A Great Man?

A few days ago, I put a face to a name I've known well since I started this job. See, normally, I'm great with faces. New customer comes in to drop off three emergency room meds and comes back at their pick up time, I'll remember that they're getting a Pred Pak, a Z-Pak and Cheratussin AC with directions for the Mucinex D that's behind the counter, so I hope to Dog they have their State ID... but I won't remember the name to save my Inherited from the German Side of the Family Arsch unless it's also the name of a close family member or otherwise enters into conversation.

But the face? See them once, and I've got it.

So it's odd for me to hear a name, like Mary or Clark Duncan and not know a face to go with it. In this case, though, two names went with one face, because Mr. Duncan picked up several times a week for Mary or Clark Duncan like clockwork.

I was surprised to say the least when two women, one clearly in her 70s or older and one somewhere in the middle of life, came in and asked for Mary Duncan's medicines. After I got through the basics, I asked if Clark was all right.

The younger woman burst into tears. The older one said simply, "Yes, now. He's passed on."

Well fuck. Stepped in that one barefoot!

By the end of the transaction I of course apologized and offered sympathies on behalf of the pharmacy, and set his profile to 'deceased' which stops all automatic phone calls and such to the phone number on file. Last thing a widow needs to hear is "Mr. Duncan has two days to pick up his medication before it's returned to stock."

But the thing that kicked me in the gut was that I didn't have the heart to tell these women, the younger one especially who went on and on about how wonderful "Dad" was... that to us, "Dad" was by and large a jerk. He was a tosser, and I don't mean that in the British sense of the word. Rather that he had a habit of taking whatever was in his hand and tossing it onto the counter-- and often right across it onto the floor at my feet. Usually, it was a piece of scratch paper with a name and some prescription numbers on it flipped in my general direction as he barked the word "Tomorrow" and walked away without a moment of eye contact or bothering with manners or courtesy. He was just generally impatient, and explaining things like Prior Auths was difficult to say the least. He didn't want to stand still and listen to anyone, just throw paper at us and walk away.

So, what makes someone a "wonderful man"? Because, to be honest, my opinion of him wouldn't change much from knowing if he was a deacon at church or helped with a food bank or any of the rest of the things they usually put in an obituary. The only time I remember him *ever* being more than stony and in a rush was when I wished him "a nice Christmas". He actually stopped and said thank you to that. I'd been waiting on him at least weekly for over a year by that point, and didn't know until then that his eyes were brown, because he'd never looked at me before.

This makes me wonder what else I don't know about this former customer of ours that made others mourn him so openly. And then I wonder if he'd care if anyone missed him or wished him well in whatever lies beyond the flat line when he never bothered to learn our names or look us in the faces, even though we all knew him.

Knowing how much most of my customers appreciate my ability to recognize them as individuals with names and frequent prescriptions and families and lives, it's a little bizarre to me to see someone so unresponsive to those measures called "a wonderful man".

Was he? I couldn't tell.

"There's a Moon out tonight..."

and it's full. Must be. It's the only way I can explain the EPIC amounts of CRAZY that we, the other departments in the store, and almost every other pharmacy or doctor's office I've spoken with since Tuesday, have dealt with.

Even my father, who had to see a specialist in Pittsburgh today, said that the hospital staff they spoke with commented on how nuts it's been. When he joked that if his condition doesn't start to improve, he's going back on the bottle, the P.A. he was talking to said, "God, I needed a drink an hour ago! Can I join you?"

The full moon. That has to be it.

Not sure how I feel about this one.

Pity? Disgust? Mockery? It's one of those ethical gray areas for me.

Today, we waited on the Fishy family. Mrs. Fishy is usually very nice, organized, and would be pleasant to talk to... if it weren't for the stench. She's not our Cat Pee Lady (and every store has at least one, I know). If it were just Cat Pee, I could take it. Nor do I know how her medical conditions may affect her ability to take care of herself. I'm also unsure of her husband's and mother's abilities to address matters of personal hygiene. But what I do know is that the aroma wafting off of these people is entirely unlike anything I've ever smelled from a human body living or dead.

Know that street person we've all seen in some huge city with an almost visible cloud of urine and body odor seeping into the sidewalk on which the unfortunate person sits, the stains of the past 3 month's dumpster-diving adventures adorning an Army surplus coat like morbid medals of horror?

That bum would notice this couple coming from 15' away and pack up and leave before they arrive.

I've finally pinpointed the best comparison to their particular eau de "soap is available in aisle 14, and for the love of God it's on special this week": nam bplah, aka: Thai Fish Sauce, which consists of anchovies or sardines fermented in salt water in the sun for months at a time, then strained, bottled, and sold to the unsuspecting Western public as something yummy for making Curried Chicken and Stir-fried Noodles (until you take a whiff of it and perform olfactory electrolysis on your nose hair).

And it *lingers*. Ten minutes after they'd left the counter today, another customer commented on how horrible the pharmacy smelled and asked if we'd spilled some kind of chemical. I had to tell her no, sorry, it was related to a previous transaction but it should clear out soon. On three separate occasions, I've had to turn away from these people and reach for a HIPPA box, garbage can, or in one case an open prescription drawer, in case the gagging from the odor turned into a public technicolor yawn.

That, of course, makes waiting on this family difficult at the best of times, but topping it is the familial difficulty with cleaning their clothes, washing their hair, or removing built up, caked on body soil from their skin... and wearing sleeveless, strapless, revealing clothing in public.

The kicker? The wife also sports a very impressive growth of beard, I'm assuming as part of some kind of medical condition. Half of the freshmen boys at Local High School are probably jealous... or would be if they stuck around long enough to see it.

I realize, reading through this, that someone has probably chuckled, and more than a few in the medical field are nodding with unpleasant memories, but what made me really start to think about our collective attitude toward this particular family-- and the difficult patients of their type across the board-- was what I saw from another set of customers today. The first is a common reaction that pharmacy staff have laughed about on more than one occasion:

Child sees and smells The Fishys.
Child looks at parent before looking back at The Fishys.
Child asks to be allowed to get something off the grocery list/go play in the toy aisle, go to the bathroom, or just flat out says "Mommy? Why does that lady smell so bad?" or "I thought you said only Men grow beards Dad?"

Children, the prevailing attitude seems to be, can be excused for those types of comments because they, unlike adults, don't always know to bite their tongue for the sake of preserving someone else's feelings or avoiding insult.

But: while The Fishys were talking to their favorite (strong stomached) technician after their transaction was completed today, another customer walked by taking pictures of them on her cell phone. This girl could have been 15, she could have been 25; it was hard to tell. But the behavior reminded me of what people do at a county fair, walking through the barns and realizing that "Those rabbits over there are doing it" or "Hey, that horse has wood!"

What bothers me, I think, is that once I stopped to think about it, The Fishys are treated by everyone I see interact with them in the store like some kind of circus side show act. Google search "The Bearded Lady" and what pops up? Dozens of circus "freak" and side show references. Is that necessary? Is it fair? Is it right?

Part of me says "Of course not. It's degrading and shouldn't be tolerated," just like spitting on customer service workers shouldn't be allowed either.

But then there's the other part of me, who has waited on this woman with a cheerful smile on my face for over a year b/c it's far easier to breathe through my mouth when they're at the counter, that thinks "They have to freakin' know! My god, how could they not?" Small children do not run away gagging from just *anybody* in the grocery store. Teenagers don't usually giggle and whip out their camera phones saying "Holy shit, dude, we need to send this to Tyler!" and "Fuck, man, the smell!" when a regular mom with a full shopping cart rolls by.

Someone somewhere along the way has had to make Mr. and Mrs. Fishy aware that their lack of hygiene has reached an unbearable level for the vast majority of the public. And yet... they do nothing about it. Do they enjoy the notoriety of it? Or do they simply not care that, as nice and kind and helpful as everyone in the store tries to be, they are almost without exception derided and pitied behind their backs after every shopping trip? These kinds of thoughts come from the part of me that would say something about their lack of care for themselves (and the rest of the world around them) if preserving feelings and avoiding insult wasn't often the only way to keep a public service job. Which leads me to think that their doctors probably can't say anything and expect to keep them as patients/not be sued. Their family members who may have tried and probably care might even find it too difficult to bring up.

But is that really something that we, even as awfully as we're treated in the course of a day, should joke about? Or is it part of the fodder for the gallows humor that lets Pharmacist Charming and Mama Bear get back out of bed the next morning and roll into a place they really can't stand to face another day?

Among the things I just don't get...

People insisting that their morality/ethics/standards are the only ones that matter.

Example: Our store received a complaint last week from a sweaty, overly cologned "gentleman" with a huge gold cross necklace around his neck, a cross tie-tack in his American Flags tie, a praying hands pin on his lapel right above an American flag pin, and a worn leather covered Bible in his hand. (Think you can see where this is going? Just wait.)

He asked for a pharmacist. I got one. Then he asked for a "better" one, and pointed to the only male we had behind the counter, who is not actually a pharmacist, or even an intern. The pharmacist explained that to this man, and he launched on his rant, quoting verses about lewdness and immodesty and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The pharmacist cut him off with "I'm familiar with the Bible, sir. I went to a religious school. What was your complaint?"

His complaint: we sell, right out in the open where people can see them, tampons, which he called "internal hygiene devices". In his mind that's disgusting, immoral, unnecessary, and they should be removed from the shelves immediately so as to not offend his delicate moral sensibilities. He "shouldn't have to see that sort of thing" while shopping for his necessities.

Now, I know the aisle in which the tampons are sold pretty well, thanks to a mishap for a local family in which Daughter's first monthly visitor showed up while Mom was out of town, leaving Older Brother to take her to the store. I spent half an hour in that aisle explaining her options and helping her figure out what she thought would work best. The contents of that aisle are exclusively related to "immoral" things like menstruation, incontinence, "family planning", intimate lubrication, UTI tests and treatment, and (thankfully) 12' of shelf space for Midol and Pamprin (or I probably would have killed someone by now). The "internal hygiene devices" are in the middle of the aisle, with incontinence treatments on the end so the elderly don't have to walk so far from the doors to find them.

Now, I don't question this man's obvious faith and dedication to his morals, but why was he even down there in the first place? What "necessities" did he have to go after down that aisle, and where is the necessity in thinking *his* needs are the only ones to which we should cater? The number of times one of the pharmacy employees has needed something from that aisle just to get through the day should be enough reason to keep it, but no, he was willing to take his complaint all the way up to the corporate level until he "received satisfaction".

My pharmacist gave him the number, said thank you when he grudgingly offered her a "blessed day" and then laughed her ass off when he got out of ear shot. What else can you do with those people?