On the less than stellar service at the pharmacy

I am pissed off, incandescent with rage, speechless ...

I went to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled. As I handed the paper over to the chemist he said, "You keep an eye on those kids, would you". And not in a nice way. Weird, and I shrugged it off. The girls wandered about touching and looking but never opening, never breaking and never running, and I stood beside them, making sure they didn't oh, you know, drink poison or eat soap.

Then this guy came out from behind his counter grabbed Nell and speaking to girls, with his back to me said to them, 'You go sit over there [in a seat next to a pile of cardboard boxes, at the very back of the shop]. It's not place to wander about unsupervised". And not in a nice way.

Well, I was brought up all WASP-y and the cold shoulder, the dirty look are my weapons of choice in times of crisis. But I lost it. I whirled about (and how often do we get to whirl in a chemist?) and went at him: "hands off my kids; how dare you!; how rude!; never once were they unsupervised!; they have opened nothing, broken nothing!; just who on earth do you think you are?; never in all my life ... ". And then I demanded back my prescription and stormed out in such a blaze of righteous fury, I melted the organic honey and beeswax lip balm, with Lucy saying her clear and carrying voice, "He was such a very rude man, Mummy"; my but she does enunciate well when I want her to.

Am still furious.

Really, can I be the very first woman with kids in the shop? Surely women are the key market, what with our taking responsibility for our families' health and loving all that lavender scented crap that lies around these stores. Or has every other woman allowed their children to systematically strip the place down, so that he only now, with me, finally learned his lesson?

Here's another couple of lessons: if you don't want kids touching stuff, don't leave illustrated boxes of chocolate and mint (!!!) face masks lying in a basket on the floor, and don't leave shiny lipstick tubes at kid eye-height, and offer somewhere to chain up the children (preferably with a bowl of water nearby). Stop worrying so much about finger marks on your marked down $5 crap, and stop acting like my kids' fingers are somehow nastier than all those people who walk around using the testers and never buying a thing.

And don't piss off a woman who comes in for birth control pills. Because if I don't get them, I'll have more rugrats and I'll bring them back to your store and let them run amok. And I'll hiss at you as you cower amongst your pills and cheap perfume, "You brought this on yourself, you angry fuck".

And to anyone who reads this and even thinks, "But some children are poorly behaved", let me say this: well, who isn't, sometimes? And also, shove it up your arse.

So, have a nice day, everybody.