Only a small handful of the stories I have from my time at a pet store.

The store I worked in was a small, local pet chain, not Petco or Petsmart or anything like that. I would absolutely never work in one of those hellholes.

...Yes. Yes you do. Story here is the guy bought a domestic, indoor kitten from the humane society and wanted to be a barn cat, for hunting mice and insects in the barn. I had him pull out his adoption contract for me and I politely pointed to the care information stating if he didn't care for the cat properly he could indeed have the cat taken away, be charged a hefty fine, and be blacklisted from any other shelters in the area. I also informed him that there was a different shelter a couple of miles away that adopted out specifically feral cats and barn cats for the exact purpose he wanted to adopt a cat and he probably should have gone there.

I don't think we ever caught these people, but they never came back either. We noticed something was up when they were just walking around the store with a perfectly quiet, covered baby stroller. Now this is a pet store full of animals. There are no such thing as quiet children in that store. After they left one of the stockers checked out the rabbit cages where they were lingering and they had stolen two $25 rabbits. They weren't purebred or anything but they were up for adoption and we did not sell rabbits to people who didn't cave cages/food/literally everything you need for a setup. So I'm guessing they didn't like that and decided to take them instead. Wherever those little buns are, I hope they're okay.

So we thought "okay, maybe he's got someone else picking up the cat." We all watched in absolute horror from the inside of the store as this massive jackwagon opens the cargo compartment on the back of his bike, sets the cat inside, and drives off before anyone can stop him. I probably have dozens of adoption applicant and pickup horror stories, so if I do a part two at some point I'll definitely include more. This fucking pool of douche was probably the worst one though.

We had three brand new shelter cats who had JUST been picked up, vaccinated, and fixed. They were all absolutely terrified, being in a new environment and being abandoned pretty much feral cats. I had been explaining to people all day to please keep their dogs away from the obviously hissing/yowling/stressed cats because they had just received surgery. This lady just would not listen and one of the smaller cats ended up popping her stitches from screaming and hissing and batting the kennel, and she had to be sent back to the pet hospital for a day for new stitched and a day's rest. I hate dog owners sometimes.

To which I responded with "Have you ever been in a car with a cat?" before I could stop myself. They had never owned a cat before and I explained to them the bouncing ball of claws and anxiety a cat becomes in a moving car. They declined buying a cat carrier but ended up coming back into the store later clawed to absolute shit, to inform me that I was, indeed, correct.

Don't worry, the raccoon was fine and was later rehabilitated back into the wild. This is honestly one of my favorite stories. She needed formula for the baby raccoon, and we ended up doing some research for/with her to find out the best options. She came back pretty frequently for formula and soft cat food, and once an older customer even bought every single can we had left on the shelf for the girl so she didn't have to spend her whole check on the pricey formula. I even bought one for her myself once or twice. The whole time she was in the store every time she let me watch the raccoon, so I got to help customers with a chill baby raccoon hanging out on my shoulder.

This was one of the best examples I've ever gotten to show. A couple was asking if a bunny would be okay for their five extremely rowdy, extremely loud, very young children. As I'm in the middle of saying "well we trim their nails pretty frequently, but the problem with rabbits and young children is they're extremely skittish and their claws are still very sharp". Just then their youngest shrieks about as loud as she can, spooking the rabbit and I end up covered in blood in front of the whole family. I was pretty calm throughout the whole situation, because I've had it happen plenty of times before, but they all looked pretty shocked. They ended up going home with a nice, safe gerbil instead.

No no no no no no no no no no no

Animals are living creatures, not fun party favors. Please don't ever do this ever. Especially don't just push a living animal that requires money, time, care, and upkeep on people you barely know. Manager ended up forcing us to do the sale anyway. I personally refused to make the sale myself and had someone else ring her up. We sent her home with fifteen separate care sheets and explained to her that everyone she was giving these to was going to be responsible for fish tanks/food/etc. Ugh.

This was one of the busiest weeks we had. We sold out of aquarium salt and fish medication and goldfish flakes VERY quickly. Almost every single fish that came in had fin rot/ammonia poisoning/some other kind of issue. Most of the fish ended up surviving, luckily, because the parents were smart enough to listen to our advice and actually spend money on the larger tanks and the medications for their sick, dying fish. They weren't too happy when we told them just how big those fish get, though.

Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

Most of the time we could grab the cricket quickly enough and toss it back into the bin. Sometimes we wouldn't notice or a customer would decide to help themselves in the cricket bin (please don't ever do this, even if you are an experienced reptile handler. Please just let the employees do it for you.).

The worst one though was when one got out and got trapped under a shelf. A stocker and I finally decided we had had quite enough insanity after three days and ended up tearing shelves apart looking for the little bastard. We eventually found it by blowing into the cracks of the shelves and kicking at the base and listening for when it stopped chirping. We ended up putting the little bug out of its misery because we weren't supposed to throw them back in the bin after that much time out in the open.

I celebrated with pizza for lunch.

This didn't really bother me at all, because I'm a reptile handler. So I was fine with it. But after about twenty minutes and a couple of horrified expressions I realized I was handling giant mealworms at the (closed) backup register right in front of terrified customers. It was actually pretty funny, but in hindsight I probably should have brought the bin in the back to work on them. I ended up having to stay up front though, because we were busy and I had to help quite a few customers in between worm wrangling.

This happened more than once.

The absolute worst brands I ever got asked about were Purina, Rachel Ray (seriously what the fuck) and some weird off brand that Family Dollar sold. We pretty much only sold "premium" brands of dog food. IE, the food that won't fucking kill your dogs when they eat it. The only super basic brands we sold were Some kind of special dietary blend of Purina, Blue, and Eukanuba. Most of what we sold was Fromm, Holistic Select, and Taste of the Wild. And pretty much any other similar brand that didn't suck major ass.
If you need recommendations on cat/dog food I'm your guy ;)

I beg your pardon?

Damn near every breed of dog, cat, snake, lizard, rabbit, hamster, a chinchilla once, some rats, couple mice, and even a fish once.

Cat tax: This is Godric. We adopted him as a tiny dumb kitten and now he's a big dumb adult.

I may do more work stories later on if people want to see more of them. I have plenty more from this pet store, as well as a bunch of weird crazy happenings from when I worked at a Gas Station, manager in a pizza place, and a few other work places.

Consider donating to Muskegon Humane Society, Harbor Humane Society, Michele's Rescue, or Carol's Ferals if you live in the West Michigan/Lakeshore area, or donate to your local shelter. Shelters are always in need of funds to help animals, carriers, blankets, pet food, and towels. Thanks :)

***EDIT***
Good lord, thank you for all of the attention. Really, I appreciate your questions, and I love answering them.

PART TWO: DOGGO EDITION: http://imgur.com/gallery/rVePL