Someone else's NSV & the bad news for the pharmacy...

Every LOVES success stories, and while I'm not finished with mine, I thought I'd share someone's big moment that I personally got be apart of. I've worked in a pharmacy ever since I was 18, and when I got the job, I was told that you deal with people who are not necessarily at their best. They might be sick (physically or mentally), taking care of someone who is sick, they might be in pain, or they have a condition that needs to be treated daily (high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc...) At the time, I was working at one of the bigger chain pharmacies as a cashier, and I was waiting on one of our regular customers.

He'd been coming to the pharmacy for MONTHS, and was on the "automatic refill" for his daily medications to treat high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and pre-diabetes. Month after month he'd get his regular prescriptions, spending over $50 every visit. One month I noticed that he had lost some weight, but didn't say anything. The next month and the months to follow, he'd be happier, energetic, and noticeably thinner with every visit. Eventually we'd laugh and talk about how much weight he'd lost, and how healthy he was, and how out of place he was being in the pharmacy. So his yearly doctor visit came up, they did the usual blood work and check-up, and the doctor happily reported that his 70 pound weight-loss and new exercise habits had completely REVERSED all three conditions and he no longer needed any medications whatsoever.

His auto-filled prescriptions were waiting on him at the pharmacy when he came in after his doctor visit. He walked right up to me at the counter and told me the good news. He was ELATED to tell me to take him off of the auto-refills. You could see how relieved, excited, and genuinely HAPPY he was to tell me he was off all of his medications because of the hard work and dedication he put into changing his lifestyle. The doctor had told him that he had added YEARS to his life.

Of course I was happy for him, I was happy to listen to him tell me his story, and I'm happy to tell it now. The only one NOT happy about all of this was the pharmacy chain! He would call every once in awhile wondering why he kept getting calls and junk mail about "coming back to the pharmacy" and how much they "missed his business." Everyone knows all they really care about is money, but if you're going to lose a customer, I think that is the absolute best way.