InfoDumping

 It's a fine line to walk.

Between giving too little information...and giving far too much. 

And it's one of those things I struggle with.

Like how much explanation is too much explanation? How much do I say that's 'just enough' before I start unintentionally digging myself a hole in one shape or another?

So.

Our DM has been on our case recently about like...staying on top of our inventory when it comes to our crickets and feeder goldfish.

Because 'running out' of either food source for pet parents is a not good thing. 

And like...we can't always control what quantities we have.

Live animals can't just be made in a factory. They have to be bred. They have to grow. They have to survive all the various travel and weather and who knows what else experiences to make it to our store.

But today our DM sent out an email wanting to know details about our crickets.

Kinda the "Are your inventories up to date? Do you have the right numbers? Are you getting in more crickets this week? Are you experiencing higher dead because of the high temperatures? Are they including ice packs in the shipments?"

Which the last one I just...have to raise an eyebrow at because I don't recall ever seeing our crickets come in with ice packs.

Like yes, we get them in with heat packs all the time during the winter.

But during the summer? No. Never seen these hypothetical ice packs that should supposedly be included in the shipment.

I mean....there's not really a place to put said ice packs because unlike the winter where the boxed crickets are all placed in a bigger box.

The summer months has the crickets just in their regular box box with holes in it. You know...to let them breathe and not die in the heat that a big enclosed box could generate.

And like I wasn't even sure I should answer this email the DM sent.

I mean, I figured if they're asking "How are we doing?"

That they're expecting a response.

But how much of a response?

Like I don't want to accidentally dig myself a hole and either get myself in trouble or well...get myself in trouble.

But I also wanted to give the DM a general idea of how things are doing.

So I ended up sending an email that was basically like: 

"We ran out of Large Crickets Monday, and our usual Tuesday shipment didn't show up until Wednesday. And Wednesday we got in 3 different shipments of crickets, and while the overall dead was low we were still getting shorted crickets and no, none of the boxes had Ice packs."

Like...that's been the main issue for the past forever with the crickets.

Is that the company we're currently working with never gives us what they say they're giving us.

If they say there's 1500 crickets in the box, oftentimes there's only 500-800 crickets within.

Meaning that I'm shorted a good 700-1000 crickets that I could have really used for customers. 

And it's worse with the smalls. Like I will often get in boxes of "2000 crickets" that in reality have 200-500 crickets within. Shorting me a good 1500-1800 crickets.

So I gave the DM this info. Gave them the states of just how many crickets were expected and how many were shorted in each shipment.

And hoped that it would help them get a better idea of how things were going with our shipments and such.

And thankfully, the DM seemed to appreciate it as they sent an email back later in the day thanking me for the information and stating that they'll continue to 'beat the drum' on those crickets.

So yay for being helpful I suppose lol. ^^;;

Still stressful though. Because I want to be helpful...but I don't want to give too much needless information either....

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

-Sarnic Dirchi