If you care about your health, take your prescriptions to your local mom-and-pop pharmacy. STAY AWAY from the Duane Reade pharmacy counter.
Do you enjoy having your time wasted? Your health toyed with? Neither do I. Choosing to take those prescriptions to a small neighborhood pharmacy could save you dozens of needless headaches in the future. Why invite trouble? Make it easier on yourself.
Little independently-owned pharmacies find it difficult to compete with the big chains, so they tend to go out of their way to give good service and keep you as a customer. They're a lot more willing to do you a favor (say, keeping you alive and out of the hospital) than the big impersonal chains, like Duane Reade.
I've had so many bad experiences with Duane Reade pharmacies around the city, I've lost count. Today was the last straw; I just had to write and save you the agony I've experienced.
I take a medication that I can't stop taking suddenly. Doing so could cause me to have a seizure, maybe even die. I can always tell when I've forgotten to take my medicine, because within three hours, I start seeing flashing lights and getting sensations inside my brain like someone's zapping my cranium with an electrified cattle prod.
Pharmacists are supposed to know about these things, right?
Yesterday I dropped my prescription off at the Duane Reade near my workplace -- Broadway & Park Place. I knew I was making huge mistake, based on past experience. But stupid me, I was looking to save some time. Since Duane Reade was nearby, I dropped my prescription there, trusting that THIS time, things would run smoothly.
Like I said -- stupid me.
The woman at the pharmacy counter told me they were out of the drug I needed, but that they'd have it back in stock by 10:00 AM the next day. I said I'd come back tomorrow.
When I returned to Duane Reade at 12:15 today, I was told the drug hadn't arrived.
"Well what am I supposed to do? I'm completely out of pills. You told me this would be ready at 10:00 today."
The head pharmacist came out to talk to me -- identified only as "Kathy" -- and said I'd have to find another pharmacy that had the pills in stock. She said she "did her best" but that the medicine just didn't come.
"Why didn't you call me?" I asked.
"Well it just happened this morning."
"And you didn't call me this morning?"
Had she really done her best?
They took my number when I dropped off my prescription. What did they want it for? In case there was a problem with my prescription? Well, what did they call this? Did it occur to anyone to give the customer a heads-up that her crucial medication wouldn't be ready when promised?
Kathy said the best she could do was call another pharmacy to see if they had the drug in stock.
I've been through this before, at another Duane Reade location. They failed to tell me they were out of this particular drug until I came wandering in to pick it up. It took about ten phone calls before I found a pharmacy that had the pills on-hand.
To her credit, Kathy made a lot of phone calls to track down my medication. Unfortunately, it was too little too late. I couldn't call into my office and say, "Hey, I know I said I was just going to lunch, but I've decided to take the rest of the day off...to go look for some pills."
And I didn't appreciate having to take 50 minutes of my 60-minute lunch break to just stand around in the middle of Duane Reade and wait for this woman to make a dozen phone calls while I waited.
I never did get my prescription filled. I still don't have it.
Kathy should not have put me -- or herself -- in such a frenzied position. Duane Reade should have better systems in place, and higher performance standards. They should have been more aware of what was going on with the day's orders -- who needed what, and by when. Who might get sick without their meds; perhaps make a simple phone call to head off disaster. Unlike CVS (which in my experience tends to have better-organized pharmacies and more alert pharmacists -- for a chain), Duane Reade is staffed by boobs -- clueless, hapless boobs, uniformly, city-wide. They've lost my prescriptions. They've given me the wrong prescriptions. They're just plain ridiculous. I can't believe I gave them another chance.
Duane Reade is OK when you need to make a shampoo pit-shop or stock up on ibuprofen. But do yourself a favor and take your prescriptions somewhere else. Anywhere else.
On a side note, as I was standing in Duane Reade waiting for Kathy The Pharmacist to finish her phone calls, the cashier left a 2-inch-thick STACK of bills -- 10s, 20s -- on the counter in front of the cash register, and WALKED AWAY for about five minutes. It could have been a stealthy thief's dream come true.
So I guess sloppiness and incompetence at Duane Reade are pretty steady policies.
At least you can count on that.
