A Quick Return

We had a customer come in pretty early this morning to return a mouse.

Which it's not surprising to have customers return pets, especially mice.

And the reasoning for the return made a lot of sense.

Because the customer was like "It smelled a lot more than I expected it to."

Which is also true.
Especially for Male Mice.
Their urine tends to stink up the place. And can become pretty potent if the mouse decides it needs to mark its territory.

So I'm not surprised when they're returned because if the owners aren't aware of how bad mice can stink...it can come as a nasty smelly surprise.

What was surprising though....is the customer hadn't had the mouse even like...twelve hours before returning him.

Like I had three mice in the cage yesterday when I opened and I wasn't aware of any mice getting sold before I left which meant the mouse was sold sometime in the evening after my shift.
And then was returned first thing in the morning.

*shakes head*
Like that's really quick to decide the mouse is too smelly. 

Still.
When the customer knows.
They know.

Since it was less than 24 hours since the mouse left the store, once the customer got their money back, I simply placed the mouse back with his buddies. I think he was happy to see them again.

-Sarnic Dirchi

Feeding Fish

I taught my coworker something new today.
Which is easy to do when half of my coworkers in my department are new and I don't always have a chance to train everyone on everything as the day they come in and how much time we end up having can influence what we cover and what we don't when I'm teaching.

Today it was Brine Shrimp.

As I had noticed that my coworkers weren't really feeding brine shrimp (or bloodworms) when they fed the fish.
And that's because I hadn't taught any of the new people how to do so.
As I'd left that step up to my other coworkers because I ran out of time to teach the newbies.

So today.
I had time to tell my new coworker this step.

And they were like ()_() HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS BEFORE?!

....Because I hadn't taught you that's why. 

So yah I spent a good ten or so minutes showing my coworker what to do and how to feed and yah...

Gotta love those teaching moments. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Chinchilla Fever

Had a customer come into the store today who was interested in getting a pet because they'd been looking after a couple of Guinea Pigs for the last little bit.
But the Guinea Pigs weren't going to be in the house much longer as they were being taken as...I think the customer's kids...were heading back down south to stay with....possibly their other parent there?

In any case.
The customer, who hadn't wanted guinea pigs in the first place--ended up falling in love with them and now wants a pet of their own to take care of since they won't be taking care of guinea pigs anymore.

But they weren't sure if they wanted to do a Chinchilla or A Guinea Pig or maybe a Hamster and wanted to know the pros and cons to them.

Which...it's hard to explain those when the customer is just so excited about getting a pet in the first place that they're hardly paying attention at all to what you're saying.
As this customer was constantly interrupting me and such to ask more questions but wasn't waiting for a answer before asking more questions about a different animal. *shakes head*

In any case.
One of the pets the customer was interested in was a Chinchilla.
But they got a bit skittish about handling them when I mentioned one of them liked to nip.

-As a different customer had been bit by one earlier today.
-Which this was one of the customer return chinchillas that had been returned for nipping children.

But after a bit of convincing.
The customer decided they still wanted to try holding one.

So I grabbed the chinchilla I figured wouldn't bite.
-Which I was right in that.-

But the customer really didn't want to get bit.

So when I tried to hand the chinchilla to them the first time...
They freaked out and didn't want to hold it.

So I offered to hold it while they petted it.
And they loved petting it.

So again I tried to get them to hold it.
No dice.

But then I was like "I could put it on your lap?"
To which the customer acquiesced. 

It was a moment of touch and go when I placed the chinchilla there.

But the customer quickly warmed up to the little guy.

And by the time I put him back the customer was back to potentially wanting to buy one though they wanted to do more research on them and other pets first before doing so. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

Delayed

It was one of those days that just...ended up getting away from me.

Because for whatever reason, it seemed to be the day where people wanted to come adopt cats.

Which it's great that we had three of our kitties find their forever home today.

But when I'm the only one scheduled in my department until I'm basically off...
It makes it difficult to get opening done in a timely manner.

And considering that each cat adoption can take up to thirty minutes or so to complete....

That's a lot of time away from doing the tasks I need to be doing.

Especially when they happened one right after the other. *shakes head*

I ended up being like two hours behind. *exhales*

I didn't start the bedding change until after noon.

But luckily it was the back rooms today and they were mostly empty.
So I was able to quickly get it done and get back on track.

But I can only image what it would have been like if the rooms had been filled.
I don't think I would have managed to get them done.
Nope nope.

Yay for an unexpectedly small task today.
Because it allowed me to catch up far quicker than I would have otherwise. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

No Brine Shrimp

Had a customer come into the store wanting to get some fish.

Which it was easy enough for me to grab them as I'd been right there feeding all the tanks some frozen brine shrimp as we'd had a package come in damaged and we didn't want it to go to waste. So all the fish got a treat today. :) Yay them lol

In any case.

I fished out like five different fish for the customer.
And at the end I was like "Anything else I can help you with?"

And the customer was like "I don't want the brine shrimp in there."

Because I had literally just fed the brineshrimp to all the fish and so while fishing out the fish the customer wanted I ended up getting some of the food into the container too.

It was an odd request, but not fully unexpected as the customer had noted while watching me feed the fish before making a decision, that some fish would go after the shrimp and some would not.

So I think they were worried that there might be something wrong with the shrimp because not all the fish would eat it.

-Honestly it's not that weird. I mean not every person likes all the same food. It's the same with fish some fish are pickier eaters than others. 

In any case.
I was like "Sure." I could totally fish out the brine shrimp so there was none in the customer's bag of fish.

So I grabbed a small net and scooped out a large amount of the brine shrimp.

And not wanting it go to waste.
Placed the net in the nearest tank to give the fish there more shrimp to eat.

And the customer was like "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

My guess, as there was a bit of a language barrier where English isn't their first language, the customer had thought I misunderstood what they wanted and that I was putting the fish back in the tank.

Nope.
"I'm fishing out the brine shrimp." Is what I told them because that's what they had wanted me to do in the first place. Like not even a minute had lapsed between the customer's request and me fishing out the shrimp.

*shakes head*
In the moment I was like "Did you already forget what you asked me to do?"

But yah I can see their concerns with me not understanding them and such. 
As they kept a rather close eye on the container to make sure all the fish stayed there and weren't put back in the tanks. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

He Like To Scream

It's always interesting to get in animals around Christmas time...as well...we get in a ton of them in in preparation of customers wanting to get pets for their kids as presents.

And I always enjoy getting in the small pets just to see the different colors and such.

Today we got in our animal shipment, though unsurprisingly I was missing half the shipment.

As once again we didn't get in winter whites or russian hamsters.
Which it's so weird that the company has such a shortage of them going on as in like the last six months I feel like I've only gotten them in like...once or twice?
And we used to get them in almost weekly.

So it's weird that they're still struggling to stock us up on those.
And then like with the birds we didn't get the society finches we were expecting. Again not surprising as it takes them like three or four months if not longer to get them in when they sell.
Dunno why.

And like they were randomly planning to send us a Conure. Which was totally out of the blue and I wans't surprised at all to not get it because we don't usually get Conures in during the winter. Basically as soon as the snow hits, BAM no more conures until the late spring.

But the amusing part is that we got in like six short haired syrian hamsters.
Which since I was missing half my shipment, meant that I had the space to divide them up into two cages of three so they wouldn't be as over crowded.

Usually the syrians are a pretty mellow group.
You'll get the occasional vocal one that complains about being picked up.

But rarely do we get in the screamers.

We got in a screamer today.
And a little follower with him.

As when this particular syrian would start screaming....
He had a buddy that also would take up the cry too.

*shakes head*

And it wasn't like the AH! sort of scream that the syrian was giving off. 
No it was like.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

poor buddy. He can scream for like ten minutes straight.
And i'm like O.o dude? What's your problem. I haven't touched your cage for a good five minutes now stop the screaming.

But no he's just like AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*exhales*
Like you even twitch the cage open and he's at it again. *shakes head*

Hopefully he'll mellow out a bit more once he gets used to his new temporary home here in the store.
But we'll have to see. 

-Sarnic Dirchi

This Parakeet

So I had a customer come into the store, who had come in like...yesterday? Day before yesterday? To look at our parakeets as her son's been wanting one and so she came to check out what she would need to get for the bird. Cage, perches, food, toys, etc. 

And she became quite taken with one of our white and blue parakeets. 

I told her that we would be getting more birds in next week so she should have plenty of selection as we tend to sell through birds quite quickly in my location. I end up getting more parakeets in every single week.
Honestly it's a rare week that I don't get parakeets. 

In any case.
She basically would have to expect that the parakeet she liked wouldn't be there when she came back to get the bird because of how quickly we sell them.
And I couldn't guarantee that I would get in another white and blue parakeet with similar patterns in the meantime. 

But.
She ended up deciding that she wanted the parakeet she'd seen originally.
So she came back today to get it.

She plans to keep the bird elsewhere until Christmas.

But yah.
I spent a bit of time talking her through everything she would need to get for the parakeet as well as helping her decide if she wanted to clip the bird's wings.

Originally the customer was against it.
But with the knowledge that she wanted to try and tame the bird down, I convinced her that clipping the wings would be the best thing to do.

Like the feathers will grow back anyways.
But this keeps the bird from flying as well.

Her concern was that it would hurt the bird.
It doesn't.
It's like cutting your fingernails or your hair.
So long as you don't cut too high, the bird feels no pain. 

She couldn't watch me cut the wings.

But yah.
She was quite happy with her purchase.

Hopefully the bird does well and the little boy is excited when he gets the parakeet for christmas. lol

-Sarnic Dirchi