Monday, July 16, 2007

You've Been Good About Indulging My Michael Moore Infatuation. I'll Reward You With The Tale Of How I Claimed The Bounty Placed On A Customer's Head.

The upside down Bactroban cap was the last straw. "THIS TUBE IS DEFECTIVE!" screamed the lunatic. "I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!"

The Pharmacy Manager calmly showed the lunatic that the defect was that he was trying to put the cap on, yes, upside down. The lunatic wouldn't budge. He wasn't leaving until he got a new tube. I knew caving in when he demanded a refund for a three-quarters empty bottle of Tobradex because "he wasn't satisfied with the product" would only lead to trouble. The Pharmacy Manager wouldn't listen to me then. Now I was the only one who could bail her out. As the lunatic walked out the door with his new tube of Bactroban, she said "I will buy a 12 pack of beer for anyone who can run that man off"

Everyone in the pharmacy knew who "anyone" was, and I understood the parameters of the mission, should i choose to accept it. It was to be a clandestine operation. Should any part of it become public, those who sent me in would deny all knowledge of it or me. This tape will self-destruct in 15 seconds.

I also knew what I was up against. I had waited on the lunatic for many months and had never once acted like I had appreciated his business in any way, yet he kept coming back. That kind of thing happens when you keep giving them free prescriptions. This would not be easy. But there was free beer. I set my terms.

"You're not talking Milwaukee's Best are you?"

"Anything in the store."

"I'm in"

I started with the "out of stock" trick. Totally untraceable. How many pharmacies have ever really run out of Vicodin? None that want to stay in business, but that's exactly what happened the next two times the lunatic came to the counter.

This was coupled with the "exaggerated order time" maneuver. It takes a week to order Vicodin. When you're a fucking lunatic that is.

Closely related to this is "exaggerated fill time" When there's a beer bounty on your head, it takes an hour to fill your prescription. Then when you come back in an hour it's not quite done.

At this point, regular customers of Walgreen's are saying to themselves, "You mean there are places where this type of thing would be considered unusual?"

Even with all this, I still needed a bit of luck. The lunatic called at 5 minutes to closing last night and wanted me to stay late. That doesn't happen even when I like you unless you're hot. This morning Target called to transfer "all his prescriptions." I emptied out his profile, sent it over to the bullseye, and now am happily drinking an imported Pale Ale.

Of course I suppose I could have bought my own beer 6 months ago when all this started, but beer tastes better when you earn it.

Mission Accomplished.

6 comments:

Pharmacy Mike said...

Happy drinking drugmonkey. I wish we could do that with a few of our customers, but our pharmacy manager is one of those customer service/anything-for-a-buck type who will bend over and take it in the ass if it meant the customer kept his business at our store.

There's a Walgreens opening up a quarter mile down the road from us, and whenever a customer is dissatisfied, they threaten to go to Walgreens. Someday maybe they'll understand that this is not so much a threat as it is an incentive for us to keep doing a shitty job. Take'em all Walgreens, I still get paid the same whether we fill 2800 or 1500 scripts per week.

Jenn Siva said...

I think my pharmacy is trying to get rid of me. Oh wait, I go to Walgreens.

Anonymous said...

When my little chain corner drug store was closed by the company, the files were sold to another company's chain store down the street. The pharmacy manager later told me, "Where did you get all these crazy people?" I replied, "I was saving them all for you,John." We had quite a collection of lunatics.

Romius T. said...

good work sir, I may only be reading you once a week now , but it is always worth it.

I should add I have only an hour of internet time allowed to me whenever I visit the library. I hope this pleases you. say hello the future mrs drug nazi for me.

do you know of anything that works for internet addiction?

Anonymous said...

Ok, so I work for WAG, and they're not ALL that bad. Our service is actually pretty decent...and I know it beats CVS because I've run off several nut bags who threaten to go down the road to them and THEY ALWAYS FREAKIN' COME BACK. The truly crazy ones always do. The drunks, the freaks, the drug addicts...they always come back. Just you wait, drugmonkey, he'll be calling you at 5 to close next weekend because he didn't make it to Target on time and won't get why you can't fill his Rx because he "gets it there all the time". They always come back. Always.

The PharmD Student said...

Occasionally when I get down and out I read your archive (which I've already read 2 or 3 times), and this post always makes me smile. Thank you.