Annie Tsai

The other day I was standing in line at CVS to pick up a prescription, and I had the great displeasure of experiencing a quarrel between what felt initially like two completely ordinary people in my community. 

(Disclosure, the names have been fabricated) 

Both in line to pick up meds. Rachel  in front of me at the head of the line. Monica casually walks up and stands on the side waiting to be served. Rachel waits a bit then asks the other lady, “excuse me, are you picking up a prescription?”

Monica says ,”yes.” And looks back down at her phone dismissively.

Rachel says, “there’s a line.” And casually turns and points at me, the only other person in said line. (Can we also take a moment and appreciate how short the pharmacy line at CVS was for me that day?)

Monica says, “I’m waiting in this line,” and points to the sign that says “prepaid mobile app pickup”, where there are no other people. I had noticed the sign before but didn’t really understand how this new sign impacted the lines. Every other time I had come to CVS to pick medication up, there was always one line. So I wasn’t surprised when Rachel says,”oh, well there’s one line.”

And here is where the action took off.

Monica says, “there’s two lines. I know I come here every day.”

(Side bar, you’re picking up prescriptions every day? How many prescriptions can you have if you’re there every day? Okay that’s for another piece, fine.)

Rachel says, “it’s always been one line.” (This is also what I have experienced.)

Monica says, “no, it’s two lines. I come here every day.”

Rachel responds with, “okay.”

Finally, some silence. Then Rachel says, “You know I didn’t know that was a new thing, there has always been one line.”

And Monica actually said this, I kid you not, “you can stop talking now, because you’re being a snot.”

Mind you, I have been calmly doom scrolling until now but hearing a grown adult human try to belittle another grown adult human with pre-teen level insults was equal parts humorous and sad, so at this point I had to look up and really invest in the conversation. 

Rachel, “you’re being being very rude.”

And then they just went at it for a while with their voices escalating. To which after a certain point I chimed in asking the both of them to please stop, we are all probably a bit hungry and would very likely also prefer to get our prescriptions and go home. 

People are getting triggered for so many things these days – things that I would never have thought would create arguments that escalate to violence. Just earlier in October, two days in a row stabbing incidents between two children and two coworker adults (in front of one of our elementary schools while kids were exiting school, mind you) took place. 

Is it the uncertainty about the job market? Or the fact that we’ve put so much junk food into our bodies for so long that our ability to exhibit executive function in public has gone awry? 

Whatever it is, please be on the lookout. Be extra nice to each other. That CVS line incident could have easily been a 60-second back and forth that started with Monica saying, “oh yeah it’s super 1confusing, the line system changed a few weeks ago and there’s no signage.”

No one is reading minds, and everyone still mostly lives with positive intent. Let’s lead with those two assumptions. 

PS – Monica did not prepay for her prescription. She thought she did, but when she finally got up there… she had not. So is it really one line and we’re all going to the same place? I think in this case, yes.

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Annie Tsai is chief operating officer at Intersct, mom to two, and perpetually curious.