“Hello?”

“Hey”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing.  So, do you use the pharmacy much?”

“What?”

“The pharmacy.  Do you use it much?”

“Like a Walgreens?”

“Like, any pharmacy.  Do you use it very much?”

“I don’t know.  I guess the normal amount.”

“So, you normally get prescriptions?”

“What?  No. I thought you meant just the store.  Like I go in there to buy beer or ice or something.”

“So no prescriptions?”

“Not regularly.  I’m a 40-year-old healthy man. I don’t take a heart pill regularly.  I get stuff when I’m sick.  Where are you going with this?”

“Gotcha.  Well, I had to get something for my foot and it was a refill of what I already had so I had to use the actual pharmacy part of the store.”

“Got it.  Look, I’m at work.”

“Sorry.  So, here’s my point.  I go in with the old bottle and show it to them and explain that I need the refill.  The girl says they will need to fill the prescription and asks if I’ll wait.  I ask how long it will be and she says about 20 minutes.  I say that I won’t and that I’ll come back the next morning.”

“Ok, you’ve really got me on the edge of my seat.”

“I know.  So, I come back the next morning and ask for my refill.  She looks it up and then tells me it’ll be about 20 minutes while they fill it.”

“So they didn’t have it ready?”

“No!  I remind her of our conversation the day before and she says she remembers it.  So, I explain that yesterday she said it would be 20 minutes.”

“Does she have an excuse?”

“She points out that I didn’t want to wait the day before and that I wanted to come back today.  I tell her that was the whole point.  I didn’t want to wait, so I’d come back the next day and pick up when it was filled and waiting.”

“And?”

“She is utterly confused.  At this point, I know it’s useless to continue pointing out the obvious but I can’t help myself, and I don’t know what else to do.  I ask if part of the prescription filling process is a mandatory in-store waiting period.  She tells me it is not.  So, I then ask why my prescription wasn’t filled the day before.  She tells me they were very busy.  I say that while I understand they were busy, I arrived, waited in line, and put in my order.  I ask if my prescription was simply discarded once I said I wasn’t going to wait around.  She tells it wasn’t, but that it didn’t get filled because they were so busy.”

“I’m beyond confused.  Did you just lose your place in the priority line?”

“Apparently.”

“Did you ask for the manager?”

“I did.”

“What did the manager say?”

“After I explained the situation, he repeated that they were very busy.  I then said that I needed it filled quickly this morning since they didn’t do it yesterday.”

“And?”

“He told me they were very busy today as well and that there were people here ahead of me that they needed to fill first, but that they could get mine done in the next 15-20 minutes.”

“So, what did you do?”

“I waited.  What else could I do?  The fact was that my pills were not in a bottle ready for me to take. Nothing was going to change that.  So, I stomped around the store replaying the conversation in my head.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, at this point I was more confused than I was mad.  The conversational maneuvering they’d just pulled was incredible.  It’s like they had an impenetrable defense.  As long as they stuck to their script, my argument continued to hit a deadend.  She had me.”

“Genius.”

“It was masterful.  By the end, I wasn’t even mad.”

“How could you be?  You were simply outmatched.”

“I never stood a chance.”