Note: If you don’t like rants, please feel free to skip down to the photo and video and/or directly to Comments.
Rant On: As most of you know, I am full-time caregiver for my elderly mother. Welp, she gets anxious when I leave the house, so I try to make it quick. So yesterday, she needed refills on her prescriptions. I called the pharmacy to check that the doc had sent them in. Yes he had. When could they be ready? In an hour. Sounds great, are you sure? If so, I’d be there in an hour! They assured me that they were sure.
Rookie mistake, don’t know where my head was: I didn’t ask for the name of the person on the phone!
Exactly one hour later, I’m there, but in a long, long line. There was another long, long line at the drive-through, so I parked, went inside, and stood in the in-person long, long line. Hopefully that was the best move, as I saved gas; OTOH, no one else wore masks!; OTOH, I’m vaxxed and boosted. And they have every 6 feet marked out on the floor. So I waited. It took about 30 minutes to get up to the counter — they were moving pretty quickly, but had about 10 people on their feet in front of me and at least 6 cars in the drive-through.
AND… as you probably guessed or I wouldn’t be ranting… her prescriptions were not ready! “Did you need those today? We have them on order for tomorrow.” Why yes. Yes, I need them today. That is why I called you and spoke with you on the phone an hour and a half ago, at which time you assured me that they would be ready in one hour. And I did not want to have to make multiple trips, which is why I asked you if you were sure that they would be ready, and you assured me that they would be ready, and that is why I am here now. You have had 30 minutes longer than you promised me it would take because I have been in this line for the last 30 minutes. So yes, I want them TODAY, right NOW!
Oh. They’d have to check to see if they had them in stock. Fine. Why yes, they had them in stock. They’d be ready in 10-15 minutes. I said OK. Didn’t ask for an explanation as to why they thought tomorrow when I specifically verified that I would pick them up in one hour. Or if they wanted to wait until tomorrow, why they didn’t call the house (our number is in their computer) and stop me from coming. Hadn’t thought about this diary at the time, or I would have asked for more of an explanation — it would probably have made an absurd story even more absurd.
I actually left the pharmacy, where there is nothing to do for 10-15 minutes other than hang out with a bunch of non-mask-wearers breathing into my air. So I went to get groceries, which had been my plan for after picking up medications. That went fine, so I was back to the pharmacy in about an hour.
And miracle of miracles, everything was ready and there was no line then and they checked me out and I double checked every bottle to ensure correctness, and I was able to finally come home!
So that was fun. All’s well that ends well, I suppose. But if you are in customer service, please don’t over-promise! Much better is to under-promise, tell me that it would take longer than an hour, then over-deliver. Tell me 3 hours if you need that much of a cushion. Then if someone wants to take a chance that it’s ready early, they can come in an hour after their call. But I, and I’m sure many others, do NOT want to run back and forth, nor wait interminable minutes in a disease-spreading malaise, for something that should be so straightforward!! /Rant Off
Alternatively the best win-win solution, expand: Set up a game room with Plexiglass shields between, and make game play FREE for those waiting for their prescriptions. :-D It won’t get me home to Mom any faster… then again, maybe a few folks would be willing to let me go first so they could play longer! And at least nobody would be bored: