| Life is just too short for small-minded, self-important jobsworths. |
[May. 7th, 2008|01:39 pm] |
So, I'm in town doing banking and such admin and I get a call on my mobile from the school nurse saying senior son is down with what she's diagnosing as a migraine.
Okay, since I'm passing Boots the Chemist on the way from the bank to carpark, I stop in and explain to the lass on the pharmacy counter that I've just had this call, that we've nothing stronger than ibruprofen in the house, so what can she sell me without prescription that will help my son? She refers me to the duty pharmacist - fair enough.
Who refuses to sell me anything because I am not the patient and I cannot describe his symptoms. I explain that the school nurse has diagnosed a migraine. No, he's not prepared to sell me anything without seeing the patient himself. This is for my own protection, he says patronisingly. I say I find his attitude astonishingly unhelpful and walk away. Because if I stayed, well, fill in the expletives for yourself.
I have collected pale and throwing up son from school and he's lying down in a darkened room. I've attempted to ring the local branch of Boots to make a formal complaint but all the listed number gives me is a range of options that connect me to answerphones.
Well, that'll be a formal letter of complaint to head office then.
Thankfully I have found some paracetamol and codeine left over from the last time I had dental work done, and they're still well in date, so he's had some of those.
*addendum* Going online to find out who to write a complaint to, I find Head Office's customer care number. So I've rung them and told an audibly astonished customer service person all about it. She apologised profusely, took all my details, a description of the pharmacist since I hadn't made a note of his name, and the complaint is going to the Pharmacy Superintendent. Heh.
*addendum secundum* Had a call from very nice Scots lady Lorraine in the Pharmacy Superintendent's office. Her first concern was to establish I had managed to get some painkillers for son and to offer useful advice on migraines, rehydration and such. Did you know you can de-bubble soft drinks by giving them a minute in a microwave, to make them easier on a queasy stomach? No, neither did I.
As to my experience in the shop, they'd also been unable to get through to the branch by phone, so that's something they're looking into. Having called the pharmacy dept direct, it turns out Mr Officious Pharmacist is a temp doing holiday cover and the actual branch head of pharmacy was on her lunch break. Not that they're offering that as an excuse, she assures me.
It has been explained to Mr Officious Pharmacist that a high percentage of people asking for advice and medicaments will be doing this on behalf of other people who cannot come into the shop, not least because they're simply too ill. A lot of those people won't be able to describe the someone else's symptoms particularly well. If for whatever reason he wasn't prepared to accept my assurance that the school nurse had diagnosed a migraine, there was still a choice of painkillers that he could reasonably have sold me, together with the necessary cautions and advice on migraines - and what to look out for in case it wasn't a migraine but something more serious. This is the level of customer service that Boots expects to provide.
Am I satisfied with this, asks Lorraine? Can we consider this complaint dealt with? Certainly, I assure her. The call wraps up with thanks on both sides etc.
Hopefully this has been a more valuable learning experience for Mr Pharmacist than me swearing inventively at him on the shopfloor would have been.
Son has had a sleep, is now sitting up, had something to drink (which hasn't reappeared) and overall looks a good deal better. |
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| Comments: |
That's a disgracefull response from Boots. I don't blame for walking away. Was there a senior manager there?
I'd mention the fact you could not make a phone complaint, thus forcing you to make a more format written complaint.
:delurks:
If you're looking for a decent over-the-counter migraine medicine, Propain Plus is ibuprofen based and usually works for me.
If your son isn't usually prone to migraines, then it might also be an idea to try cutting down on the 'usual' trigger foods for a while - the biggest one is caffeine (not just tea/coffee but also soft drinks and particularly diet soft drinks as they're stacked with caffeine and other chemicals that can have a trigger effect). I also find that drinking lots of water helps.
Apologies if this is telling you what you already know.
:resumes lurking:
Not come across Propain Plus, thanks for the recommendation. Also the other advice, gratefully received.
a girl in work is a big fan of the Propain tablets so there's a second recommendation for them.
As I have been known to get severe headaches at times (not as bad as your sons) one thing I found useful was a gel pack which you could place on your forehead and it eased the pain. I can't recall the brand name, but it was an over the counter product.
Yup, we have one of these living in the fridge. It has many uses with boys in the house - and to be fair, two parents who do a martial art.
This was not something you kept in the fridge. You peeled off the backing strip and placed on the head. It could be cut as well - the full pad was about the size of a postcard. There were supposed to be single use only, but I found they could work for a few uses.
I had a similar instance where my baby son suffered a (relatively) severe allergic reaction to egg. NHS direct instructed us to buy some Piriton and give him a dose as soon as possible. I didn't realise what they meant when they said that I could "buy it at corner shops and garages". Like a fool I queued up in the busy pharmacy, and to cut a very long story short had to suffer a lengthy lecture about the fact that Piriton was not licensed for under 12 month olds, and so on and on and on and on, whilst I interrupted repeatedly to ask if he would sell it to me or not, as I was on my way to the doctors with a sick child with a rapidly expanding red face in the car. "Balloon" didn't really cover it. Scary stuff.
He was only doing his job, but darn he could have been less officious and hurried up with his final "no". Of course the GP gave us a prescription for Piriton immediately.
Much like yourself, lesson learned - lie to the pharmacist.
Ludicrous isn't it?
Compare and contrast with the occasion when small son was stung right beside his eye by a bee when we were out with Granny. This is in a small Hampshire market town. So we hurry off to the local chemist who instantly takes us into the back, gets the sting out, applies cold compress and gives small son something for the pain, a double dose of piriton and hands me the rest of the pack with clear instructions for how much to give him and when. As a result the effects of the sting were minimal.
Flip side of story:
If the pharmacist sells you the meds, they are legally liable if anything goes wrong. As in: your son has a bad reaction to the chlorpheniramine and suffers brain damage before you get him to hospital? The pharmacist is on the hook for $BIGNUM in damages.
Alternatively: if you were an actor working for an RPS inspector and they sold you the medicine, they'd be up in front of charges of gross professional misconduct, and liable to lose not only their job but their professional qualification.
The officiousness isn't entirely arbitrary -- they're shit-scared of litigation or disciplinary action. And the number of patients who lie to them doesn't help.
(I speak as an ex-pharmacist.)
Fair comment. Up to a point. That point, in this instance being, he's standing beside a shelf holding amongst other things, packets of 'Solpadeine Migraine' (or some such) which if I'd gone in and just asked for, he would have had no justification in refusing me.
It's his officious and superior attitude that really winds me up, when I am there asking for advice on how best to help my sick child. So, yes, there's an element of mummy bear wanting to rip his arms off and club him to death with the soggy end at play here.
I'm well used to pharmacists asking about any other medications and warning about mixing for eg cold cures and I have no problem with that. Not least,(as you know Bob), because I've had some of the weirdest allergic reactions to thoroughly tested medications to ever hit the pages of The Lancet. Professional caution is fine. I prefer it blended with judicious common sense though.
Poor thing, I hope he soon recovers.
Pharmacists can be infuriating, I once left a Tescos fuming because their phramacist refused to sell me an over the counter cream for skin rashes because I'd admitted it was for my son, who was three at the time. I've seen the funny side of them questioning me suspiciously when I asked for two bottles of Calpol at once though. What? You think I'm going to commit suicide by drinking pink gloop? Two words, 'power' and 'corruption'.
And in this instance, the pharmacist was about 5'2" and about the same round his waist. No, honest, that's not just me being catty. You may draw your own conclusions about small men and power and corruption...
On the topic of things that seem to be helpful for migraine-sufferers, I have a couple of really, really cheap sleep masks, like the quality of cheap Delta Airlines provides in their overseas "this is to make you feel special and cared for" bag of stuff. They're very loose-fitting and very lightweight and while I don't get migraines myself, Ted does. Both he and another friend to whom I gave one seem to be able to relax significantly more when they slip one on, and they particularly seem to make a difference in summer hours when "darkened room" does not necessarily equate to "actually dark".
I hope he feels better soon. Poor guy. :/
Ooh, right, I think I have one of those in a drawer from the last transatlantic flight I was on. *goes to see*
Yup, found it and applied it to son. I'll keep you posted - and thanks.
Do hope your son is feeling better.
Boots are definitely the worst for this sort of thing. I bought some Paramol in there and despite telling the woman I'd used it before, she still questioned me further and when I admitted high BP went and spoke to the pharmacist before letting me buy it.
No such problems in Superdrug, where I get all my prescriptions from.
What really makes me laugh is you can't buy more than two packets of paracetamol 16s any more, because of the risk of overdose, but what's to stop you going round every shop/supermarket that sells it (which is most places these days) and buying two in each?? There at least 7 places in the centre of Bristol you could buy them, just off the top of my head.
I should like to note that (a) yes, the pharmacist in question deserves a discreet bollocking and a lecture on patient care priorities ... but (b) dropping Boots' Superintendant on them is like delivering a bollocking in the form of a medium-scale thermonuclear war.
Most Boots pharmacists are young and occupying entry-level positions; the Superintendant's powers are overkill for this sort of situation -- it'd normally be the branch manager's job to deliver the necessary talking-to.
Tried that. There's seemingly no way of reaching said branch manager by phone - or anyone else, come to that. I went all round the automated system twice trying to talk to a human being. I did make that point when I spoke to the HQ customer care lady.
I'm not about to leave pale and upchucking son alone in the house for the sake of going back into town and asking for a face to face meeting when I've no idea if the manager's even available - on account of not actually being able to talk to a human being. I did leave an answerphone message, asking for an immediate call back, and left it over an hour before ringing HQ.
Overkill? Perhaps. It was the HQ person who said that's how the complaint will be handled.
At the moment thermonuclear options look fine to me, but then I am still in full-on mother grizzly bear mode.
Understood. Not my problem, but I wouldn't like to be in his shoes ... if he attracts the superintendant's attention more than once in a non-positive light he'll be looking for a new profession, never mind a new job.
Good for you for complaining.
Interesting, though: while I am not positive, I am pretty darn sure that here in the US, pharmacists cannot at all make any kind of recommendation (even if they know, which I am sure they must do). While in Mexico, pharmacists -- especially at a local level in small towns -- often act (I believe) as a kind of first court of query (doctors being so expensive by local standards).
I hope your son feels better soon. I'm afraid I would have been very tempted to take my throwing up son in so that the pharmacist could indeed examine him in person. And hopefully get his shoes decorated in the process.
Sometimes I just feel snotty like that.
Y'know, the thought did occur to me... but that would hardly have been fair on the ailing lad...
"Did you know you can de-bubble soft drinks by giving them a minute in a microwave, to make them easier on a queasy stomach?"
That certainly explains the boiled 7up from when I was younger!
You go girl!
There is a great satisfaction to being able to complain properly, and getting results thereby. But:
Hopefully this has been a more valuable learning experience for Mr Pharmacist than me swearing inventively at him on the shopfloor would have been.
I'd have paid good money to watch you do it, though!
Is it only in Ireland that 7-Up was boiled to de-fizz it before giving it to people with a weak stomach (as mentioned by my good wife, below)?
And, if I may say so, it's absolutely fascinating to see household name authors (for certain localised and genre-specific values of 'household') weighing in to this. The big world is a smaller place due to t'internet.
And lastly, but certainly not leastly, give out regards to K, and tell him to get better soon. | |
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