My workplace has been under heavy geriatric attack this past week- very stressful, very stressful. It seems my pharmacy has the only flu shots in all the D.C. Metropolis. "My little girl's pediatrician doesn't have any more and he said come to you! He said you were my last hope! My little girl is in chemo and has asthma! She'll die if you don't give her a flu shot!" "I'm very sorry ma'am, but it's against state law for us to administer shots to anyone under 18." "So you want my little girl to die? Maybe I should wheel her in so you can tell her that she has to die before Christmas. Explain to her that the chemo was all for nothing."
I'm paid $11.80/hour before taxes. If I had any gumption, I'd demand a dollar raise to be the harbinger of death to sick children. But that's not the worst part. Well, maybe it is. But it's not the most time-consuming part. It's the old people; between the semi-old and the really old; from the newly-retired to the How the hell is that body still functioning, I've seen a lot of old people the past week. Funny old couples who play off each other and send me into fits of hysteria (my favorite), sad old couples, widowed, etc etc etc. Old black couples, old Asian couples, fat old people, skinny old people, flirty old men, cranky old men. And they all lined up outside my store at four in the morning yesterday.
We announced that we would only have 250 shots to give on our last date, yesterday, that, as before, it's limited to high risk patients, and that we would bgin giving out numbers at 8 a.m., when the pharmacy opened. Boy do I feel stupid for telling people to be sure to be here bright & early at 8. By 8 a.m. there were 400 old people winding in a line around the grocery store. The first 200 had camped outsdie the store at 4 a.m.; some had been there all night. And then, as I stared at the uniformly old bunch, I cocked my head to the side, tweaked the picture a bit and then came a chuckle. They all brought lawn chairs and folding chairs and all sat meekly in line waiting for the doors to open so they could get their ticket and be the envy of the nursing home. Some old people met up with people they hadn't seen in years, and it was very heartwarming & all, but the thing that really tickled me pink is that they looked like teenagers who had been waiting for concert tickets for a very very long time.