I never been too much for conservation
I kinda dig these awkward silences

TenuredVulture wrote:

MrsVox wrote:My hatred for CVS pharmacy has been renewed with a fiery passion.

Me too. Though I no longer have a nearby CVS to stoke it.

I had no choice, Vox's doctor sends his prescriptions to random local pharmacies because his little computer gadget doesn't have our preferred pharmacy in its database.

When Vox came home from the doctors, he said he wasn't sure if it went to CVS or Walgreens, because the doctor mentioned one and the nurse mentioned another.

I go to CVS, pick up one of the two prescriptions, ask for the other, and when it's not there, I think to myself that maybe the doctor sent one to CVS and the nurse called in the other to Walgreens. I stopped at Walgreens, but there was no prescription there (this was no big deal, because I had to get some other things anyway.)

Call the doctor's office, confirm that both were sent to CVS. Go back to CVS, and someone new waits on me, looks like I have two heads instead asking a helpful question to take resolving my problem to the next step. Gets the pharmacist involved. There is much typing and murmuring. Then they tell me they found it, it just didn't get filled, have a seat, blah blah blah. I sit and wait about ten minutes.

Then the pharmacist comes to me and blatantly lies, saying that, no, they had the order, but they are out of stock, come back tomorrow after twelve and they'll have it. Utter BS, because if they tried to fill it yesterday with the first prescription, they would have ordered it last night, and I would only have to wait until this afternoon instead of tomorrow for it. Which in the scheme of things is not a big deal, except that the CVS is twice as far as the Walgreens to begin with, and I hate having to run out for one thing instead of grouping my trips together.

And I really think the color scheme inside CVS is bad.... Red doesn't really go far in calming people down. And there was used band-aid stuck to the carpet in the pharmacy waiting area, and that grossed me out.

phatj wrote:

swishnicholson wrote:My daughter had a take home physics test for which she was forbidden to use the book, internet or any other outside sources. I'm proud to say she complied, but am I a terrible person for wondering whether all her classmates did? Is it common to have science take home tests that aren't open book?

A take-home, closed-book test? Sounds like the teacher didn't want to proctor the exam.

It seemed a little odd to me, too. I guess it does give the students as much time as they need to work through the problems (which is nice, since my daughter stared at the second problem uncomprehendingly for an hour or so before getting some insight to it) but it seems wide open to abuse. Although how they do on the AP exam is the final arbiter, so I suppose it doesn't affect things long-range.

wow she's got the rare but extremely useful sleeping-with-your-eyes-open skill

I worked it CVS. Didn't enjoy my time there at all. I had to call a manager if someone paid with anything over a 50 or if they got cash back of more than 20 with their debit card. Also, to void a purchase I needed to call the manager up to the front as well. I ended up having to get a manager about every 15 minutes. The whole concept was just broken.

When I used to go to CVS, I just remember the pharmacy took forever, and on more than one occasion, I'd be on line to pay for my stuff, and just when they got to me, the cashier would be told by the manager to do something other than ring me up.

So I took my business to a mom and pop across the street. Nice, efficient, and the pharm tech was unbelievably hot. Like a young Annabella Sciorra.

I don't know what kind of scam the Vox's doctor is running, but I'd complain about CVS to them.

We find the mom and pop so much more convenient--they'll deliver, and because we live in small town, you can just put it on your account there.

The CVS in Dupont Circle was the bane of my existence the two years I lived there. Surly staff, disorganized merchandise, bums urinating in the corner, flat screen TVs with Jerry Jones high fiveing George W. Bush on a loop, etc.

PrattRules wrote:I worked it CVS. Didn't enjoy my time there at all. I had to call a manager if someone paid with anything over a 50 or if they got cash back of more than 20 with their debit card. Also, to void a purchase I needed to call the manager up to the front as well. I ended up having to get a manager about every 15 minutes. The whole concept was just broken.

the retail pharmacy chain model is a curious thing, similar in some ways to chain movie theaters, but imagine that to run your movie house, in addition to hiring a gang of teenagers to wrangle popcorn, you had to hire someone licensed by the appropriate state authority to run the movie projector.

couple that with the fact that so much of the financial success of the big chains like cvs is tangled up with things like effective commercial property management and shrinkage prevention (mostly via constraints on employee discretion vis a vis $ transactions) that things like positive customer experience get moved well down the priority chart.

teens & young 20s can be difficult employees to manage. Hormones, y'know. I remember talking with a risk mgr for a big theater chain some years ago. he averred that their biggest work comp issue was psych trauma cases resulting from youthful mgrs preying on their even more youthful employees in the always dark, always available recesses of the octoplexes.

drsmooth wrote:

PrattRules wrote:I worked it CVS. Didn't enjoy my time there at all. I had to call a manager if someone paid with anything over a 50 or if they got cash back of more than 20 with their debit card. Also, to void a purchase I needed to call the manager up to the front as well. I ended up having to get a manager about every 15 minutes. The whole concept was just broken.

the retail pharmacy chain model is a curious thing, similar in some ways to chain movie theaters, but imagine that to run your movie house, in addition to hiring a gang of teenagers to wrangle popcorn, you had to hire someone licensed by the appropriate state authority to run the movie projector.

couple that with the fact that so much of the financial success of the big chains like cvs is tangled up with things like effective commercial property management and shrinkage prevention (mostly via constraints on employee discretion vis a vis $ transactions) that things like positive customer experience get moved well down the priority chart.

teens & young 20s can be difficult employees to manage. Hormones, y'know. I remember talking with a risk mgr for a big theater chain some years ago. he averred that their biggest work comp issue was psych trauma cases resulting from youthful mgrs preying on their even more youthful employees in the always dark, always available recesses of the octoplexes.

Not to turn this into the health care thread, but the other thing is that if you've got a prescription plan, there's no difference in price between a mom and pop and a chain. I suppose one difference might be Walgreens or CVS has more junk to buy while you wait for your prescription, but that seems to me to be a negative, not a positive.

We do get our mail order presecriptions from CVS, and I don't have a complain on that score.

Grotewold wrote:The CVS in Dupont Circle was the bane of my existence the two years I lived there. Surly staff, disorganized merchandise, bums urinating in the corner, flat screen TVs with Jerry Jones high fiveing George W. Bush on a loop, etc.

that scruffy joint saved my life about 5 years ago. The fact of its open-24-hours existence was worth the standing in line with people trying to sell me their own private brands of pharmaceuticals, body parts, etc in return for the simple act of buying them an admittedly generous quantity of sudafed.

I simply acted like I was as zoned out as they were - no trick given my aggravating health condition at the time - and we got on fine.

TenuredVulture wrote:Not to turn this into the health care thread, but the other thing is that if you've got a prescription plan, there's no difference in price between a mom and pop and a chain. I suppose one difference might be Walgreens or CVS has more junk to buy while you wait for your prescription, but that seems to me to be a negative, not a positive.

We do get our mail order presecriptions from CVS, and I don't have a complain on that score.

To clarify, there's no difference to YOU the employee, IF your employer's plan plan doesn't drive traffic to one or more of the chains via copay favoritism or outright absence of reimbursement for any but Rxs dispensed in their operations. Employers with widely-and-thinly dispersed populations (retailers, for example) are more prone to that design than employers whose workforces all live & work in the same general geographic area (academe).

drsmooth wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:Not to turn this into the health care thread, but the other thing is that if you've got a prescription plan, there's no difference in price between a mom and pop and a chain. I suppose one difference might be Walgreens or CVS has more junk to buy while you wait for your prescription, but that seems to me to be a negative, not a positive.

We do get our mail order presecriptions from CVS, and I don't have a complain on that score.

To clarify, there's no difference to YOU the employee, IF your employer's plan plan doesn't drive traffic to one or more of the chains via copay favoritism or outright absence of reimbursement for any but Rxs dispensed in their operations. Employers with widely-and-thinly dispersed populations (retailers, for example) are more prone to that design than employers whose workforces all live & work in the same general geographic area (academe).

Interestingly, the only chain pharmacy in town is Walgreens, and they are a relatively recent arrival. There's of course Wal Mart and the Brookshires grocery story has a pharmacy as well. In addition, there are at least 4 independent pharmacies.

drsmooth wrote:

PrattRules wrote:I worked it CVS. Didn't enjoy my time there at all. I had to call a manager if someone paid with anything over a 50 or if they got cash back of more than 20 with their debit card. Also, to void a purchase I needed to call the manager up to the front as well. I ended up having to get a manager about every 15 minutes. The whole concept was just broken.

the retail pharmacy chain model is a curious thing, similar in some ways to chain movie theaters, but imagine that to run your movie house, in addition to hiring a gang of teenagers to wrangle popcorn, you had to hire someone licensed by the appropriate state authority to run the movie projector.

couple that with the fact that so much of the financial success of the big chains like cvs is tangled up with things like effective commercial property management and shrinkage prevention (mostly via constraints on employee discretion vis a vis $ transactions) that things like positive customer experience get moved well down the priority chart.

teens & young 20s can be difficult employees to manage. Hormones, y'know. I remember talking with a risk mgr for a big theater chain some years ago. he averred that their biggest work comp issue was psych trauma cases resulting from youthful mgrs preying on their even more youthful employees in the always dark, always available recesses of the octoplexes.

That was a much better explanation than I ever came up with.

I just woke up from a nearly 2 hour nap. That may have been a bit of an over indulgence.

my favorite nap length is 3 hours. if you time it right it earns you like 8 extra hours of awake time afterward.

I often wish that I-76 and I-676 could have 6-10 more lanes appear between the hours of 5:30-7:30pm at night. Either that or my own personal helicopter.

MrsVox wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

MrsVox wrote:My hatred for CVS pharmacy has been renewed with a fiery passion.

Me too. Though I no longer have a nearby CVS to stoke it.

I had no choice, Vox's doctor sends his prescriptions to random local pharmacies because his little computer gadget doesn't have our preferred pharmacy in its database.

When Vox came home from the doctors, he said he wasn't sure if it went to CVS or Walgreens, because the doctor mentioned one and the nurse mentioned another.

I go to CVS, pick up one of the two prescriptions, ask for the other, and when it's not there, I think to myself that maybe the doctor sent one to CVS and the nurse called in the other to Walgreens. I stopped at Walgreens, but there was no prescription there (this was no big deal, because I had to get some other things anyway.)

Call the doctor's office, confirm that both were sent to CVS. Go back to CVS, and someone new waits on me, looks like I have two heads instead asking a helpful question to take resolving my problem to the next step. Gets the pharmacist involved. There is much typing and murmuring. Then they tell me they found it, it just didn't get filled, have a seat, blah blah blah. I sit and wait about ten minutes.

Then the pharmacist comes to me and blatantly lies, saying that, no, they had the order, but they are out of stock, come back tomorrow after twelve and they'll have it. Utter BS, because if they tried to fill it yesterday with the first prescription, they would have ordered it last night, and I would only have to wait until this afternoon instead of tomorrow for it. Which in the scheme of things is not a big deal, except that the CVS is twice as far as the Walgreens to begin with, and I hate having to run out for one thing instead of grouping my trips together.

And I really think the color scheme inside CVS is bad.... Red doesn't really go far in calming people down. And there was used band-aid stuck to the carpet in the pharmacy waiting area, and that grossed me out.

The doctor should transmit the prescriptions (whether it be by phone, fax, or electronically) to the pharmacy of YOUR choosing. Otherwise you can try insisting that they hand you written prescriptions so you can take them where you want.

If the doctor's office won't cooperate, your pharmacy of choice can contact the CVS (or Walgreen's) to transfer the prescription. Also, if you let the pharmacist-in-charge at your preferred pharmacy know what's going on, he/she would most likely be inclined to put some pressure on the doctor's office to change their ways.

mickbayne wrote:

MrsVox wrote:

TenuredVulture wrote:

MrsVox wrote:My hatred for CVS pharmacy has been renewed with a fiery passion.

Me too. Though I no longer have a nearby CVS to stoke it.

I had no choice, Vox's doctor sends his prescriptions to random local pharmacies because his little computer gadget doesn't have our preferred pharmacy in its database.

When Vox came home from the doctors, he said he wasn't sure if it went to CVS or Walgreens, because the doctor mentioned one and the nurse mentioned another.

I go to CVS, pick up one of the two prescriptions, ask for the other, and when it's not there, I think to myself that maybe the doctor sent one to CVS and the nurse called in the other to Walgreens. I stopped at Walgreens, but there was no prescription there (this was no big deal, because I had to get some other things anyway.)

Call the doctor's office, confirm that both were sent to CVS. Go back to CVS, and someone new waits on me, looks like I have two heads instead asking a helpful question to take resolving my problem to the next step. Gets the pharmacist involved. There is much typing and murmuring. Then they tell me they found it, it just didn't get filled, have a seat, blah blah blah. I sit and wait about ten minutes.

Then the pharmacist comes to me and blatantly lies, saying that, no, they had the order, but they are out of stock, come back tomorrow after twelve and they'll have it. Utter BS, because if they tried to fill it yesterday with the first prescription, they would have ordered it last night, and I would only have to wait until this afternoon instead of tomorrow for it. Which in the scheme of things is not a big deal, except that the CVS is twice as far as the Walgreens to begin with, and I hate having to run out for one thing instead of grouping my trips together.

And I really think the color scheme inside CVS is bad.... Red doesn't really go far in calming people down. And there was used band-aid stuck to the carpet in the pharmacy waiting area, and that grossed me out.

The doctor should transmit the prescriptions (whether it be by phone, fax, or electronically) to the pharmacy of YOUR choosing. Otherwise you can try insisting that they hand you written prescriptions so you can take them where you want.

If the doctor's office won't cooperate, your pharmacy of choice can contact the CVS (or Walgreen's) to transfer the prescription. Also, if you let the pharmacist-in-charge at your preferred pharmacy know what's going on, he/she would most likely be inclined to put some pressure on the doctor's office to change their ways.

the problem is that our pharmacy of choice is not in the doc's electronic delivery device, and that Vox doesn't always remember what our pharmacy of choice is (not in his job description.) For a while they (between Vox and the doc) were sending them to another Walgreens a little further away, and then for refills I would get them transferred closer. Which is what I will do when refill time comes around in 30 days...

my favorite pharmacy is Target. Even though it didn't have a drive-through, it had auto-refills (other chains are getting this now), and it was always the same pharmacist (who educated me on how long it should take to order an unstocked drug). But our closest Target is way too far to drive to, and with the drive-through, Walgreens is more convenient. And Walgreens is the best maintained/nicest atmosphere as well, at least around here, from my experience. I would try Walmart, but again, it's further than three Walgreens.

I just got back from Target pharmacy. Little guy has another ear infection (and a well timed stomach virus--I've removed and cleaned two car seats/seat covers tonight). Doc (not Halladay, the pediatrician) says he should get the ear tubes

Any type of surgery is scary, but I think the ear tube procedure is pretty routine at this point. And just think, in the long run it'll end up being a big improvement over constantly dealing with ear infections, so this is a good thing (for both you and the little guy).

Does Target still use those goofy-shaped prescription bottles? Do people actually prefer them over a traditional bottle?