What The F*ck Is Wrong With You?

My eyes aren't that good.....

2006-10-25T20:14:00.000-04:00

A lady calls up the pharmacy today - CALLS UP as in on the phone - and tells me she's got a prescription in her hand from her doctor. She said (and this is exactly what she said), "It looks like it says Levaquin five something. Can you see it?"

Ummm..... maybe if you put the prescription a little closer to the phone?

It's customers like that that make me wonder why I don't take up drinking.......

Election ads

2006-10-20T21:50:00.000-04:00

I've been seeing commercials lately for payattention.org - a website dedicated to getting people out to vote. If you haven't seen the commercials, they start off like any other commercial you might see for a political candidate, but then you find out that the "candidate" is a bag of leaves or an old relish packet. The idea is that they are trying to encourage you to pay attention to who you are voting for because otherwise you don't know what you will get.

I think their commercials have backfired though. Having seen some of the people running for office around here, I'll take bag of leaves any day.

Random questions from the pharmacy

2006-10-16T23:10:00.000-04:00

Customer #1: My bottle says to take 1 tablet daily. Does that mean one tablet every 24 hours or one every 12 hours?
- Well, on THIS planet a day is 24 hours. Things on your planet may be different......

Customer #2: I was on 10 milligrams of this medicine and now the doctor put me on 20 milligrams. Is that stronger?
- Yes. 20 milligrams is twice as much medicine as 10 milligrams. (Sadly it took 10 minutes of conversation where I stated that and restated that many times before the customer finally left. And he still seemed confused.)

Customer #3: I've been sick since Friday [and it's now Monday.] Do you think it's a 24 hour bug?
- Yes. You just were unlucky enough to catch it 4 times in a row!

No wonder I find more grey hairs every day.......

It never ceases to amaze me.......

2006-09-20T21:52:00.000-04:00

This guy came into the pharmacy tonight to drop off an antibiotic for his friend's kid. I asked if the child had had prescriptions and naturally was told "yes, of course he has." So I took the date of birth and put the prescription on the pile of things to do.

Now those of you who work in a pharmacy will already know what happened next. I went to fill the prescription and the kid wasn't in our system. It was a fairly common name, so I found about a dozen "John Smiths" in the computer but none was ever close to the date of birth I was given of 11/22/2002.

So the guy comes back right at closing and I told him it wasn't filled because I needed the kid's info. The guy was still sure that the kid should be in our system, but started giving me the info anyway. Only this time he told me the date of birth was 3/29/06. I said, "Oh! That's a big difference." So the guy got all defensive and said "Yeah, well he's just a 5 month old baby." Yeah..... and you gave me a date of birth originally indicating that the kid is almost 4 years old. I guess I should give the guy a break though. I didn't actually see the kid. Maybe he's HUGE for 5 months old?

This is how we treat our vets?

2006-08-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I was at work today and an elderly gentleman brought in a prescription for Plavix. As it happened, he was retired from one branch or another of the US military so he had coverage through .... well let's just say it's a major company that handles the Department Of Defense prescription benefits. Also as it happens, a generic for Plavix just came out - "just" as in we got it in yesterday. So we try to fill the prescription and the insurange company doesn't recognize the generic as a valid product. That wasn't too surprising because sometimes it takes the plans a little while to catch on to a new generic. So naturally we tried to fill it for the brand. This is where it got tricky. The insurance company refused to pay for the brand name Plavix because there is a generic available. A generic - that it doesn't recognize. Now, that's pretty stupid in and of itself. So I called the insurance company and was told by the person at their help desk that they couldn't override the claim. Presumably since it's Saturday, there was no one there to add the generic drug to the system either. So the lady at the help desk gave me another option. She told me that the patient could pay out of pocket for the drug and then be reimbursed by the insurance company some time in the future when they put the generic into the system. Oh yeah that's a good plan......... the generic cost over $100 per month. (Imagine what the brand would have cost!) Now I understand the real reason why retired military personnel aren't permitted to keep their old weapons as souvenirs.....

Miss Cleo isn't your doctor either

2006-08-01T23:43:00.000-04:00

Apparently there is an expectation that people in the medical profession have psychic powers. I guess some people figure that's part of the curriculum at medical school and pharmacy school.

The other night we got a phone call at about 8:30 PM from a mom who was asking about her daughter's medicine. The daughter was 16 and had received a prescription for an extended release antibiotic for a throat infection. Here's the problem. The 16 year old was unable to swallow tablets at the best of times and the throat infection was only compounding the problem. Plus the tablets she got were fairly large and because they are extended release, they can't be crushed. The mom wanted to know what to do to get this medicine into her daughter. All we could tell her is that if the daughter can't swallow, then there is nothing they could do until morning when the doctor's office was open. The daughter needed a liquid medication and that was that. But you would think one of them would have had the common sense to mention to the doctor at the time that the daughter can't swallow tablets. That would have saved them both some trouble and the daughter would have had an antibiotic she could actually use a little sooner. If you don't tell the doctor something, then how he he/she supposed to know???

Just once.......

2006-08-01T23:33:00.000-04:00

People call us at the pharmacy all the time about drug interactions. Fortunately most of them think ahead and ask if they can take X with Y before they actually do anything. But every so often you get someone who calls and says, "I just took a dose of A and followed it with a dose of B. Is that okay?" Just ONCE I'd like to say - "You took A with B? You should be dead by now!"

Yes, I have a twisted mind......

Another driving adventure

2006-08-01T23:12:00.000-04:00

There is a major intersection near my house. The North/South street has 2 straight through, 2 left turn and 1 right turn lane for each direction. The East/West street is the same right at the intersection although it does narrow about a block away in either direction.

One day I was sitting there at the intersection waiting for the light. (I was heading East.) There were a few cars ahead of me and a bunch in the left turn lanes also waiting for the light to change. As I'm sitting there, I see the guy at the head of the line in the left most straight through lane start to inch his way up like he's going to jump the light. I thought that would be a neat trick since the left turn lanes for both East and West get to go before the straight through lanes get the green light. Well, I had misjudges his plans. WHen the left turn arrows went green, the guy didn't attempt to go straight through at all. He decided that even though he as in a straight through lane, he was turning left. So he made a wide left turn and then forced a merge into the lane on the North South road - probably scaring the hell out of the drivers who had been correctly using the turn lane.

Now his move was dangerous and stupid to begin with, but the stupid part of it was compounded by one little detail that is apparent to anyone who drives those roads. Had the guy opted to safely go straight when the straight through lanes got the green, he could have driven up the road one block - just ONE block, made a left at that traffic light (a traffic light that is very visible from the major intersection we were at), gone another block and made another easy left, gone one last block and made a right (with the help of a traffic light that is also very visible from the major intersection we were at) on the North South road. AND he'd have entered the North South road at a point before ANYTHING he could have been planning to turn off on- so it's not like he would have missed an exit or a store or something. Maybe the guy just likes living dangerously? Too bad he forgot that the rest of the drivers on the road may not feel the same way.

A new sort of diet?

2006-08-01T22:52:00.000-04:00

Since it was only about 8 million degrees out today, I decided to stop at the ice cream store and treat myself to a nice cold Italian ice. The place was packed (as expected) so I got to watch as other people got their orders ahead of me. One person in particular stood out. She ordered a cup of the lowfat vanilla ice cream, which didn't strike me as at all odd - until she had the counter person dump a ton of whipped cream on it. (And when I say a ton - I mean that there was at least as much whipped creap as there was ice cream.)

Now don't get me wrong - I've seen people go to McDonald's (or the like) and get a mega-calorie burger and a diet soda. That might make sense if the person was diabetic or something and was worried specifically about sugar rather than about calories in general. But the ice cream thing threw me. I mean, I can see watching your fat intake but still wanting a nice cold treat on day like today. But if you are watching your fat intake enough to want low fat ice cream (YUK), then WHY WHY WHY would you dump a ton of whipped cream on it which probably has more fat by itself then the regular ice cream would have had on its own? What are you thinking???

Strange kind of courtesy?

2006-08-01T22:41:00.000-04:00

So I was driving home the other afternoon - or at least I was about to, when I ran into an unexpected show of kindness.

Let me see if I can draw you a picture. I was waiting to pull out of the side entrance to the shopping center where I work. That throws me out on to the main road less than half a block from an intersection with a traffic light. Now the intersection is to my right when I leave, and the right turn lane for that intersection starts just about at the side entrance to the parking lot. I was sitting there at a full stop waiting to make my right turn onto the main road, when a gentleman in the straight through lane took pity on me and stopped to let me in. That was very nice of him since traffic was pretty heavy at that moment.... but there was one small problem. I couldn't take advantage of his gesture because as he sat there stopped, there were people passing him on the right trying to use the right turn lane. So if I had pulled out into traffic, I'd have been slammed by one of those cars. Yet the guy sat there for a little while, perplexed as to why I wasn't taking advantage of his kindness. You would have thought he'd have noticed the other cars as he stared at me - but maybe they were invisible on one side? Anyway, the guy finally gave up on me and took off, and I sat as more cars passed in both the straight through and right turn lanes. Less than a minute later, another guy in the straight through lane stopped to let me in - equally oblivious to the right turn lane traffic. So that left me wondering if there is some new eye disease or something that allows you to see stopped cars but not moving ones?

Deja Vu

2006-08-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

We have a regular customer, let's call her Agnes P. Ambien. She's an older lady gets a number of things from us, but her favorite medication is Ambien. For those of you who don't know what that it, it's a prescription sleeping aid....... and also a controlled substance. (That means it's regulated more strictly than say penicillin.) Every month Agnes gets her 30 day supply of Ambien and every month she comes back for an early refill - something we legally cannot do because of state and Federal laws. And every month we have the same conversation - she tells us that she took a couple extra tablets because the first one didn't help a couple of nights. We tell her that she can't do that and if the medicine isn't working she needs to speak to her doctor about other options (there are plenty). She promises to never ever take extra tablets again and then tells us that since she is out of medicine she won't be able to sleep again until we will refill her prescription. We tell her what date we will be able to fill it again and that we would be subjected to heavy fines from the state if we filled it early. Most of the time that's the end of the conversation until the next day. (She usually tries this every day until we can fill her prescription - you never know, maybe she'll get someone new!)

Well, she was in again the other day with that same old song and dance, so I reminded her AGAIN that it is ILLEGAL for us to refill that medication early. But she was a little more desperate this time to that wasn't the end of the conversation:

Me: I can't fill that early. It's against the law and we would face huge fines.

Agnes: But who would know?

Me: The state inspectors when they come in.

Agnes: Can't you tell them to get lost?

Me: Ummmm.... no. [I'm sure that would go down really well - "Hey Mr. Inspector - get out of my pharmacy!"]

Agnes: Can't you just change the date in your records?

Me: Ummmmm... how does no sound? [Let's see, she wants me to fill her controlled medicine early, tell the inspectors to go jump in the lake, and then I'm supposed to falsify the records on top of all that. Should I also go rob a bank for her so she'll have the money to pay for the drugs?]

If she pulled this kind of thing once, I would just chalk it up to her testing the boundaries - but come on. Every freaking month for the past several years? Especially when she's talking to one of the same seven people on a daily basis and we are all saying the exact same things to her? What the fuck is wrong with you? Take the hint already!

But it's an emergency!

2006-04-10T23:12:00.000-04:00

You know, I get lots of "emergency" prescriptions every day that aren't really emergencies. So it got me to thinking that maybe people don't really know what constitutes an emergency. So I thought I'd write this handy little guide for the one or two people who might actually be reading this blog.

Okay - what is an emergency:

"I was in a car accident and just got out of the emergency room with this prescription for pain." Yes, that's an actual emergency.

"My baby has a fever of 103 and my doctor gave me this prescription for an antibiotic." Yes, that is also an actual emergency.

Now, what is NOT an emergency:

"I ran out of my Synthroid and haven't taken a pill for three days." That is NOT an emergency. That is your own freakin' fault for #1 not noticing all month long that the number of pills in your medicine bottle was dwindling, and #2 for still not noticing for three days that the freakin' thing was EMPTY. In technical terms - you are a moron.

"I'm having a procedure done tomorrow and I need this prescription (dated 6 months ago) filled RIGHT NOW!" That is NOT an emergency. You had the prescription in your hands for 6 months and could have dropped it off at any time to get it filled. But you waited until the last freakin' minute. That's your own damn fault.

"I need this cream filled immediately. It's for acne vulgaris." This is also NOT an emergency. You have one or more pimples. Get over it. You can wait until I'm done with the pain meds for the cancer patient, the heart pills for old Mrs. Smith, and the antibiotic for the baby in the waiting area who is screaming because his infected ear hurts. Just remember - if acne was fatal, no one would live past their teens.

"I need my birth control filled right now because I'm going away on vacation and my plane leaves in an hour." You know, I'm torn on this one. On the one hand, you really should have planned ahead long enough to make sure that you had your refill done in plenty of time before you left. And if your plane is leaving in an hour and you are standing here in my store, there's not a chance in hell that you are going to get to the airport in time to get through security and board your flight. But on the other hand, if you are really that stupid that you think you can breeze into my store to make me drop every thing so you can race to a plane you can't possibly catch - then you are probably too stupid to be allowed to have kids. So maybe I should not only drop everything to fill your prescription, I should shove the damn pills down your throat AND throw in a free box of condoms. I mean, why take chances?

"I need my Vicodin filled 29 days early (for the sixth time in a row) because I accidentally dropped the bottle in the toilet (again)." That is NOT an emergency. That is you being a really lame drug scammer. You are fooling no one, so just give it up already. There will be NO drugs for you today.

"I need my narcotic cough medicine filled early because I accidentally poured that in my kid's cereal instead of milk." (And I swear I'm NOT making that one up!) This is NOT an emergency prescription. It's a whole different kind of emergency. I want you to hand me whatever drugs you have left, and turn the kids over to someone else - RIGHT NOW! If you can't tell the difference between Tussionex and milk, you are far too stupid to be trusted with either children or drugs, and you should probably be locked in a home for the terminally stupid somewhere before you hurt yourself or someone else.

I think I might print this out and post it in 6 inch high letters in my pharmacy. It probably won't help, but it might make my more intelligent customers smile.

April 10, 3'4"

2006-04-10T22:59:00.000-04:00

You know, it unfortunately a very common occurance for people to come to the pharmacy unable to answer the most basic questions. (I guess they don't know there is going to be a quiz.) "What is the patient's date of birth?" seems to be the most difficult one to get answered correctly. Usually most people who don't know the answer will either say straight up, "This is for my neighbor, so I don't know" or they will make an educated guess - "This is for my wife, I think she was born on January 3 or maybe it's January 4. And she's about 50 years old."

But today my boss told me about a real winner. A guy was dropping off a prescription for his kid, and as usual he couldn't rattle off the date of birth. (A lot of dads seem to have that trouble - maybe that's why one of mu customers had them tatooed on his arm? But I digress.....) My boss asked him for the date of birth and after some thought, the guy came up with a month and day. So my boss pressed her luck and attempted to get a year out of the guy - because it actually is helpful to know if the medicine is for an infant or for a 12 year old. Well, the guy thought about it for awhile and finally came up with an answer. Let's add this to the "now I've heard everything" category - the guy said, "Well, he's about this tall" (indicating a height with his hand.) Huh? Does that mean the kid was born in the year "three feet tall"? Or does it mean that his age is "three feet tall"? My own dad was never good at remembering our birthdays, but at least he had the sense to know how old we were. What the f*ck is wrong with that guy?

Note to my boss: Did I write it good enough for you? ;-)

If you didn't want to be a parent, WHY did you have kids?

2006-03-21T22:21:00.000-05:00

This may be a long rant about people who can't be bothered to look out for their kids. I see them all over the place. Tonight, it was the lady in the grocery store who paid no attention as her kid roller skated up and down the aisles, completely heedless of the other customers shopping there. (When I was a kid, no one EVER thought about roller skating in a store - mom or dad would kill you if you tried it!) I guess it was okay with mom that junior was skating around like a lunatic - but I wonder what she'd have said if the kid had actually managed to run into someone?

Of course that's not as bad as the mom of the 3 year old who was in my store one night. We sell those bouncy play balls, and of course all the kids have to bounce, roll or throw them around the store. Well, this little guy was obviously a Tiger Woods wannabee, because he'd grabbed a wiffleball bat and was attempting to play golf with the bat and a convenient play ball. In the process he was knocking stuff off the shelves and probably would have knocked the ball into another customer had there been one in the aisle. So, I went over to the kid and said, "Honey, please don't play with the balls in the store." The kid was only 3 so I figured my comment was more for the mom's benefit than the kid's, and usually if I say something to a kid, mom will finally step in. But not this time. As I walked away I heard the mom telling her friend (in a pretty snotty tone), "Well, if they don't want the kids to play with the balls, why do they have them out?" Ummm, so that you will BUY them you dumb ass? Not for nothing, but I get a lot of elderly customers, What if your kid had managed to hit one of them with the ball? He could have hurt somebody - all because YOU are too stupid to know the difference between a playground and a store.

But it's not just other customers that can get hurt by unattentive parents. I can't count the number of times I've seen a kid ready to fall head first out of a shopping cart because mom or dad has their back to junior and can't see him climbing out of his seat. (If the kid is lucky, I spot them in time and say something to get the parent's attention before disaster strikes. If he's not, I get there just in time to see the cart fall over on its side because junior was trying to make his escape. It might not seem like such a long fall to you, but the kid is falling from a height that is well over his body height. How would YOU like to fall off something taller than you? Sounds painful, doesn't it?)

And my absolute favorite gripe - patents who let their babies chew on whatever item they happen to be buying that day. It's one thing when baby is chewing on the new teether or the sippy cup that mom is getting ready to pay for - at least those items are meant for kids. (But I would still want to wash them before I let a kid chew on them. And I won't even get into how I feel as a cashier that has to handle an item that's been slobbered all over by a sick kid.......) But some of these parents will literally let their kid chew on ANYTHING in their shopping basket. I will never forget the day a lady came up to my counter and the baby was gumming a bottle of freaking NAIL POLISH REMOVER!!! You know, the stuff that says "Harmful or FATAL if swallowed." WHAT THE F*CK WAS SHE THINKING? What if the cap came off? Not all those types of things come with safety seals, you know - because it's not like they are meant to be ingested. I had another lady who needed our assistance in the store because her little one had managed to squirt perfume in his eyes - because once again, mom had let him play with something she was about to buy. Ugh!

To the good parents out there who make an effort to watch their kids, I applaud you - standing ovation. But to the rest of you, I can only ask - what the f*ck is wrong with you?

Dionne's psychic friends don't work here either

2006-03-12T00:53:00.000-05:00

Usually around the beginning of the year, people get new prescription cards from their insurance carriers. Many times it's because they changed providers, or because the insurance company had changed the ID or group numbers on the cards. So I try to ask people if they have received new cards since the last time they had a prescription filled in my store. After they look at me like I am completely insane for asking such a thing, they usually say "Yes. Do you need to see it?" No, I don't need to see it. I'll just pull some random numbers out of my ass and see if they work. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Miss Cleo doesn't work here

2006-03-12T00:44:00.000-05:00

Today a woman came into my store trying to return a cream that she had picked up the other day. She said that she decided not to use it because the literature that came with the drug said not to use it if you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, and she was trying to get pregnant. She seemed quite perturbed that neither her doctor or the pharmacist had told her that she shouldn't be using it if she was trying to get pregnant. So I asked her if she had told anyone that she was trying. Her answer? "No, because I didn't think that was important since it is just a cream." Okay, there are two things wrong with that. Number one - nobody in my pharmacy has psychic powers (and I assume the same is probably true at her doctor's office.) So unless she said something to someone (ANYONE!) how was the pharmacist to know that she was trying to become pregnant. Number two - if it's "just a cream" (the implication being that creams are somehow not drugs, I guess) then WHY would the FDA in its infinite wisdom, make it obtainable ONLY WITH A DOCTOR'S PRESCRIPTION? Hello! If it was not a drug then you could just buy it in the beauty aisle with all the moisturizers, wrinkle creams, etc. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Not out of the mouth of babes please...

2006-03-04T21:54:00.000-05:00

Sometimes at the pharmacy, we run into patients who have their children drop off new prescriptions. Now that's not usually a problem as the "child" is usually an adult bringing in something for an elderly parent, or a teenager bringing in something for a sick parent. But every so often, we get a 5 or 6 year old bringing in a prescription for a mommy or daddy who is waiting in the car. Putting aside the obvious issue of why on earth would you send an unattended 5 year old into a store where anyone could walk off with them....... most of the time these children can't answer the questions we need answered. Like for instance, what is the name of the patient. "Mommy" just doesn't quite cut it. And forget getting a date of birth or even any insurance info. Those are questions that most little kids can't handle - especially when mommy or daddy didn't bother writing any useful information on the prescription to help us out. Parents - what the f*ck is wrong with you?

1912 prices?

2006-02-17T23:26:00.000-05:00

Okay, just so you know that stupidity really is everywhere - yesterday I mailed out a couple of bills. Before I put them in the mailbox, I carefully affixed a stamp to the corner of each of the envelopes. Unfortunately, I chose my TWO CENT stamps....... what the f*ck is wrong with me?

Trade school drop out?

2006-02-11T19:10:00.000-05:00

A number of years ago we had our pharmacy remodeled. We got all new fixtures, carpeting, etc. We even got a new sink. Now I'm no plumber, but it seems to me that the first step in removing and/or replacing a sink would be to turn off the water...... Unfortunately, the (supposedly qualified) plumber we hired forgot about that one tiny step. Fortunately the electrician who was working in the pharmacy that same night had turned off the power or we'd have had barbequed workmen in our new indoor swimming pool. It was quite awhile before the carpeting stopped going "squish" when we walked on it. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Oh the weather outside will be frightful.....

2006-02-10T21:00:00.000-05:00

I received a phone call today from one of our customers. We had run out of one of his medications yesterday and had only given him a few tablets to tide him over until today's order arrived at 3 PM. The gentleman called me about 1 PM inquiring about his drug. I told him that the order wasn't here yet but I would fill the balance of his prescription as soon as it did arrive. I then told him politely that they should have mentioned to him yesterday that the order doesn't usually arrive intil late afternoon. He told me that they did tell him that the order wouldn't be in until 3 but he was concerned that the delivery might not come because of the weather. You see we were expecting a huge snowstorm - ON SATURDAY! So yeah, I can see how Saturday's threatened blizzard might make it impossible to deliver drugs on FRIDAY. You never know just when a blizzard might decide to travel backwards in time to screw up the day before...... What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Do I look like the Bank Of America?

2006-02-10T20:14:00.000-05:00

Like many retail establishments, our store takes debit cards and you do have an option to get a limited amount of cash back with your transaction. At our store, the most extra you can take out per transaction is $50. If you need more than that, then there is a regular ATM machine right next door. It would take literally less than 2 minutes to walk from the pharmacy in our store to the ATM in the grocery store next door. Well, apparently that was too long a walk for one woman. She wanted $150 and she wasn't about to walk all the way to the grocery store. So she broke her purchase up into 3 transactions - and took $50 each time. The only problem with that is that she wiped out the cash drawer in the process. You see, there is a reason we have a $50 limit - we don't keep a lot of cash in the register because we don't want to get robbed. But I guess it's okay that we didn't have any cash left to make change for the next customers - I mean we did save that woman that long long walk........ What the f*ck is wrong with you? (And what the f*ck is wrong with my company that they can't invest in a computer that will halt the transaction with a simple statement like "funds not available."?)

Watch out for that tree!

2006-02-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

We get telephone calls every day from customers who are obviously calling from a cell phone. I don't have a problem with that (unless the connection is really bad) because I know some people will use their cell when they are calling from the doctor's office or from work, or there are even a few people who don't have a landline available at their homes. But what I can never understand is the people who call me while they are driving down the road. There is nothing scarier that having a customer trying to read a prescription number to you and then saying "Oops - I almost got into an accident." PULL THE FREAKING CAR OVER AND THEN TALK TO ME! What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Yeah that narrows things down

2006-02-10T20:01:00.000-05:00

A woman came into the store today looking for a cream that a friend had recommended. Naturally she came to my counter to see if we carried it. There is nothing at all unusual about that except for one thing. The woman had no idea what the name of the cream was. She only knew one of the ingredients - vitamin K. I had no idea which product she had in mind, and when I consulted the pharmacist, he couldn't think of anything either. So I politely told the woman that we could be more helpful if she could find out the name of the item. So she gave us that one extra detail that made all the difference (NOT!) - she said "It comes in a tube." Yeah, that narrows it down to only 3 or 4 thousand products....... What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Her name is Mommy

2006-02-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

A woman came into the store one day to pick up medicine for her elderly mother. She came up to the counter and asked if we had a prescription for Ann Smith. (Names have been changed to protect the stupid and those related to the stupid.) We didn't. The woman assured us that we should have a prescription ready for Ann Smith as it had been dropped off by another family member earlier in the day. So we checked the computer and found that we had no Ann Smith listed at all. The woman became rather upset and informed us that her mother had been a regular customer of our store for years. We explained repeatedly that we had no Ann Smith in our records and that perhaps she was confusing us with one of our competitors. (Our competitors aren't that close to us, but people still get confused from time to time anyway.) The woman insisted that she had the right store and eventually left in a huff. Some time later the woman's sister called. She explained that her sister had asked for the wrong name and that the medication shound be under Ann Jones. Now Ann Jones was in our computer as she really was a regular customer of ours for the last 20 years or so, and she did have a prescription waiting. The woman on the phone apologized and said that her sister had given us their mother's maiden name by mistake - a name that hadn't been used in over 50 years . Now I realize that not every person knows every detail about his or her own mother, but it never once occured to me that her name would ever be one of those missing details. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

I have to pay to do it myself?

2006-02-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

I've never been a fan of self-serve gas stations mainly because I hate the smell of gasoline, so I really don't want to have to touch the nozzle. I'd rather pay the extra money to have someone pump it for me. But recently I've discovered that I don't have to pay extra for service. A couple of miles from my house there is a main street with 2 gas stations side by side. Both are name-brand companies and they are literally side by side. One is full-service and one is self-service only. And strangely enough, the full-service one is cheaper than the self-service one. So people using the self-service one are actually paying more money for the priviledges of doing the work themself and of having their hands reek of gasoline. I'm not sure which confuses me more - the fact that the owners of the station decided to have higher prices, or the fact that people use that station fairly often. What the f*ck is wrong with them?