I know these words will come back to haunt me someday, but old people - feebs - make me crazy in retail situations.
There is one drugstore in our tiny (1,500 population) town and, what with various prescriptions for me, my wife and her college student daughter and high school student son, I'm in there more than I care to be. That's mainly because I work from home and that makes me the pharmacy go-fer, in addition to taking care of all of the other day-to-day tasks associated with keeping a household going.
This puts me in direct contact with the population segment that uses the health care infrastructure the most - old people.
(Now, I realize that being born in 1945 makes me a geezer to a lot of people, but I'm still young enough to put a premium on getting my transaction done and getting the hell out of the way of the next person in line.)
Every time I go to the drugstore, I end up behind at least one desperately slow old person who refuses to use a credit/debit card and insists on writing a check for his/her medications.
I put a stopwatch to one woman a couple of weeks ago and was amazed to note that she took more than three minutes - THREE MINUTES!!! - to write a check. Good, God! I thought she was writing her memoirs!
And, of course, it took her another couple of minutes to slooooooooooowly record her payment in her check register and stuff her checkbook back into her purse, also in slow motion. Did I mention it took her a long time to fish the checkbook out of the purse in the first place? Then she had to fumble with her prescription and put it into the purse. Then she had to put on her wraparound ultra-dark space invader sunglasses and shuffle toward the door.
Unfortunately, the woman behind the counter is also pushing 80 and incapable of doing anything quickly. When she swipes my credit card through the card reader, she moves it so slowly that it's a miracle that the machine can read the datastrip. She obviously doesn't understand that the faster she swipes it, the more likely it is that the machine will get an accurate read.
This afternoon, she interrupted the transaction to take a phone call from someone wanting to talk to the pharmacist.
"Do you want to talk to the pharmist (yes, that's exactly what she said)?"
Maybe it's time to increase my Wellbutrin dosage.
1 comment:
You are really an excellent writer. I hate being behind people who write checks. RRRR. Who does that anymore anyway, you would think we have advanced. I also get crabby behind elderly in the store, or women with baby carriages. I hate being in such a hurry, and stressing, and I tell myself to relax.
-Plus I need to remember to always respect the elderly.
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