Unfiltered Story #223091
(I work in a pharmacy in Stockholm, Sweden, helping customers with their presciptions. Most prescriptions are electronic and also individual. To find a persons prescriptions in the computer I need to have their full personal identity number (date of birth plus four additional digits that you recieve when you’re borne) and a picture ID. One day a woman comes in.)
Me. “Hi, how can i help you?”
Woman: “I’m here to pick up some medication.”
Me: “Of course. Can I please see some ID?”
Woman: “ID? I don’t have any ID. It’s for my grandson.”
Me: “Oh. Can I have his personal identity number then, and your ID, please?”
(The woman gives me her grandsons date of birth, and starts looking in her cell phone to see if she has the last four digits there, but it doesn’t seem that she does.)
Woman: “Do you really need his personal identity number? The doctor told my grandson to get [medicine].”
([Medicine] is an OTC drug, which means you don’t really need a prescription to buy it. A lot of times doctors just recommend their patients to buy a medicine without sending a prescription. Thinking that may be the case here I say:)
Me: “Was the doctor going to send a prescription? Because you can buy it without a prescription.”
Woman: “I’m so not going to come back to this pharmacy. I wanted to help my grandson, but I think I’ll go somewhere else where they won’t question me!”
(The woman then angrily leaves. Me and a woman who is next in line stare in disbelief.)
Woman next in line: “Well, some people sure don’t know how to behave.”
Me (in order to act professional resisting my urch to say something bad about [Woman]): “Well, I really don’t know why she got so upset, but what can you do?”
Woman next in line: “Oh well, you shouldn’t care about her. You guys are always so nice and helpful whenever I come in here.”
Me: “Thank you, we try our best.”
(I still don’t understand why [Woman] took offence, she could have called her grandson or his parents to ask for his four last digits, but maybe she just had a bad day. I hope he got his medicine in the end.)