Day 12 - Bagged

I am afraid of bugs. Spare me the logic that "they're more afraid of you, then you are of them" because I just don't believe it. They scare me with their multiple legs, antennae and crunchy exoskeletons. No matter their size, I can admit I'm afraid of them. While we do our best to avoid each other, the one place I cannot avoid bugs is at work. I work part time in a pet retail store and we not only sell reptiles, frogs and lizards, but things to feed them. One of those "things" are live crickets. Because of my fear of bugs, I avoid the cricket bagging center where employees must accommodate customer requests by sticking their hands in a large bin of crickets and bag the number of bugs requested. I prefer to limit my interaction with the noisy boogers to random store floor sightings of those that managed to escape from the bin of doom.

Choosing to exterminate my fears, I decided today was the day I will bag crickets. I recruited an awesome co-worker to talk me through the bug gathering process and the best advice she offered was, "just think of them as raisins". That worked, I'm not afraid of raisins! It wasn't long until I had my first customer, "10 large crickets please"! I told him I was new at bagging and requested that he be patient, and he jokingly replied, "Don't let them bite you!". Just what I needed to hear in my panic given state, but then I remembered, raisins don't bite! As I sealed the bag that was now full of something's dinner, I realized I bagged a lot more then crickets - another fear conquered.