I'd like to refill my pride

I didn't have a car for the majority of my time in college. It sort of sucked, because if you needed to like, leave campus in order to buy things, you were pretty much screwed. There was this weird Mexican market within walking distance that I didn't trust--they were closed down on more than one occasion for selling beer to underage college students and rat infestations, or perhaps just underage mutant rats were trying to buy beer, I'm not sure because I couldn't read the broken English hand-written sign on the door (but how cool would that be? It's like Splinter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, only not old and lecture-y!!! He's all, "hey don't worry about Shredder, here's a Newcastle.")--but I was sometimes forced to due to my lack of food and inability to order Thai food for the tenth day in a row.

If I needed some sort of non-food product, the overpriced pharmacy on campus was always the way to go, especially if you didn't want to buy suspicious looking Los Kleenexos. However, something went down one day while I was there which made me sort of unable to ever enter the pharmacy again.

So I had to buy something and get a prescription filled, which always worried me because I assumed that work-study students filled the prescriptions, and I had to ask myself, is this the day they accidentally hand me diabetes medication and I die? But it was a chance I had to take. So I buy whatever I needed and hand them my prescription and wander around campus for a half hour until it's ready. I come back there, and the dude's like, hey what medication are you talking about? I don't have a prescription for you here. I told him what it was, and waited patiently while he flipped through EVERY PAPER IN THE PHARMACY looking for it. Nope. He lost it, apparently. I pointed to the woman I handed it to and said, "SHE must have lost it. I handed it RIGHT TO HER." I was pretty accusatory, because I was annoyed and had to get home in time to play Spider Solitaire, most likely. So then he conferenced with her and was like, "yeah I don't know what to tell you. It's gone." I stood there for a minute, like, uhhhhh? Seriously? The pharmacy was always screwing things up and charging 11 dollars for deodorant and I just couldn't take it anymore. I was pissed. By this time, a crowd had started to form for some reason, I guess because I was holding up the line. Normally, I'd wander away like a loser, but I wasn't going to let it go. I even RAISED MY VOICE a bit, and was like, "hey, what kind of operation are you running here, man? I don't know about anyone else here, but I don't think it's very good business TO LOSE A CUSTOMER'S PRESCRIPTION." Yeah, I created a scene. It was awesome. I felt very proud of myself. Now the pharmacy guy was shaking in his boots. He starts searching around for it again. At this point, I've already browsed every item in the pharmacy (including ear wax remover! COOL!), so I had nothing left to do but stand there and look pissed. I called my mom, and decided to have a conversation with her for the benefit of the entire pharmacy-- "Yeah! Can you BELIEVE IT? They LOST my PRESCRIPTION. I know, I won't stand for it! NOT ONE BIT! Highly unprofessional, I must say." Everyone was cheering me on, and I felt very Norma Rae. I even got a "damn, that ain't right" from some random dude. Well, maybe not, but he was THINKING it, at the very least. Finally, the pharmacy guy calls me over, and is like, "look. I am so sorry. We can't find it. I'll tell you what. I will just fill it without the prescription. Just don't tell anyone, okay? I don't want you to be without your medication." That seemed sort of dangerous, but whatever. I accepted the meds and thanked him and went about my way, shoving my meds in my purse, thankful that this ordeal is over.

And then I found the prescription in my purse.

I mean...I guess I never ACTUALLY handed it to the woman? The woman I called out as the loser of my prescription. I'm pretty sure I did hand it to her. But clearly, I did not. So here was the dilemma. Do I go home and have an extra prescription just lying around, and hope that the woman doesn't get fired and the guy doesn't get arrested for filling medication without a prescription, or do I bury any sort of pride and go back and say, whoooops I found it? If you know me at all, you'd know that I am such a guilty wimp that I went back just so no one would get in trouble. It was SO EMBARRASSING. Especially because the guy then YELLED AT ME for being mistaken. I mean, I guess I yelled at him for essentially the same thing, but STILL! Didn't he know I just saved his job and that it was really awkward for me?! He then LECTURED ME, "you should really call back whoever you were on the phone with and say, HEY IT WAS ALL MY FAULT. THIS PHARMACY DOESN'T LOSE PRESCRIPTIONS." And I'm all like, "WELL I can't because it was my mom and now she is watching American Idol so maybe she'll just go on thinking that, OKAY?!"

Looking back, here's how I would have handled it differently. 1) Actually hand them my prescription. 2) If I didn't give it to them, then I would not yell at them, but instead look on my person for the prescription. 3) Instead of admitting my mistake, I would just pretend I found the prescription on the floor, like, "OH HERE IT IS! It must have fallen off your counter. HOW ODD." 4) Get someone to drive me to Rite Aid. But Rite Aid sort of sucks, too. Don't even get me started on Rite Aid. Anyway, isn't life just full of valuable lessons? Especially those pharmaceutical-related.