Posted 4:50 PM by Gene

I just came from a Rong-Aid to buy a fan for my office demi-cubicle and some CONAgra canned spaghetti, when some uh, clerk asked for ID. (The reason they asked for ID, some "manager" said later, was because of local fraud. Don't the credit card companies have databases?) Anyway, I got a little upset as I'd been there the day before to buy subway tokens. Didn't someone see me? The girl kept saying I needed ID, and then (remembering how No-CVS manhandled me in the same situation) I lost my temper. Then the uh, clerk laughed at me. Then I got madder, and two other uh, clerks joined in the hilarity. I stomped out, walked eight blocks to get my ID, got my items (the uh, clerks claimed they reshelved them so I had to get them all over), left, and will never return to that Rong-Aid again.

I told the "manager" of a time (in Lancaster) I'd been to a McDonald's to buy two Big Macs on sale, and the store ran out of the thousand-island "special sauce," and I got mad, and the clerks laughed at me. Such patented franchise-tested-and-approved service is why Mickey D's is in trouble, and all the chain drug stores share the same predicament. As it happens this particular Rong-Aid has employed a girl with purple hair (she later had it undyed), and a girl with shocking-pink hair. (The store also introduced me to the accused pedophile who can flyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy and is playing a radio station on its loudspeakers in violation of the law.) The clowns who run these stores don't give a damn. Rong-Aid of course got into huge trouble for cooking its books and it hasn't fully recovered. No-CVS makes its money by skimping on store maintenance so that to buy anything you have to wade through aisles of trash and plastic buckets. Even without accountants and Pig Pens when I think of chain drug stores I remember the Washington Post's heartrending account of the Rong-Aid in Virginia (I think) that dispensed the wrong medication to a young girl who died as a result, or the Walgreen's pharmacist who tried to get a customer arrested for improperly securing a prescription painkiller when it turned out she had a malignant brain tumor. These stories provoked much laughter and backslapping in Illinois, and Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island. Customers like me don't find this nationwide joke funny.

I'm debating whether to send a letter of appreciation to Rong-Aid's chairman. Lot of good that will do. In the in-box and out the out-box. If I do, it will close with my variation of Rong-Aid's imbecilic Dilbert-written motto: WITH ME, IT'S PERSONAL.