Mr. Cave

Can you hear me now?

Last night I had an interesting encounter with a customer, who I’ll refer to as Jane. She came in and dropped all her stuff (keys, phone, purse) at the consultation area and told me she needed to find a new battery for her hearing aid. I pointed to the hearing-aid endcap and after stopping at every kiosk along the way (saying “I don’t see it, where is it?” at each one) she finally arrived at the proper location and promptly begain looking through the assortment of batteries.

I went to help a customer at the drive-thru and turned around as I heard Jane scream, “OH MY GOD, WHERE’S MY PURSE?!?!”. She threw her hands up to her face “Home Alone” style and maintained the look of awe/surprise for a good 8 seconds before she heard me saying “Jane, calm down, your purse is over here in the consultation area. It’s OK, no one took it.”

After she was finished shitting her pants she came back to the consultation area and told me we didn’t have the battery she needed. Then Jane said, “Here I’ve got an old battery right here with me.”

“Great,” I thought, we’ll just match it up and I’ll get this crazy lady out of here.

As Jane reached up to her ear, everything went into slow-motion. My face cringed and I looked on in disgust as she pulled out the yellowed hearing aid. I began backing up and looking for an exit strategy. Her arthritic hands began fumbling with the device, and I knew each second that she unsuccessfully tried to open the battery door was one second less I’d have before she handed it over to me for assistance. I was sunk…

Never in my 2 years as a pharmacist has the “One drive-up call” announcement sounded so sweet.

I don’t know if I even said anything to Jane as I bolted to take care of the drive-thru customer. I knew if I stayed busy long enough she would eventually get the compartment open, so I chatted it up a little with the drive-thru customer and was slightly startled when I heard someone walk through the gate and into the pharmacy.

No, it wasn’t Jane. It was just a font-store supervisor, Kathryn. She asked me something about returning an OTC product, but I was only half-paying attention as I looked over her shoulder to still see Jane jacking with her hearing aid. I answered Kathryn’s question and went on about my business of taking extra-special care of the drive-thru customer.

Once we were all finished up I came over and was pleased to see that Kathryn had stopped to help Jane with the hearing aid. They had the battery compartement open and were just getting ready to insert a fresh battery that Kathryn had determined was a close match to the old one. She dropped the battery in, upside down as luck would have it, and tried to shut the door, thourougly jamming the battery inside the hearing aid.

Kathryn, being older and not-so-dexterous herself, looked up at me and, you guessed it - handed me the hearing aid.

If you don’t know me, here’s a pertinent fact from my past: Ever since I was a little boy I’ve been somewhat of a priss about touching nasty/dirty shit. I’ve gotten over the dirt part when it comes to day-to-day things (i.e. I don’t mind getting mud or some raw chicken on my hands) but my phobia slowly evolved into one of not wanting to have large amounts of contact with bodily fluids or fomites, and this hearing aid was a shining example of things I don’t to be within 10 feet of.

It’s probably an overly irrational fear, but I simply don’t like touching stuff that came out of someone else’s body. I hand-sanitize when I get downtime if I’ve touched the keyboards, a prescription, money, or anything else that someone else has handled.

If I wanted to touch crusty stuff I would’ve been a nurse, but I fixed the damn hearing aid anyway. Then I hand-sanitized.

Note: I changed the names in the story to protect the innocent and to avoid violating a federal law.