perils of pet store employment

Nobody who loved animals intentionally would take a job at a pet store chain. No, that was untrue, but that's what Briar told herself as she smiled and scooped crickets out of egg cartons for reptile owners, watching them watch the animals in terrariums with sad eyes. Briar told her corporate disapproved lie when informed by one said customer that one bearded dragon was struggling with shedding.

"I'll give him a bath later, we always do at the beginning and ending of a shift. Do you have a bearded dragon?"

"No, leopard gecko, but struggling with stuck shed has been a problem. I've had to take Wiggleworth to the vet for stuck shed a few times. The humidity might be off in the enclosure, and you really shouldn't have so many of them housed together."

"I know, unfortunately, store policy requires we only have a specific amount of shelf space for each department. The snakes need the forty gallons, so we end up cohabitating the lizards until someone adopts them. I hate that they end up like this too, they often almost glare at me, like they know their predicament is my fault." That surprised a laugh out of the customer.

"That's both hilarious and depressing. Thanks for the crickets, how much are they?" Briar ran the customer's total at the cash register, and the customer was gone again. Briar couldn't guess if they were male or female, or maybe nonbinary, that was a thing now too. Briar couldn't guess most of the animals' sexes either. She would never learn them, unless a customer came back after a vet visit, reporting bumps they thought were cancerous were actually just a hemipenis. Briar found herself laughing to keep from crying when she had those customers come back reporting that, trying to avoid acknowledging the reality that Briar should have been able to tell the customer their pet's sex. She knew why she hadn't learned how, that the store owners believed if they sold exotics to customers who knew their new pet's sex, customers may purchase with the intent of becoming backyard breeders. Nevermind that by allowing lizards to be purchased with the intent of cohabitating, customers might end up unintentionally becoming backyard breeders anyway.

Briar knew this job was a mistake. She opened the bearded dragons' terrarium anyway. She was going to help the beardies shed. Nobody else was in the store at the moment, so there wasn't anyone to scold her for doing the right thing. Not that everyone who worked at the store necessarily would scold her - there were other coworkers who loved reptiles as much as she did, such as the aquatics department coworker Leslie. She was more focused on fish care, and trying to ensure her favorites were sent to ideal homes. Briar knew anyone who adopted or bought an animal was likely to be a better home for a reptile than the bright crowded cage she was carefully removing the bearded dragon from. She walked to the sink, put on gloves, and got to work. So now what she had told the customer was not actually a lie anymore. Briar was in fact giving the bearded dragon a bath at the end of her shift. She then, once the white crusted skin was removed, placed the bearded dragon back in its terrarium, and got to work removing the excrement that littered the enclosure. After all, she was already wearing gloves. She did the same for the leopard geckos and refilled the water dishes for the frogs, lizards, and snakes. She caught Leslie clocking in right as Briar clocked out.

"How'd it go?"

"Cleaned the terraria and helped the beardie shed after a customer caught that he was struggling. You'll have to do the water changes for aquatics, I'm fried."

"Fair enough. Manager's not in today?"

"No, and thank God for that!" The manager always wanted the employees focused on the most lucrative investments, the various dog toys and food brands and catnip. She couldn't care less if a few lizards were purchased elsewhere due to customers seeing how badly they were neglected at her store - they weren't the moneymakers.

"See you tomorrow, Bri!" Briar waved and exited, relieved her shift was finally over.

Nobody who loved animals would intentionally take a job at a pet store, Briar thought to herself, wondering what exactly that made her. Maybe she didn't love animals as much as she thought she did, since she supported with her labor and time a storethat enabled the creation and interchange of living beings for mere entertainment of humans. Not only that, but they then were contractually obligated to sell said creatures to anyone who wanted to purchase them. And far too often the ones who wanted to purchase them were parents hoping to surprise their young children with gift pets the parent would either end up caring for herself (it was far too often the mom who would be taking care of the new family member) or neglecting (again, Dads typically went this route, sometimes even trying to return the animals back to the store, which never ended with the refund said Dad usually demanded). Briar did thoroughly enjoy teaching the young kids who visited the store about the animals, and especially when the kid's parent demanded they leave without purchasing. Then Briar could pretend she hadn't sold her soul and morality in exchange for a paycheck, pretend she had a job like the many she had applied for at aquariums and natural history museums. Educating children on the beauty of the natural world without directly facing the harm said world inflicted on the animals humans sold as pets.

A better person would have quit, but Briar just walked home to her own apartment, watched birds through nest camera livestreams on YouTube. She had helped that miserable bearded dragon with the stuck shed today. She had done good, turned a lie into the truth in spite of her job's rules against handling the animals. Corporate policy cared more about employees' possibly suing if a lizard bit them than said lizard dying in the employees' care.