OPENING HOURS
and the like

Trevor Turner, B. Vet. Med., MRCVS

“Oh, this is Mrs May speaking, Penny is due in today for her fortnight¹s holiday with you while we go away. I know you are closed on a Sunday afternoon but I wonder if I could ask a great favour. I have so much to do going away tomorrow morning and all that and I just wondered if I could bring her in about 5 this evening. Would that be at all possible?”

Mrs May is a regular and good customer so you reluctantly agree, abandoning that fanciful idea that you could perhaps sit in the sun for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon and do your VAT returns. You console yourself with the thought that at least Mrs May, unlike some customers, doesn¹t want to come just when you are sitting down for the first proper meal of the day as happens with some that you know.
You wait. Five o’clock comes and goes. Oh, well, it is a sunny summer Sunday afternoon and there is a lot of traffic. Perhaps this has delayed Mrs May. By the time it gets to six you decide you had better give her a ring to find out if she really is intending to come.

The telephone is answered immediately, profuse apologies. Oh, yes, she did leave and then found the traffic was so bad that she returned and was waiting to see if it got any better and then would give you a ring to see if you could just take Penny in a bit later.

Mrs May is clearly perceptive and realises from the tone of your voice that her suggestion has fallen on stony ground. Positive to the last she then asks if she can drop Penny off on the way past to the airport in the morning, at about 6.45 a.m.

“I know you start very early because a friend of mine who lives near you tells me that she hears the dogs when you start working in the kennels at about 6.30.”

Thanks, Mrs May!

How do you handle situations like that? I always found it particularly difficult when they were good customers whom you had known for a long time.

As our kennels grew in size, our hours of opening tended to grow with them since reception staff were employed and sometimes did little else but reception work. Nevertheless, at weekends and on summer evenings, there were still problems with people arriving at what I always considered to be extraordinary hours.

Perhaps worse than the Mrs Mays were the people who had delayed journeys and arrived on the off chance.

“We were just passing, see.”

Sometimes it was very late in the evening.

The simple answer, of course, is that you just do not answer the door and put the answer machine on the phone. I can recall one particular incident where a determined owner contacted the RSPCA and subsequently (during working hours!) the local authority to complain that they felt the kennels were left unattended on Sunday evenings and were not worthy of a boarding licence.

What had we done? We had not responded to the answer machine message requesting permission to collect the dog at 8.30 p.m. nor had we answered the door when they had arrived, therefore the assumption was that we had a huge number of boarders left unattended. Disgraceful! Should never have been licensed!

How do you handle it?