That really jam themselves up ones’ ass sideways right quick.
Yes, it is.
I’m here to bitch, whine, moan, and complain so I don’t hold this inside and let it ruin, or at least impinge upon, what is otherwise a super-awesome time in my life.
The family has dealt with quite a ton of shit over the last 3 years and finally there’s light and all that happy-crappy. Short story: it’s been one long-ass MF’n road and I’m completely wiped. I have find I have little patience for most people and things anymore. That’s bad, I know, but it is what it is. If I don’t actually know or like you, then out there in the Big Bad World if you piss me off I might just let you know it.
That was today.
I got to run an errand for my youngest daughter who is currently 9 months pregnant with our second grandchild expected to arrive on or before December 5th. This errand involved making a trip to…Walgreens. If you know me at all you know I don’t have a shiny opinion of lots of things but doctors and anyone in the Medical Establishment, really, are at the top of the list, tied only with lawyers. One thing I cannot stand to do, and almost never goes smoothly no matter which one I use, is going to the pharmacy.
A regular ol’ thing for you maybe.
Drive You Right UP the MFn Wall thing for me.
I get to the Walgreens in Groton, CT and, at first, I had a rather nice Shopping Experience. Probably because I had to get a few things and was very happy to see that it seems, unlike some other stores, every Walgreens is probably laid out in the same manner. There’s one where I live in New London and, well I might as well have been there instead of Groton. I found a nice deal on some fancy wash for my old face AND to my utter DELIGHT I found 2 big bottles of Regular Tums I don’t about you but, in my area, finding that exact item in any size is like striking gold these days. They had 2. I got 2.
There was no line at the pharmacy counter so the blonde lady called me over and I gave her the details. Like other Walgreens I waited a bit while she shuffled around trying to find what she was looking for. (I once waited over 45 minutes in my local Walgreens for them to find a filled prescription that was in a some bin somewhere. No joke.) She finds it. She brings it over. I’m expecting her to ask me for my youngest child’s birth date.
She asked for the address.
To my shame, I don’t know the exact address. I mean, I know where it IS. I can get there. I know what street it’s on. So I give her that.
She says, “No.”
I say, “I don’t know what address you have but she lives on ____ Ave in New London.”
“Well, that’s not what we have.” Says she.
Ok, honey, what do you want me to do here? Are we on Wheel of Fortune now? Should I buy a vowel?
Before I can ask, she tells me there’s no insurance listed and if I want it I have to pay $120.00 to get it.
Ahhh, the joys of the pharmacy.
Knowing I may not get her on the phone because she doesn’t answer all that often on the first try, I call my daughter. Luckily for me, she did answer. I try to give the woman the phone so she can get the information she wants and she held up her hands like I was pointing a gun at her decrying;
“Oh no! I can’t touch a cell phone!”
Pussy bitch.
So I received the task of relaying…twice …the insurance information. You just to ease the little chick’s phobia. She put in the computer and we waited for a while. In the meantime the stupid PIN pad kept wanting me to do shit I didn’t care about. My patience is fleeing right out the sliding double doors behind me.
This is supposed to be easy. This is supposed to be quick. I am doing someone a favor not vouching that they’ve never been a part of the Community Party.
I’m trying to get information from my daughter to relay to the pharmacist who cannot understand she has become secondary to the entire process.Ok, fine, she was already on the peripheral and she was never going to get off in my eyes. There I said it.
The insurance finally goes and, once again instead of asking something intelligent like “What her date of birth”, she again asked for the address. My daughter hears her, she gives me the exact address and the blonde argues that its’ “not right”. My daughter states it again and I relay it again.
“That’s not what we have.”
Seriously, you dumb bitch, what the fuck do you want me to do here? Just toss out any old address and see if it sticks?
On the razor’s edge, I managed to say, “I don’t know what else to tell you, that’s her address.” You know, since you’re not being of any help here Vanna.
“Well, can you at least put in her phone number?” Blonde says and point to the PIN pad.
At that point I very politely flipped her off. I did. Just gently. Nice and easy. It was more of reflex than anything else at that point. honestly, it was. Here’s the trigger for that; my youngest has changed her phone number like people change their underwear. She has! Years ago, I stopped trying to memorize it because I knew it was going to change. She’s just in my contacts. I couldn’t call her without my phone to save my soul. As I look down at the PIN pad the number says 860-389-(put in the last 4). I instantly knew that was wrong. My daughter starts telling me her phone number, I can’t do anything with the PIN pad and…..
The blonde wigged!
It was priceless. I can’t stop laughing about it and I hope she reads this, realizes what a dumb bitch she was and that she deserved the bird she was given.
In true Millennial Fashion she RAN over to her boss whining like a child. It was beautiful.
The boss comes over and instantly realizes he’s not gonna get any ice from me. He forges ahead like a GenX Trooper. He wants the address but he’s smart enough to realize the one they have is wrong so he gives a hint. WOW! Right? No BS at all.
Come to find out they have an address on file that’s 3 years old. In fact, it’s my address. Neither myself or my daughter can figure that one out OR the fact they were looking for is also mine…from 3 years ago.
I could have spent half the rest of the afternoon there if I hadn’t flipped her off. She would have kept treating it like a game show instead of coming to the straight and simple understanding that she was wasting both our time.
Want the real kicker here? I dropped the stuff off to my daughter and….they didn’t give her the whole thing.
Gotta love ’em or be like me and avoid like the black plague.
It gets better…don’t leave yet.
The boss pharmacist ‘forgot’ to ring up my items so I took them to the front register where I encountered the stereotypical, but unfortunately not funny, Grumpy Old Man.
He spent about 7 minutes arguing with the cashier repeatedly telling her that she didn’t take off a KitKat bar…keep that in mind the following all about 1 single regular KitKat bar.
She kept showing him her screen where the item had been removed. Plain as day. Right there in his face.
He couldn’t get it. He started griping about how he’s ‘on a fixed income’ because ‘the democrats ruined the economy’.
Fuck off, old man, get your own shit straight.
Repeatedly, he took his three items from one side of the cash register to the other as he added them up.
1 large pack of paper towels
2 KitKat bars
“This is $12.00,” he’d say about the paper towels. “These are, what? Fifty cents each?”
The cashier kept telling him the KitKat bars were $0.99 each. So he added it up again and kept coming to $14.00. Why was he being charged $14.91!
Do you have any idea how much it took for me to shut my mouth until that old fuck finally realized there was sales tax on all that shit? It wasn’t some Government or Walgreens plot to get an extra $0.91 off the old geezer who obviously should have paid attention and made better choices in his much younger years.
THEN, as the sale was run up the first time, he was given a $5.00 off coupon. He could not understand why she wasn’t taking that $5.00 of no matter how many times she informed him it was $5.00 off on his NEXT purchase and he kept saying (I shit you not!):
“So I can go outside right now, come back in, buy something and get five dollars off?”
She kept saying; “That’s right, sir.”
“But I can’t use it right now?”
“That’s right, sir.”
That exact exchange happened no less than 4 full times.
I think, by the time he was finished everyone was ready to cheer if a house should fall upon him.
By the time I got to the Pet Place for flea and tick shampoo, the dispensary for meds for someone else where, thankfully, I had no problems at all because stoners know what the fuck they’re doing no matter what anyone else says. That’s how you run a damn pharmacy Walgreens, CVS, and all you other money hungry little grubbers out there. Then to my daughter’s house to drop stuff out and then, blissfully, finally, home, I really had enough of the entire world.
Yet, still, I am grateful for the lesson they reinforced today and that is; Who Not To Be Like. Examples are everywhere. Follow them, please. I beg of you.
Now I gotta get ready for Thanksgiving Dinner and the arrival of new granddaughter. Both of which I am looking very forward to beholding.
I have spent weeks behind the scenes working was diligently on some awesome things no one but will care about but I do care about them and I’m proud as hell of them. While instituting One Stop Shopping on my site…whoa what a job! I discovered some thing that a lot of people never get to say and I’ve been able to say it for a while ow I just never knew. My books are, quite literally, available on sites and places all over the globe–no, not just frickin’ Amazon.. Places I never even thought of. Places that had once turned me down! I may not have become the Next Great American Author but I have worked my ass off for the last 15 years and created something I can be extremely proud of. I have accomplished my dreams and goals as a writer. Maybe not in the big flashy way but…in the end, baby,
So, you know, I’m a little tired from all of that. I’m not going to let the two…individuals…we just discussed taint any of it with anger. That’s why you just read this. So, I could be like Elsa and Let It Go.
Lisa Beth Darling 