So as you all may or may not know, I work at PetCo right now. Before I left in April we had an incident where a ferrett was stolen on my shift while I was on register (within sight of the small animal area). I didn't get in trouble of course, since I wasn't the only one working that night, but I still felt horrible and that I could have paid more attention, you know? Especially since there are LOCKS on the cages!! After the incident we were told that NO ONE was to hold ferrets, and we were to ONLY bring the ferrets out of their cages for customers seriously considering purchasing one.
A month later, or later the same month I was cleaning the ferrett cages and of course the cages have to be open to clean them... it was later at night near closing time so we did not have a lot of customers. I turn to scoop some food and turn back and a customer had walked up, stuck their hand into the cage and picked up a ferrett!! I nearly freaked out, said "Ma'am put the ferrett down please!" and she was like, "Oh its ok, I know Terri (the MOD that night) and she's cool with me" and I said, "It doesn't matter, if she wants to come out here now and let you hold one that's fine, but you can not hold one now, especially without permission!" She got angry and huffed off.. and later complained to the guy on register that they "needed to get new employees because the current ones were very rude" LOL I talked to Terri about it and told her about the girl, and apparently she USED to work at the other location but was fired for stealing. HMM...
Now fast forward to yesterday. It has been almost a year since that happened but the managers are still cautious about opening the ferret cages during store hours unless you're cleaning them for obvious reasons. A family came in and crowded around the small animal section... then later one of the girls came up to me and asked if she could hold a ferrett. I asked her if she was 18, she was not. I asked if her mother was with her, she said she was. I then asked if they were considering buying a ferrett, because otherwise I wasn't allowed to let them hold one. She said no, and walked over to her mom. At the time time I had a customer who wanted to buy some mice, so I walk over to small animals and overhear the mother say, "Well how do they KNOW who is considering buying a ferrett and who isn't???" so I say, "well ma'am, if a customer was considering purchasing a ferrett they would be asking and looking at supplies, asking about care, and other miscellany stuff." I wanted to add, "Not just ooh-ing and ahh-ing and saying how cute they are" but didn't. So she said, "WELL then, I guess we will have to go ELSEWHERE to purchase OUR ferret!!"
This made me laugh for a number of reasons. I KNOW she was not going to buy one for the simple fact that they walked in, saw the small animal section, said "awwwww how cute!! Ferrets!! mom can we have one??" and she said NO!! Its just ARGH!! And the rest of her visit there she was very cold and rude to me! I asked someone else to ring her out because I was angry and didn't want to say something to her that I would later regret!!
Was I WRONG?? Did I say anything WRONG?? I was doing as I was told and I don't know if it seems like it but I did say everything as polite as possible, even if I wanted to get rude I couldn't.
