Lights Off

It's a known fact that customers tend to be more grumpy in the evenings.
Probably because they're just getting off work and are tired hungry and who knows what other emotions they're feeling. But they don't tend to take being told 'no' very well if something doesn't go according to plan while they're in the store. Like we don't have the product on hand or they have to wait in line or they can't do the return....or more recently the fact that we can't sell them an animal after a certain point in time.

Because due to shortages in staff (which I am so tired of being on a skeleton crew. I hope corporate gets their act together soon and allows us to hire people back again) we have made the choice to close my department to animal sales in the evening once we're forced to go down to two people for the remainder of the day. 

Some days it's worse than others. Some days we have to close the department as early as 1pm. Others it's more like 6pm.
Though I can only imagine the chaos that's gonna happen this week as we switch back to our normal operating hours...with the same amount of staff. Like...please let us hire people. *exhales* Your skeleton crew is getting worn out.

In any case.
Because we can't very well back up cashier, do curbside pick ups, take phone calls, pick orders, catch fish, reptiles, birds, animals, and help customers with their questions all at the same time when there's only ONE person free to move around the store (since the Cashier can't very well leave) it makes sense to close down the more time consuming part of the job.
Selling the animal.
As those interactions can be as short as like two minutes....or take upwards to an hour depending on how needy the customer is or how particular they are with the type of animal they need.

You can't very well do a curbside pickup if a customer is having you catch fish from six different fish tanks or if you're trying to catch a bird to clip it's wings....

So we've ended up stopping animal sales.

Which was the case today.
Where I did a 'clopening" in that I needed to do all the opening and closing tasks in my department before I left for the day. 

Which I didn't quite understand why I was the one who needed to close the department or why we needed to have it closed when I left since I knew we would still have at least three people in the store for another hour after I left....

But at the same time, it'd been a busy enough Saturday that we'd been having two cashiers most of the day and lines were still extending halfway down the store as people waited to get checked out. (as we're still social distancing and therefore can't open the middle register so we can only max have two registers open) So I could see why it would be a good idea to have my department close when I left so two people could cashier and the one remaining worker could field all the phone calls and curbside pick ups and customer questions and such.

Which with animal sales...didn't seem like that big of a deal to close it when I left.
Because I hadn't been too busy getting animals for people. Most of the time it was fish anyways.

But as luck would have it.
We had a bunch of people come in like right as I was supposed to be off. Right as I was about to turn off all the lights to indicate that we would no longer be selling any creatures. 

I literally had a family come in the doors and they were like "We're gonna look around a bit before we go get fish."
And I had to be like "Well I'm actually closing the department to animal sales for the night so if you want fish...you need to grab them now. 

The family was like ()_() WHAT?!?! IF WE'D KNOWN THAT WE WOULD HAVE COME HERE FIRST!
And then they proceeded to spend like ten minutes dithering over the fish they wanted. *exhales* Like tick tock tick tock customers I need to be leaving and turning off the lights.

So I did my best to hurry them along because I wanted to go home.
And did manage to get them their fish.

My coworker ended up turning off all the lights for me because it felt like customers kept wandering over to the fish wall.
Thankfully it was only the family that really needed help.
But there was this one father/son duo who were still looking at the fish even though the lights were off.
And when I asked them if they were doing alright they were like "Oh we're wanting fish but we're still looking."
So I was like "Well I've closed the department...so unless you pick some right now while I'm still standing here. you won't be able to get any."
He ended up asking for some feeder goldfish. 

So yah.
That was about one of the more chaotic closings I've been through. 
Trying to get the lights off and help customers at the same time.
Ended up clocking out 15 minutes late because of it. *shakes head*

But yah, I don't envy my closing coworkers who have to constantly inform people that we're not selling anymore animals for the night. :S :S :S

Makes me really grateful that I work morning shifts. 

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

-Sarnic Dirchi