A woman comes up to the register with her freshly groomed dog under her arm. I work at a pet store with a grooming salon.

I can deal with garbage and dog poo and rotted food with no problem because absolutely nothing compares to that.

It’s been years since that incident, but my barometer for bad smells has shifted ever since. It made no difference whether I breathed through my nose or my mouth, so I had to stop periodically to run off the back loading dock and breathe fresh air. We had to freeze and keep the bodies as evidence to show to fish and wildlife, so I spent the evening one night fishing dead snails and tube worms out of the tank and carefully placing them in plastic bags for the freezer. The stress of transport and being in broken, leaking bags with little oxygen was rough on the animals, and within a week or so, the (not endangered, thankfully) snails and other invertebrates began to die off, despite the best efforts of the store workers. My shop ended up housing them for a bit while we waited for the appropriate officials to intervene. Long story short, upon opening the containers, they found that many of the fish were protected exotics caught illegally in Hawaii. I got a call one day from an airline worker.Īirline Worker: “We have what appears to be someone’s live fish in transport, and the containers are leaking.” I worked at an aquarium store that was near the big airport in my city.

Fumy pet store