DREWspective

So yesterday I headed back to Pets at Home to claim the plant that the nice staff person forgot to put in my bag. As mentioned in my last post, I thought it would be a good test of their customer service, which up until now wasn’t anything to talk out loud about.

So I approached the counter, armed with a pack of goldfish pellets that I thought would be more useful for the fish than flakes. Having been straight ignored by one of the staff, I was eventually seen to by another. I explained the situation.

Apparently I was supposed to check the contents of the bag before leaving the store first of all. Fair enough, but a little difficult when carrying two live fish in a brown paper bag.

Failing that, the "correct" action to take, according to the staff member, was to call the store and tell them the plant was missing.
Am I the only person here who wouldn’t have thought of that? After all, if the staff were just standing around, ignoring potential customers and taking an age to give people service, what do you think would happen over the phone?
And besides, what would you do if you had to travel for two hours via public transport, only realising an item was missing when you were well on your way? Chances are, you’d go back the next day.

Luckily, because this staff member had seen me standing in anxiety around the store several times, he made a gesture of goodwill. As a result, I received two plants for the price of one.

Unfortunately I was dismissed straight afterwards, so I didn’t bother with the fish food.

From the aquarium across the road from where I work at the moment, I had been sold a shit, expensive gravel cleaner. It’s the kind that requires pumping of the large tube rather than squeezing.

I’d tried on two occasions to get it working properly, doing as best as I could to follow the poorly-worded instructions on the back of the box. It didn’t work. All I ended up doing was removing water.

So I’m going to opt for one of those squeezy gravel cleaners instead, and hopefully I can sell that piece of shit on.

And before I end this post:

To all those smug, arrongant goldfish keepers around the Internet, who’ve exercised their ALL CAPS fetishes and have bullied and verbally beaten up newcomers and question-askers, because they say 10 gallons of water per goldfish is a supposed MINIMUM requirement:

F*** YOU.

Okay, I’ve managed to track down a 30 gallon tank (which I will probably have a nightmare getting home tonight) which should be enough to house the fish. But the hours of anxiety and stress about getting a bigger tank are entirely down to these people. I wish I could find every single one of them and smack them across the face with a small but inexpensive glass tank.

Go and read some of the comments made about goldfish and minimum tank sizes. I guarantee, you never see me being that way over video editing, or illustration, for example.