Jibber-Jabber-itis

Over the last week or so, i've been battling a cold. I had Friday off work, and during a trip to the pharmacy for some cold and flu tablets, I made a few observations that I thought were worth sharing.

• While pharmacies are mildly suspicious of you for wanting to purchase Cold & Flu tablets containing Pseudo-ephedrine as a general rule, asking for these tablets in a slummy area like where I work means they are VERY suspicious of you. Suspicious enough to make you talk to three separate employees about why you want the pills. I think they were hoping I would slip and say "I want them for my drug-la...ahhh...no, that's not it, I mean for my cold. Yes, I have a cold and/or the Flu."
  
  
• Asking for "Cold and Flu tablets with Pseudo-ephedrine instead of that other crap" apparently makes you seem even more suspect. I have discovered, however, that requesting 'old formula' cold and flu tablets makes you seem clueless about drugs, and therefore obviously less likely to be purchasing the tablets to take home to your secret drug lab in order to cook up a bunch of Speed. Because apparently people who make drugs are better educated than any law abiding citizen.
  
  
• Pharmacies are the epicentre of that world-wide phenomenon known as old-man-illness-jibber-jabber-itis. You may also know this as 'Sick-old-man-talk-itis' or 'Old-fart-talking-pus-itis'. Visit a pharmacy on a weekday during working hours and you will find a wide variety of elderly people telling anyone who will listen about their boils, blisters, constipation, growths and rashes. And that's just for starters. If you hang around for long enough you'll hear about the REAL problems - You don't even have to be the one having the conversation, they'll talk loud enough so everyone can hear. They're thoughtful like that.
  
  
• Elderly people in pharmacies are just as suspicious of you as the pharmacists, only their suspicion seems to stem more from their feelings about your age/apparent lack of employment/refusal to hear about their pus-filled sores.

The benefit of all of these suspicions and medical jibber-jabber is that what you thought was a day that would be dull and spent wasted eating chicken noodle soup and watching trashy tv actually becomes quite entertaining. And it gives me new respect for pharmacists and pharmacy employees who have to deal with this stuff every single day.