The Other Day

So, I think a lot of people don't realize all that goes on here.  I know I've said that before, and said I'm gonna occasionally post about what goes on certain days, so I wrote this a few days ago when I was listing what I was doing, and this gives you an idea of a day:

In a typical day, I don't just do orders, I don't just answer calls and emails... I also have 150-200 chins at any given time to care for, plus 2 prairie dogs, currently about 30 crested geckos, 5 guinea pigs, 3 dogs... plus emails, phone calls... you get the idea.  And of course, much of those things takes time every day, and someone said the other day that I have the greatest job ever (thank you... not sure they'd necessarily feel so strongly if they did this for a week, but you know)... so I thought I'd post about what was going on today...

So, get up in the morning, immediately check the emails.  Of course, there's a million junk emails, so I delete those that aren't necessary to respond to, and remain with 169 emails in my inbox.  Not all from today, mind you, but there are 71 from today and yesterday.  Plus some from the few days before that, because unless I skim an email and it needs immediate response, or can be answered in a sentence or two, I come back to it later and do them in order.  With the junk deleted, I move onto the next thing.

See, I break up my days.  I could spend 8 hours answering emails.  Totally could.  Might even get done (probably not, but might).  But then... I wouldn't be answering people's fb messages and texts that I get, and all that, so I usually spend gaps of time on certain things, and then come back to them when I have time later.  So, some time spent on emails...

Moving on, I wrote my list of what I needed to accomplish for the day.  Answered all the fb messages and texts that had accumulated overnight.

In looking at my list, the one thing on there is getting my rescue stuff ready for taxes to be done.  I broke down what needed to be done into tasks, and one of those tasks was getting the total year 2017 credit card fees.  That requires opening up the account, and opening each month's "deposits" page, and counting up the processing fees, and then adding them up for the year.  This is fine, I was doing this last night, but I got to September, and everything was good... starting October, my account showed deposits... but no transaction fees (which I knew couldn't be right... I usually have $800-900 in transaction fees per year), so I went and logged onto their live chat (this was last night).  Of course, live chat was open until 9 pm EST, and it was... 8:12 CST (so, 9:12 EST).  So, that had to be put off until today, so I logged on this morning, logged onto live chat, and asked.   Chat person looked up the account and explained my account had been switched to some other type of account.  Looking back, probably should have asked what exactly that meant, but oh well... anyway, so she explained to me that if I logged into the business portal, I could download monthly statements, and I went on there, confirmed which category was transaction fees (cause of course, it couldn't just be called, "transaction fees" -- no, it was called "offset to sales")... ended the chat.  For once, this was actually a useful change, because they group the entire month, so rather than having to add up the month, I was able to see, ok, October's fees were X.  Great.  Checked out the fees for Oct / Nov / Dec and input those into my spreadsheet.  Spent enough time on that, moving on.

In looking at the orders that I have to do (I know, I know, I'm sorry if you're still waiting for one), I realized a lot of them required some stuff I was out of.  Also realized, I should probably get on the stick with making a donation basket, as I always end up making one super last minute before the expo... going to aim for not doing that this time.  Want to say I don't have a ton of expo basket stuff lying around (baskets, yes... stuff for them, not so much)... so I planned to go to the ATM to get money out for the weekend, plus the dollar store for expo basket items, plus Home Depot (my favorite place!) for wood / supplies.  The ATM let me get all the way to selecting how much I wanted to withdraw, and asking if I wanted a receipt, and then said it could not process my transaction.  Of course not... no money today, then (the other ATM is a ways away).  Stopped at the dollar store, and picked up some stuff for the donation basket.  As always, lied to myself that I wouldn't need a cart, and then ended up having to trudge back up to the front of the store with armfulls of stuff.  Then went to Home Depot and picked up the wood / supplies, where a very persistent cashier really wanted to get me to sign up for their credit card, even though I explained I already have one.

Came home.  Called back the voicemails that were on my phone for calls I missed.  Got another call, lady wanted me to take in, and not put down her cat.  I referred her to Cats of St. Francis.  I know of not a lot of rescues (well, I do, but good ones I can vouch for are harder to come by), so these good ones probably could do with less referrals... but it's like here... run a good rescue, everyone wants your help.

Went downstairs to feed and water the chins.  Fed everyone, medicated the chins that needed it.  Started watering the chins.  Decided to take a break from that (watering takes FOREVER... it's like 200+ water bottles... it's a LOT of filling and refilling and refilling and refilling the pitcher), and hayed all the chins.  Swept up the hay on the floor, that hay went to the guinea pigs.

In case you're thinking all this can be accomplished in an hour or two... this brought us to 5 pm. 

Realized that I still had not gotten back to someone who had wanted to know if I had any white or black velvet females, and also hadn't gotten pics of a dark ebony female that someone wanted to see, so headed back downstairs.  I have a white female, so I took and sent pics of that one.  Also took pics of the dark ebony and texted those to the other person.  They want to put a deposit on the dark ebony (yay), so we talked about that.

Got a text from the person who's picking up rabbit chow (yes, we really do sell everything), they were scheduled for 6 but wanted to come early.  No biggie, I told them they could, and I stopped what I was doing to go bag up their 10 pounds of rabbit chow.  Got that bagged up, came upstairs.  Texted back and forth about pickup with the person about the dark ebony, while waiting for the person for the rabbit chow.  In the meantime, went through more emails.  I know from experience, the second I go downstairs, they will arrive, so I will stay up until they do.  They texted they were here, I went out and handed them the rabbit chow, they handed me the $10.  Very quick for some pickups.  Went back to the office and marked down on my "walk-in invoice" that I sold 10 pounds of rabbit chow.

Sat down at the computer again and did the books and balanced accounts for November.  Got that done, moved onto the geckos.  The crested geckos get fed / misted / watered Monday / Wednesday / Friday.  Mixed up their food and about that time, the phone rang.  The person calling was the one putting down the deposit for the dark ebony female, so I took down their card info and tentatively set when they're going to get her (we will update later, since it's over a week from now and they still need to plan).  Ran the card for the deposit, sent them a receipt, and made myself a note that that chin is now on hold with deposit and that I will be bringing her with on the next trip to Ohio.

Back to the geckos.   Spent about a half hour feeding and watering and changing paper towels (like bedding) if needed.  Got about half done.  Moving on for a bit. 

Supposed to have help tomorrow (would be great! but not holding my breath) so I started a short list of what can be done tomorrow with help.  One of those things is that we're gonna do a hammock inventory, as I know what's listed on the webstore isn't even close to matching what's actually here.  So, I thought, I'll just print out the webstore pages with the hammocks.  Nope!  My printer printed out just a list of the hammocks, no pics.  So, I had to manually select every one of the stinking pics, copy and paste it into a word doc along with the name of the hammock and a space to right how many there really are... and then print.  Yes, I acknowledge, we could just look back and forth between the website (like on a phone) and what's in front... but you'd be amazed how much more time that takes.  Now that that's printed, and I've added a few more things to the list for tomorrow, moving on.  '

Onto orders.  I have my clipboard upstairs, so I check what I have written down against what orders I have actually in to-do... there's of course more orders (thanks!  but it takes time...), so I get more invoices and copy down more orders.... literally in 30-40 minutes, all I got done was writing down a few orders, emailing back one person who'd inquired about a part of their order, and then sending a fb message to someone who'd wanted to order and pick up, working to arrange that.  In the meantime, got a message from another person who gets their chin chow here, and we set up an appointment for them to come this upcoming week to re-stock. 

Decided I should probably eat, as it's like 8 pm and all I had was two corn dogs earlier.  Had lots of reward points with Papa Johns, so decided to order a pizza.  Cleaned up a bit while waiting for the pizza, ate, then went back to geckos.  Finished the geckos, also fed all the toads and gave everyone crickets, and that is done for the day.

Went back downstairs, watered more of the chins.  Got all the water bottles to a reasonable level, so that was done for the day. 

Went through and finished and packed up some of the orders that I could easily get packed and out that day.  Printed off labels, sealed them up, went online and scheduled a package pickup, and set them outside for the package pickup.  I actually had to stop what I was doing, packing the boxes, because the cutoff for a package pickup is 2 am.  As in, you have to submit the request on the website by 2 am.  So, stopped packing around 1:50 am, went and submitted the package pickup, and then back to packing. 

Watched a little tv and then went to bed.  Fun fun.