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My mother and I went to get one of her prescriptions filled this afternoon. She takes three different medicines, and when she went to the doctor on Thursday, he decided she was taking too high a dose of Vytorin, her cholesterol medication, and gave her a new prescription for a lower dose. We hadn't filled it that day or Friday, because she'd planned to just cut the old pills in half and not get the new prescription until they were used up. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that probably wouldn't work out to the correct dosage, so we drove over to CVS to get the new pills.

Normally, we only wait about fifteen minutes to get a prescription filled; but today, the place was chaotic. They were understaffed, and when I arrived at the drop-off window the only employee (who wasn't the pharmacist) was at the cash register, involved in what has to be the longest transaction I've ever seen. Even after the pharmacist came out and took the prescription, the other guy was still involved in ringing up this sale, which only got more complicated when, after she'd paid for everything, she decided to buy three bottles of water. Then a few minutes later, she returned complaining that the bottles had rung up at $1.19 when the price listed on the rack was 99 cents. The cashier was very nice to her, and gave her the refund; she then made him ring them all up again at the correct price along with a fourth bottle, all the while continuing to complain about the original mistake. It was infuriating.

Meanwhile, the pharmacist-- working entirely by himself, without the usual assistants-- was trying to fill all the call-in and walk-in prescriptions, along with the drive-thru prescriptions. Several of these involved various complications, some requiring calls to the doctor; there was also an insanely complex situation involving an old man who came in after everyone else, spoke in an incomprehensible accent, and apparently was involved in some sort of accident but had an outstanding claim concerning an earlier accident that was somehow getting mixed up with the current one. He somehow got his prescription before we found out what was going on with ours.

After waiting for an hour and a half, the pharmacist came out and apologized to us-- it turned out they didn't have the right strength of Vytorin in stock, and wouldn't have it until Monday. That's also the day the handyman is coming to fix the hole in the ceiling. So I'm not really looking forward to Monday-- it's going to be a hectic and stressful day.