I am the manager of a grooming salon within a pet store. Because we are short-staffed, the salon is closed on Mondays.

On Tuesday morning, I arrive to an email from the corporate office informing me that I need to contact an irate customer. She claims that she had an appointment scheduled for that Monday and the salon was empty when she arrived. This is impossible as Mondays are blocked off and scheduling simply isn’t available when no employees are on the books.

I pull up all of her appointment information and give her a call.

Me: “Hi, this is [My Name] from [Pet Salon]. I had a message about an issue with your appointment?”

The next ten minutes are a profanity-laden barrage as she screams about how incompetent my employees and I are. How dare we schedule an appointment for her and not arrive to groom Fluffy?! And so on.

I allow her to continue uninterrupted until she tires herself out.

Me: “I see here we had Fluffy down for an appointment on the twenty-third.”

Client: “Yes, yesterday, Monday the twenty-third, you stupid b****!”

Me: “Ma’am, yesterday was the twenty-first. Wednesday is the twenty-third.”

Client: “Yesterday was the twenty-third, you stupid little…”

Her rant trails off as she clearly pulls her phone down from her face to check the calendar app on her phone. Then, suddenly, she hangs up, presumably as she realizes that the twenty-third is, in fact, this Wednesday and that she spent ten minutes screaming and cursing at me because of her own incompetence.

I call back.

Me: “Oh, no, it seems like we got disconnected!”

She immediately hung up again. I marked a note on the incident report from corporate that the issue remained unresolved, as the customer had ended the phone call. I checked back later that day to see that the district manager had also contacted her, only to be immediately hung up on, as well.

CONTENT WARNING: Animal Abuse

I work in a pet store. There are times I do not want to sell a person an animal because I suspect they’re not qualified to look after the animal.

A woman comes into the store with a potentially abused guinea pig. She dumps the tiny, filthy cage on the counter.

Customer: “I want my money back! My children have stopped playing with it.”

It’s only my lack of coffee that allows her to continue breathing.

Me: “We are not legally allowed to take back animals. Here is the information for the local animal shelter.”

A few hours later, another customer comes up to me.

Customer #2: “There’s a guinea pig in a tiny cage out in the parking lot!”

It took me two months to nurse the little guy back to health and regain his trust. Fidget had the most amazing personality. I trained him to use a litter box, and he had a grand old time playing with my dog and cat.

Honestly, if you really want to lose your faith in humanity, work in a pet store.

I work in a pet store as an assistant manager, and I am also in charge of the aquatics department. Most of my shifts leave me as the “manager on duty” because I close, and the manager opens or works mid-shift. The general manager, district manager, and I are all female; the only male manager for the store is the warehouse manager, and he does not outrank me when it comes to selling any of the animals, including feeders.

I’m working on stocking when a woman asks for some fish. She’s acting a little weird but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Customer: “I want that plant.”

Me: Okay, are you getting anything else tonight?”

Customer: “Yes.”

I wait an excessive amount of time for her to continue.

Me: “Okay, so, more plants, or do you want fish, too?”

Customer: “I want fish.”

I again wait for her to continue, but she doesn’t.

Me: “Okay, how big is your tank?”

The look on her face goes from pleasantly blank to irate.

Customer: “You can’t ask me that!”

Me: “What?”

Customer: “That’s a violation of my privacy!”

I am confused, wondering if maybe she misheard me or I misspoke.

Me: “Uh, I can’t ask you how big your fish tank is?”

Customer: “No! That is a violation of my privacy! You don’t need to know anything about my home! You just need to sell me fish!”

Me: “Well, I can’t sell you fish if I don’t know how big a tank you have.”

Customer: “Why do you need to know how big my tank is?!”

Me: “I need to know if you’ve got enough space for the fish you want, to make sure you’re not overstocking it and risking the fish you intend to buy — and any you already own — dying by crashing your cycle adding too much. Also, some of our fish get up to two feet long and weigh up to and possibly over ten pounds. Fish can also get aggressive if they don’t have enough space to create their own territory, especially if there are pre-existing fish in the tank.

Customer: “You can’t ask me questions! I’ve talked to people! They said you aren’t allowed to ask me that question! They said you just have to sell me fish! They said I just tell you what I want and you give it to me!”

Me: “I don’t know who ‘they’ is, but I’m allowed to refuse a sale if I’m not comfortable with it. These are live animals, and it’s my job to make sure they get an appropriate home. No one you’ve ‘spoken’ to is going to tell you anything different.”

Customer: “Where is the manager?! This is an outrage! I’ve talked to corporate, and they told me you can’t ask me questions and that you have to sell me fish!”

Me: “I’m the manager.”

Customer: “No, you aren’t! I know the manager! He says you can’t do any of this! He’s going to sell me fish! Go get him!”

Me: “Ma’am, if you can’t answer the most basic questions, I’m not going to feel comfortable with this sale. I’ve asked you the most basic question, one that any and all fish stores should ask before even considering a sale, and I would have asked you even more before selling you fish because I decide who gets them and who doesn’t.”

Customer: “This is ridiculous! What qualifies you to outrank me?! I have sixty years of experience raising, breeding, and selling fish! I know you don’t have that much experience!”

She then proceeds to ask me rapid-fire questions about my fish experience and what qualifies me to ask questions without giving me a chance to answer any of them.

Me: “Ma’am, do you want me to answer any of those questions?”

Customer: “I’m just trying to prove my point about how invasive your questioning has been.”

Me: “Ma’am, I work here. That makes me qualified to sell animals, and I may not have sixty years of experience, but I don’t need that to know you shouldn’t belittle the person doing a service for you. Also, you asked me thirteen questions, all of which I’m willing to answer, while I’ve asked you one, which you’ve refused. So, I’m just going to refuse to sell you fish and hope you have the night you deserve.”

She stormed to the front of the store and asked my coworker if he could get her fish. When he said he’d get the fish person, me, she screamed and stormed out of the store promising to complain directly to corporate about me.

I work in a pet store.

Customer: “Hello! We’d like to get some fish, please!”

Me: “Sure! What size tank do you guys have?”

Customer: “It’s this size! These are also the fish that we want, these two right here!” *Shows me the most difficult fish* 

Me: “Okay! I was looking for the size of the tank that you’re going to put them in.”

Customer: “Uh… medium?”

Long story short, the fish they wanted needed a forty-gallon tank. They were buying a five-gallon. At least they were nice about it?

I used to work in a pet store with a phenomenal manager and an amazing team of coworkers. As with all retail, we all dreaded Inventory Day, though more so the following day of putting the store back together while still serving customers. Our manager was very careful to make sure all work was divided as fairly and evenly as possible, never failing to include himself in chore assignments, and we were encouraged to help each other out whenever possible or to ask for help ourselves if we needed it.

One of his stipulations was that anyone assigned to redress the cat aisle didn’t have to do any other organization since the cat aisle had the most small pieces of any section. On my second or third post-Inventory Day day, I was assigned to the cat aisle.

Unfortunately, our district manager had decided to visit our store that day, and he had a bad habit of getting in the way and generally being an unhelpful nuisance while thinking he was being “motivating.” I was working on blocking the canned cat foods (of which there were literally thousands in three different sizes) which anyone could see was going to be a time-consuming task, but I found I could make good time working from top shelf to bottom in a roughly one-foot block at a time.

I was at this for perhaps ten minutes before [District Manager] popped around the corner.

District Manager: *Cheerfully* “[My Nickname]! How’s it going over here?”

Me: *Amiably* “Slow and steady, but we’ll get there!”

District Manager: “All right, just make sure it all gets done!”

Me: “Don’t worry; it will.”

[District Manager] left, and I continued my careful stacking and sorting of the hundreds of tiny cans around me. Another roughly ten minutes went by, barely enough for me to finish the one-foot section I’d started on, and he came back.

District Manager: *Still cheerful* “How’s it looking over here, [My Nickname]?”

I was trying not to be rude but wondered how much progress he expected.

Me: “I mean, there are a lot of cans to stack, and I’m trying to make it look nice.”

District Manager: “All right, just make sure it’s done!”

Me: “It will be; it’s just gonna take a while.”

He left again, and I foolishly dared to hope that that was the end of it and that I could work in peace. I really should have known better, as [District Manager] was a micromanager who understood surprisingly little about pets or running a pet store.

Another ten or so minutes later:

District Manager: *Still cheerful* “[My Nickname]! Getting close to done yet?”

I was out of patience and snapped a little.

Me: “[District Manager], do you want this done quickly or do you want it done well?”

District Manager: *Startled* “I, um, I’d like it done well.”

Me: “Then shoo!”

I turned back to the wall to keep stacking my cans, and I saw [District Manager] quietly slip away out of the corner of my eye. From the next aisle over, in a tone that suggested he was shrugging, I heard my manager say, “I TOLD you to leave her alone.”

I did not get in trouble, and the cat aisle looked FLAWLESS.