Lights Out

This weekend the lights started to flicker in my bathroom. Eventually, the lights wouldn’t go on at all. Must be the switch. The bathroom window looks out into the middle of some weird empty middle space in our four-plex, so it’s not really a source of light. So, more or less, depending on the time of day, like say morning, getting ready for work, it’s dark in there.

I was going to buy a new switch yesterday, but picking up a prescription for my daughter after work yesterday was like study in frustration, people not reading the prescription, not having the prescription and driving all over hallelujah looking for it. My daughter cannot take the generic of one of her medications, and at one in-store pharmacy, where we usually go, they filled it generic, and after waiting for it, and finding it was generic, not name brand, they informed me they only had 1/2 the amount of the name brand and would not give me that amount, but would call around for me, to find out who might have the name brand. So they called another pharmacy, to which I drove during the rush hour, with a frozen pizza (which I’d bought at the first store) thawing in my car.

At the second store, I wait for the twenty minutes they asked me to wait, picking up some ice cream, this time. Then they said, “It will be ten more minutes.” Fine, we wait, sitting on the little bench near the pharmacy with our ice cream getting softer all the time. I finally get to pick up the prescription and once again, it’s generic. This time, it’s taking all my patience, I want to just scream, “Don’t you read the freaking prescription when you fill it?” As the clerk says, “Oh, can’t she just take the generic?” I smile, and say, “No, she can’t take the generic, and that’s why we drove from the first store, who called this store to make sure you had this.”

This store, at least, as the pharmacist at the first store had told me, has the name brand of this particular drug. Now, they are nice, sorry, trying to hurry for me. We replace the melted ice cream with a new container, and finally, I’m on my way home at nearly 7:00 pm in the evening. I’m too tired and too hungry to try to find a hardware store and pick up a replacement light switch. I bake the frozen pizza which turns out funky from being thawed out in the car.

I must be getting old, because at times like this I remember that good customer service used to exist. That there was a time in the past, that had the first pharmacist called to the second pharmacy, at the second pharmacy they would have had that prescription, name brand, actually waiting for me. This is when I’m so disappointed with America, with our mega-stores, and our culture that debates whether we should still teach our children cursive, when pharmacists don’t read and look like they are so overwhelmed, when I sit and wait for my daughter’s prescription and I hear elderly folks say things like “What? $285.00 for this month’s worth of my prescription? Why, last time it was $190.00 for six weeks. I can’t pay that.” It’s depressing. Like getting ready for work in the dark.