On Ben's many trips back to Canada this year he has been able to bring back some of my favourite products. From clamato juice to kraft dinner, I am very lucky to be endowed with quite a few bits of Canadiana here in CPH.
One Canadian icon (which I would not have called an icon while living in Canada but have since switched to a different tune) that is impossible to join me here in Denmark is Shoppers Drugmart. Oh the reliable drugstore that always has a location near you that is open 24 hours a day! Just in case you get that middle of the night migraine and need to rush out for some intense tylenol. Or if you are on your way to work at 6am and decide now would be an amazing time to get a prescription filled. And of course, my favourite, the boxing day shopping deals! When all the boxed christmas sets of my products go on sale for half price....heaven!
The drugstore system, or Apoteket as it is called, is nowhere near as seamless as my good old Shoppers. Take my experience yesterday getting a prescription filled. It was a beautiful sunny Saturday, birds were singing and people were out and about enjoying the sunshine. Not me though - it was off to the Apoteket which is inconveniently open between 10am and 3pm and not at all on Sundays (wtf?). For people who spend their weekdays working this timing allows a very small window to get prescriptions filled. Ok...to be fair, the Apoteket is open until 6pm on weekdays...but really, when you compare this to Shoppers Drugmart it means nothing!
Anyways, so 11am off to the Apoteket I go. I walk into the store and immediately take a number. I get 72. The pharmacists are currently serving numbers 58-60. There is no telling how long I will have to wait. So I grab a chair and wait. And wait. And wait. You may be asking yourself "Why grab a chair and wait? If this is a pharmacy, can you not spend your waiting time perusing the shelves and shelves of many wonderful products....like at Shoppers?". Nope. There are no shelves and shelves of wonderful products here. Well...there is one shelf that has some fish oil, baby products and fiber...nothing really fun to look at. So I sit.
Ultimately I wait half an hour before a pharmacist is ready to serve me. Within another 3 minutes I am out the door (I am a pretty fast customer compared to some of the people waiting ahead of me in line). Number 66 was STILL standing at a station.
While half an hour is really not a big deal out of teh grand scheme of things, when I have the Shoppers Drugmart system as a benchmark I cannot help but be annoyed. At Shoppers you spend a couple minutes dropping off your prescription then you go off to shop (i used to go across the street and buy fruits and vegetables). 10 minutes later I would pop back in and my prescription would be ready. No waiting, no taking numbers, no muss no fuss. And if I did decide to wait in Shoppers I would use my time wisely perusing makeup, candles, cards, hair products, chocolate and magazines. Perhaps someone not raised on the Shoppers system would question why so many un-pharmaceutical related products belong in a Canadian pharmacy? My answer: to make the waiting painless.
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