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I am a pharmacy tech at a fairly large retail chain on Long Island. While most of our customers are lovely, we have quite a few rather wealthy customers who are just… out of touch with how normal people work.

I had a person ask me over the phone to grab a whole laundry list (about forty items) of items from our front end. When I explained that I couldn’t do that but would ring him up at the pharmacy instead of the front end, since this time of night was never busy, he casually offered me $200 to do it. When I was quiet for a second, wondering if this was a prank, he upped the offer to $300!

I apologized and again told him that I couldn’t do that. (Corporate policy, apparently, says that we cannot sell front-end items out of the drive-thru, so it wasn’t just my own discomfort.) He sighed, said they would shop elsewhere, and thanked me for my time.

When he and his wife came to pick up their prescriptions, they were quite nice but insisted on trying to tip me $40 for ringing up their prescriptions. My pharmacist genuinely had to go up and tell them that we were not allowed to accept tips but we thanked them for visiting [Store], after my “thank you, but I can’t accept this” didn’t deter them!

All around, they’re very sweet people, but my goodness, it’s always a rollercoaster with them.

This happened during my second week as a pharmacy tech, and six months later, they still ask me (and all of my fellow techs) if we’re SURE we can’t accept anything.