Newshound, September 2021
Swearing at customers
I consider myself pretty calm and level headed when it comes to dealing with our more challenging customers, such as the ones that insist on squeaking every dog toy or setting off every mechanical cat toy. I’m even fairly calm when people bring in wet dogs to try on dog coats or let their children run up and down the shop screaming, but one Friday I finally snapped and told a customer to f*** off!
A mother and daughter, both regular customers, were in the shop and I casually commented that I had not seen them for a week or so. The daughter replied that the whole family had caught covid one after another and in fact neither of them should be out for at least four more days but they got bored isolating so they thought a trip to the pet shop would break the monotony of being indoors 24-hours a day.
I was not impressed!
Yes, we are both double jabbed but we are both over 60 and therefore vulnerable and we have both bent over backwards to keep the shop open six days a week while also steering clear of covid, yet this pair think it’s perfectly acceptable to wander round the shop potentially spreading covid like a pair of typhoid Annies.
So yes, I did ask them to leave and I did use the phrase f*** off. Maybe it’s time to apologise when I see them next.
Lost sister
For a few years I’ve delivered two sacks of wild bird seed every couple of months to two sisters who live two streets apart in the same village. For the last few months one sister had not had a delivery and I casually said to the other one one day, “Oh I haven’t delivered to your sister for a while. I hope she’s OK. As I said it I instinctively knew I had said the wrong thing and I should have kept my mouth shut but customers over time do become friends and it’s instinctive to enquire after them if they have not been around for a while. It turned out the sister had been ill for some time and had recently passed.
Necrotising fasciitis
We’ve all read about necrotising fasciitis in humans, where the skin literally eats itself away, but until now I’ve never heard of it in dogs – has anyone else?
No waiting…
A customer came in on Monday looking for Bakers Meaty Meals and, as we don’t normally stock it, we offered to add it to our normal Wednesday order so in fact they would have to wait only two days to get it.
Apparently they needed it NOW and could not come back in two days as they live all of three miles away – so they took Chappie instead.
….still waiting
A customer was in on a Monday looking for a 20 kilo bag of mixed canary seed and told us they could not get it anywhere else. Again, another line we don’t keep but we are more than happy to get it in for Wednesday with our regular order. Apparently, this was not quick enough as the customer told us not to bother as they would get it somewhere else. Funnily enough they came back the following week and asked us to order them a mixed canary!
James Wellbelloved
A couple came into the shop who had just moved into the area from America and were looking for a grain-free dog food with a minimal number of ingredients that was preferably turkey based. They mentioned a company they had bought from in America but as far as we could work out it was not available in the UK. After a fair bit of work and reading of ingredient lists we settled on James Wellbeloved grain-free Turkey. The couple paid and left, however 10 minutes later one of them came back and asked if they could leave the food on the counter for an hour or so as they wanted to get a coffee and stroll round the shops and apparently carrying a 1.5 kilo bag of dog food was a problem. No problem for us except they never came back for it. So how long do we hang onto a bag of food that someone paid for but not has not collected before we put it back out for sale?
