Draft

[desperance]

I do try to be a good consumer. In my terms, this means avoiding supermarkets and chain stores where possible, and encouraging local stores by all means within my ability.

Today I have been turned away from the independent local pharmacy, because the pharmacist was on her lunchbreak and the tilljockey wasn't allowed to sell me Ibuprofen in any significant quantity or strength; and from the sub-post office, because their system refused to accept the address on the parcel I had to send.

So I went into town and dealt with both these issues, at businesses competent to do so. Snarl. Also, this involved me passing through other shops on the way home, and I have bought an unreasonable quantity of stuff I don't really need, just because I was in that kind of mood. People close should be aware, there may be more cakes soon.

In other news: I have finished the first draft of the SF story! Yay! Six pages today, and a mad gallop to the end. This makes me happy, perhaps to the point where I may just go downstairs and finish this bottle of wine. One thing for sure, I'm not going to read the thing today. I may just send it out to people unread, let others give a verdict before I even think about my own...

Comments

[samarcand.livejournal.com]

You know I'm always happy to give a completely biased judgment...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's in your inbox.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Verdicts'R'Us. Cakes too.

Though what I know about SF gets wobbly in the mid-70s.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Me too. Serious wobbles, for all sorts of reasons that if I were scientific I could produce good metaphoric reasons for.

The story's in your inbox, too.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Actually, it's hard to blame the pharmacy assistant -- she'd have been committing an imprisonable offense if she'd sold you the ibuprofen in the absence of her lawful supervisor. Yes, I know you can get the stuff in supermarkets, but the law controlling the sale of pharmacy-only meds (with the P in a rectangle on the packaging) is pretty explicit, and the Pharmaceutical Society inspectors aren't above using a ringer to see if the pharmacy is being run in accordance with the law.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I don't at all blame the assistant; there are laws, I know, and she abides by them. I just get unreasonably angry when I'm surrounded by posters urging me to support my local pharmacy, and I'm in there trying to be a good shopper and do just that, and they can't sell me the thing I need because the pharmacist has gone off for lunch rather than grabbing a sandwich in the back. If your business is that important to you, and to the community, you don't shut it down for an hour a day. Seems to me. Snarl...

[And yes, I do know I'm being unreasonable, which is something else that makes me unreasonably angry, when I get disproportionately stroppy just because something is inconvenient to me. But I do.]

PS

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I used to get furious with the licensing laws as well, especially Sunday opening - how dare it be illegal for a pub to sell me alcohol, when it so happened that I wanted a drink, at a perfectly reasonable time of day...?

[frumpo.livejournal.com]

At a supermarket, it was the till rather than the assistant that declined to sell a large quantity of painkillers.
The assistant helpfully suggested splitting them into separate purchases, which seems to be missing the point somehow...

[durham-rambler.livejournal.com]

I had this problem at the small branch of Boots in Durham's North Road when I was collecting a repeat prescription. What really got my goat was that the medicines came in a bag labelled with their slogan 'Ready when you are'.

[devonellington.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry for those frustrations.

I couldn't get your package out on Monday before I left town, because our post office now has random hours, and they weren't open before I had to leave.

GRRRRRR!