Incident at Rite Aid Made Me Furious

My goodness, why didn't you just go in?? It is very silly to wait,
fuming, in your car when there is obviously an issue with the
drive-through (someone parking in the wrong place).

Don't just threaten and threaten to take your business elsewhere.
Actually do it. I've done it (without throwing a fit) and did not
even have to call my doctor. If your prescriptions are different and
you really do have to call your doctor, /just do it/.

"Your closing comments about the pharmacist's intelligence is simply
obnoxious and uncalled for. This letter says a lot more about you than
it does about her." From a previous poster, and I do agree. It would
be nice if folks could refrain from unnecessary comments on
intelligence in what is supposed to be a business letter.

I found it difficult to even take this letter seriously when we got to
the point of calling the busy pharmacy from the car, refusing to be
placed on hold, and letting the pharmacist know how long it was
taking. This reminds me of people at an office I used to work at who,
when calling my department and getting hold music/busy signal, would
actually walk over to the department and interrupt the current call we
were on to let us know they were trying to call us and it was busy,
and they needed help! It's busy because someone else is being helped.



For future reference, when placing a business call and being asked
after greeting if you can hold, the person you called is busy taking
care of other customers. The best response to the question, unless
there is truly some sort of emergency, is "yes, I can hold."

Perhaps the driver refused to move. Or maybe a conversation similar to
the following took place:

driver: "Will this interact with my other meds?"

pharmacy employee: "No, this is safe to take with the other 2
medications we have on your profile."

driver: "2 medicines? I take 15 different meds, doesn't your computer
show that?"

pharmacy employee, somewhat puzzled: "and you had them all filled at
Rite Aid?"

driver: "No, some at Walgreen's , CVS, a couple at Kmart, why does
that matter?"

pharmacy employee, trying to think of a polite response when she
really wants to say "Because there is not some magic computer
somewhere that tells me every single medication you had filled at any
pharmacy in the United States at the push of a button!"

Phone rings

caller: Yeah, I've been behind 1 car in the drive thru for the past 10
minutes and I want to know what's taking so long?"

driver to pharmacy employee: "You need to tell whoever's on the phone
to hold since you are in the middle of waiting on me!"

pharmacy employee to caller: "Ma'am, can you please hold?" Then to the
first driver " The total is $54.87."

driver: "What! I'm not supposed to pay more than ten dollars for my
meds with my insurance!"

pharmacy employee: "You have an insurance card? So sorry, I didn't
realize you had an insurance card, the magic insurance computer has
been down all day."

You were actually lucky you only waited 10 minutes, Joni

...with the insulting of intelligence.

Why? Why do so many who write letters take to insulting or insuating
that employees are not intelligent? It's childish! Absolutely
childish. I'd love to see more letters here that don't immediately
take to these tactics.

I can't take letter writers seriously when they do this.

So, I must ask...was the inside of the pharmacy closed? Was the drive
thru the only method of receiving your prescription? You said you were
not sick, so what prevented you from getting out of your car and
walking into the pharmacy to get your prescription filled if you were
so bothered by the wait? Two other cars, the ones that pulled up
behind you, figured something out that prevented them from waiting.
But not you, you sat there fuming when you could've simply moved,
parked, and went in to the pharmacy.

...What you said.

Although this service may be convenient I prefer to go to my local
pharmacy.and that is definitely NOT Rite-Aid!!

The pharmacists know me by name, know much about my health and appear
to care about me. Perhaps many Rite-Aid pharmacists do the same but
not the one in my town. To me, Rite-Aid is Big Business and not
nearly as thoughtful and careful as my local pharmacy. We have
several other large pharmacies in my area and I still prefer my local
pharmacy. I will pay the little bit more (and sometimes less) for my
RX to get the careful attention to my RX that I require. It's all a
matter of personal preference in that regard.

As a pharmacy tech, I loathe the drive-thru. I think it's completely
idiotic to have a drive-thru for something as important as medication.
But I digress. Something to keep in mind is that the drive-thru was
created for convenience NOT speed. It was meant so that sick people or
people driving around sick people do not have to get out of their cars
to walk back to the pharmacy. There's a whole lot of reasons why the
drive-thru can get backed up. Someone can be dropping off over 15
prescriptions. That can take up a lot of time and a lot of techs tend
to make the customer wait as they enter in the scripts so as that they
can catch insurance, allergy or any other problem right then and
there. Someone could be picking up a prescription and wants to speak
to the pharmacist. Someone could be dropping off or picking up a
prescription and there's an insurance problem. We try to keep the
drive-thru moving as efficiently as possible but things happen. When
they do, we ask the patient to come inside but if someone is adamant
about not coming in, we really can't force them to do so.

With that said, if you feel the wait is long, your best bet is to come
inside the store. More than likely, you will get quicker service. And
nothing peeves me more than people who honk their horn while I'm
taking care of someone else. That's NOT going to make things go
quicker and more than likely, I'll slow my roll even more. Getting out
of the car and interrupting a conversation between me and the patient
I'm taking care of won't help either. Calling on your cell phone to
ask what's taking so long will be answered with "Due to patient
privacy, I cannot discuss that with you". I'm quite sure
you(collective you) don't harass the doctor about taking too long to
be seen so please show as much patience at the pharmacy. We're dealing
with medication here. An error due to being rushed or overwhelmed can
quite possible harm or even kill you. Please keep that in mind.

It just takes time to conduct transactions and unfortunately you had
to wait while someone else, who was there first, was taking care of
business. Personally I would rather wait knowing that someone was
being helped than to have to wait for no good reason.

I have been going to the same Rite-Aid for years and have developed a
great relationship with the people who work there. We are friendly
with each other and they know me by name even. Sometimes a little
effort goes a long way. I am sure if I treated them as if they were
"challenged" it would be a different story.

My Rite Aid ...which is not my favorite drug store has two pull ups,
but we don't have either one marked for pick up only.

Had you gone inside you would have probably still had to wait while
the drive up was processed.

I have gone to pick up scheduled promised pickups to find the RX
partially filled. I had to wait for the rest of the order.

I wrote a letter once to my bank on here about the drive up. I pulled
up to the drive up and had to wait while another worker occupied the
worker reading a birthday card. Then the person working my drive up
sat and pondered what to write on the card instead of waiting on me.
It was a very hot day....gas was above 3 dollars a gallon, and I did
push the button to request she process my transaction. That said if
another person was ahead of me even if I didn't desire to wait, I
would of waited.

Sometimes people are just ahead of you in life.

Get over it. Get furious over it? No Way. .

I like drive ups for drug stores....use to be all those sick people
had to come inside and spread germs all around.

This reminds me of an incident i encountered back in 2000. My mother
and i were in the pickup lane at RA waiting for my prescription to be
filled. A truck pulled up behind us and honked, we stayed put. A few
minutes later a kid no older than 10 got out and walked up between our
car and the window. he pushed the call button and asked how long it
would be. the cashier said about ten minutes. he went back to the
truck, then came back a few minutes later and said "my daddy would
like to be served NOW please!" the cashier reminded him that this was
a line and his father was more than welcome to come inside. when the
kid got back to the truck we were being handed our stuff, he then
proceeded to honk incessantly until we pulled out.

Like they say, it takes all kinds!

You make some big assumptions in your letter. When you got in line,
the car was already in front with car and lights off. You don't know
the circumstances of the situation. You don't know what the paper was
that was handed over. They could have been correcting a potentially
life threatening mistake of meds, but God forbid you have to wait in
line 10 minutes.

My wife alway tell me the story of when she was young she was sent on
a week long road trip with her grandma and grandma's friend to learn
about the "P" word (as they called it). I always found it amusing
because I can think of no better way to learn about PATIENCE than a
week long road trip with two old ladies. Sounds like the OP need a
similar trip.

So, if you had been the one to pull up in the wrong lane, you would
have no problem with the pharmacy staff telling YOU that you were
wrong and refusing to help you because of YOUR error, right?

I also have to assume that if you were being waited on in the pharmacy
or on the phone with staff that you would have absolutely no issue
with being told that YOUR transaction would have to be interrupted
while staff went to help someone else.

I do agree though that someone should've told this other car they
couldn't park in the drive-thru, whether they knew another car was
waiting or not. It's not a matter of intelligence; it's just a matter
of courtesy.

It seems to me the problem started with the person in the car ahead of
you, who didn't realize he/she was in the wrong lane. And the
pharmacist was being kind and simply helped the customer rather than
make him go somewhere else. I'm sure she COULDN'T see you behind him -
it was nighttime, probably dark, and there is a limited view from a
drive through window.

You were the one that escalated the situation further with your
snottiness when you were asked to wait while the pharmacist helped the
customer - who DID get there ahead of you - and refused. It seems like
the pharmacist went above and beyond to help the customer ahead of
you. She tried to help you, but your attitude made it impossible.

Your closing comments about the pharmacist's intelligence is simply
obnoxious and uncalled for. This letter says a lot more about you than
it does about her.

So, here's the thing. Furious, over a ten minute wait? Insulting the
employees' intelligence without even knowing what really went on? I
think the problem lies with you.

For all you know, the woman in the car in front of you was REALLY
sick. Maybe she really needed her meds ASAP and didn't want to move
from the drive up window for fear that the pharm tech would move onto
other customers. Maybe she outright refused to come back to pick up
her meds, or even to pull away from the window. If we assume any or
all of that is true, maybe the pharm tech was actually being smart,
and trying to quickly take care of the woman's needs in spite of being
interrupted by the phone.

In that situation, turn on your radio, use your cell phone to call
home / a friend / play Solitaire, and enjoy that you have a few
minutes to relax. If you are really in a rush, go inside and have the
prescription filled there.

Also, just an FYI - to become a pharmacy tech, you have to go through
a pretty good amount of not easy schooling, so I doubt the "clerk" was
as "challenged" as you're making her out to be. Perhaps her customer
service / phone skills need a little work, but I doubt she's stupid.

I do pick up pain medication once a month. Quite a lot of it,
actually (I take 7 meds a day, 4 for pain, 1 for a separate condition
that contributes to the pain, and 2 for the side effects of the pain
meds -- and then there are a couple of things I take intermittently,
either for pain flares or for side effect flares). And what I would
have felt is gratitude that there was someone there who was taking the
time the person ahead of me needed, because it meant that if I needed
their time I would get it too.

As long as we're talking about people who really need their meds, do
you know for a fact that the person ahead of you was in a position to
park his car, get out, and go into the store? There are people for
whom that sort of thing is very difficult, and you haven't mentioned
such details as whether the store is ADAAG-compliant -- and even ADAAG
compliance doesn't mean that a store is accessible to everybody.

I really hope that the clerk gets complimented by her supervisor on
not giving that man short shrift just because there was someone behind
him who wanted to get great service, but not to wait around while
someone else got it too.

I don't think 10-12 minutes is worth getting
furious/livid/vein-bursting-mad over, but heh, whatever trips your
trigger.

The only good drive-up window is at a liquor store.

I've never used a drive-thru pharmacy and can't imagine it is a good
idea to do so. Medication is far too important to be handed out a
window in 30 seconds or less.

It sounds as if the driver got in the wrong lane and dropped off her
prescription without realizing that it was a pick-up only lane. This
is similar to what would happen at McDonald's when I worked there as a
young college student. Customers would bypass the menu board and try
ordering at the window which would throw off the order queue. We
still had to take their order.

There were drivers who would refuse to pull up to the parked space
when we were waiting on an order. We would ask and not realize they
hadn't pulled up until later. Sometimes, they would refuse to our
faces.

The intelligence test comment is petty and insulting. It doesn't
belong in a professional letter.

I don't understand them at fast food joints, and I don't understand
them at pharmacies. I saw one at a bakery once in Utica NY, and I
surely didn't understand that either.

If a car is parked at the drive through window, why not use the front
door?

I think it is a low blow to suggest the CSR is of low intelligence,
and to go beyond that and call the organization sick. They probably
will not miss you as a customer.

I'm sure they will be giddy to be rid of you. You seem to think your
entitled to privileged services... why didn't you just go INSIDE to
pick up your prescription? You sound like lazy and insulting.


If I were Rite Aid I'd transfer your prescription for you with a
greeting card that said "good riddance".

Intelligence test indeed.