Of course with the holidays quickly approaching, several days before Thanksgiving, my body decided to betray me.
"Ha ha!" it railed. "You were all set to gorge yourself silly so I'm stopping you from doing that! Poof! You feel like a poo-poo platter!" (Quick juvenile sidebar: I used to enjoy ordering poo-poo platters at Chinese restaurants. Not because I liked the food; no way! I just enjoyed saying it out loud and having a little giggle. Yes, I'm six years old. But I digress...)
So, my wife takes off to enjoy being with the family, leaving me home in a pile of tissues and hacking my lungs out. Naturally, I thought I had Covid. Again. So I took a test. It was indeterminate. There were two red lines. What? There was no protocol for two red lines.
I waited and took another test the next day. Still same strange results. Huh, I thought. Either I'm dead and in the Twilight Zone or something seems off.
Sure enough, the two tests had expired. Back to the drawing board with yet another test. This one came out as negative, but after inspecting the various packets and stuff, one of them had expired by several months. Another test was enjoyed by my nostrils and flooding eyes!
Finally, I bit the bullet and went to Urgent Care. Now the only thing I hate more than going to the doctor is going to Urgent Care. Here, you'll generally wait for hours and hours and hours in a waiting room packed with the sickest people this side of a Covid ward. But this time I had a plan. As they opened at 10:00 A.M., I decided to get there, wait it out in front of the doors like a Black Friday Walmart Raider, and get a jump on the sick masses.
I got in. And of course, first thing they wanted to do was give me a Covid test. Fun! While I should've been packing myself silly until I was sick with all sorts of high carb foods, I was having my nostrils tortured by Nurse Ratched.
So, bronchitis, bla, bla, bla. They phoned it into a nearby pharmacy (my regular one was closed on Sunday because no one is allowed to get sick on the Lord's Day.).
I gave it a good hour before I showed up. The pharmacist on duty was young and angry, clearly wanting his Sunday back, didn't speak until I did, no time for pleasantries (in fact everyone I dealt with there NEVER spoke to me first, the onus always being on me), and not once even looked up at me. "It'll be...thirty minutes," he said. While I sat down, he repeated this line numerous times to other customers, always with the well-rehearsed pause in the same place as if he was actually giving the time frame ample consideration. I mean, AS IF.
While I sat, coughing behind my mask, a long line of other drug-needing customers lined up. Sure enough after thirty minutes of drudgery (there oughta be a law against vapid non-stop Christmas music in public places this early), the eye-contact-avoiding pharmacist blipped out my name. I jumped out of my chair to go approach him. And he ignored me.
I thought, well, maybe I'm in the wrong line. So without giving it a second thought I raced over to the clerk at the pick-up line.
Using awkward hand gestures, I said, "Um, that guy over there just called my name."
The clerk is looking over my shoulder at the other waiting customers, anywhere but me. Man, what charm school did they all graduate from?
But then it hit me...did I just cut in line? Surely not. I mean, my name was called. And I'd already done my due diligence by waiting in line the first time, so my behavior is perfectly acceptable. Right? RIGHT?
By the time my bout of doubt and second doubt had fully ensnared me within its nefarious clutches, I could feel unrest at my back. Daggers, even.
I turned, mustered up an awkward smile, and said to the first person in line, "Hey, I'm sorry if I cut in line. I didn't mean to... I'd already waited in line before and, um, he just called my name...and, um..." My hands and thumbs gesticulated in every direction, seeking out visual aid in my time of need and failing me horribly, rendering me into a drunken traffic cop.
The woman in charge of the restless natives was ballcapped, young, dressed in expensive looking designer workout clothes, and very, VERY angry. She said nothing. I kinda was expecting a small smile, maybe a handwave, a "oh, you're fine."
Instead I got the most hateful glare, slow shake of the head, and upturned sneer I've ever been accorded. She followed up with an arm-fold and a very audible snort through her inflated and enflamed nostrils. Absolutely spewing out her incredibly self-entitled rich, white yuppie anger.
In the halls of CVS, I faced down the fury of Karen Unleashed.
I've seen how things like this can escalate on YouTube, so I hauled ass, arms full of prescriptions, out of there.
Later I asked both my wife and daughter if what I had done constituted poor pharmacy etiquette. To my relief, they both said no, since I'd already waited in line.
But try telling that to Karen, Angry Queen of CVS. Undoubtedly, it's my fault, though. Had I kept my mouth shut and not offered an apology (even though I didn't think it truly necessary, just covering the bases), then I wouldn't have fed her flames of self-righteous indignation. Akin to feeding online trolls, sometimes I just can't help myself.
Let this be a warning, friends. Beware of Karens in pharmacies. They're mad, they're there, and they want to see the manager NOW!
While I've got bad decisions on my mind, consider poor Shawn Biltmore. Stuck in a dead-end, miserable drudge of corporate nonsense job, his love-life is also going nowhere. Until he gets bitten by a werewolf. Things change. And not necessarily for the better. Yet it doesn't stop Shawn from forging ahead from one bad decision to another. Yes sir, it's corporate satire at its fiercest, funneled through the lens of a horror tale and more werewolves than you can toss a stick to. Check out the horror, suspense, and dark humor of Corporate Wolf. Tell them Karen sent you. And then demand to see the manager.
