Grooming Visit

So we had some Grooming higher ups drop by to visit today.

I would say it was a surprise visit...but technically we got some warning....in an email...last night...at like 8pm...when no one ever checks the mail. *shakes head*

But yah...I never like coming into work only to discover that we have higher ups coming in. *exhales*

Honestly I don't know which one is worse...the surprise visit...or the knowledge of just when a visit is gonna happen. 

In any case.

I was hoping to avoid interacting with the Grooming Higher Ups while they were in the store. Mostly because I don't usually have anything to do with grooming. Soooo there's not really a reason to interact beyond the typical polite "hellos" and such.

Except.

We have this thing in the store where three times a day we have to do a "walk" where we use our handy dandy ipads to check on certain aspects of the store and make sure that everything is still going well.

It's one of those things where I can see why we do it. Because it's good to keep a finger on the pulse of the store basically and be aware of things going on.

But it's really annoying most of the time. Because you have to make time to do these walks and you have to make sure your walk isn't too long or too short or else it doesn't count in the system and sometimes you just get busy and it's hard to break away to do this thing.

And when I came into work today, my Head Manager assigned me to be the one doing our mid day walk.

Which no big deal. We had enough coverage I could happily do that.

Except for two small issues. As you see, part of the walk is going into the grooming salon and making sure everyone -dogs/people- is doing good and there's no signs of stress and such.

The midday questions for this are pretty easy. And I could be in and out of the salon in a couple minutes.

However, it so happened that today was a day where there was a bit of a line in the grooming salon. Where customers were waiting to check in and out their dogs.

And with current pandemic policies...there isn't supposed to be more than one 'family' in the salon at a time.

So us managers try to wait until the customer is done in the salon before entering ourselves. That way we're still following guidelines and such.

Further bad luck...the Grooming Higher Ups were also waiting for a clear moment to enter the salon.

I was hoping to get in and out before they noticed me so I could finish the check quickly.

But no such luck. One of the higher ups saw me walking by with the Ipad and was like "Oh! Are you doing the walk? Let me do it with you!" 

*exhales*

Which okay. It's not the end of the world.

But that does put some pressure on me. Especially with the Grooming Salon as I have general ideas of what to look for, but I'm not aware of every little thing to keep an eye out on.

And this is a grooming higher up. That means they know what I should be looking for...

And I don't.

It's like a surprise test that you didn't know you had to study for.

Thankfully, I'm pretty good at taking tests. 

And beyond a couple of little pointers of things to look out for from the higher up...I managed to hold my own pretty well in answering the questions posed to me by the higher up and giving suggestions and such on things.

I honestly think the higher up wanted to do the entire walk with me...but they ended up getting distracted in the salon...and my head manager came to my rescue allowing me to escape so that I could finish the walk within the time limit -as I'd already spent half an hour in the salon with the higher ups- and such.

So yah. Yay stress. *shakes head* 

Glad that it went well overall though.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi