just me being annoyed

So what did you do last night in the freezing cold?

I sewed up red monkey privates. Yes, I know. The things we moms do. A red monkey came to the mom hospital last night in a bad situation. Seems his seams came open and his inners we becoming his outers. So here I sat watching the news feed of how many million degrees below zero it felt like and stitched up a little red monkey's personals.

Our two year old has decided she needs to be 'just like the baby'. She's spending lots of time sucking on one of her old nuks, reverted back to a bottle and wants to be fed like the baby. I'm guessing it won't last too long, especially because she's trying hard to eat the same baby food as Little One. Today for lunch she ate 3 bowls of rice cereal, a box of banana berry baby food and part of a jar of mac-n-cheese. I wish you could see the determination on her face as she swallows this stuff down. It's out of sheer will power, I tell you. Each spoonful brings up that gag reflex in her, but she wants to be just like the baby so she forces it down. Then The Littlest Mr. brought out some chips and her resolve began to waiver, she almost let the baby thing go, but no, not yet. Maybe she'll be over it by dinner.

What else is new...I'm fed up with inconsiderate people. I'm tired of appointments getting cancelled, skipped or missed and no one calling until well after the fact. It's no small task to get my whole family ready for anything, let alone some sort of therapy session or some other "official" visitor to our humble home, but to then pull that off and get blown off, is putting me into a cranky mood. Once again, I'm feeling like I'm going to start howling at the wind on behalf of my foster kids who seem to be getting slighted more than the average kid.

I'm still trying to figure out if that's the real issue with our pharmacy...or shall I say former pharmacy. I'm not going back. I simply refuse to be treated that way, especially as a paying customer. Getting treated rudely or poorly by a stranger or acquaintance is one thing, but when you are the customer and are paying out money a certain level of politeness ought to exist, I don't even care if it's a fake polite.

So here's the tale of medicine that I still don't understand even though I spent 20 minutes on the phone this morning with the pharmacy manager. I'm not sure that she could manage anything, to be honest. Yup. Still a little cranky.

The medicine we get is something that the pharmacy must mix for us. They requested, the first time we filled it, that we give them 24 hours to make the medicine. I said, no problem. Left them with the prescription and came back the next day. The second time they said no problem and had the medicine ready in a few hours. Hmm, I thought this medicines took 24 hours to make. The third time I called in the refill at the end of one day and asked for it to be ready at the end of the following day. It seemed to me that I was giving them long enough to mix this up, especially since I was really beginning to doubt the story of needing 24 hours to mix this medicine.

This time, the pharmacy called me at home to tell me I didn't give them enough time to get it done and it would not be ready until that night. I said fine, not a problem. Then they called a few hours later to tell me it was ready.

I thought when they said they couldn't do it and needed more time that they couldn't do it and needed more time! I believed what they said.

So then when The Mr. went to pick it up last night there was a note on the outside of the medicine information page. In black marker. Highlighted. Stating that they were not given enough time to make this medicine.

So which is it? Do you need 24 hours to make this medicine or not? If I haven't given you enough time to get it done, then how is it that you're calling me a few hours later and telling me it's done?

The manager never answered any of my questions. She just kept insisting that they were not given enough time to get this medicine ready.

She never apologized for her staff who called me at home and scolded me for calling in my refill wrong. She did not apologize for the rude note scribbled on the outside of my information sheet. She did not offer to speak to any of her staff about treating the customers better. She did not make any attempt to offer any sort of understanding at all.

I still don't even understand how it is that they would like a customer to call in that particular kind of refill. I could not even get her to commit to how long it actually took to make the medicine or how long they needed to get it ready.

I got off the phone with her and thought, the manager argued with me.

I've been a retail manager. Over all, it's not good to argue with the customer. Every attempt should be made to not argue, even when they are wildly wrong and you can't give them what they want. There are ways to agree and sympathize without giving away the store.

If she had just simply said, "I'm sorry someone treated you like that" I would have said OK, hung up, let it go and brought my next prescription there.

But she argued.

Now I'll be getting my medicine anywhere but there.

The problem is, as people, we aren't grace filled. I know that I'll remember this a whole lot longer than if it had turned out better. I know that when people are asking me, even at the Dr. office, I'll be relaying my story of rotten customer service.

It's a really big reminder that the little stuff counts. The little ways we treat people, strangers, family or friends. The things we say, the looks on our faces. It all counts. It all makes an impression and an impact.