Late night...

Working on making more "My is my furry kid!" bumper stickers. They will be available for all the dog breeds I carry... eventually. They are quick to make but take a long time to post up and categorize.

Here's an interesting story about my real life job today.. I work at a pet store. This woman comes in, to the pet store, the PET store, to buy some food for her puppies. I had out a quaker parakeet, trying to get her used to people (she's VERY shy, and shy birds don't sell), because we were slow and well, that's my job. This woman heard the bird call and immediately jumped back about ten feet. She asked where the bird was, and a nearby employee informed her that I (the cashier) had a bird on my shoulder. The woman was terrified. I thought she was going to cry. I had the employee come get the bird so he could put her away for the woman, and as soon as he had the bird she ran into an aisle and hid. She called out that she was scared of every kind of animal and to keep them away from her. I guess she was petting some dogs the owner said was really nice and she was bitten three times (which tells me she doesn't know how to read dogs at ALL).

Eventually she got brave enough to come check out, even though we had already put the bird away. I am still fascinated by the fact that the woman was close to losing it at the very thought of being near another animal, and yet she came into a PET STORE. I mean duh. If you are that terrified of animals, don't go into a store that sells them. I can't keep the parrots caged all day long, that's cruel (and it will eventually make them mean). Seek medication. Have your boyfriend pick up the food. Something. I am claustrophobic. I don't go to places that have small spaces. If you're afraid of animals, don't go somewhere that may have them. We do get a lot of arachnaphobes in our store, and that's ok, they just take a wide berth around the tarantulas. They don't have panic attacks.

I also had a man that insisted that his plecostomus was going to die because it had eaten all the algae in his aquarium and now had nothing to eat. I informed him that algae was always growing in his tank whether he could see it or not, but he insisted on seeing the algae wafers, because a "professional" (and he surely did emphasize that word) told him that he HAD to feed it those. Now, it is completely unnecessary and even harmful to feed your single pleco an algae wafer everyday. Not only is your pleco now going to grow like mad, he won't eat the entire wafer (until he is bigger anyway), so there is a whole lot of waste in your tank. So I was annoyed on two different levels, one, that what I said meant nothing, and two, that I wanted to throw my degree in his face (I have an emphasis in icthyology), but I would also be pretty embarassed that I only work at a pet store. So. I guess the moral is, don't spend money on things that you don't need, and don't assume the person working at the store is stupid until that is proven.

More store updates tomorrow......