So I have some rather unsightly warts on my fingers. A course of freezing didn’t really help much, so the dermatologist wrote me a prescription. She said it required compounding, and told me that of the big-box pharmacies, the only one that does compounding is Walgreens. Some mom-and-pop stores might still do it, but I’d have to call around. Lacking the time to do that, I went to Walgreen’s yesterday evening.
Everyone at Walgreen’s was very friendly. While I waited, one of the pharmacists spent ten minutes helping an elderly woman figure out which of her many prescription discount cards would be best for each of her many prescriptions. Eventually, they filled one of my two prescriptions (I also have a cold, so this trip was killing two birds with one stone), but the pharmacist told me that they didn’t have one of the two ingredients for the compound. They called a neighboring pharmacy, who said they would mix it up, and one of the pharmacists offered to pick it up himself and have it in for me at opening this morning.
This morning, there were two voice-mails from the pharmacist–the first informing me that he’d gotten the prescription, and the second letting me know that it wasn’t covered by my insurance, it was $35, and asking if I still wanted it. My husband called him back while I slept in a bit. When I got downstairs, he said “We are switching all of our prescriptions to Walgreens now.” When he talked to the pharmacist, he had apologized profusely for not having the ingredients on hand, and offered to bring it to our house on the way into work!
House calls from a big-box pharmacist. I am amazed.
No, I’m no Pollyanna and I am one of the grumpiest gits alive, but I do often wonder about all those tales of dreadful customer service. Yeah, it exists, I know, and I have been know to rush in tears of frustration and fury from dealing with London Transport. Grrr. But on the whole, I’m usually thinking that I know working at the sharp end of retail can involve some bad times, so I’m usually impressed at the cheerful and pleasant and helpful attitude of shop staff.
but oh well, I just go and walk by the sea for a while, but they were lovely old boys, and said, “we noticed your tail light is cracked, and while not exactly illegal … well, we have replaced it, anyway, and the way the gear pedal is set, we don’t see how that can work for you, small person having small feet, so we have taken the liberty of altering it …”. I was inwardly slightly worried about whether this was going to cost more money than I had, but no, they charged pennies for the tail light cover, saying it was an old one we had lying around anyway and it fitted, and we hope you do not mind it being an old one", and compared to a place I had once taken the bike to, who just sort of threw me the keys and kept yapping to friend on telephone, these guys definitely wanted me to try the bike, check I was happy, and all was fine, and indeed it was. Now, the gear pedal thing, I had got used to doing it my way, so that particular bit of help was not help but okay, and the cheap light cover thing was nice, but the BEST thing was seeing that these guys really did seem interested in their job EVEN to a sort of joke customer like me, not driving big impressive bike. But of course, I had been recommended to them by word of mouth and I also recommended them to others.