It was a day of frustrations for me. (Beware Venting Post)
Not tasking wise. As overall that went really well. I managed to actually get things done enough that I could do the 'extra' tasks that I'd been meaning to do for weeks but never had the time to do.
No.
It was the customers being frustrating today.
Like it felt like nearly every one I talked to needed to be difficult.
My very first customer of the day was a gentleman who wanted mealworms and waxworms.
And as per habit, I open the containers to double check that the worms look good and are in there.
Well the mealworms were good, but the waxworms?
There were a few visible dead there.
Which isn't surprising, almost all the containers have at least a few dead in them.
But the customer wasn't happy about it.
He was paying for the thing you know.
Which I get. You don't want to pay for dead things when you want live.
But I told him "They usually put more than 50 in there to account for them dying."
But did the guy listen to me?
Nope. He proceeded to spend a good five or so minutes sifting through that one container of waxworms to pull out ALL the dead ones he could find (14) total to basically be like "You want me to pay for 14 of these DEAD ones? Like these are 10 cents each! I'm not paying for these!"
Which I countered by pulling out a different container.
Dumping it out, and pulling out all the LIVE ones and going "Here look, see there's FIFTY here, but LOOK *gestures to the remaining pile* You can see there's at least 10 dead ones here. So you should still have 50 alive ones in the container.
Which seemed to mollify him a little.
But to make sure he got a 'good batch' I was like "Here you can have this container where you know you have fifty for sure."
But nope. Stubborn guy was like "I'll just take this one." -The one where he'd pulled out the 14 dead.
Which was confusing because like a) yay that you trust my word so much, but b) why not take the one that you KNOW has 50 alive ones in it??
*exhales* I don't know.
Then there was a customer with birds. Where he's like "I want to get a bird."
"Okay,what kind?" I ask.
"Parakeets."
"Which one?"
"A blue one?"
"Okay which one?"
"A blue one on the bottom."
*exhales* But like He NEVER pointed out which one he wanted?
It took a bit to drag it out of him that he wanted a boy and a girl parakeet.
But not just blue ones. No he wanted one blue and one green.
And beyond specifying that he wanted one of each gender
-Which I really don't get why people are so obsessed with getting boy/girl pairings. Like I'm pretty sure the birds are young enough that they don't care who else they end up with.
Besides they're young enough we can't always tell the gender. *exhales*
In any case. I ended up catching one blue and one green that were boy and girl because the dude didn't want to point one out. He had me pick them.
Which is still weird. Like....pick out your favorite birds? As you're the one going to be caring for it for the next decade. Not me.
Then there was a customer calling who wanted to know if we had 'baby hamsters'
Which...you mean like actual 'baby' hamsters or 'baby' as in the 'tiny' hamsters like the Robos or the Dwarfs?
Never got a straight answer on that. I told the hamsters are about 3-4 months old in the store.
And the customer then asked if we had any Syrians. Which I still had like three from Christmas. But it was an odd choice as the Syrians are the largest hamsters....
Which I then had the manager ask me to go over to crickets to get some for a customer.
To which I responded "We're out."
"Out?'
"Yah I don't have any."
"Large or small?"
*exhales* "None."
"Not even the boxed ones?!"
"OKay we may still have those, but I'm out of the bagged ones."
"HOW CAN WE BE OUT?!"
….Well considering we get our shipments on Tuesdays and Thursdays and TUESDAY was CHRISTMAS that means we haven't gotten a shipment in for a WEEK. Since Last Thursday. (And today's shipment never showed up...possibly due to the snow. So yah. No crickets at work. Oh goodie)
I mean...these weren't all one after the other.
But they were pretty darn close to being one after the other.
I had a woman give me quite the lecture on Cat toys today because she mentioned that she couldn't find any felt ones.
...Which I wasn't aware that we had any.
I mean we could, but nothing came to mind.
And I told her so. We don't carry them.
And she went all lecture on me on how Felt is the only SAFE cat toys to play with and that ALL the other cat toys we have in the store are actually dangerous for cats and how we need to get the manufactures to make more felt toys and to stop making all the others because if the cat eats the toy it can be dangerous to them! Her cat nearly died because he ate a non-felt toy.
*exhales* …..But most cats don't usually eat toys? They just play with them?
But yah I had to listen to quite the ten minute rant on the subject.
The frustrating customers also came in the fish section too.
Had some repeat frustrating customers from yesterday come back into the store today.
Mostly to a) show me the tank they'd set up last night.
-As they wanted my opinion on like every single decoration they put in their small tank and what my opinions on live plants are and cycling the tank and fish to put in with betta fish and the types of algae eaters etc.
But b) they'd done more online research
-Which I don't get why they come to me with questions if they have online research under their belts as they basically ended up contradicting me with everything I said by saying "But our online research told us?" -__- *exhales* If you trust the ONLINE resources WHY are you ASKING me???
They wanted to get some Ghost Shrimp today to put in the tank first before they put their betta in the new tank. Which was a great idea.
Only I'd told them YESTERDAY I was out of ghost shrimp because we don't get in shipments until FRIDAY.
THe mom forgot.
But the son was like "But I came for shrimp! Do you have any other shrimp?"
….Not live ones no. I just carry the ghost shrimp.
"BUT I WANT SHRIMP!!"
Sorry to break it to you kiddo...but you gotta wait if you want them from my store. I don't have a secret stash in the back.
More customers were like that. "Do you not sell Male Bettas anymore?" "Do you have any more Male Bettas?" "Where are the Male Bettas? Do you have more in the back?"
*sighs* No. No. NO.
I don't have them because we only get fish in on FRIDAY and since Christmas was on TUESDAY that means that any fish I had for Friday's shipment got sold in the prechristmas rush. So I won't be restocked until Friday.
And then there was a customer who wanted help with filters, but had very specific needs on the size and dimensions of the filters as he had limited space against the wall...and so after having me catch him fish, and go through a ton of different decorations for his tank and backgrounds and such...proceeded to dither over different brands and sizes of filters as to what he wanted to have on his tank.
We pulled out like three different boxes so he could see the sizes of them and such.
And finally decided on a smaller one...despite it being more expensive than a bigger one.
These people weren't the most frustrating customers though.
Oh no.
That honor goes to this couple that came into the store.
Which they had such the weird vibe to them. I'm not sure they were totally 'there.' really. They kinda gave off the vibe of being on drugs...
In any case it was the girl who needed help.
With turtles specifically.
And the guy just stood there, not blinking, staring at me with creepy eyes with this permanent smile on his face and it was just *shudders* A creepy creepy face to have staring at you for a good FORTY-FIVE FREAKING MINUTES. Because he barely contributed to the conversation at all. Just stared with that creepy stare with that creepy smile.
And the lady wasn't much better conversation wise.
As in the beginning I gathered that she was wanting to set up a tank for a turtle she'd gotten from a friend and wanted to make sure it was all the right set up.
So her saying Turtle I assumed it was aquatic and was going through all the needs.
As they asked "What do you need to decorate a turtle tank."
So going with the Aquatic I was telling her everything she needed.
But she kept having concerns that didn't quite...mesh with aquatic turtles.
And some worries were just plain odd. Like the worry that "The turtle will climb out because it has claws."
….Sure turtles have feet...with longer nails. But I wouldn't call them claws. They can't use them to injure or climb. Mostly for digging really.
But it got to the point where I was like "Is your turtle land or water?"
She didn't understand. Wasn't sure.
So I showed her our aquatic turtles and land tortoises so I could figure out which one was similar to the one she'd gotten.
She had no idea.
*exhales* I told her to get a picture or something because both have differing needs.
Which she too didn't understand.
Like how could they have different needs?
Simple.
One needs to be mostly in WATER the other one DOES NOT.
Even looking at the cages that should have been obvious.
(It wasn't to her)
The same with the food and such.
SO I got to where I could get with the turtles with them....
Only for them to then start asking questions about their Aquatic Frogs.
Like what do they eat, why did one we have die, is this substrate bad for them, if we feed this will they be okay?
And like "what is the difference between Tubifex worms and blood worms?"
ummm...besides the name? And the shape? and the color? ….I have no idea.
They're worms. It's probably like comparing Romane lettuce with Spinach or something. Both are greens but both have slightly different nutritional needs/values to them.
It didn't END there though.
No there was questions on frozen fish food, and cat fish, and shrimp, and goldfish and live plants and seriously I was about ready to scream because the woman kept asking Question after Question after Question after QUESTION.
Like I seriously must have answered like a 100 from this couple.
And I don't even know if it was worth my time really.
As I could tell that not all of it was computing even as I was talking to them.
And after venting to a coworker, they stated that that couple comes into the store a lot.
And they do the same thing every single time.
Ask a million questions about a ton of different animals. *exhales*
So yah.
Very frustrating day.
I'm so glad it's over.
Because I had reached my 'helpful' limit an hour earlier when it came to dealing with customers.
Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
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