I found myself in need of drugs…. At least of the kind that would settle down my lower GI tract. So I stopped at the drugstore in the Festval Mall on my way back to the hotel. The display racks had only the most benign of products like shampoo and diapers. Everything else is obtained at the pharmacy in the back of the store. That is a place where eveything from multi-vitamins to cough drops to cold medicine to hard drugs are dispensed. The facility is a long, semi-circular counter with four clerks working behind the counter and a mob of people in front trying to get waited on.

The clerks would take orders from four people, collect money (credit cards or health care cards), and go get the stuff from the appropriate shelves. That was all then taken to a cashier in the middle of the pharmacy area. This single cashier would ring up the sale, check prescriptions against a book of medical people authorized to write prescriptions, and do quality control on what the clerks had assembled. The clerks would wait there until all four of their customer payments had been processed and then bagged the stuff. They brought the bags back, handed them out, and started the process over for the next four people who had jockeyed themselves into position at the counter.

The drugs we classify as over-the-counter drugs didn’t require a prescription. But, pills and such can be ordered singly. I didn’t need a whole box of Immodium AD, so I bought 5 capsules. That part I liked. However, each cycle from ordering to completion took about ten minutes. That’s about 96 customers an hour who can be processed. There were about 50 people mobbed around the counter and it took about 20 minutes to muscle my way up to the counter and another 15 to get the capsules and be on my way. A very interesting process! Now if the capsules do their job, I’ll be a happy traveler.

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