Fuck you, Walgreen's.

I am so onto you it is, quite literally, sick.

So, the other day, by which I mean sometime around mid-goddamn-January, I come down with The Grippe. Yes, I know this is an archaic term, but it fits...mostly because whatever microscopic motherfucker has taken hold in my lungs will. Not. Let. GO. I've actually torn my ridiculously well-insulated abdominal muscles coughing, my voice sounds like ten miles of bad road, and I can hardly sleep, because when I lie down, my lungs make a noise that sounds altogether too much like a teapot left on the burner at an enthusiastic simmer. I've been to see two separate medical professionals, and while their bedside manners were wildly divergent, the diagnosis was the same:

Disaffected, gum-smacking, 21-year-old Nurse Practitioner at lunch-break kwik-e-klinic inside major department store chain: "S'prolly a virus. Here, go get some codeine syrup, or sumthin'."

My incredibly-cool actual Doctor (from whom I sought a second opinion on day 10), while listening to my upper-respiratory function via stethoscope: "Wow. That is fucked...UP. Your lungs sound like the bastard lovechild of an accordion and a set of bagpipes!" And yeah, he really talks like that, which is a large part of the reason I go to him. Anyone can do the doctorin', but this guy's always good for some entertainment in the bargain. "It's definitely Bronchitis, but it doesn't seem to be the bacterial kind. So, sorry...No antibiotics. You'll just have to rub some dirt on it and soldier it out, tough guy."

However, he did write me for some more drugs. Namely, a steroid and an inhaled dilator to shore up my breathing, and help me get some sleep. So, off to Walgreen's I go like a good citizen to procure my controlled substances.

And WHY do I go to Walgreen's? Same reason so many other drones march dutifully off to other buyatoriums that start with "Wal-." The heady combination of ubiquity, convenience, and familiarity that most chains assume translates as "brand loyalty." Walgreen's has the sort of market penetration also-rans like CVS, Snyder's and Rite Aid can only have wet dreams about. Of course, with Walgreen's, there's also the added wrinkle that they're sort of a de facto extension of my doctor's office, inasmuch as they deal with the medication end. And going anywhere else involves giving someone new a lot of semi-sensitive info. So when it comes to faceless corporate giants being privy to the particulars of my medical history, I try to keep that shit to a minimum.

But. It must be said that Walgreen's, while easy, also pisses me off something FIERCE. They frost my cookies, big-time. This is because they are shamelessly running one of the biggest rackets in the entire Western Hemisphere. And that racket goes by a code-phrase:

"That's gonna be about twenty minutes."

That's the way their business model works: You drop off a prescription, and the friendly, helpful pharmacist (or a licensed representative of same) says, "That's gonna be about twenty minutes." And then you're left to your own devices. And, make no mistake, "twenty minutes" is an EXTREMELY carefully-chosen window of time they'll tell you to wait. It is totally arbitrary; a span specifically selected to sound like a reasonable amount of time to hang out. Certainly, too brief a window of time to leave and come back, right? So, what do you do?

You take the bait. You shop. You shop like the goddamned MORON you are. You shop like they know you will.

You cruise up and down the aisles, perusing the selection of (again, very carefully-selected) products, and you wind up picking shit out you don't really need JUST BECAUSE IT'S THERE.

Let it be known: the "twenty minutes" gambit is the BIG profit-building backbone of the Walgreen's corporate empire. You think Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, and GlaxoSmithKline are cutting them a sweet deal on the good stuff? Fuck, no. So they make it up on the other crap. And the large-scale moving of the tertiary shit-on-shelves accounts for such a significant chunk of their overall business that it's no WONDER we never question it, no matter how ludicrous it is on its face. Of course it doesn't take twenty goddamned minutes to count to fifteen pills, you fucking mongoloids! Especially not when three-quarters of everything behind the magic barrier comes in bottles, pre-counted blister-packs, or patented, complicated dose-measuring mechanisms designed to jack up the asking price Big Pharma gets to charge for top-tier drugs! WALGREEN'S IS PLAYING YOU, BITCHES! And you, my friend, are literally buying it!

Think about it...The non-prescription products in every Walgreen's fall into one of four categories:

1) Food. And not just food...Convenience food. Canned soups. Frozen shit. Insta-dinners. The kind of stuff that's cheap and fast, and that you're likely to be inclined to want to pick up to save all the time they've stolen from you, being as it apparently takes twenty minutes to take a bottle from a box, and put it into a bag with your name on it.

2) Cheap Entertainment. Paperbacks. DVD's. Magazines. There is no earthly reason for this shit to be here. That is, except for the fact that Walgreen's knows that you'll be wandering the store for quite awhile while they fastidiously count out one pill every 90 seconds and you're gonna walk past everything twice.

3) "Health & Beauty" products. Toothpaste. Cotton balls. Cosmetics. Weak-sauce over-the-counter pseudo-remedies. Stuff that helps them feel more like a pharmacy, and less like a seedy corner convenience store. Plus, it's all shit you tend to run out of at home. Not that the hippie to the left is necessarily gonna need what she's nabbing any time soon, but they also don't refuse to sell eyeliner to geriatrics, if you feel me.

4) CANDY, CANDY, CANDY. First, you have to chew good and slow on the incongruity of the fact that the same place that sells both sugary sweets AND insulin monitors knows that you're sure to be back for both sooner or later. If you think about it, that's kind of like a motorcycle dealership that has a special section in the back for crutches and discount body casting: the shiny, highly-marketed shit hangs out in the front all glossy and appealing, and the piper-paying wages-of-sin are just below the surface. Walgreen's knows that you can't pass up a 2-for-1 sale on Twizzlers. They know that a bag of store-brand Bridge Mix that's not-coincidentally the rough size of your lower intestines is a "gimme." Especially when you're wandering the aisles forever, waiting on a tiny bottle of pills to be painstakingly totted up and bagged by a glorified register-jockey.

And besides that, they know there's a pretty good chance you're going to have some kids with you. And if you've ever dragged a squalling brat past rows and rows and rows of brightly-colored bags of sugary bliss, you know only one of you is getting out of there alive. And yes, while Dr. Spock would have our parental hides for caving in and reinforcing bad behavior by buying the unbearable little shits something to shut them the fuck up already, anyone who has ever had to endure the stygian joy of a tiny, impossible-to-deal-with asshole pitching a howling, red-faced bitch in the middle of a public place knows the meaning of the phrase "pick your battles" more intimately than any army commander ever will.

Bear in mind, that's only if you're lucky enough NOT to need meds during one of the four candy-heavy marketing seasons of the year. Those being: Easter (defined as Valentine's Day through Memorial Day), Halloween (Labor Day through Thanksgiving), Christmas (Thanksgiving through New Years') and Valentine's Day (New Years' through Easter). During those magical run-up/holiday/clearance periods, the candy "aisle" sprawls over the entire front half of the store like a goddamned alien fungus that feeds on desperation and self-loathing.

Of course, as you're drinking in all of this shameless retailery as a more-or-less captive audience, you don't usually realize that it's never actually only twenty minutes you wait. It just never is, is it? In Walgreen's time, "twenty minutes" usually averages about thirty-five. That way, when you go up to the counter to ask them why it's taken them the better part of an hour to hand you your goddamned birth control pills, pills that come in for-chrissakes blister-packs in a shit-eating clamshell case and have for years, they can act flustered, like YOU'RE the unreasonable asshole. At that point, they may tersely claim they called your name on the overhead P.A., but of course, they never do. Even when you've specifically asked them to, and they say they will. Then they sigh, as if they're so put-upon and so overworked, and then they GO AND GET THE FUCKING PILLS. And they ring them up right there. They ring them up right along with your three pints of Ben & Jerry's, gallon jug of Lubriderm, copy of "Hair Today," family-size jeroboam of Extra-Strength Tylenol Migraine, pair of "As Seen On TV" Dryer Balls, and the My Little Pony with the lollipop ass-tattoo that little Keighleighh welled up a metric quart of crocodile tears over when you forgot yourself for three seconds and half-turned down the toy aisle. And lo and behold...you are the sucker again.

So, don't fall for it, tools. Don't become a cog in the system! Don't be seduced by Walgreen's carefully-researched and perfectly-laid little honey-trap. Because that's what it is. A trap. So , the next time the pharmacist or conscripted surrogate looks you dead in the eye and utters the lie-on-several-levels of, "that's gonna be about twenty minutes," just do what I do. Look right back at them and say, "Okay. I'll just wait RIGHT HERE." Refuse to move from the register. Firmly, but politely decline to step aside so they can help someone else. Do not be swayed by the bank of comfy chairs they have placed near the counter so they can drag their heels while you watch your afternoon slip away. Stand bolt upright directly in front of the register, and watch them like a hawk until you get your medication. They fucking HATE this. Not only are you totally calling them on the absurd notion that it takes thirty-plus minutes to count out twenty tablets by observing the process directly, but you are making them nervous by being vaguely menacing...But not SO menacing that security must get involved. As an added bonus, you are not draining your bank account and padding theirs by buying SHIT YOU WILL NEVER NEED. EVER.

Trust me, try it. If you don't get your meds inside of five minutes flat, Uncle Mert will buy you a fuckin' Whitman's Sampler. You can pick it out. They're the next aisle over from the Massengill.