If you’re outside of the UK this probably won’t mean much to you, but if you’re in the UK you’ll know all about Boots the chemist. They’re a HUGE chain and for my whole life I have preferred them to other chemists and would actually go out of my way to go to a Boots rather than any other chemist. When the big supermarkets started opening chemists in-store I felt it was even more important to support specialist companies like Boots and always made my chemist-y purchases from there instead of Asda, Tesco etc.

I’ve had a Boots Advantage card for years (you collect points when you purchase things that you can then use to make further purchases) and every year at xmas my mum gives me a Boots gift card which I use to get perfume, make-up and other nice things that I probably wouldn’t (be able to afford to) buy myself otherwise. The staff in Boots are always incredibly helpful and knowledgeable and without sounding too zealous about the whole thing, I have always felt like a valued customer when I shop there. There are few shops or companies that I actually feel brand loyalty towards, but Boots is one of them.

Those of you who follow my blog will know that I recently gave up smoking. Boots have this awesome new service where they can write a prescription for nicotine replacement which costs £5 a month for about £100 worth of products. You get your prescription then go into the store each week to pick up your NRT stuff. I’ve been doing that for the last month and telling people all about it and feeling so impressed with yet another great service from a shop that I like.

Liked.

Yesterday I had the first in a series of dental treatments done and my dentist suggested that I take a painkiller before the local anaesthetic wore off. So I picked D up from the house and we went to Boots to get some painkillers. D was there because at the time I wasn’t speaking very clearly due to not being able to feel half my face.

We went into our local Boots at Ocean Terminal, Edinburgh (I’ve thought a lot about whether or not to name the store here and decided that I should, although I’ll resist naming individual people) and since I knew I was going to be getting more dental treatment each week for the next month or so I asked for a box of 32 Paramol. If you don’t know, Paramol is an over-the-counter medication containing paracetamol and dihydracodeine. The sales assistant asked me to repeat myself (fair enough, I was mumbling a little with my frozen face), so I repeated my request and explained that the painkillers were for the dental work I’d just had done, as the dentist suggested.

The sales assistant then looked at the ground and said something along the lines of “I need to check something”. I wasn’t that surprised since codeine is an addictive substance and shops need to be careful about how much they sell of it and to who. Fair enough. I sometimes take aspirin and codeine alongside my prescription for amitriptyline, which my doctor knows about and is absolutely fine with. I could get (more, stronger, cheaper, addictive) painkillers on prescription but I choose not to because it makes me feel like a-sick-person, which I hate. So when I need some painkillers, I just buy them.

So the sales assistant didn’t come back. A pharmacist did. He stood behind the counter and announced in a loud and conspicuous manner “You can’t have any more of those. You’ve bought too many and I won’t sell you any more”. I asked him what he was talking about, since the last time I bought Paramol was last October when I had sinusitis. I also asked him if there was a customer record somewhere with my photo on it and a list of what I purchased since he didn’t even know my name.

He said “You’ve been seen in here a lot of you’ve bought painkillers”. I explained, very calmly and politely given the situation, that I had been in that store on a weekly basis to pick up my nicotine replacement stuff and although I sometimes purchased (considerably weaker and totally different) painkillers, I certainly haven’t been habitually purchasing anything addictive (or anything, really). I also said that I have M.E. and my doctor know what I’m taking. I had explained that to a number of sales assistants in that store previously and it had never been a problem.

He said that if I wanted any more (is he a drug dealer now?!) I would have to go to my doctor. I explained AGAIN that I chose not to take prescription painkillers, but would be seeing my doctor soon anyway as I see her regularly due to the M.E. and needing frequent check-ups cause of that. He was being so horribly obnoxious, and in a shop full of people too, so I asked if I could speak to his manager.

He said “No, if you want more painkillers, you have to ask your doctor because I won’t sell you any more”. I explained that I didn’t ‘want more painkillers’ (the whole shop-full of people probably thought I was a crazed drooling drug addict my now), I wanted to make a complaint about the way he spoke to me and the fact that I was being treated like a criminal, like I had done something wrong.

He kept saying no, I just had to go to my doctor. I kept saying no, I wanted to speak to his manager. So he eventually went and got his manager who was absolutely lovely, very apologetic and pleasant about the whole thing. By this time I was in tears, partly because I was really hurt by the implication (ok, downright accusation) that I was a drug addict and partly because all the other people in the shop had witnessed the altercation so I was feeling immensely humiliated.

Nice manager guy went and got another pharmacist who sat down opposite me and started talking at a million miles an hour about controlled substances, notes from doctors etc etc, as if talking really quickly and not giving me a chance to speak was some kind of acceptable substitution for actually addressing the issue at hand.

When I was eventually given (ok, forcefully took) the opportunity to speak, I explained that I was fully aware of and completely appreciated policies on controlled substances and the responsibility held by pharmacists etc. I told her that I was upset because the horrible treatment I had received was based on the fact that I had been seen in the shop often (sorry for being a loyal customer) rather than any kind of records. Obviously people remember me. I have bright pink hair and a tattoo on my face. I’m a pretty distinctive looking person. If I’d looked more ‘normal’ (for want of a better word) I doubt that anyone would’ve remembered me, let alone noticed anything I was buying.

Woman-pharmacist started telling me that they remembered all their customers and what they bought (there’s an encyclopedic memory!) and it had nothing to do with how I looked, that I wasn’t being judged or discriminated against. I explained my point again, since it was obviously being ignored. I was met with the same obtuse bullshit. D then stepped in and explained it, and he was also dismissed with complete crap.

I gave up on that point and decided to express my feelings about how I was spoken to. I said that if the pharmacist guy had quietly explained that company policy now dictated that customers who bought certain medications more than a couple of times needed some kind of written documentation from their doctor regarding why they were purchasing the medications, there wouldn’t have been a problem. The problem was with how I was spoken to, how I was treated and how publicly it occurred. As a human being, never mind a loyal customer, I did not deserve to be blatantly accused of mass-buying painkillers like a drug addict loudly in a busy shop.

The way the guy spoke to me…have you ever been walking down the street only to encounter a very drunk person staggering about and trying to engage passers-by in conversation? The way people speak to those drunk people is the way this guy spoke to me. I can’t tell you how much that hurt.

I told woman-pharmacist and nice-manager that I was as far from being a drug addict as it was possible to be. I told them about having M.E. and that I didn’t smoke, drink or take drugs. I am the most squeaky fucking clean person in existence right now. Woman-pharmacist was still talking to me like I was a small child, so I told her that I was 28 years old, a fully-grown adult with a functioning brain, that I ran my own business, that I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the person that I was being accused of being.

They didn’t seem to grasp that ‘person seen in shop often’ + ‘person seen purchasing painkillers’ does not = ‘person purchasing painkillers often’. They didn’t seem to understand that people who look unusual or distinctive are obviously going to be noticed and remembered more often than people who don’t. They had no recollection of seeing D before, and he shops in there as often as I do. Case in fucking point, assholes.

The whole thing was going round and round in circles and getting nowhere, so I gave up. I said that the next time I saw my doctor I would obtain some sort of written proof that my intake of over-the-counter medicine was above-board, acceptable and in no way addict-behaviour. Then I would take it to a different chemist where I would also be buying my shampoo, perfume, tampons, make-up and all the other things that I previously bought from Boots. As if they give a shit about losing one customer, but I wanted them to understand how much I had been hurt.

Nice-manager said that he would deal with it and take things further etc but by this stage I didn’t believe a word of it. Woman-pharmacist also said that they had a responsibility to make sure people didn’t kill themselves. She said “…and what if someone killed themselves cause we sold him too much paracetamol?”. I said “What if someone killed themselves because they were accused of being a drug-addict by someone who worked in a shop at a time when they were already dealing with a whole heap of other horrible things that the person in the shop knew nothing about?”. At that point, we left the shop. And now I don’t know whether or not to do anything more about it.

I want to make the point to you, readers, that I am under no illusion that the way I choose to look won’t result in some stupid people treating me like shit or making unpleasant and inaccurate assumptions about me. I get it. I’m fine with that. Life is too short and hard enough already not to indulge in fun things like having pink hair or piercings or whatever if that’s what you want to do.

The thing I’m angry (frustrated, hurt, upset, devasted, gutted, still crying) about is how I was spoken to by someone who works in a chemist shop, someone who is supposed to actually have a grasp on how to treat customers, how to speak to people. Hell, if I WAS a drug addict I wouldn’t even have deserved the way I was treated yesterday. Woman-pharmacist and nice-manager actually made the excuse that the guy who was rude to me wasn’t the best at speaking English. His grasp on the language is good enough to get a degree in this country, to get a job in this country which involves speaking to members of the public on a daily basis, but not good enough not to be an obnoxious cunt. Right.

Since all this happened yesterday I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to write to Boots customer care department (can’t find an address for anything more corporate than that) about it. I feel that I should because I hate the thought that anyone else would be treated the way I was treated yesterday, but at the same time I’m sure that the only response I’ll get is a bunch of platitudes and bullshit. If you’ve made it through this entire entry and have an opinion on whether or not I should attempt to take things further, please comment or email and let me know what you think.

I typed another 5 paragraphs about how shit I feel right now, because of this and a lot of other stuff, but I can’t bring myself to scatter it all over the public domain. I find it so hard to have public moments of weakness and if anyone started giving it the whole smile cheer up it might never happen it could be worse at least you don’t have cancer hurricanes earthquakes war starving children in africa be strong hang in there bullshit I would seriously have to go and put my fist through something.

So, do I make a complaint about this? Would it be worth it? Would it be a waste of time?