The witch at the pharmacy

April 06th 2007

I had to go to the pharmacy today at lunch to pick up a prescription. It’s a special medicine that’s not available to the public in France so I have to go to a hospital in Paris to get it. If that sounds quite serious it’s really not, the version in France has aspartame which gives me headaches so they special another brand without aspartame. And I think it’s very cool that they do that for me. Not only that, it’s completely free.

So back to my story, I go every 2 months to get it and there is usually this old, unfriendly pharmacist that works in the hospital pharmacy. Now to make this even more complicated (please bear with me), only a pharmacy intern can dispense this medicine. A few times ago, after several times of waiting in line only to be told “You should have told us it’s a special medicine so we can call an intern”, I come in and go to the counter. The old hag is there, I call her “the witch”, and I say something like “Hello, excuse me I have an ATU.” And what does she say? She starts fussing at me saying I have to wait my turn. So I tell her “I was told to tell you right away that I have an ATU so that you can call an intern.” Now how can she argue with that? I’m doing what I’m told right? No she continues fussing at me and I’m not backing down, I tell her that I’m just doing what I was told. So she tells me to sit down and wait my turn and then I see her quietly call for an intern. Yes! Gagné! (I win!). So this witch really annoys me and I dread going to the pharmacy. I’ve been dealing with her for several years now and she’s not close to retirement..

Fast forward a few months to today.. I go to the pharmacy, hoping the witch will be at lunch. They changed the pharmacy location and so I follow directions to the new entrance and then I see a bunch of signs that say go to accueil (”information”) and I see three glass boxes (apparently for privacy) and then a door and a big counter and I quickly read the sign and I see accès .. publique (”public .. access”) so I go in and up to the counter and low and behold, the witch. So I give my friendly greeting Bonjour! (maybe it’s the exclamation point that got her upset) but she starts fussing at me right away! Holy crap, all I did was say Bonjour!! She explains that I’m not allowed in there and that I have to go to the accueil. So I open up the door and reread the sign, which says accès interdit au publique (”access forbidden”). Yeah, that small word interdit (”forbidden”) changes everything. So I go to one of the boxes which I see is marked accueil and she does the same from the other side.

Expecting a big scolding I announce that I’m sorry, that I just saw the accès publique and she starts telling me how I should actually read the text. Now this is the real reason why traffic signs don’t have many words, because people like me wouldn’t read them. So I keep talking, trying to charm her a bit with my American accent and to my amazement she starts smiling and chuckling. No, not a real laugh, just a chuckle. But it was a major success for me, I made the witch smile! Gagné!!

So then I inform her I have an ATU and she calls the intern. And I got my medicine. Moral of the story? I guess the obvious one is that one should always read all the text but no that’s no fun so let’s not go there. The real moral of the story is that when you come across a crabby French person, take it as a challenge to make them laugh or even just crack a smile. It’s a fun game and one I’ll be playing more and more. My theory is that if you’re really goofy and polite, no matter how crabby they are, they can’t resist. It’s a theory that I’ve been testing for a while with moderate success. I’m going to make it a point for this blog to keep testing, and I’ll post the results here. Just follow the tag getting the mean ones to be nice. I’ve already got another example that turned out well if only for a short time.

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Comments

1 Comment so far

  1. Anonymous on April 7, 2007 20:07

    hey, you never know what kind of day (or life for that matter) that mean, crabby person may be having. I always do the smile (a sincere smile please!)and try the chit-chat (like, how’s your day going?)- sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t BUT I feel better because I was nice. And just maybe, it is the only nice thing that poor crabby person has had happen to them today or in several days. This world is full of mean ugly people - we (the smiley, friendly, nice people) should do all we can to brighten the day of everyone that we come in contact with. Just what if - they die really soon after our encounter, wouldn’t you like to think they died thinking about that nice young man making them smile, or do you really think they would be thinking about that crabby man who cut in line and was rude? OK, so I’m just a happy smiley person but just think about it . . .

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