I usually like short shifts at work.
Mostly because I don't often get them.
So when I get scheduled a short shift...it's great!
And today. I was scheduled a super short shift.
Which is totally crazy...like only 4 hours long.
And it's even crazier because I got scheduled a short shift on a Saturday...which happens pretty rarely.
Totally was ecstatic about it.
Because Saturday shifts basically always exhaust me afterwards.
So a short shift had to mean I would be using less energy and therefore would have more energy outside of work, since I wouldn't be exposed to as much peopling.
*exhales*
Of course. It doesn't always work out like that.
I should have known something would be up when I was asked to come in an hour early to work to briefly cover my coworker while they briefly left to get a cat bite checked out at a clinic.
Which of course, as soon as I got near the manager, prompted a whole spiel of "We need to be more careful with the cats. We're not here to socialize them! Just get them adopted. You should be in there to just clean them, not have them all running rampant all over the area!"
Cue my mental eye roll. Because:
a) The manager is allergic to cats and therefore never does anything with them.
b) It's not like you can get a cat to stay in a cage when it wants out. If the cat doesn't want out we work around it, but there's nothing wrong with letting it wander around.
c) We don't have ALL the cats out at once despite what my manager thinks. It's one cage at a time. So the only time there's multiple cats out is when there were multiple cats in the cage in the first place. d) Who can resist stopping for a moment to pet the cats? and
e) My coworker got bitten when the cat was still IN the cage. Not out and wandering around. >.< *exhales*
So it wasn't the best way to be greeted at work, that's for sure.
Add on top of that a near instantaneous. "Do you know when the Dogs for the Adoption day are supposed to be here?"
"12:30" was my response.
"No, no, they were supposed to be here at 10!" (it was after 10) What are we going to tell customers? What if the adoption group doesn't show up!? I've already told customers to come back! Did we confirm they were coming in this week?"
"...the other manager confirms when the adoption group next plans to come in when they come into the store. So he'll confirm today when they're going to come next. Besides...they usually show up at 12:30"
"We need to confirm! We got to confirm! Quick call them!"
*exhales*
I tried calling them (wondering why I had to do it when it should be a manager doing it) ...no answer. But it's rare for the group to show up in the mornings...usually it's 12:30. So I figured it would be then.
....and of course I had customers constantly coming up to me asking when the adoptions were going to be. And I had to respond. "We're expecting them in today, but they haven't yet shown up."
-They did show up at 12:30 like I had expected so go me for being right.
And then yet another manager was like. "Soooo we still don't have fish."
*head bang* We don't?!
The truck was supposed to show up YESTERDAY. (Friday)
And you're telling me today (Saturday) that the truck hasn't shown up?
Yep. Yep. Yep.
Our truck had once again vanished. (it did this like a month ago too) It was supposed to again show up this morning at 6am...only guess what? Yah...it didn't.
The managers had only received an email stating that the truck would no longer be coming at Six. Instead it would be coming at TBD.
Which could mean in an hour, a day, a week, never...
*exhales*
We later got confirmation that the truck should be showing up tomorrow (Sunday)
But all in all...if I do have fish on that truck....like I'm supposed to...
Then we're probably going to have a lot of dead fish to deal with.
As they'll be in those boxes at least 72 hours longer than they were supposed to be.
And who knows what the temperatures have been like. I mean...the weather has been pretty back and forth with cold and hot, but if it's on the hotter side and the truck doesn't have a stable temperature....the fish are either going to cook or freeze and yah...it's going to be a bad shipment of fish tomorrow. I'm pretty confident.
And then there was the issue of my coworker not having the department fully open yet, due to having to fill out an incident report and such. Which meant I was trying to help customers and finish giving all the animals their breakfast...by myself. I also had to mess with the fish system a bit because the water was super cold because two of the three heaters had turned themselves off (flipped their breakers) so I had to turn them back on....
Plus since it's the first Saturday of the month, that means that our cats in our adoption center are switching out. -As we partner with a different group this month.
And as luck would have it. The group that was supposed to bring cats in....showed up before the group that was supposed to take their cats out did.
Meaning I had to deal with miffed/annoyed/frustrated people from adoptions.
Thankfully the other group showed up like a minute later, so within like 10 minutes their cats were gone.
But the cages the cats in still needed to be cleaned so that the new ones could go in. So there went 30 minutes of trying to clean the cages, litter boxes, and bowls quickly so that next adoption group could bring their cats in.
Add to that difficult customers like one who asked how often we feed our fish here in the store and proceeded to lecture me that "Doesn't your mother feed you three times a day, why would you fed these fish only once a day?" after I told them that we do it once a day everyday.
-Which I've had this thought multiple times before and have used it on customers before when they seem dismayed they have to feed their pet everyday...it's rather disconcerting to have it used on me.
Or a different customer who wanted a blue harness, but could only find the style that they wanted in pink, and had no patience to learn how to put the blue harness of the other style on, and wouldn't take a black replacement that was the same style of the pink one as they didn't like pink on their dog, but black would be worse....
Ending with tons of customers all needing help right at the end of my shift...when I should have already been off, but hadn't left yet because my two coworkers who were supposed to show up to replace me were once again late...led to me clocking out late....
*takes a deep breath*
Yah. It's no surprise that I was exhausted when I got home. It may have been a short shift. But it was a crazy hectic short shift and I'm so very glad I didn't have my usual 8 hour shift today or else I would be dead on my feet.
*exhales* At least it was a short shift. Right? Who knows what other chaos I would have encountered if I'd stayed longer...
Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
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