My day yesterday consisted of big hairy rat nuts (the rats lounge in their habitat under this bowl with just their nuts showing, which is peculiar and looks like it hurts) and inane questions about pet food. I work at a pet store, so this is par for the course, but I still find myself getting aggravated. The music that they play in my store is this insipid musak channel that they should call 'the worst of ever'; it is random music that just when you think it cannot suck worse, it does. Hard. People bring in their animals, and they are loud and smelly and want to either lick or eat me, neither of which I am comfortable with. I had this guy actually ask me what a particular dog food tasted like; I told him I was only really familiar with the taste of puppy chow, and I had not had any for years so perhaps he should ask someone else.

The food choices that they have for animals is ridiculous. Duck, venison, lamb, salmon- these I get. They are meat, and this is a close approximation of what a wild dog or cat may dine on. (Funny, there are no pork-based pet foods. I wonder why?) Avocado, however, is not a food either animal eats, nor is carrots, broccoli, sweet potatoes or pretty much any vegetable. Try putting down a can of green peas for your cat and see how well that goes over. Seriously folks. And people pay $50 a bag for this shit. Now, when people ask me about what is the best food, I am going to tell them that I feed my dogs raw meat because it makes them mean. (I considered telling them that I prefer eating collie to beagle or any smaller dog, but I am pretty sure this would get me fired...)

I worked at a pet store when I was in my early (very early) 20's, and it was actually a cool job. I worked as a manager for the fish dept, and after the fish were cared for I would have a friend lift me up on the forklift into the overstock dogloo's (basically a big igloo-shaped dog house) and nap until I heard someone page my department. This job, I cannot get into the dogloo's unless I clamber up an unstable shelf of $50 carrot based dog food, which is an uncomfortable proposition at best. The store I work at is understaffed, so sadly their is no real way for me to fuck off. And to make it worse, a friend got me the job (how sad is the economy here, when you have to have a hook up for a pet store job?) so I feel that it would be wrong for me to do drugs while working. At least for now. So I have to be completely sober and deal with the mongloid mouth-breathing public and their inbred mouth-breathing dogs.

Last night was truck night, and I unloaded and put up about 12,000 pounds of pet food, which is a lot when you are sick and hung over, like I was. My malaria is flaring up, and I am pretty sure I got some swine flu up in me. To add to the general awesomeness of the day, my zipper on the pants I wore was a quitter; I ended up stapling my pants closed, which was a bitch when I had to go to the bathroom. They turn the air off after 9pm, which does not make sense because there are people scheduled to be in the store until 1AM. It's not like they don't already know we will be there. And regarding my vapid coworkers, my only consolation is this: in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man rules. One day I will be in charge of this ship of fools.