Where's A Spot?

You ever have those moments where you're like "I have made a mistake." In that a decision you made probably wasn't the best thought out decision?

Yah....

Yah.

So in general. I tend to avoid going places on the weekends. 

Because after working a good decade in retail....I am well aware how crazy busy stores can get.

And me? I like to avoid lines where I can. I like to avoid being around crowds when I can.

So I try to usually do my shopping in the middle of the week. Usually in the mornings when I know less people are around.

That also usually goes for food places as well. Though it's also a case of for whatever reason when I do try to get food aka fast food on the weekend....it just usually ends up not tasting good.

The exceptionish to this food thing on weekends....is usually Texas Roadhouse.

In that I can usually order pick up and go grab the food with minimal hassle. 

Of course.

I usually grab food right after my morning shift on a Fri/Sat which is like right before the beginning of the dinner rush. Plus with the place opening earlier on Fri/Sat I'm more likely to be able to order food without having to wait around for a while after work to go get it.

The difference with today though.

Was that I worked a mid.

And said midshift ended at 7pm.

I didn't think it would be that big of a deal though.

Because it's 7pm. The main dinner rush would most likely be over and so I figured it wouldn't be any difficulties in grabbing my food.

Ha.

HA.

I forgot to account for the fact that this particular Roadhouse location is on the same lot as the MALL.

Aka "Crowd Central" on a Friday night.

Plus with like 3 other restaruants in the area.

And with it being a Friday where people are more likely to go out to eat in the later evening after work...

Let's say the parking lot was CROWDED.

Like it's been a long while since I've been in a lot where the cars are circling like sharks on the hunt searching for an empty stall to snag.

It...it wasn't fun.

Like I arrived 5 minutes before my order was supposed to be ready.

I didn't get my order until nearly 15 minutes AFTER it was ready.

because there was literally NO WHERE TO PARK.

Ugh.

And like I'm sure if I'd had a passenger in the car I could have just done a quick park in front of the place, hopped out, grabbed the food, and come back without issue.

But since I was the only one in the car....I highly doubted that would have passed well.

*exhales*

So I ended up circling and circling and glaring at the cars in the lots with their lights on just sitting there idling. 

Until I FINALLY found a spot and was able to grab my food.

Of course the moment I left (and had to meander my way through the chaos) there were immediately 7 open spots available that hadn't been there 30 seconds earlier.

Ugh.

So it goes.

But yah.

Note to self.

Do not try and do pick up in the Mall area on the weekend night. It is NOT a GOOD IDEA.

At least the food was good though.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Calculating All The Breaks

 So, I very nearly put myself in a bad situation at work.

Like not 'bad bad' just a "that would have sucked" sort of bad.

As you see, I was scheduled to be the mid manager today.

And when I came in I had my morning manager, the morning cashier, and the morning petcare person on the floor. 

And I'm basically the gap for everyone there. Basically come in the time I do to help cover lunches and such.

In any case.

When I go to talk to my petcare person they asked if instead of taking a lunch, if they could leave at 2 instead of 2:30.

And I was thinking "Yah, sure that would be fine." As I figured that would leave an hour gap in petcare.

But like I also had my cashier here. So if anything it would be me and the cashier depending on when my morning manager got off. 

BUT

I had the thought that maaaaybe I should go look at the schedule. Just to see when exactly all my closing crew were supposed to come in and when my opening crew were off so that I could make sure everyone who needed a lunch got one and that I would still have people until the trade off happened.

Yah.

It was nearly bad.

Because my morning manager? Was technically off at 230. But they never take lunches so they would be leaving at 2.

My morning cashier? Off at 2.

My morning petcare -again off at 2:30 but was wanting to not take a lunch and leave at 2.

Which ooof. Not. Good.

It became SUPER not good when I looked at when everyone else was supposed to come in.

My closing manager 4:30.

My closing cashier? 3pm..

My closing petcare? 3pm. 

Which meant. If I let the morning crew all leave at 2.

I would literally be THE ONLY PERSON in the core part of the store for AN HOUR.

NOT. GOOD.

And actually something I can't do.

We're supposed to have at least 2 people if not 3 people on the floor at all times.

And like I still had 3 groomers in the salon. But they're groomers. They have no core store training.

So if someone needed help at fish and I was stuck watching register? Yah. No help at fish for an hour.

So yah. Mayday mayday mayday scenario there.

And it's just crazy because that sort of thing shouldn't happen with scheduling.

Except corporate was dumb and decided to go all micromanagement on us with scheduling dictating exactly how many hours in each department in each day we can schedule people in. Which makes the whole thing complicated and confusing and leaves gaps all over the place in coverage. 

Mostly gaps in petcare because for whatever reason they don't believe the SECOND LARGEST STORE in my State who services like HALF OF THE STATE because the next store south of us is like 3 hours away so we serve like everyone bewteen that store and our store. Doesn't need any help in petcare for like 2 hours. XP It's stupid.

In any case.

I had my morning petcare take a lunch so that they were off at 230 like scheduled.

And we tried to get my evening petcare to come in early at 2:30 but they got caught in a thing and so didn't make it to the store until 2:50. 

But we also had our morning cashier stay an hour later so that they were off at 3 instead.

So from 2:30-3pm I had me and a cashier at least. So I was covered that way.

But ugh. That was stressful getting that all figured out because idk what we'd have done if people couldn't have stayed longer or come in early. 

*shakes head*

Corporate sucks big time with their microing our hours. Just give us more hours and stop trying to line your own goldenlined pockets already.

*exhales*

In any case.

The fun continued after that because I ended up not getting a lunch myself.

Why?

Because I was planning to take my lunch when the closing manager came in at 430.

BUT. Like 20 minutes before the manager came in. 

Grooming calls me up to the front.

Because they've had an incident where a dog injured itself in the salon by somehow getting it's tooth caught in a divider in the cage and cutting the gums making it bleed.

*exhales*

Luckily the vet says that it should heal just fine and gave some antibiotics as a preventative. 

But such an incident in the salon means that we have to fill out an incident report.

And that basically needs to be done ASAP.

And they've changed a bit of how to do that as well. So I had to keep confiring with my Head Manager and keep going back and forth between salon and the office to get details and take pictures and hear everyone's version of events. While I'm also trying to back up cashier, talk to the vet, help the many many helpless doordashers that seem to have sprung up out of the woodwork and deal with our fish truck as well.

So it was.... alot.

I ended up not getting done with that report until like 6pm because of all the interruptions. Ugh.

Which since I was off at 7 basically meant that I would just need to leave 30 minutes early instead since I didn't have time to take a lunch.

Thankfully we were able to get all the closers their lunches and breaks so that wasn't an issue.

Except we also had a stupid rush on the registers at 630 so I didn't end up leaving until 645. *exhales*

So yah.

It was a long day.

Waaay more stress today than there should have been.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Fallen

 So like nearly ... ... I don't know six years ago now? I think it's been around 6 years. We had a fire behind our house. 

Where I'd basically just woken up from a nap...possibly also had been dealing with a migraine and was just hanging out when I heard a bunch of popping noises coming from the backyard. Which upon investigation ..... showed that the strip of land between our back yard and the road below the house ....was on fire.

I'd been quick to react in that I was the first to call 911 for help so that we could get the fire department over.

And luckily there was minimal damages to the houses along that strip of land. A few balconies and fences received damage and that was about it.

But at the time of the fire we had 2 huge cottonwood trees behind the house.

And both of them had caught fire. The one on the left had gone up like a torch in front of my sister and had burned hot enough to singe some of the hair on her head.

But upon investigating after the fire was out and such.

The people in charge of figuring out saftey hazards and such...decided that the cotton wood tree on the right needed to be cut down.

But decided to not cut down the one on the left as they thought it would 'come back'

It didn't come back.

Like it may have had a bit of greenery the first year or two but overall the tree was dead.

And despite all our efforts. We couldn't get the city to come in and cut down the tree.

No the most they did was trim some branches to make sure nothing would fall on the powerlines.

But otherwise. 

They were like "Not my circus not my monkeys." as the tree was on "private property" in that the strip of land is actually owned by a person so that person is in charge of maintaining the land and the trees there. If the tree isn't on 'city property' then there's nothing they can do. 

Only the city didn't TELL US THAT.

No. Last we'd heard was that the city was considering buying the land from the property owner to make sure that a fire like that couldn't happen again. But I guess they did nothing with it?

In any case. 

Over the years the tree has been slowly rotting away. Like we'd get in storms of rain and snow and wind and pieces of bark and lots of branches would fall off and break and such.

And in many ways we kinda just figured the dead tree would be standing there forever.

And in others we worried about the day it finally fell because we weren't sure how much would be uprooted when and if this cotton would decided to topple over.

And like it's on the side of a hill. So odds are the tree would fall down the hill and not up it. But like there's always that chance that the tree would fall uphill and hit our or the neighbor's house.

Anywho.

Today.

Today I had been down with a migraine that got triggered yesterday. 

And it was towards sunset when I finally awoke from my midafternoon nap that I'd taken to try and get rid of the headache.

And I was just lying in bed when I heard this odd....crashing noise?

Like it kinda sounded like the wind rushing through the branches of a tree. But there was also a heavier sound that was similar to like heavy snow falling to the ground after a storm. But like...it hadn't been snowing at all and only recently had I noticed the wind was blowing outside and honestly the only reason why I noticed the wind was blowing was because of these odd sounds I was hearing.

And I had this thought of like "Huh...this combination of noise almost sounds like a tree fell down outside my window."

You know what tree is outside my window? Yep. The dead one.

So I venture out of bed to my window and peer outside.

And there's just....nothing.

No tree.

The tree is GONE. 

So I rush upstairs up onto our deck because I wanted a birds eye view and Yep. The TREE IS GONE. 

With a quick dart back down the stairs so I could put in some contacts so I could actually SEE SEE what was going on.

I go back upstairs.

And yah. The tree had finally fallen over. 

Which was crazy because yes the wind was blowing and it was a stronger gustier wind that had a bit of a biting chill to it.

But like. It isn't the strongest wind that we've had here. We've had worse winds that I thought for sure would topple the tree...but didn't.

But for whatever reason. This wind. This day. Ended up being the last day for the tree to stand.

And since I only heard it and didn't see it....I don't quite know how it fell.

Like it sounded like 2 separate breaks. But I don't know if a top portion of the tree broke off first and then the base...or if the base actually snapped and the portions of the tree towards the top broke off when it hit the ground.

I'm thinking the base finally snapped....because it has been rotting there for years now. Maybe the rot and the increased wind from just the right direction finally convinced it to fall.

As the roots of the tree are still somewhere in the ground. Because the base of the tree is a very jagged snapped look. 

Thankfully the tree didn't hit anything manmade on its way down. The powerlines were safe that were in the area. And the tree itself managed to mostly avoid falling into the road below.

Like the top maybe 6 feet of branches had made it into the road so if a car wasn't paying attention they could have hit it.

But overall. Nothing but fallen tree to worry about.

But in an odd twist of fate.

The owner of the property happened to be outside when the tree fell.

Like was basically just down the road in their pickup truck waiting for a supply of wood chips from somewhere when the tree came down.

I don't know if they saw the tree fall itself or happened upon it soon after.

But like between me rushing up the stairs to check, getting my eyes in, and letting my roomies know hwat happened...the owner (i didn't know it was them at the time) had already pulled up at the tree in their truck and was tossing branches and grabbing a power saw to cut larger pieces into more moveable pieces. 

With the sun quickly setting they didn't do much more than gather the branches they could into the bed of their truck and move the larger pieces off the road so it wasn't blocking anything or a danger to traffic.

I'm guessing that they'll be back tomorrow or maybe this weekened to finish sawing apart the tree??? Not sure.

But apparently the owner didn't even realize that the tree was dead? Because their portion of the strip of land ends just past our house...so I guess they didn't venture down this far that often?? Because the owner was like "So did this tree die this past summer?" and my roomie (who'd ventured down to see the tree) was like "No, it was dead since the fire." 

So yah. Not observant the property owner. Not at all.

But in any case.

It's just crazy that two similar events involving trees happened when I was experiencing similar circumstances of nap/migraine.

And it's just another one of those 'is this real life' moments. Because like you see it happen but you can't really believe that it happened.

Like I keep looking out the window and it's sooo crazy to not see the giant dead tree right there. It's all open view now. I have a new view of the valley that I didn't have before because giant dead tree was in the way. And it's just....something I'l have to get used to. It's crazy. So crazy.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Natural?

I've been asked a lot over the years if I dye my hair.

Mostly because I inherited the gene in my family where my hair greys early. 

Like I found my first grey hair when I was 15. 

And honestly if I'm completely grey by age 40 ....I wouldn't be too surprised.

In any case.

It has been a popular trend for the past little while, for people to dye their hair grey. They spend a lot of money doing it. And a lot of people who discover that my grey highlights are natural get extremely jealous lol. 

Which is crazy since I grew up with my Daddoo constantly dying his hair and the adults around me constantly dying their hair to hide the greys.

Now though? A lot of people love the grey haired look.

So it's not too surprising for me to get asked at least once a week if my hair is natural or if I dye it.

But today I got a different question.

A customer at work asked me if I was wearing a wig.

O_o 

A Wig?

Yes. A wig. Because apparently I look too young to have that much grey hair. So it can't be natural. And instead of going for the typical "did you dye it?" question they intead asked if I was wearing a wig.

Especially because they were impressed with how 'thick my hair is' for it being that grey.

????

Okay???

Idk. Like it's my hair....

But yah no no wig here lol.

Just my natural locks.

*shakes head*

First time I've been asked that.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Checking In

 So, I'm technically cat sitting my Daddoo's kitty.

Like 'technically' because I'm only dropping in a handful of times to check in on him since I live a distance away and I can't bring him to my place because of roomie allergies and I can't stay at my Daddoo's home because I still have to get to work and I'm not making the commute back and forth between happy valley every day because that's crazy.

In any case.

Since I had today off, I ventured back up to Hometown to see the cat and give him some much needed attention and socialization.

Which the kitty really appreciated because he spent a good hour or so curled up in my lap purring happily away while I gave him scritches and pets and such.

And I just....I just feel so bad for him.

Spending time by himself in the house with no one to interact with.

He was so happy to see me.

But also so desperate to have me stay when I needed to leave.

As I had to get back before sunset because it's been storming off and on all day and I did not want to attempt navigating snow and darkness at the same time as that's more stress than I already need.

But even though I spent like a good 5 hours with him.

The poor kitty kept trying to convince me to stay longer.

And I just feel so bad for him.

To know he's by himself until my next day off. *exhales*

Like just the despeartion in his meows, the look in his eyes, his attempts to follow me out the door.

It was soo heartbreaking.

And it's so stressful. Because I want to help the kitty out, but at this point there's not much more I can do. Not without stressing myself out and I already have enough stress on my plate worrying about my siblings, my niblings, my family, my friends, my job, my roomies.

There's just a lot going on.

Doesn't stop me from feeling guilty.

But hopefully the kitty can survive on his own until I can check in on him again.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Additions

 I bit the bullet today.

And decided to attempt to add more fish back into my giant fish tank.

As it's been stable for like a week now.

And it was looking soooo empty.

But it's like....stressful. To buy fish. Especially after a death pandemic where you lose over half your fish. *exhales* Because like...the thought is constantly in the back of my mind of "will they make it or did I just waste money."

Like I can be semi-confident that I'm not 'wasting money' since I was trying to be more careful to not add a bunch of fish. Keeping my selections on the smaller size so that the addition of them should hopefully not upset the tank.

Not like the customer earlier today who decided they wanted 4 of each glodanio color. Which with 5 colors meant that they wanted TWENTY fish. 

20 fish to place in their 50 gallon tank. 

Which in theory since the danios only get 2 inches each and would need 2 gallons per tank. They were only at 40 gallons adding in those 20.

But the customer, after I'd fished out the 20 fish, was like "Oh wait get me 2 more of each color" aka 6 of each color.

*exhales*

I had to explain to them why that wasn't a good idea. Because yes the tank can hold that manyish fish. But its not something you want to add all at once. Honestly I would have suggested adding closer to maybe 10? But the customer was from a couple of hours away.

And those customers are always more difficult to convince to 'add a few a time' because they don't want to have to drive all the way up to my store more than once.

In any case. I convinced that customer to just stick with the 20 glodanios I'd already fished out. 

Though honestly, it wouldn't surprise me if they lose around half of them. *shakes head*

But at like $7 each...the customer literally just dropped like $140 before tax on their fish. Like O_o I couldn't imagine spending that much money on fish all at once.

I mean...I could...but I would never do that.

In any case.

I do get the desire of "add them all now!" because I had to fight that desire myself lol.

Mostly because this month we have our glotetras and our mollies and platys on sale. 

Where if you buy 3 or more you can get 15% off the fish. 

Which is one of those frustrating sales...because customers want to take advantage of the 'deal' but sometimes their tank just isn't big enough to add a lot of fish at once. 

So we often end up with a higher dead fish return because customers try to get as much fish as they can for as little as possible.

In any case. Since the sale only lasts a month...and me trying to be somewhat careful at how many fish I add at once...that only gives me like 4 weeks to add in fish before the sale is done for. (Buying fish once a week for a month. aka 4 times to buy fish) 

And that's only IF the fish in the first batch do well and I don't retrigger another die off. *exhales* 

In any case.

After spending my entire shift deliberating just which fish I wanted to get.

I decided that I would be adding in 4 glotetras. An orange, a red, and 2 greens to go with my remaining red, orange and 2 purples. 

Which hopefully, if it goes well, I will also add in 2 blues and 2 pinks next week to complete the 'collection' 

Though I am debating about whether or not I should try to have 3 of each color instead of 2. But for now I'm sticking with 2s. 

And then...Platys and Mollies....they can be rather tricky in my tank. I want to try them again. And since it's a less aggressive tank....

I went with 3 painted platys. 1 male and 2 females. Just to see how they would do.

Ergo I had planned to only add like 7 fish today.

And maybe if I hadn't been so distracted catching fish for 3 hours straight at the fish wall I would have just taken advantage of that and stuck with it.

But I also discovered an 'odd' fish in our feeder goldfish tanks...which judging by shape and color...might be one of those rosy minnows I've heard about but my store doesn't carry....

So I fished that one out to take home.

And then in our Zebra Danio tank I discovered that some of our zebras that had come in were actually leopard danios instead. So I fished those out.

And then there were 3 actual zebra danios that a customer had brought into the store to donate that I said I could take home since our store doesn't accept donated fish.

Which meant....I ended up with an extra 8 fish I hadn't planned to take home that I took home. 

So I added in like 15 fish instead of my planned 6ish.

So I'm kinda....trying to not stress about it.

After all, all the fish are on the smaller size. So like total I'm adding maybe 20 inches of fish to my tank? Which means 20 gallons which is a fraction of my 125 gallon tank.

So it should be fine.

And overall the fish are looking good. The danios are schooling with my 2 surviving ones from the die off. The minnow is hanging with them, my glotetras found their buddies in the tank and are having a grand old time.

It's just the platys that I'm uncertain of. They seem to be taking a minute to adjust to their new much bigger set up. So *fingers crossed* That they do well. 

But if they don't I'll know that it's probably not a good idea to add in platys and mollies to my tank if this batch doesn't do well. And I can focus on just the glotetras for the rest of the month until I see what March's sale is. 

Though if the platys do do well I'm hoping to add in some red wags as well. And perhaps some balloon belly mollies and some gold panda mollies. 

So we'll see how the fish do this week. And plan from there what I'll get next weekend.

But in typical fashion....whenever I seem to get some new fish...I end up with causualties somewhere.

And unfortunately....it's looking like it's gonna be the black moor.

*exhales*

Like luckily said fish is in a different tank from all the new fish so there's no fear of the goldfish getting the others sick. As I had decided to give it a couple of days before adding the moor back into my big tank...and it was a good thing I waited because the day after the 'ick' had vanished I came home from work yesterday to discover the goldfish had ick spots again on its body. So I started the ick treatment in that tank.

And today....today the moor isn't looking good.

Like he was semi-perky when I got home from work.

But the past couple of hours he's just been....kinda laying on the bottom of the tank doing the death breathing sort of movements. Y_Y and its looking like the 'fin rot' has attacked the fish's tail...which if the fin rot strikes....that's not a good sign...

So yah. Gonna probably lose the goldfish tonight. 

Which would leave my 10 gallon tank with just snails in it. 

Which is fine as I was hoping to take down that tank anyways....I just need to figure out what I need to do with the snails....As I don't want to move them to yet another tank and have them bring disease to that tank.

So since I've already started the ick treatment....I'll probably finish that out and let the tank run with just the snails in it for another week or so before moving the snails into my big tank and taking down the 10.

But we'll see.

Plans could change.

But at least. For now. My 125's new additions seem to be going well.

Hopefully it stays that way.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

The Dasher Glitch

 We had the oddest glitch happen at work yesterday.

So.

We do curbsides in our store right? Customer orders items online and they can come pick it up in the store, or have us bring it out to them in their car, or else have doordash deliver it to their home.

-Though we're apparently going to be adding another option of 'ship from store' with my store being one of the 'test' stores. Soooo that's going to be interesting to deal with when we impliment it.

In any case.

Customer orders online and we in the store have 3 hours to pick said order.

-Not that customers pay attention to that specific detail. But it does say to give us at least 3 hours.

Though most of the time it doesn't take us that long. We usually can get an order picked within half an hour of it dropping. Mostly it depends on how busy we are at the moment.

So the Glitch.

I was backing up the register when a dasher came through saying that they were here to pick up an order.

And usually with Dashers they give a first name and like first 2 or 3 letters of the last name. 

But this order was weird because it just said "Ore" 

So I pull up our curbside system to look for the order.

And there's no order for "Ore"

No big deal there. 

One of the odd things about the curbside system is that sometimes if a person is placing an order on behalf of the other person the other person will come in to pick it up, but the order will be under the orderer's name instead. 

But usually on the papers we print out and stick on the order there will be a "So and So is picking it up for me" section. And when we get into the actual order itself the order will show us two options (the orderer, or the pick up person) as the one picking up.

So I just needed to put in the Dasher's order number to find said order.

And said order did pull up. Under a different name. Confirming my suspicion someone else was supposed to pick up the order.

Though I recognized the name of said person ordering as they're one of our more regular curbside pick up people. 

But I don't recall an "Ore" being one to pick it up.

HOWEVER.

The main thing when I pulled up the order.

Was that it hadn't been picked yet.

Because said order had dropped FIFTEEN MINUTES AGO.

And DoorDash has its issues for sure.

But one thing that it does do is that people can't order a doordash and have it delivered that quickly.

No Doordash has 'time slots' and while I haven't used them myself. Those time slots are usually like 4 to 8 hours AFTER the order is placed.

Ergo enough time to give us people at the store time to pick the order and have it ready. 

Fifteen minutes though? Unheard of. Doordash doesn't do delivery that quickly. Not unless it's a 'new' thing with the 'new' year since the 'new year' starts for us in February instead of January.

In any case.

I inform the dasher that their order isn't ready yet, but I'd go pick it right then.

And when I printed out the slip, I glanced at the time it was supposed to be picked up (as the dash orders always list the time frame an order is supposed to be picked up in) and it listed it as 3pm.

At the time of picking said order it was just after 11am. 

So the doordasher was 4 hours too early picking up the order.

Whatever. I figured it was a glitch. I picked the order easily enough so I just gave it to the dasher. And pushed the order through the system to say it'd been picked up. And mentally marked it off as a "That was weird" moment. 

I wasn't planning to think on it further.

Only to have the Dasher come back into the store a few minutes later and ask to talk to me.

Why?

Because they were having trouble delivering their order to the customer.

As when they selected the "take me to their address" option....the dashing app led the dasher....straight back to our store. The address listed was our store. 

So the dasher attempted to call the customer to get their address.

Only for the phone number provided to ring out to our store.

Which. Weird. So weird. Like...why would our store address and our store number be listed?

I took another glance at the paper and in the "Pick up section" it had "Doordash on behalf of (Store Number & City) on it. 

O.o

Why would DoorDash need to pick up on behalf of our store?? So weird. So very weird.

In any case, since the customer is a semi-regular person I was able to look up their phone number from a previous order and offered to have the dasher call that number. 

But since the order wasn't supposed to be picked up until after 3pm anyways.

The dasher decided to cut their loss and cancel the pick up of this order and just left it here in the store for someone else to grab when the time slot came.

So. Put the order back in our curbside area to await pick up. And informed the various managers who would be working during the pick up time frame what was going on.

As since I'd already pushed the order through as "Picked Up" it wouldn't show up under the "Open Orders" section of orders waiting to be grabbed. So I was doing my duty and letting the other managers know what was up so there would be hopefully less confusion.

Figured that would be that.

But when I came in this morning and checked our curbsides.....

The order was still there.

Which meant no Dasher had come by yesterday after 3 to pick up the order.

But hey. I hadn't looked looked at the date. And since we hold orders for only 3 days before returning them to the shelf (and refunding the customer) sometimes the Dash orders are for the next day. I don't recal seeing them for past next day shipping. I'm guessing DoorDash really only has a 24 hour clock to order in?? Not certain since I've never used the app.

In any case.

I went to check the date to see if it was an order for today instead of yesterday.

And the date on the paper?

Was for 12/27/2022.

No. That is not a typo. The date was for DECEMBER 27th of LAST YEAR. 

Like. What?????????

Because again, we only keep customer's orders for 3 days before returning them to the shelf. 

There is no way an order placed YESTERDAY could be from DECEMBER.

Like time travel shenigans much? 

Totally alot.

So there was the delimma. the doordash pick up time was for like 39 days ago. Therefore Doordash wasn't going to pick up the order any time soon.

And I'd already pushed said order through the system. So it wouldn't show as a "need to put back."

And like....I wasn't even sure if the customer had been notified that their order had been 'picked up' but never delievered?

Like had they even ordered it in the first place?

Was this a time delay glitch where the order was in the nether until yesterday when it finally dropped?

Who knows.

But after talking to my head manager, we decided it would be best to call the customer. Just so we could figure it out.

So I looked up their information and got their phone number. 

And interestly enough.

The customer stated that they hadn't even selected DoorDash as an option when they placed the order. No they'd selected "store pick up" aka the customer was planning to come to the store to grab the order themselves. No 3rd party necessary. 

And they told me they thought it was weird that they got a "Door Dasher is trying to get your address" notification yesterday....when they hadn't ordered through doordash and weren't expecting it to be picked up by anyone but themselves.

In any case.

We decided it was a glitch in the system.

Probably related to the "ship from store" program that we're going to be piloting sometime in the new future. 

But yah. Weird times.

Hopefully the customer got their order....as I left before they came by to get it.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

More Sickness?????

 So for the past....couple years? I think it's been a couple of years now. 

I've had a little ten gallon tank set up. 

And within that tank set up I've had 2 goldfish.

One of those goldfish was a semi-causalty from my big tank in that one of my other fish in my 125 attacked the goldfish and managed to eat both of it's eyeballs. 

*exhales* It was a pandemic at the time. And I couldn't figure out which fish was doing it. But basically any bigger fish I tried to add that had bigger eyeballs like your goldfish or angelfish....would end up missing one or both eyes and would consequently die. 

Not fun.

Not fun at all when I'm trying to get my tank to play well together.

And this one particular goldfish was unique in the fact that it actually survived being blinded. 

And to help said fish continue to survive I placed him in a smaller tank -aka the 10 gallon tank- to ensure that he would have an easier time finding food and wouldn't get 'lost' in a larger space. 

To help said fish survive, I ended up placing a black moor goldfish in that tank as well.

Mostly because it was getting picked on by some fin nipping fish.

But also I figured the vibrations in the water from that fish swimming would help guide my blind goldfish up to the surface whenever I fed them so that said goldfish could eat.

Though I think after a while just the act of opening up the flap on the lid to feed them clued in the blind goldfish to there being food coming.

And it was a pretty good system overall. 

Ended up adding in a betta fish into that tank that was abandoned at my work and all 3 of them did pretty well...

Until I noticed one day the betta just laying on the ground on its side.

Figuring that wasn't a good sign, I ended up moving the betta into a one gallon tank.

But also noticed that the blind goldfish now had a front fin that was...well missing a bit of its fin. But I could tell if it was fin rot or if it was just an injury that the fish somehow managed to get.

Though I had recently added in snails from my 125 to my 10 gallon tank to a) help clean the 10 gallon tank as it was getting a bit of algae and b) save the snails from death via ick treatment since my big tank was dealing with some sort of ick/finrot death pandemic. *exhales*

And like my 125 has finally stablized to the point where I think I can start adding fish back in to get my schools and community back up and running.

But yesterday....after I got home....I discovered my blind goldfish had shoved its way into a corner and...well...was dead. 

Which I'd noticed he was acting kind of off the past couple of days so I wasn't too surprised, but I was surprised you know? Because they'd been doing good for so long.

And to suddenly have the goldfish die....I still don't know what to think.

And I'm worried that by putting the snails from my 125 into my 10 I somehow managed to transfer whatever disease struck that tank into the smaller tank.

Except...snails don't carry ick. They can carry a similar looking thing. But they don't get ick themselves.

And yet both the blind goldfish and the black moor had visible white ick-like dots on their fins.

So I figured I'd probably need to do an ick treatment to try and save the black moor.....

Except when I got back home today with the treatment....there was like no signs of ick on the fish? 

O.o

So I'm...I'm now confused.

And worried for the poor black moor.

Because he's now the only fish in his tank (since snails are boring companions to interact with apparently) and like I'm pretty sure all my fin nipping fish in my 125 kicked the bucket in the death spiral my tank went into.

So more than likely it would be safe to add the black moor back into the big tank as I'm not planning to get any semi-aggressive fin nippers at the moment. 

And that would give the goldfish some more friends to interact with.

Except...I don't know if it's actually safe for me to add the moor into the tank. After all it looked like there were signs of ick. That shouldn't just disappear a day later.

So honestly I should keep him in his own tank for a while longer to make sure he's recovering and healthy.

But he's also been so lethargic. My black moor.

Like kinda a depressed sort of lethargic of "I'm bored there's no one here in the tank to talk to." 

Which has me considering maybe just grabbing one of those little feeder comet goldfish and placing it in said tank with my black moor to give him a buddy in the 10 gallon until I can established that he is healthy.

But at the same time if there is sickness in the tank....I don't want to expose yet another fish to it....

*exhales*

So there's the delimma I'm facing currently.

Like I want to get the moor into my big tank but can't until he's healthy but I'm not sure he'll get healthy if he stays by himself with no one to interact with. 

*sighs* 

I'll figure it out I guess.

But yah.....we'll see how this goes.

Just kinda sad that this little 10 is suddenly having its own issues.

*shakes head*

No matter what happens though...I'll probably end up taking down the ten. Whether that's from the moor dying or from me moving the moor into the big tank....I won't have a need for the 10 if all goes well and I'll finally have one less tank to take care of.

We'll see though.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Weekend in the Dark

 I knew something was up when I felt more tired than normal Saturday morning. That's usually not a good sign to need a caffeine fix first thing to try and get through the day. 

But I figured it was just tired tired. 

And unfortunately if I get tired tired there's literally a 50/50 chance that taking a nap will give me a headache....or it will help me out.

So when I got home from work, knowing that I wouldn't function well for long without getting some sleep I went and took a nap.

Only to hit the bad side of the coin flip and get a headache.

No big deal. Some pain meds. Some more rest. A shower maybe and all would be fine.

All was not fine.

Because Saturday night I triggered a Nuclear Migraine.

Which sucks because I honestly don't know what caused it. Like was it not the right amount of sleep or some other factor? 

Who knows.

But this stabbing pain in my head like a hot poker being pounded into my skull....Would. Not. Go. Away.

I took like 6 showers/baths over the next 24 hours to try and get the stupid muscles in my neck and shoulder to relax enough to stop sending pain into my skull.

I tried massages.

I spent basically all of Sunday sleeping on and off when I wasn't getting wet in an effort to relax said muscles.

I tried medicines...when I could...because the pain was bad enough that I was feeling nauseous so it made it difficult to want to eat or drink anything and meds on an already upset feeling stomach are a bad idea.

So like.

I just spent all of Saturday night and all of Sunday and into the early hours of Monday basically dying. 

And it's so frustrating. Because the pain was bad enough I couldn't really do much more than lie in the dark curled up with a heatpack and just listen to movies because staring at any screen or having my eyes opened for any amount of time would just cause the headache to spike again.

So yah. I spent the weekend suffering from a headache. And it's taken me a couple of days to just recharge enough to have the energy to do something more than just survive work and come home and rest.

*exhales*

I would say 'hopefully' it doesn't occur again. But it feels like at least every other month I end up with a super bad migraine that just won't quit. Ugh.

Dear self.

Stress myself out less okay. Tense muscles seem to trigger most of my pain.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi