when said coworker had to go do their other responsiblities in the store.

Leaving me with a half worked pallet...that needed to be finished before we left for the day. *exhales*

I ended up putting away almost everything else on it by myself. 

Not surprisingly I was much quicker at it than my coworker even with the constant calls up to the register and around the store to go help other customers.

And by the end of the day I just had the 'overstock' stuff. Product that wouldn't fit on the shelves, that needed to be placed in our midsteel.

And like...I was proud that I managed to get it basically all done before we left.

But it still left me irritated that I ended up having to finish the pallet in the first place as my coworker should have been able to have done a lot more than they did if they hadn't been so focused on getting distracted by what was happening in petcare. 

*exhales*

At least the stuff got done.

But yah...gonna have to figure out a better way to get this coworker to focus on the job at hand...

-Sarnic Dirchi

Register Drama

So today...was a day of 'difficult' customers at the register.

It may be because it's a new month. It may be because it's a monday. It could be spring fever. Who knows.

The customers were just...more difficult today. 

And it might have been me feeling a bit sleep deprived. It could be me fighting my own irritations of the morning. It could be the constant talking over the radio for the first hour or so of the shift.

But AHHHHHHH

It was frustrating to constantly having to be heading up to the front to rescue the cashier from whatever BS the customers decided to throw their way.

Like there was a dude who needed help fitting his dog with a harness.

And he walked to the harness aisle. Waited like maybe ten seconds. Thought "Oh hey no one is coming!" and went right back up to the front to ask the cashier if 'anyone else' was avaiable to help...when I had arrived five seconds after him to the aisle and was confused why no one was there. *shakes head* 

Or the dude who asked "WHERE IS EVERYONE?!" when he saw me because he needed help at the fishwall because beyond the cashier I was the first person he'd seen...because he'd had the excellent timing to come right when the other four people in the store all happened to be in the back of the store for various reasons.

Or the two or three customers who decided that they needed to buy their $20 item with a a $50 or $100 bill first thing in the morning and totally wiped us out of our $20s and $10s in the tills right off the back so we had to go exchange out bills in the safe so that we could actually have the proper bills to give people the right amount of change.

Or it could be the customer who was just 'quick' enough in the store that they noticed a sale was still up that had expired yesterday and insisted that they get their 'buy one get one half off." deal.

Or that that same customer tried to take advantage of a different buy 3 get the 4th free deal but the sale apparently hadn't yet activated or something because it didn't ring up at the register so once again a manager had to be called up to take care of the situation.

It was never ending it felt like.

Every two minutes it was like there was some issue at the register (and yes my sleep deprived self is exaggerating this a little bit but the register related calls just kept coming one after the other) and a manager was needed to come help out.

*exhales*

It was frustrating.

Lol though the most memorable customer of the day was a gentleman who came into the store to try and return some wood shavings he'd bought a couple of days ago. 

Which I vaguely remembered helping this customer. As I'm pretty sure he was looking for cedar wood shavings for his dog house and we only had pine or aspen and he'd tried pine and his dog hadn't liked it so I suggested he try aspen instead and told him if it didn't work that he could bring it back and get his money back so long as half of it was unused.

Considering the bag wasn't even opened....I wonder if he ended up finding his wood shavings elsewhere.

In any case.

He wanted to return the wood shavings and get his money back.

Only...he'd forgotten his receipt.

No biggie. We can just look it up under his phone number.

Only...when the cashier tried to look it up....nothing showed up. The phone number that the dude swore up and down that he uses every single time he comes into the store...showed no purchase history.

Again. No biggie. Sometimes the computers are dumb. So I took down some information about his purchase, the dates, what he bought, and what card he used....and tried to look up the card in our computer system to see if we could pull up the receipt there.

Except...despite him swearing up and down that that was the card he'd used....

No history showed up.

*exhales*

Because the wood shavings weren't that expensive, my head manager gave me permission to just to a no receipt return. 

But the dude was like "Seriously. I use this phone number and this card all the time and you can't find anything?! Anywhere?!" before I could start his return.

So I pulled out our ipad that we mostly use for online orders because we have an app on that too where you can look up customers receipts there.

And nope.

Still nothing pulled up.

And who knows why I did it...but I ended up putting the customer's phone number into our register again, just to see what pulled up.

And the number worked.

Only...instead of the phone number the dude gave me showing up underneath his name...a different number entirely showed up in the system. O.o 
I was like "hey that's weird."

And he was like "...so are my receipts under that number instead?"

A check of that number -which apparently had been an old home number that they hadn't used in years. Showed that all his purchases aka his receipts were listed under that old number. 

Including the one from a couple of days ago. 

Lol and the kicker?

The card the dude swore he used when he bought the wood shavings....wasn't the card he used. 

He used a different one lol. *shakes head*

So he had the wrong phone number and the wrong card. 

It was no wonder that we couldn't find anything. lol.

He was like "It's obviously Monday....my brain isn't working...and I need coke."

Like dude. Me too. A caffeine fix would help immensely.

Lol and he took his mistake rather gracefully, even going so far as to go apologize to our cashier for his mistake.

So yah. Fun times.

-Sarnic Dirchi

On the Register

I ended up getting stuck on the register today.

Like for the first...I don't know...two or three hours of my shift...it felt like I spent most of it on the register helping to backup cashier and to be the cashier to cover breaks and such.

Which....not my most favorite place to be in the store. 

Like in normal times I didn't ever like register because you basically just stand there waiting for people to come to you...and I much prefer the freedom of wandering around the store.

During current times aka pandemic times....I really don't like getting stuck on register because you encounter waaaaay more people on register than anywhere else in the store.

After all, you have to check out all the customers buying things. Soo you interact with far more people than if you're in the back stocking, or wandering around the store helping people with their questions.

I mean yes, if it's a slow day in the store, then you end up interacting with basically everyone anyways whether you're on the floor or on register.

But still. It's not my favorite place to be. 

About the only interesting thing about register is seeing how much money people are willing to spend on their pets. Like you get the people who are ecking out as much bang for their buck as they can. And then others who will happily drop $100-$300 without blinking an eye.

You get all sorts here.

But probably the memorable experience of being on register today was an older gentleman who came in to buy a dog carrier and made a point to tell me at the register that the guy who helped him out on the floor had done an amazing job and that he deserved a raise.

lol don't we all? Pretty sure all of us in the store deserve a raise after all the crap we've had to deal with with all the pandemic related chaos. 

But it's nice to have customers make a point to compliment our workers. To tell them that they did a great job and wonderful service.

Lol and the gentleman made a point to tell me that I was doing a great job too and that I also deserved the raise.

XD lol. It was a good moment. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Let Me In!

So there's this old guy who is a regular grooming customer at our salon.

He probably only comes in like once a month. But it sometimes feels like more often.

And he's notable and memorable mostly because he comes in first thing in the morning right when Grooming opens up.

And since the pandemic...has also been notable in the fact that he never seems to be wearing a mask when he walks in the store.

Like this dude is definitely in the 'at high risk' age range...and he's just wandering around willy nilly without a mask on.

He's quite willing to put one on if you offer it to him....but like he hardly remembers to bring his own. And today forgot to wear it twice. Once when dropping off the dog, and again when picking it up.

Who knows...maybe he got the vaccine and thinks he's safe now? Who knows. 

In any case.

He showed up right at 8am wanting to drop off his dog at the grooming salon.

Only....our salon was still dark. No one had arrived yet.

Which is unusual...and so I went to go investigate why no one had come in yet especially when we apparently had a customer waiting.

And the person scheduled in was the only one scheduled in. And so they had been told to come half an hour later when the second grooming person was scheduled. 

As it's policy that you can't groom any dogs unless there are two people present in the salon. And so the first groomer didn't want to waste time sitting around doing nothing. 

Especially since the first customer wasn't scheduled to come in until 9. 

That's right.

The old guy came in an HOUR early to drop off his dog.

*exhales* 

And when I informed him that our grooming salon wouldn't be opening until 8:30 today due to a scheduling issue. He was like "But your sign says you open at Eight!" 

Well...yah....but like I said. There was a grooming issue.

And he was like "But I have to get to work!"

(At his age he should be retired.) 

"Can't you just take my dog into the back for me and put it in the cage?"

Ha. No.

Because the groomers have to 'check in' your dog and they have to 'evaluate' your dog to make sure it's healthy, happy, and able to be groomed. We don't just go "Oh yes, you're here let me put the dog in back and call it good."

No. We don't do that.

And I have no training whatsoever in grooming. That's not my expertise or responsibility in the store. 

-And by this point I'd been made aware that he was an hour early. So like....dude. You're early. Not my fault. If you wanted to drop off your dog early you need to call first and make sure it's okay because often they don't want you to bring your dog until the appointed time. We're not a doggy day care. It's a grooming salon. 

*exhales*

In any case. Our groomer happened to come in a few minutes later and so was able to check the dude's dog in so he could go off to 'work'

Though again. I do wonder what his 'job' is.

Because he was back in the store at 11:15 to pick up his dog from its groom.

And last I checked....there aren't many places that schedule two hour shifts.

Of course he could be on like "crossing guard" duty or could have taken a 'lunch break' to pick up his dog.

But I kinda just feel like he pulled the "I got to go to work!" excuse to try and force our hand and let him drop off his dog earlier.

*rolls eyes* 

-Sarnic Dirchi

White Fungus

My VP Manager has a tendency to drop random phone calls on me at work.

Mostly because I tend to have the most experience with animals and so when a customer asks a PetCare related question that the VP doesn't know, they tend to hand the phone off to me.

Which is always 'fun' because I never know what I'm going to get into by answering the phone as my VP doesn't always tell me the situation before placing the phone in my face.

In this case, the customer was calling to ask about a Fungus problem she had been having for the past couple months.

Where a white fungus has been growing in her tank. Thick enough to be like 'batting' aka the stuffing in the middle of quilts and such.

And that she's cleaned it off multiple times but it keeps growing back.

And like most situations "Nothing has changed." in the customer's life to cause this to happen.

...pretty sure something has changed, otherwise the fungus wouldn't be growing.

But after getting a bit more information about the care and such that they'd been taking of the tank....

I was no closer to figuring out why it was growing. 

And unfortunately...I don't carry any products to kill fungus growth in tanks. Sure I have fungus cure for fish...but the customer said that her fish were fine. No fungus there.

In the end, I suggested to the customer that they take out all their decorations and boil it and then let it dry for a few days.

As well as take the gravel out and replace it--though the customer did ask if she could boil the gravel too...which yah, probably...depending on how much work you want to do with that.

i also suggested deep cleaning the filter that they have.

And then to wait a few days before putting anything back to see if the fungus would still continue to grow.

Because if it didn't...obviously the source was in either the decor or the rocks. 

And if it did....then there was a problem in the water or possibly the filter. 

So yah....

Probably not the solution that the customer was looking for....but it's the only idea I had that might work to get rid of it all.

Guess we'll see.

-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

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

Counting Issue

My fellow opening manager was having issues with the safe count this morning.

In that they were off from what the amount should have been. And they couldn't figure out how they hadn't counted correctly.

I ended up glancing over the paper they'd printed out and comparing it to the cash we had on hand.

And realized that they'd accidentally inputed the right number of bills...in the wrong spot.

Where they should have put the number of $100s we had on the $100s line in our system.

They accidentally put it on the $50s line instead. 

And because we didn't have any $50s at that point...they hadn't realized that they'd inputed the count wrong.

So yah.

Thankfully it was an easy enough fix. lol. As it would have been concerning to be $$$ off in our count between last night and this morning. :S

-Sarnic Dirchi

Dove Return

We got Diamond Doves in today in our animal shipment.

Which is notable mostly because it's been like...two years since I last got them into our store. 

I'd actually thought we'd never see them again despite them still showing as 'active' on our planogram for the birds. 

Do I know why we had such a long gap between receiving them in?

No. Though I'm guessing it's probably just a breeding issue. 

Or perhaps we were put in a 'lull' period of not selling them so that there could be a stronger demand for them when they eventually came back.

Regardless.

We got them into the store today.

And I had the fun task of explaining the doves to my new coworkers and what sort of care they need and how they can be dumb enough to break their wings from flying against the glass too hard.

So yah....hopefully they do well. We'll see. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Ads Ads and More Ads

I ended up clocking out over an hour late tonight.

Because it took my coworkers and I longer than expected to set out the black friday ad after we closed today. 

Though I wasn't surprised it took us a couple of hours as that's how long it took us to put out an ad a couple of weeks ago. 

And if we'd been able to start the ad a bit before closing it probably would have gone quicker.

But nope.

Took us 2 hours to get it done.

So we all clocked out an hour later than expected.

*exhales*

So tired.

So very tired. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Guinea Woes

So we got in some guinea pigs yesterday from our supplier. Just like three...which is semi concerning when we have Black Friday around the corner and who knows what sort of animals people will be wanting that day.

In any case, upon opening the back room this morning, I noticed that one of the guinea pigs was acting...off. Very lethargic, hardly moving from it's spot.

Picking him up, I knew right away that this guinea pig wasn't doing well as he was pretty limp in my grip. Hardly struggling at all. And I noted that when he tried to move, it was rather shaky, like he couldn't stand up straight. 

It wasn't a good sign.

And I was already semi preparing for the worst case scenario being that he wouldn't last the day.

I took him over to our head manager and they agreed that we needed to get him to a vet.

So I called our regular vet asking if they could see him today...but they couldn't.

So I tried calling our back up vet...only to discover that they no longer had an exotics vet at their location...

So last resort was I took the guinea pig to the vet in the store, which they don't normally see exotics because none of the vets there are familiar with their care, but it was better than nothing.

And the vet on duty decided that we probably should try and get some baytril into him, but he would need time to create a dosage specifically for guinea pigs.

So I took said guinea pig to our iso room to wait for the meds...but checking on him a little bit later, like I don't think an hour had passed...I noted that he was lying on his side now...barely moving. Kinda struggling to breathe...and I figured that that he probably wasn't going to make it.

Like if he lived the hour I would have been surprised.

I ended up flagging down the vet and informing him that I seriously doubted he was going to live.

And the vet was like "Well maybe we should just inject him with straight baytril, bring him over."

I didn't think it would do much, and upon bringing him back over to the vet and seeing the state he was in--which the vet was shocked at how quickly the guinea pig had gone down hill, he agreed that at this stage -where he was lying on his side barely moving and hardly breathing....that we should go ahead and euthanize him because he'd passed the point of recovery.

*exhales* :( I hate it when we have to euthanize pets...especially when this guinea pig had been in our care under 24 hours. Like...that's quick for him to go downhill especially when he'd looked okay in my brief glimpse of him when he came in yesterday.

*exhales* Not easy...but hopefully he's resting easier now. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Learning

 I understand that greenies can't learn everything the first day.

I get it. Truly I do. 

There's a lot of information to take in no matter what position you hold in the store.

And with the variety of questions we get from customers, new associates aren't expected to know everything. That's why we're all connected by radios. So if we don't know an answer we can ask and see if someone else knows. 

However...there is a point where new associates are expected to have a basic knowledge of the store.

Like...the layout. Where they're likely to find the common things that customers often ask for.

Like collars, cones, dog foot, cat litter, fish, shampoo...etc. 

It should come to workers pretty quickly to direct people to aisle 4, 7, 15 for the items they're looking for.

But I have this one greenie, who's been in the store for a couple of weeks now...not quite a month but they've been in the store for a while...who is still acting like it's day one.

Constantly asking questions that they should already know the answer to.

*exhales*

And I get the fear of not wanting to be wrong. Of wanting to be sure that you direct the person to the right spot.

But if we've told you ten times that something is located on such and such an aisle...then you really should remember for the next time a customer asks you that question. 

And it could be that the new worker has been stuck on the register for practically their entire time they've been working here.

So they haven't really had time to go look about and figure out where things are. 

Though...I am halfway surprised that they hadn't taken the initiative and like...maybe explored the store on their own so they could figure out where things were. 

Thankfully, we were able to give the greenie time today to wander around the store and familiarize themselves with things. Though I don't know if they took as much advantage of the time as they could have...

*exhales*

Guess I'll find out tomorrow as I believe I work another shift with the greenie.

We'll see if they're on the radio every five minutes again...hopefully not. 

But considering that that's been the trend of the past couple of weeks....I may just have to brace myself for many more questions.....we'll see.

-Sarnic Dirchi