Contacting, Part 1

I hate to always go back to posts that are sort of mildly complaining about things... but I mean... I try to be helpful... and people are, well, people...

So, take this example.  Got a facebook message on my NWI Chins page from someone who adopted one of our chins some years ago... he's shipping off to the Army overseas, leaving Monday, and he messaged me Friday, asking about if we could take his chin back, since he has no one to watch her while he's gone.

I responded back right away, said that we could, and asked when he wanted to bring her in.  He said tomorrow (Saturday), anytime.  I responded that I'd be here most of the day, and asked what time would be good for him.

Now, I have enough going on, that if I don't get notifications for messages, I don't check them all the time, maybe every few days.  If I'm watching my phone and someone sends me a message, I will go and respond, but without that notification popping up, I only check periodically.  So, Saturday (today) comes, and I realize about 10:30 in the morning, I never did hear back from the guy.  I actually even had a thought of, maybe he did message and I missed it or something.

Nope!  No message from him, actually, he hadn't even read my message that I sent.  I wanted to make sure that he didn't just randomly show up today, since I never know if I'm going to be at the house 24/7, so I sent him another message, basically just saying that I hadn't heard from him, and wanted to check if he was going to be coming over today.  He responded that yes, he was, and that he was currently looking for a small cage to bring her in.

I responded, asking if he could tell me approx. what time he was thinking he'd be by, explaining that I have some things to do away from the house, and I want to be sure that I'm home for when he shows up.

He did respond, he said he'd be here between 1 and 2.  Now, don't get me wrong, I appreciate him responding.

What slightly irritates me about this... I am no one's babysitter.  I want to help you out and take your animal and find it a good home for you... but until the animal gets here, I can't do that.  I'm not saying I'm so magical and perfect and all, but this sort of thing happens all the time, where I ask someone for a time because they want to drop off their animal, and they don't reply, so I ask again, and they eventually reply... sometimes, and so on and so forth.  I have plenty of animals here that require my time and attention, I don't have time to chase you down to bring your animal in.  If you want to, great.  If you want to rehome yourself (well, as long as it's not one of my animals), great.  If you want to take it elsewhere, great.  While of course I care about the animal's welfare, if it's not in my care, there's very little I can do... but chasing people down... to me, after doing this so long, my opinion on that, is that basically, it's something I shouldn't have to do.  This isn't the doctor's office, reminding you to make an appointment, lol.

Of course, he showed up more like 2:30.  Besides just having to remind people, if you read this blog with any regularity, you know how much I hate appointments set for a time gap, like 1-2.  If you show up at 1, I can have a 2 pm set as well.  But if you don't show up until 2, I can't set the next appointment til 3.  If you show up even after 2, the next appointment should be even later.  See where this can become a scheduling nightmare?  So, he dropped off the chin, all is well.