The Saturday Before Christmas

Ah.
The Saturday before Christmas.

It's always a more crazy day in retail land.
Because of course that's when all the shoppers decide to come out.

It was even busier for us at the pet store though.
Because not only is it the last saturday before Christmas.
But we also had a dog adoption group come in.
And we also had Santa Claus in for a few hours to take pictures with everyone's pets.

In any case.
It was crazy busy.
Like busier than black friday busy.

My manager tells me we barely missed making more money today than we did on Black Friday.
Which means.
It was crazy busy lol.

We had three registers going like nearly the entire day it felt like.

And the lines? 
*shakes head*
The lines were never ending.
It was just one customer after another after another after another.

My department fared slightly better.
But was still crazy in it's own right because having Christmas on Wednesday has thrown off all our animal shipments.
And the cold weather has delayed our reptile shipments.

So like....I have no last minute shipments of animals coming in.
No right before Christmas creatures to bring out.

What we have in the store is what we have.

Which is bad because we were basically already out of reptiles.
And I didn't get in my reptile shipment I was expecting to.

Soooo for all pet parents wanting to get a reptile for their kid.....
They're probably going to be out of luck at least at our store.
Just because we literally have like....nothing.
And we're going to still probably have nothing until after Christmas.
Because I doubt we're going to get a shipment in before christmas at this point.

*exhales*

That was poor planning on everyone's part really.

But it's hard to predict which animals will be 'the pet' to get this year. As it's never consistent.
Some years it's bearded dragons.
Other years it's fish.
And other years it's guinea pigs.

This year...it's been pretty even across the board.
Though I think we've received more calls about Hermit Crabs, Snakes and Bearded Dragons compared to the others.


So yah.
busy busy busy busy day.

*shakes head*

I expect it will stay busy for us for the next three days as well before christmas as all the last minute shoppers come in to...well shop. 

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

I'm Awake Now

I had one of those dreams where you wake up feeling more stressed than when you went to bed.
Yes it was a school related dream because those are always stressful lol.

In any case.
To try and like...calm myself down and relax enough to possibly go back to sleep.
I got up to grab some water from the bathroom sink. Cus cool water helps everything lol.

And I was to the state of 'yes i will go back to bed'
When I went to leave the bathroom.
and right there by the handle of the bathroom door.
Was this creepy big spider!!

Like GAH.

WHERE DID YOU EVEN COME FROM?! 
I had walked right by it when I came into the room and didn't even see it until I was getting ready to leave.

So yah.
Nice little heart attack there because like, I could have accidentally brushed it. :S Gah.

Needless to say.
That spider got an early morning trip out into the cold darkness of the early morning air.
As I managed to catch it and toss it outside. 

Hopefully he found a warm spot to hang out.
But yah.
No hanging out where I am okay spider?

*shakes head*

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Christmas Animal Crazy

Holidays can often throw off the shipping of our animals.
Usually it's just bug shipments that are the most affected because they come in bi-weekly and so if there's a holiday....usually the shipments end up getting delayed a day or so.

With our Small Pets and Birds....usually only Thanksgiving and Christmas cause major changes on when they're sent to us. 

Since next week is Christmas.
I needed to know when our shipment would be coming in so I could have cages prepared next week for when the shipment showed up. 

Since Christmas is on a Wednesday this year.
And our Shipments usually show up on Thursdays. 
I wasn't sure how much Christmas would affect us.

Like. Would they come in on Monday like they did for Thanksgiving?

Nope.

When I asked the dude he gave the surprising news that he wouldn't be coming into the store until Sunday.
Aka. The sunday AFTER Christmas. 

Usually we get in a last shipment of animals before Christmas to you know...prepare for all the people who want to buy pets at the last minute. 

But apparently the shipment I got in today...is the last shipment before Christmas.
Which makes sense since Christmas is only like...six days away. :S 

And we can't bring out the animals for a couple of days anyways because we watch them for a bit to make sure that they're healthy before bringing them out onto the floor.

But that definitely means that....I'm expecting to have many an unhappy customer come in on Monday and Tuesday.
Because I expect Saturday to be super busy and will wipe us out. 
-Though it's hard to predict just what will and won't sell each year.

It's not going to be fun.
Plus I will have to deal with after Christmas customers too.
Who want to come in the day after christmas to get their pets for their kids.

And I won't have any new pets available until January 1st. :S 
Yikes. 

So weird.
So crazy to think it's going to be so much time before we get in another shipment. 

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

A Leak?

I don't know how well known of a fact this is. 
But I get more irritated and frazzled when I'm trying to accomplish a task...and then I keep getting delayed in completing the task because I keep getting pulled away from it. *exhales*

Today was one of those days.
Where the day started out in control...and then slowly spiraled out of control. 

It was towards the end of my shift, as I was frantically trying to at least finish cleaning the cages I was supposed to be cleaning before I was off. As I knew I couldn't get all the decorations back into the cages. Not in ten minutes. 

Which is frustrating.
When I know I can get the bedding change done by basically lunchtime....if I'm not interrupted.

And interrupted I was. Constantly. 

In any case.

As I was frantically trying to finish cleaning cages.

My coworker and manager were messing around with the aquatic plant tank.
Coworker trying to organize it so that manager could count all the plants and make sure our inventory was accurate.

Which is hard because there's two new plants in there that look very similar to each other. 
And I haven't yet managed to be there when we get the plants in so I have no idea how to tell which one from the other one because I've yet to see them come in labeled.

I'd just finished telling them twice over the radio that I didn't know how to tell the difference between those plants.

When my manager came over the radio yet again, but this time they were asking for me to come over to the tank because it was experiencing a 'critical failure' aka it's leaking.

O_o???
A critical failure?
For tanks that have been there probably longer than I've been alive? 
Doubtful. 
But I came over to investigate.

And sure enough.
Underneath the tank, dripping onto the bags of gravel we sell below that tank.
Large droplets of water were indeed falling. 

My coworker, and two of my managers were staring at these dripping drops trying to figure out where on the bottom of the tank the water was coming from. 

I was skeptical it was coming from the bottom as whatever my coworkers had been doing to organize the tank, couldn't be crazy enough to suddenly make it leak.

So I looked to the tank itself and noticed that the water level was high.
Extremely high.
Like overflowing high.

Only no one had noticed that it was overflowing because the water wasn't dripping down the front.
But instead, it was dropping down the side of the tank, in the crack between that tank and the tank next to it.

Hence why they didn't see the problem.

I did though.
Overflowing tank meant that something was blocked.
Aka. The basket was blocked.
Which is the device that protects the hole where the water flows out of the tank and into the pipes behind it to go to our big filter system in the back.

Considering the fact that my coworker had been moving plants around to try and organize them, I'm not surprised little strands got loose and blocked the basket.

So I acted quickly and unscrewed the basket from the tank to allow more water to flow out into the pipes.

And right away, the water levels went down and the leak stopped. 

I cleared the basket. Made sure nothing was blocking the hole. 
And walla.
The tank was back to normal. 

Tada!!

*shakes head*

Sometimes I wonder what my coworkers would do without me there.
Because like....I do wonder how long it would have taken them to realize what the actual issue to the tank was and what solution they would have taken to get the water to stop dripping.

I probably would have run to shut off the system that way water isn't continuing to flow into the tank and we could better isolate the issue.

Thankfully we didn't have to do that.
As the tank is fine. 
So Yay!

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Go Do The Thing

I don't understand what goes on in my coworkers heads sometimes.

Like...what they're thinking when they do the things they do.

Today for example.

I was winding down on the opening tasks.

Where we basically just had to put back the rest of the fish ornaments we'd taken out to clean, feed the fish, and then do the betta water changes. 

-Plus technically we needed to bag crickets, but it was late enough in the day where I was like...we probably didn't need to do that.

In any case. 
I wasn't doing any of the above listed tasks.
As I was focusing on putting away a couple shipments of things because I definitely didn't trust new people to do that task and the coworker replacing me for the day is the newest of our associates in the department.

So I was doing that task.

And told this coworker about the other three tasks that needed to be done. Ornaments, Feeding Fish, and Betta Water Changes. 

And my coworker was like "Oh I don't know how to do betta water changes! I've never done them without someone. Can you show me?" 

And I was like "Sure...but I need to finish this first so you can go put back ornaments or feed the fish---"

But the coworker was like "Okay! I'll wait until you're done then then we can do it together!"
And like. 
Walked away.

Without doing either task I said that they could do in the meantime. 

*exhales*

Like....this has happened before with other coworkers.
Where I tell them what still needs to be done and then they go "Okay" and don't do them. 

Like I wasn't telling you what still needed to be done for funsies. 
I was telling you so you could go do one of the tasks.

But this coworker focused on like the one task they didn't know how to do and apparently decided that since they can't do that one they can't do any of them?
I don't know the logic there.

I'll have to make a mental note for next time to tell them directly "Hey can you go do this for me." So they know that I mean for them to go do the task.

Yah...we'll see how that goes. 

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Chubby

So a few weeks ago we had two mice adopted out at our store because a customer pointed out that they were female and that one was pregnant.
And after the manager took the pregnant mouse over to the vet to confirm...indeed adopted out both female mice.

Though truthfully.
I was rather skeptical that the mice were girls let alone pregnant.
Because again, we only carry boys.
And I'm pretty sure all the mice were boys in the store.

But since I wasn't there there's no way to verify really.

However.
Today.
I came into work to discover that one of our hamsters had been isolated.
Why?
Because it was a girl and pregnant.

This discovery was made after I'd left work on Saturday.

So I knew nothing about it until I came into work this morning.

And me.
I was very skeptical.

Like okay.
It does happen on occasion that we do get in females when we only get in males.
But like this occurrence is rare.
Like maybe once a year if not once every other year rare.

So to have two different rodents both turn out to be girls within like a month of each other?

Oh yah.
I was skeptical.

Especially when I pulled open the cage the hamster had been isolated in.
And saw that this particular hamster was one of our 'long term resident' ones. 
Aka. We've had this particular hamster in the store for MONTHS.
Like at least six months I feel like.
Because he was white and the white hamsters don't sell as well.

But I've placed this hamster, along with his buddy, in with multiple other hamsters over the months as they overall do okay being placed with other short haired syrians.

So the likely hood of this hamster being a girl AND pregnant....was rather low. Because like...wouldn't the hamster have already had babies by this point? I mean this hamster has been placed in with a good dozen or so other hamsters over the months and NOT ONCE did babies result in that.

So I carefully picked up the hamster to see it's bottom.

And it looked like a boy.

But to double check.
I looked at another hamster that had been isolated as well for a different reason.
And the bottoms looked exactly the same.

A quick confirmation with a manager.
As well as a google search of how to tell boy and girl hamsters apart.
Confirmed that this hamster was indeed a boy.

*rolls eyes*
He's just a really chubby boy.

So I placed him back on the floor with his buddies because there's no concern about him having babies at all.

But I also ended up printing an image detailing exactly how you can tell the genders apart in boy and girl rodents.

Because I can't afford to have my coworkers all thinking that we're getting in females and adopting them out only to have them later confirmed to be male.

So yah.
That's fun.
And I get to spend the next few days making sure each and every one of my coworkers sees it.

But now that leaves me rather skeptical about the mice that we adopted out. Even more so than i was before.

My guess is they were actually boys.

But we probably won't know unless the guy who adopted them comes back to confirm that they're boys.

At least I managed to confirm the hamster was a boy before it got adopted or something.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi

Work Issues

Ended up getting slightly stressed out today as not one but two of my managers ended up texting me work related questions/problems.

The first manager's question was if our fancy leopard geckos that had come in this weeks reptile shipment were actually dead.

Which I was like O_o???
Because as far as I'd been aware they'd come in alive.
But at the same time I had noticed that we still only had two fancies and I would have expected there to be more since we were expecting more.
But I'd figured that we'd ended up selling one. 

Plus I hadn't been the one to put the shipment out as I'd been busy doing something else. But my coworker at the time hadn't mentioned that any of the reptiles were dead.

So I had my manager send me a picture of the PO and sure enough my coworker had written DOA (dead on arrival) next to the fancy leopard geckos. 

Which O.o???
If they were dead...why was it not brought to my attention?
Who knows.

But now it has me wondering/worrying if the leopard geckos only appeared to be dead but were actually alive.
Because like if the shipment came in cold...then they could appear deceased when in fact they weren't. 

But since the shipment was from like...four days ago....there's no way of knowing. Though I'll probably end up asking my coworker when I see them next what happened with them. 

But yah.
That was stressful.

And then in the evening a different manager texted me to tell me that some of our hamsters had come down with wettail.
Which isn't surprising as it's a more stressful time of year and the animals are slighly more overcrowded. 

But still annoying to deal with. 
Especially because apparently it was our longhaired syrians that were suffering from the problem?
As from what I can remember they were doing alright...
But I won't know for sure what all is up until I go into work tomorrow morning.

It could have been my coworkers panicking for no reason.
As sometimes hamsters just have bad days too.
But yah...I'll have to double check and make sure they actually are sick when I go in tomorrow. 

So yay.
Stress.

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

-Sarnic Dirchi