Black Magic Women ~ The Pharmacy

Not all that long ago a person would become a pharmacist and they'd own their own drugstore, complete with lunch counter/soda fountain and a huge selection of magazines, comic books, and out of town newspapers. Now it seems like all the drugstores in Florida are either owned by CVS or Walgreens and all the pharmacists are on salary. It seems that there's always at least one drugstore nearby that's open twenty-four hours a day seven days a week, and rather than compounding your 'script from chemicals, like in the old days, they're just counting pills and typing a label.

If they know you they'll remark "Oh, the Suchandsuch you've been taking didn't work? Well I hear that this new stuff has less side effects anyway!" but it's$3.60 a tablet and the other was only $1.20. They never tell you that it'd be cheaper to buy the 50mg pill and simply break it into two 25mg pieces. The pill is already scored to break in two. No, the whole process, the entire industry, is based on Black Magic to guarantee that a fool and his money are soon parted.

So why is it that when I was a kid coming in to get some magic new drug the pharmacist would tell me to get a Coke or maybe read a comic book because he "needed a few minutes". Now you give them the prescription and get your head chewed off for not calling it in first, especially a refill, and they tell you to "stop back in a couple of hours. It should be ready then". It won't be, but that's a ploy to get you to aimlessly wander the aisles for another half an hour and find a bunch of junk that you neither needed nor had any intention of buying today. When your prescription is finally ready they look at your basket full of "not neededs" and say "Oh, I can ring that up for you here so you don't have to go through that big line by the door!" and they make you feel like they did you a big favor.