Where's The Corner Drugstore?

I admit that I am old enough to remember going to the lunch counter at the corner drug store after school. The big draw was a drink you'd be hard to find now, a cherry phosphate. I know where the lunch counters went in drugstores. 

For some reason when they started insisting on being called pharmacies, they took out the lunch counters. Was it to stock durable medical equipment? Was it to stock more brands of painkillers or allergy medicines? No it was to stock Cheerios. But none of these are my beef with one unnamed pharmacy. My beef is not being opened on Sat. & Sun. My beef is shutting down for a lunch break in the middle of the day.

But here's the topper. Today I arrived (according to them) 15 minutes before closing for lunch, prescription in hand. I was told they couldn't fill it until after lunch, not enough time. There were no other customers waiting. Not enough time to scan a script, print a label and have two people count to 30. I found that ridiculous.

So while I waited in my car for them to finish their lunch break I called the company's corporate office to ask a simple question. My question was, a customer walking in with a prescription in hand should they be able to have it filled in 15 minutes? No. Okay how about 20 minutes? No. Why, because your prescription has to go into the queue. You don't get special treatment just because you walked in.

Let's talk about that, yes today I walked in. I walked in on two crutches and a pair of visibly shaky legs because the wheelchair lift in my minivan is on the fritz. I even explained that to the clerk when they told me they couldn't finish filling my script before lunch. I explained that they were putting undue strain on my body because now I have to walk-in and walk-out TWICE, when I should be riding in an electric wheelchair.

Imagine you walk into a curio shop and the owner tells you, I'll be right with you, after I finish filling all my online Amazon orders. I'll be with you in about a half hour or so. Are you sticking around to buy that chatzky or are you going somewhere where they wait on the customer in front of them first.

I'm not asking to bring back the luncheonette, where I used to have a warm pecan cinnamon bun and cup of coffee after mass (or instead of mass). But I am asking to bring back plain old customer service.

If your name says you are a pharmacy and you are open on Sundays as they were even in states with Blue Laws, then you should be open for more than chips, dips, and diapers. You should be open to fill prescriptions which was where your exemption to Blue Laws stemmed from anyway. 

I am not naming the company. Why, because I plan on checking comments to see how many readers guess the company I'm writing about.