Stupid customer tricks

[missyme06]

a long time ago there was a girl who worked at petsmart who got a prank call that said "this is corporate: what color is fishes blood" so she took a fish out and stomped it about 12 times and kept saying it was red....but the prank caller said thats not true fish blood is green

:WTF: how can you be that smart?

 

[Oddball]

I had a woman come into an lfs I worked in looking to buy a PowerPlus 100 HOB filter. I told her I had dozens and they were $39.99 each. She said; "But, down at CTF, they're on sale for $19.99 each". So, I asked her why she didn't buy one there. She said; "I didn't buy one because they were out of them". To which I replied; "Ma'am, when I'm out of them, they're $9.99 each". Strange, for some reason she didn't find that amusing at all.

 

[RyanS]

Have a woman who comes in every two days, brings back the dead fish and a water sample, demanding credit. She has over 20 fish in the 10 gallon tank. The water sample is curiously perfect. No ammonia, nitrite, and less than 5 ppm nitrate if any. There is NO particulates in the water, and the water smells perfectly clean, like it never had a fish in it. Why? Because she brings in tap water in a bag. Can't prove it, but very annoying. I wish we had a chlorine test.

The bossman won't buy chlorine test strips? They aren't that expensive are they?
Either way, if I ran the place I'd tell her to take her business elsewhere. She's doing nothing more than costing you guys money.

 

[Oddball]

Have a strange one. We used to get our fresh brine shrimp deliveries on Tuesdays and Fridays. On those days, every single week, an elderly 'foreign' couple would come in, look at the fish, then order 2 large portions of live brine shrimp. After months of the same routine, I realized that they'd never bought a fish on any visit. They never bought any supplies either. Just the 2 large shrimp orders twice a week. One Friday, I finally asked them, in casual conversation, "What kinds of fish are you feeding all this shrimp to?" They're response was simply; "No fish. For soup".

 

[hamato_yoshii]

where to start... i guess ill just tell you about he most resent.

on Sunday, a rude lady came in smelling of cattle, with her very polite daughter wanting two Placos for a 2 and a half gallon. i say "placos will out grown that tank very shortly and will have to be moved to a bigger tank." she smiles her smelly smile and says "oh, didn't you know that fish will stop growing in a smaller tank." I say "no mam, that's just a myth, growth is genetic and that just not how genetics work, it like saying if you make the ceilings in your house shorter you wouldn't grow as tall." she goes "Ive been keeping fish all my life and I've never had the fish out grow any of their tanks." I reply "oh really, that's interesting, how long do your placos usually live." she says "oh, forever! Ive had some of my placos live to be 2 years old." then her daughter cuts in between me and her and says she wants a snail instead.

stupid smelly lady with her ugly hair cut and icky teeth.

B*%(#.

and one that's not related to fish

a lady called us asking if we could take a G-pig off her hands, she saved it from her neighbors who where remodeling so they put it in the basement and there wasn't any light in the basement, no windows and no lights. it was in the basement for a week when they dicided they didn't want it any more so they husband took it in to the back yard in a residential area and got his shot gun out, that's when the lady that called us saw him and jumped the fence to save him. the worse part is when she brought it in we recognized him as Hagrid. a pig that had lived for a year in the shop and then went up for adoption after we decided that know one would pic him over the cute little baby g-pigs. so we get to look up the person that adopted him and NEVER EVER let them take home an animal from us ever again. thank god we do all the useless paper work.

the worst part was he couldn't walk because his nails had curled around his paws.

People are sick.

i wish i could turn people in to animals, i would make the smelly lady a placo and put her in a 2.5 gallon. and i would turn those G-pig killers in to G-pigs and put them in a full grown pythons cage.

I've encountered this many times, and tried to find the best way to tell people that their animals don't just "grow with the tank". I also get this question a lot with reptiles, and I love your "ceilings" analogy. This is what I do. I look them straight in the eye and say "It would be like if your mom, when you were a baby decided to confine you to a closet while you were growing up. You may still live, but your gonna be awful weird looking." They seem to kind of understand after that. Unless of course they they think that I just used "fancy words", to make a joke about their mom.

 

[dougefresh]

Have a strange one. We used to get our fresh brine shrimp deliveries on Tuesdays and Fridays. On those days, every single week, an elderly 'foreign' couple would come in, look at the fish, then order 2 large portions of live brine shrimp. After months of the same routine, I realized that they'd never bought a fish on any visit. They never bought any supplies either. Just the 2 large shrimp orders twice a week. One Friday, I finally asked them, in casual conversation, "What kinds of fish are you feeding all this shrimp to?" They're response was simply; "No fish. For soup".

 

[dragonfish]

All good stories. So far my vote is for the brine shrimp soup. Here's another. Had a guy in asking what he could feed his four clown knives and three lima shovelnose. He fed heavily everyday and they grew rapidly to about 6-7 inches and then stopped. Did I have any recommendations. What size tank. They are in a 40 but I will upgrade to a 75 soon. Poor fish.

 

[Oddball]

We used to get alot of abandoned fish at the shop. Usually, the heavy days were the day after someone tried to sell back a fish too large for us to want to take. Of course, pacus were the most frequent abandonees. At one point, we had so many black and RB pacus in our shop's giant display tank that we could no longer distinguish one from the other as far as the price tags were concerned. The manager got the idea to mark the tank as if it was in a grocery store "PACUs - $2.00/lb". We all thought it was amusing. However, one of our regulars chastised us 'cruel' treatment of the pacus.
I thought long and hard about my possible straying from the path of enlightenment and did the only thing that seemed logical to me at the time. I went to the grocery store, bought a jar of tartar sauce, and talked a stocker into letting me get the box/case the jars came in. I set the empty case at the entrance to the fishroom (with the purchased jar glued on top) and added 'per pound prices to all 210 tanks in the shop.

 

[oddballer]

oh man after 11yrs of retail i've got stories for days..... but my blood pressure will go up if i start thinking about it........

 

[Oddball]

oh man after 11yrs of retail i've got stories for days..... but my blood pressure will go up if i start thinking about it........

Get your toes wet slowly then. Start with the amusing anecdotal stories first.