After Christmas Shopping

 It's never easy to predict how the day after Christmas will go in the retail world.

Like of course you get people returning gifts that either broke or didn't work or they don't want.

But here in the pet store world, you also get the hordes of parents bringing their kids into the store to either buy the pet that they were promised when they opened up the cage/tank on Christmas or to buy supplies for the pet they got for Christmas.

And with animals, there's always shortages with them, no matter the year. 

But this year? 2020. Where everyone has decided to buy a pet to be their quarantine buddy....

Yah, it's a lot harder to keep animals in stock because the breeders have yet to catch up with the demand that has been high on them this entire year.

And since they can't meet the demand...we therefore can't keep all the 'extra' animals in stock that we usually have at this time of year.

Like from Black Friday to Christmas I usually get in 3x as many animals as usual because it's expected a lot of people will want pets.

This year?

Hardly a thing.

I never reached the point of wondering where I was going to place all my extra animals because we had no extra animals to place.

It's been the same thing the entire year. As soon as we have animals available for sale...they're gone.

Very few have stayed in the store longer than a week.

Most are gone within a day or two of being put on the floor.

So yah...add onto that the crazy of Christmas?

And we're the lowest on animals we've been since the beginning of the pandemic.

My reptiles are all but gone. Birds down to a handful. Hamsters? Ha. We have none. Just mice and guinea pigs.

So yah.

It's not easy to know just how to face today....because who knows how many people are coming in to get animals.

And how many people will be disappointed by what they don't find.

In any case.

Overall it wasn't too bad on the animal front.

We did have a lot of people in the store.

But most of them were gathering supplies instead of animals.

With the exception of the fish.

*shakes head*

Towards the end of my shift we had a horde of people descend on the fish wall. 

And by horde I mean that two of my coworkers and I ended up having to be at the fish wall all at the same time frantically trying to catch and bag fish as quickly as possible so we could get to the next customer.

There had to be like thirty people at the fish wall wanting fish.

Which with social distancing guidelines....is not a good thing.

People were slightly too close together.

But it was hard to separate them out as some of them were groups together. Aka families and such.

So while there was some space between groups....it still felt very crowded and I couldn't help but feel uneasy at how many people were there.

Like. Guys. Pandemic.

But noooo they're so focused on getting their fish they don't really care about who else is around them.

*shakes head*

At least the rest of the day hasn't been that crazy compared to that one mob at the fish wall.

But still. 

It's always interesting to deal with after Christmas shoppers.

Until you next find these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi