Drive-Thru Goldfish

So, at one point tonight, I get paged by an assistant manager. When I call him back, he tells me that someone will be over by the fish tanks in five minutes, and I'm asked to have a bag with ten goldfish ready to go when he shows up. Perplexing, eh? So, I make a slight dash for the fish tanks, since most of the time I work on the opposite side of the store (beats me why they didn't lay out the stores to have all the pet stuff together), and begin dipping the fish out. Now, the goldfish tanks are a little bit crowded right now, so it's not hard to get ten of them in just a couple passes with the medium net. Thinking back on it now, though, it might have been faster if I got the biggest net. So anyway, I tie off the bag and write the UPC number on it and hang around waiting for dude to come get his fish. And amazingly, just a couple minutes later, a guy comes tearing out from Lawn and Garden, and about fifteen feet away from me starts saying, "Those are for me!", though he was basically polite. I asked the obvious, and indeed these were to be feeders. And then he asked for a bowl to keep them in, so naturally I take him to our selection of goldfish bowls. Bizzarely, he needs something "flat", and naturally we don't actually have flat fish bowls. Luckily, two or three stainless steel dog dishes had been misplaced in the fish aisle, which he seemed well pleased with. I can't begin to imagine why the shape of the temporary housing was so important, but then I also don't grasp most of this situation.

I talked to that Assistant manager later, and he asked me if I got that guy his fish. He then went on to explain that the guy had called the store from ten minutes or so down the road, and essentially placed an order through the manager. It's not a bad idea, since if the guy is really in that much hurry, he succeeded in cutting off a good bit of time waiting for me to get set up and scoop all those fish. But even so, I've never had to prepare fish as though we were a take-out before. I can't decide whether it's good or terribly sad that this was the noteworthy part of my shift.