PHARMACEUTICA: Use the Damn Card


Please do not use cash. I do not want to handle your greasy bills and crusty coins fished from the deep crevices of your Tesla. Credit/debit is clean and quick. Generally I can accurately anticipate this; the olds (ages 65 to 95) think they are doing you a huge favor by coming up with exact change. It is especially problematic at the drive-thru, when my long monkey arms reach out to the car parked four feet from the window as my lower back twinges in pain. What I’d like to do is throw the $.58 into your open window, but instead, I politely drop it into your outstretched hand with a crumpled receipt. Unless of course it lands on the asphalt, which gives me great pleasure. After they leave, I make a beeline for the hand sanitizer and pump pump pump like there's no tomorrow. Equally problematic: the customer who removes a stack of credit cards as thick as a deck of cards from her purse and proceeds to shuffle through them to find “the one.”


ME: Your total is $1.08.

OLD: $1.08! Think I can swing that, lol. Hang on, I have exact change, lemme find it…[proceeds to empty coin purse on the counter with a loud clatter to find two pennies]...

ME: Please don’t. [line behind customer invariably expands from three to six to nine increasingly irritated people]

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