Left Behind

 It's amazing how....sneaky customers can be.

Though truthfully. It's not like us workers can be in every aisle watching every person that comes through the store.

So the fact that thieves can get away with stealing product without us seeing....isn't that suprising.

What does surprise me though is when the reverse happens.

Where people just.....leave us animals without us realizing. Without us seeing.

It's happened with some cats/dogs over the years. As well as with a Tortoise at one point. And like we've had customers come up to the registers before and just plunk down their pet and say "It's yours now" and leave before we can do anything.

But the oddest ones are the customers who just....leave random fish in our fish tanks. 

Like with how often there's at least one of us over at the fish wall -as that's like 95% of the petcare job is catching fish or bagging crickets (and crickets are by the fish) 

It's amazing that people can come in and just....dump a fish in our tanks and leave without us being any the wiser until we notice that there's a fish that doesn't belong in the tank it's discovered in.

Today was one of those days. 

Where towards opening....i don't even remember if we'd been opened yet or if the store had been open for only half an hour...but like...I go to our Betta Cube -the big glowing endcap with all our bettas on it.

And notice a container with a betta on the shelf below the bettas. 

And I noticed it because the container it was in....was not the right size for our bettas. It was like thrice as big.

Upon closer investigation the container was an old salsa container. And inside....a random betta. 

Just left there. 

I don't know if the fish had been there since yesterday evening or if it appeared this morning....but there it was. 

*shakes head*

And then a few hours later, when I was doing the fish count to ensure that our inventory of animals was accurate....I discovered an angelfish in our tanks. One that wasn't there before. 

As I have been paying attention to our fish. Specifically our angels as I keep wanting to add one into my tank but I've been leery too as the last angelfish that got added in got it's eyeballs eaten out like within the first two hours of being there.

Plus said angelfish was like twice the size of the last angelfish that I saw in said tank. And since I put out the fish shipment when it came in....I knew we hadn't received any angelfish for said tank.

Plus. Inventory stated that we weren't supposed to have ANY angelfish in that tank.

So yah.

Turns out that one of my other managers had discovered said angelfish the night before in one of our CICHLID tanks.

*exhales*

If people feel the need to donate fish to us without us knowing....the least they could do is NOT put them in the AGGRESSIVE fish tanks. As Cichlids have been known to kill other fish. *shakes head* 

Luckily....angelfish are a type of cichlid and maybe it hadn't been in the tank that long, but my other manager fished it out and placed it in the tank that I discovered it in.

In any case.

I ended up taking both fish home. Since we don't know WHERE the fish came from or IF they'd come from our store originally, we figured it would be best to not keep them there.

So I took them home. 

^^;; Currently the angelfish is doing well in the big tank, though I'm not going to get my hopes up too much until it's survived in there a couple of days. 

And the betta too is doing well in it's new home.

So yah.

Yay new free fish!

But Boooo on customers who just....leave there pets like that. So not cool.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi