Nearly Out of Stock

Well....this next week is gonna be fun.

Mostly because we are running low on our birds and rodents.
And my shipment today....ended up shorting us most of the rodents and birds we were expecting in.

Which wasn't too surprising though slightly disappointing.
Because I was aware that the breeders for both our hamsters and our parakeets are having issues right now.
From what I can tell it's mostly issues in that they don't have the supply available yet to meet the demand of all the stores that the breeders provide animals to. 

Which...our store has been one of those stores where people are just obsessed with buying creatures right now.
So animals are flying off the shelves so to speak.

So to have no new hamsters or parakeets available next week to bring out to sell??
Not good for the customers.

As we're down to just two parakeets. Six hamsters. One mouse.

And that's it.

I expect the parakeets will be gone by the end of Saturday.
The hamsters, possibly by Monday.

On the one hand that means less work in the mornings because there will be less to clean and less animals to feed.
On the other it's gonna mean an uptick in unhappy customers because we don't have the animals they want. 

So.
It's gonna be interesting.
To see if we run out of hamsters and birds this weekend or not. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Bit

I'll say it once and I'll say it again. 
Parakeets are evil.
Evil evil birds.

So I had a family come into the store, wanting to get a couple of parakeets. 
Specifically a boy and a girl.
Which is always an adventure because our birds are still quite young, which means that they don't always show the coloration on their beaks that indicate whether one is male or female. 
*shakes head*
Why do people insist on a boy and a girl? Like...do you want them trying to breed? 

In any case. 
After some looking and debating and me pointing out girls and boys that I could see in stock.
The family left me to grab their birds while they went to look at cages. 

And I had the luck of having another customer decide to watch me catch the birds. *exhales* which is always stressful when you have an audience. :S 

In any case.
I caught the first parakeet, the male, and the evil creature latched onto my thumb, pinching my skin in it's beak and clamping it's mouth shut. 

It took all my strength not to fling the bird about right then, but geez that creature would not let go!
I ducked down to wrap the bird in a towel and managed to shake my hand loose. 
Yeesh.

The area still hurts hours and hours later. >.< 
Evil bird. 

At least the female was much easier to handle and I only got bit the one time. 

But after catching the birds, the family were like "Hey do you have this cage in stock or do we just take the display?
Which I was reluctant to let them take the display as it would only mean that one of my coworkers (or myself) would have to put together another display cage. 
So hoping to avoid that, I told them I would check in my overstock and see.
Which I was in luck, we did have the cage in stock there. 
So I told them that.
And then went to grab it down.
Which took a bit of jigsawing as there were other boxes piled on top of it.
But after much effort...I managed to get the box down and to the customers....
Only for them to have changed their mind while waiting.
They were looking for a smaller cage that the grandmother could lift and move around.
Which....why would you be wanting to move the bird cage around? Shouldn't it just stay in a stationary location? *shakes head* In any case they wanted a different cage. *exhales* 
I tried to convince them they needed larger to give the birds space.
Though I don't know if I succeeded in that or not....

But I was all too happy to leave them to their decision making. 
As I was still dealing with an aching thumb at the time. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Neighborhood ChitChat

I had a customer call this morning.
Wanting to know if we carried love birds.
And when I told her we didn't.
She asked what sort of birds we carried.

So I told her.

....only to have her ask me to repeat myself....because I had listed them too fast for her to comprehend.

-Yes I was totally wondering if I would end up in another A-r-K/C scenario.

But thankfully it didn't happen that way.

Lol.
So it turns out the customer was calling because she'd recently had her parakeet die.
And she was looking to get a new bird, and had not yet decided if she wanted to get another parakeet, or if she wanted to try a different species of bird.

The funny thing...
Is that she was quite the rambler.
I was reminded of those neighborhood chats you have with your next door neighbor on the phone, where you basically just call to shoot the breeze.

Because the woman told me the life story of like three of her birds, and experiences she'd had watching people deal with birds, and how she thinks, and how her neighbor thinks, and eventually the conversation wound its way to left-handed people and how all three of her kids were lefties...

lol.
Normally I'm less than a fan of these sort of rambling conversations.
Mostly because, since I'm at work, I kinda want people to get to the point of what they need so I can answer their question and move onto the next customer in line.

But she'd called in the morning, when we were really slow.
Like no people in the store whatsoever.
And since I wasn't needing to help customers in the store.
I just let her chat to me on the phone while I worked on scrubbing fish tanks.
After all, I didn't need my ears in order to scrub. lol. And I could easily keep the phone to my ear while doing this task.
So I let her blabber on. (admittedly I was trying to find a way to end the conversation, but couldn't find any good openings.)

But in the end. After letting her talk to me on the phone for 30 minutes.
She told me how grateful she was for me being willing to listen to her talk.
As she confirmed what I'd been thinking, that she'd been feeling rather lonely living by herself.

So I was glad that I was able to give her a bit of conversation and interaction in her day. :) I like helping people, and the stories she told me were actually quite entertaining lol.

So while she may not come in to get a bird, at least I made a phone friend today. :)

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Arriving Today

I was taking a break at work today.
When one of my coworkers came in to the break room and was like "Oh! There you are Sarnic, you have a guy here looking for you."
O.o
A guy?
Here.
Looking for me?

At first all I could think of was that my brother had dropped by again for a visit though I would have no idea why he'd be back down this way.

Was it a customer? Maybe they had more questions, or wanted help from me specifically for some reason.
Though since the store had just barely opened....it seemed highly unlikely.

So a guy.
Some guy asking specifically for me.

The only other person I could think of.
Was the guy that delivers us our shipments of animals.
But I wasn't expecting him until tomorrow.
As he said he'd be coming that day when I asked him last week when he was coming.

But when I opened the door to leave the breakroom,
there were the boxes of animals.
And soon after, the guy who delivers them.

lol.
Apparently he was supposed to have come yesterday. :S
But he can only travel so much before he has to stop and rest.
And yesterday the heads of his company said he had to stop and rest.
Which was good for me.

Because today is actually the day that we prepare our back rooms for receiving our new animals. Which usually show up two days later.
But in situations like this.
They sometimes come early.
So we try and be prepared ahead of time so we're not scrambling if they show up before they should.
Thankfully.
We were prepared.
All the cages were set up and such.

So I didn't have to scramble to get anything ready. :)

Yay for being on top of things! lol.

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Gone Gone Gone

Ugh.
Today was not a good day at work,
At least animal wise.

We lost a ton of animals this week.
Not a 'ton' per say.
But a good handful more than normal.
>.<
And its unfortunate because over half of these animals were over the $50 range.
Which means...
Yah, a hit to us.

I'm not even sure if all these animals ended up dying...or if some accidentally (or on purpose) left the store without being paid for.

I'll probably never know.

Still.
Its rather depressing.
Especially when you find a reptile you just got into the store the day before.
Dead.
Somehow it had gotten squished underneath a decoration.
I'm not even sure how he managed to be squished!
The decoration didn't even appear to be that heavy!
Yet there he was, as flat as a pancake.
>.<
So.
Annoying.

But pretty typical.
 I mean, I was gone from the store for nearly a week.
Which means I usually come back to chaos.

So, 'chaos' in store. Check.

Hopefully things calm down a bit before next week's craziness with all the sells.
We'll see. We'll see.

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Sleep

Sometimes I'd like to be able to sleep in any position.
Especially after working a long busy shift.