Deputies on the Pharm

The quest for Claritin-D took us on a field trip to Rite-Aid, which sells a Claritin-D substitute. The key element, I hope, is that both use pseudoephedrine sulfate, rather than the much more common pseudoephedrine hydrochloride (damn, those HCls come in handy!).

It was cheap - $5.40 including tax for 10 doses, the maximum allowable purchase. I get the whole War on Meth thing, so I don't really mind being ID'd for decongestants and I'm certainly OK with the price, but I didn't like that it took four Pharm employees to get the drugs in my hand (I shit you not: one to greet me and take my chit, one to hand her the two boxes (she was only supposed to dispense one), one to help her negotiate with the cash register when it rejected the second box, and a final employee to help workers 1 and 3 overcome the register).

My observations:

a) It sucks to deputize retailers. Yes, they take the money so they need to be responsible, but they aren't really trained to treat you like a customer and at the same time be cops.
b) Too many establishments expect the customer to hang around while they do non-customer-related tasks ("Pardon me, the Priority Mail display is out of envelopes..." "How many do you need?" "Four." "Here's 10. Put the rest in the display." {Uh, yeah, who's working for whom?}).
c) Rite Aid blows, and I should have gone to one of the non-chain stores downtown, which is where I plan to go when the waiting period runs out and I'm allowed to buy more over-the-counter drugs.

for Christ's sake.