What's Your Intention?

There was a customer who called the store today asking if we sold something.
But the manager who answered couldn't understand what they were asking.
And so had me take over the call to figure it out.

And from what I heard the customer was looking for "Ratchets." 

Which...I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head that we sold that would be like that.
Like ratchets...like the tool? Like a racket for sports?

So I asked them to spell it out.

And they were like "R-A-T-S------"
And they garbled out the rest.

Okay. So rat something.
Something related to rats?

So I asked them what that last part was.

And they were like "It's Rat Sh--! You know. Like feces?! Because you guys sell rats I thought you'd have some."

Ah.

Well no wonder i wasn't understanding what they were saying at first.
Most people would say Rat Poop or something instead....

But unfortunately for them.
I didn't have any 'rat feces' on hand.
Because my store actually stopped selling rats like five years ago because our breeders stopped breeding them.
So with no rats in the store that meant I definitely didn't have any of their feces either.

And even if I did.

I probably wouldn't be able to give any to the customer anyways.
Like I'm pretty sure it's against policy somewhere to give away animal waste.
Probably it's a health hazard or something.

Which does make me curious why they wanted feces in the first place.
Because most of the time you want to avoid animal droppings.
And like there's easier ways to get fertilizer....

So *shrugs*
Who knows.
I don't.

I'm kinda hoping that they are unable to find some...as I don't know if their intentions are good....

-Sarnic Dirchi

Bait?

I had a customer call the store today.

Asking if we sold Feeder Rats.

Which we don't. 

We don't sell any live rodents for food.

So the customer was like: Do you sell Pet Rats?

Which, no, not anymore. 

Our breeder stopped breeding rats like...four years ago now? 

So nope. No rats.

Which even if we did....I wouldn't sell them to this gentleman because he'd specifically asked for feeder rats.

Which is an alarm bell because again, we don't sell rats as food.

The customer wouldn't be dissuaded though.

Upon finding out that we didn't have rats.

He was like "Well, what's the largest rodent you carry?"

Which would be a chinchilla or guinea pig.

But I was like "I don't sell animals for food."

*rolls eyes* 

He was like "But I'm using them for bait! Not to feed!"

….What in the world do you think Bait is dude?

Bait is a food that is to tempt an animal closer and more than likely gets KILLED if it's alive when the animal you want to trap comes closer.

So I refused.

I was like "No we don't sell animals for food or bait."

And directed him to a couple of local petstores to try out instead. 

Hopefully he found what he was looking for...just not at my store.

-Sarnic Dirchi

On the Hunt

There's always a slight amount of stress involved when I answer the phone at work.
Because there's no way to know what sort of customer is on the other end.
Are they just grooming customers that need to be transferred back to the grooming department?
Are they someone with a quick question that you can answer in two seconds?
Or are they the type of person who makes you hunt all over the store for a product, or else asks a gazillion questions that you may or may not know the answers to and you end up spending an eternity on the phone with them.....

Which means that when you're helping an actual customer in the store and the phone rings...it's always a game of Russian roulette on if you answer the phone while helping the person in the store...if you'll be able to quickly multitask and answer the phone customer's question...or end up in a bad situation where you're now helping two needy people at once. *Exhales* 

Thankfully....
This wasn't like that.
I wasn't helping a customer, I wasn't busy.
But the customer on the phone did have a need.

He called wanted to know if we had a specific brand of rat food in the store.
Oxbow Essentials. 

Which I know very well that we carry oxbow food.
But it always throws me off slightly when the customer adds in extra words like "Essentials" 
Because I don't always look closely at the packaging to see what all the little words under the brand name say.

So I had to go check to make sure that the Oxbow we had in the store actually was the Oxbow Essentials he wanted.

It was!!

Only....there was a small problem.
We didn't have the adult rat food in stock on the shelf. :S 
I mean I had the young rat food in stock,
but unfortunately the customer was in need of the adult food. 

A glance above in the overstock in the aisle showed that we had no extra food up there.

But instead of telling the customer that I didn't have any of that food in stock.
I told him I would put him on hold and check around the store.
As I knew that we had a truck come in today, so perhaps that food was on the truck.
After all, that particular section of the shelf had been empty for nearly a week now.
Which meant....either we'd lost the food somewhere in the store, or it should be coming in soon. 

A quick question to the manager, a check in our boxes off the truck....
Revealed no rat food.

Which left me with just one option left.

We've just started a new organizational thing where we have boxes of overstock product placed on the steel in our store. And thankfully, they've now been labeled with aisle numbers and the sort of things that are in the boxes.
Like :Aisle 5 Fish food and Filters.
That sort of thing.

Usually we don't get too much overstock in our small pet section. (unless the DC goes crazy sending us Hamster balls. :S ) 
But it was worth a shot to go look and see if somehow extra animal food had ended up up there.

I found the right box.
Could see that there were red bags up in it. (the boxes are clear) 
And upon grabbing a ladder and reaching the boxes.
Discovered where all our missing adult rat food was. lol.

There were five bags of the stuff in that box.
So when I got back on the phone with the customer and informed him that I had found his food.

He was extremely happy. :D lol. 
So grateful that I had found him his food, so he wouldn't have to try and find it elsewhere.

I ended up placing a bag on hold for him, just to ensure when he came in that he WOULD have a bag of food to buy.

As I doubted that someone would come in within the day and buy all 5 bags of rat food.
But it's better to be safe than sorry. 

Hopefully he got the food alright. :) 
I'm just glad I was able to help him out. :) 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Where'd They Go?

So, we haven't carried Rats in our store for a while now.
Like since the beginning of the year.
Why?
Because our Breeder stopped breeding them, and our store hasn't found (and may never find) another breeder to go through to get Rats.

So, we carry the rat supplies. but no rats.

Yet....I still have people coming in to the store,
Asking if we have any rats.
What rats we have.
Where are the rats.

....I don't have any.

And they seem so offended by that answer.
WELL WHY NOT?!?!

Because, dear customer, I can't sell what we don't get in. When our breeder chooses to not breed certain animals it's not like I have any say in the matter....

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Ratless

()_()
Wow.
That's unexpected....

Soo after three years of working at Starsmet.
We had a message come down from the heads.
Telling us that we'll no longer be selling rats.

O.o
Dumbo Rats.
Fancy Rats.

Once we've sold what we have, we're not getting anymore.

O.o
Why?
Not really sure.
All I know is that the company that we get our animals from has decided to stop selling them...
So therefore...we will no longer be selling them.
I don't know if that will be permanent...
or if it will just last until we find a new breeder to get rats from.

Its one of those good bad moments.
As I do like having the rats in the store.
They're sweet and friendly and fun.

But in many many ways I'm glad we're no longer going to be carrying them,
Because in reality...
They don't sell.

The rats in our store will often get full grown before we sell them.
Sitting in their poor cages for months and months and months until they are finally taken home.

So I'm glad that we don't have to watch the rats get older and larger.

But still. It's weird.
To have it happen now....
I guess everyone finally decided that they weren't profitable?
Who knows.

But sometime in the future (months from now more than likely)
We'll no longer have rats in our store.
And its going to be weird.

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Blood

Oops.

That's all I can say...
Oops.

So, the situation.

We sold a couple of rats to a customer.
-I wasn't there, but I was super happy.
Because Rats....they don't sell that often in our store.
And unfortunately they end up getting full grown before we finally find an owner wanting to buy them.

This was the case with this particular duo of rats.

Poor things...
They have the worse luck.

As in the cage we had a set of three rats.
One has been here for at least 6 months I feel like... At least the beginning of the summer I'm sure.
The second, came in a couple weeks or so after the first.
And the third, same story, came in a couple of weeks after the other two.

Thankfully, it was the two older ones who finally got sold.
Again.
As they've gone through the rounds here at the store.
I'm pretty sure that this was like their fourth time getting sold.
And...
Their fourth time getting returned.
Both of them. :(
Why?
Because apparently the other rat that was already at the customer's home wasn't playing nice with them.
*sighs*
So...We got the two rats back,
the third one, hadn't sold at all, so it was still in the cage.
After the proper quarantine time -to ensure they weren't sick.
I decided to return the two rats to their third buddy.
Since they'd been together before, I thought nothing of it.
They would get along.

Wrong.
It was a couple of hours later.
I'd just gotten back from a break.
And saw a family looking at the rats,
So I stopped to talk to them.
And they're like "We're doing fine, but this guy doesn't appear to be."
And I look in the cage.
There was Blood.
Bright Red Blood. Smeared on the glass.
And right there, was the third rat.
Big droplets of bright red vivid blood dropping down his back.

Apparently one or both of the rats had attacked the third one!!
AH!!

I couldn't have that.
No way.
So I pulled out the third rat, to get him into our sick room, so that he could heal from his injuries in a quiet place.

The customers were concerned. "What's going to happen to him?"
Like they were worried that I was going to kill the rat because he was injured. O.o
Uh...No. "I'm just taking him to our sick room where we can get him to the vet and have him heal."
-The wounds weren't bad enough to see a vet (yet, hopefully they heal cleanly) but I did take the poor creature into the back to give him his own cage again.

Ah.
The blood.
I had to put Stypic powder on the wounds (there were like 2 or 3, hard to tell with so much blood on the body) to get them to stop bleeding, and did my best to clean the blood off him.
-Which is hard to do when most of the rat is white and red likes to stain things.

Thankfully the wounds are scabbed and healing.

But yeesh!
I have no idea why they decided not to get along again the three of them. >.<

At least the incident was caught before the wounds got more serious than they were....

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Dust and Feathers

We were in the middle of receiving in our new animals into the store.
I was inspecting them, to make sure they looked healthy enough to be received by us.

We'd gotten to the Dumbo Rats, and the guy picked up the last one...
And the rat freaked out.
O.o
Like it went all spastic, squeaking, rushing around.
The handler couldn't keep a hold on it.
And the rat managed to get out of the box, onto the floor, rushing around.
(Don't worry we were in a contained room where it couldn't escape into the main store. O.o that would have been a nightmare.)

We couldn't get a hold of it,
And the rat slipped under a rack of bird cages we had back there.
A narrow space.
Making it hard to reach in and grab the terrified creature out.

I took over before the guy could move,
Going to my stomach, with a net in hand, I spent like five or so minutes fishing around, before finally I pulled the now dusty feather covered rat out and got him into his temporary cage.

Before I dusted my own feather covered dusty self off as well.

And the guy was like
"Wow, you're not afraid of getting dirty are you?"

Ha.
I had to laugh.
I mean....I work in a pet store!
Dirty is part of the game here.
When you work with animals, there are bound to be messes.
Not comfortable with messes...you shouldn't be in a pet store.
So I answered "Nope, I'm not." :) lol.

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE -Scavenger Hunt

It's rather typical.
While I'm at work.
For there to randomly be a 'lunch time rush'
Rather odd, in the fact that we're a pet store...for people to come during 'lunch time'
But come they do.
At some point between 11-3pm there is a rush of people.
Most of them wanting fish.

Which was the case of today.
An hour before I was to get off my shift.
I got hit with a rush.

It wasn't the worst rush I experienced.
Mostly it was people getting fish, and they were taking forever to decide on what to get, or kept adding on fish they also wanted, or kept asking questions.
Which made it more time consuming, so people had to wait.
But they knew I was helping them as quickly as possible.
It's also difficult because during these rushes...I'm usually scheduled alone.
So there isn't somebody else to help me out.
*sighs*
Thankfully most of the time people are patient.

But today.
Was different.

Because it was a day where there was apparently a Scavenger Hunt. A Team Related Scavenger Hunt. Where each team (there had to be like 5 of them.) Were given a set of tasks and asked to complete them the fastest.

One of those tasks, apparently was to come to our PetStore.

The first I knew of them, was while I was in the middle of my fish rush.
And this crazy group of people came in.
Giving off the frenzied air.
Talking about fish.
I assumed they needed a fish.
But they asked me like three questions about the mollies and then rushed off with the words "Hurry, before the other team arrives!"
Which gave me the heads up...I'd be seeing another team of people soon.
And I assumed that they would be asking me similar questions.
Which are easy to answer while I'm catching and bagging fish.

So I was still in the middle of helping my fish customers.
When I got an overhead call to go to reptiles.
Busy with fish, I tried to get a manager to help these customers, as I was going to be a while longer, at least 10 minutes or so.
But everyone else was busy with customers as well. So these reptile customers had to wait.
As I was in the middle of helping one, and had two more to go after them before I'd be able to go help the customers with the reptiles.

I was in the middle of helping the second customer (with another after them.)
When a woman in pink comes up to me.
"Hi, is there anyone in the store that can help us?"
"You're with the reptiles?" I asked, figuring that was who was getting impatient.
"Yes."
I was right. "I'm sorry, I'm the only one here right now, I have two more customers to help with, and then I'll be right over."

"We're kinda in a hurry." She said, as if she's expecting me to drop everything and come right over. "We're on a scavenger hunt, we need to hold a snake, or a rat real quick and take a picture so we can get ahead of the other teams."
"I'm sorry, its going to be a while before I can get to you."
"Is there anything else we can do?"
"I know another group just asked me about fish."
"That's not what we have..."
"I'll be right over, I just have to help one more customer and I'll be with you."

So I rushed to help the last customer as quickly as I could.
Before going over to this group of scavengers.
To find that my manager had managed to get to them first.
But I still needed to help them quickly hold a snake (as they didn't get a picture of the girl holding a rat because the rat tried to jump away.)
Which I managed.

And there were TWO other scavenger groups along the animals as well.
I pictured a nightmare scene.
But thankfully, my manager told the other two groups: "No more holding the animals." So I didn't have to help them, which allowed me to go back over to the fish wall which had more customers waiting for me.

Ugh. Rushes.

In any case...
I find myself slightly irritated at the people who thought up this Scavenger hunt on a FRIDAY.
Seriously.
Fridays and Saturdays are the worst days to do such things.
Because we are busier on those days.
We don't always have time to humor people in their 'quests to hold animals.'
Unless they intend to buy, people who just want to 'look/hold/touch' are low on our priority list. If we're busy, we're less likely to allow people to just randomly hold the animals.
Especially when I'm by myself and in the middle of the rush.

I don't know why they decided to have one of the stops be a pet store.
I mean, its happened before.
And its quite easy. Answer a couple quick questions, let them hold an animal for thirty seconds. Walla, off they go and I'm free of them.

But the way the woman today, basically expected me to drop everything to go help her in her group's task....Bugged me a lot.
Yes. It's a game.
Yes its a competition.
But No. I'm not going to skip out on helping actual paying customers, in order to help people who may not ever come into the store again, for a possible chance to win a game that won't matter in the long run.... yah. Not high on my priority list.

I'm busy.
I'm by myself.
You can't expect me to not help customers.
You can't expect quick service when I have customers IN the store.
If they'd come earlier in the day.
I would have been fine with helping them.
I wouldn't have been busy with customers.
So I could have taken the time to cater to them.

But lunch time.
Bad time.

At least they were helped, and they seemed content to go onto their next task.

In the end.
I was just glad to get off work and away from the crazy.
Because the rush....was a rush, and they wear me out.

-Sarnic Dirchi

MLAARE - Rex

He didn't look like the others when he came in.
The Dumbo Rat.
I noticed right off the bat that his fur seemed to have something wrong with it.
thin patches of hair.
Which had me thinking I would reject him, as I didn't know if I could sale him.
But the guy who brings us our new shipments of animals didn't share my same concern.

For, he explained.
This Dumbo Rat was considered to be a Rex.
Who knows why they settled on Rex.
But basically he's more genetically dispositioned to have thinner fur even hairlessness. (as breeding enough rexes together will result in the hairless rats some people adore.)
It was also easy to tell that he was a Rex because his whiskers curled instead of being straight out.

I held him in my hands.
Still debating.
Would I be able to sale him? Or should I send him back?
He took the decision away from me when he clambered up to my neck and curled up there, cuddling with me.
Oh yes,
My heart melted then.
Nearly I considered buying him myself. Nearly.
But I did accept him along with his two other brothers he came in with.
Hoping that he'd go to a loving home.

Which he did.
For a customer came into the store, wanting to have rats as pets again like he'd done as a kid. He'd convinced his wife to let him do so.
But went a little overboard. lol. He ended up buying all three of the Dumbo Rats (Rex included)
Which was great. I liked the thought that the three of them that came into our store would leave our store together.
And I made sure to inform them about the Rex Dumbo's looks, so they wouldn't be concerned over his thinner patches of fur.

I didn't expect to see them again.

But sadly, a weekish later.
All three were returned.
Why?
Because one of the children of the couple didn't like them, would refuse to go into the living room where they lived. Even though the rest of the family now loved the rats...
They decided to have life be easier on their one child, and brought them back.
Which was depressing.
But I'm glad they all three came back alive.
Still...now it was more likely that the three of them would be sold to separate people. :( Which was sad as they'd already been together for a while now.

I expected them to get sold.

But yesterday....
I noticed something wrong with the Rex. (As all three were still in the store a couple weeks later waiting to be bought again.)
He wasn't breathing right.
Quick.
Shallow.
And he seemed to have gotten thinner than the others.

I wondered if the others were hogging all the food.
That they were stressing him out.
And so I took him out and put him in our backroom, to give him a quieter space. To let him have access to all the food he wanted, let him be by himself so he could calm down again.
I thought that would help.
Truly I did.

...
....
.....
....
...

But.
When I came in this morning.
I immediately noticed that he'd gotten worse.
His mouth was opening and shutting (like a goldfish opens and shuts their mouths really)
Like he was trying to gasp for air, but wasn't getting any in to him.
Immediately I took him out, holding him in my hands, trying to soothe him. Trying to give him comfort.
It was obvious there was something majorly wrong.
Something that a vet definitely need to see so I could get him treatment, get him better.....
But it was too early in the morning.
The vet wouldn't open for a few more hours.
And he...
I held him....as he worked to breathe.
As he started convulsing and spasaming.
Gently placed him back in his cage, continuing to keep my hand on him as it got worse.
As he fell still...
As he died...

... All...within about five minutes of me discovering him.
My poor Rex.

It shouldn't have ended like this.
He hadn't even been full grown yet.
Still so small.

And so suddenly gone.

It hit me hard, I literally just sat there and cried.
Tears running down my cheeks. My heart bleeding for the loss of life.

I only found comfort in the fact that....I was able to be there with him. To let him know someone cared about him as he left. That he wasn't alone.....

-Sarnic Dirchi