leroy

For one reason or another, I've taken some kind of medication on a daily basis for almost forty years. I am an expert at swallowing pills. I'd hate to estimate how many I've taken over the years. Despite the attempts by my insurance company to strong-arm me into using a mail-order pharmacy, I stubbornly cling to a locally owned one that I lucked into by being hard to get along with.

I used to use various big box pharmacies. One thing I quickly learned by doing that was that the people there do not care about you. You might occasionally run into someone with a heart for people, but by and large, the pharmacists and techs there don't form relationships, and they stop seeing their customers as human beings after a while. That's been my experience. They will tell you to come back tomorrow in a minute. They will tell you that counting your own meds after they short you is your responsibility. Furthermore, they won't make the extra effort to deal with frustrating insurance companies. I pretty much would rather die a thousand deaths than deal with one.

Luckily, a local pharmacist with good business sense saw an opportunity to draw business away from them by starting his own pharmacy in a good location. He hired nice, competent people, and most of the time, you could go in there with a prescription in hand and walk out within 15 minutes with your medicine. It was glorious. Unfortunately, he had two giant TVs right behind the cash register tuned in at all times to Fox News. I was in there when they were covering a story about poor people trapped in a flood after a hurricane. The owner of the pharmacy was ranting that it was all their own fault for not leaving. I disgustedly asked him if he thought maybe they should have just driven their Maserati out of town or something.

I went home, went to the pharmacy's Facebook page, and left a scathing review, where I said they had good service but bad politics, and they weren't getting any more of my money as a result. I resigned myself to living in Big Box Hell. Some period after that, I got a message through Facebook from a name I didn't recognize. The writer, first name LeRoy, told me that he'd been a partner in the pharmacy but that he was leaving to go out on his own. He let me know that there would be no giant TVs playing Fox News in his new business and asked me to give him a chance, so I did.

These days, when I go to a doctor's visit for med refills, LeRoy has them filled before I can get out of the parking lot. If I have a question or an issue about one of my prescriptions, I can message him via Facebook or text him to get an answer or a refill. He's fought every insurance battle that's faced me for a decade. When big pharma jacked up the price of one of my meds by 400%, LeRoy figured out how to get me a better price. If I'm late picking up a refill, he doesn't put my meds back on the shelf and yell at me on my next visit; he just holds on to them for me, secure in the knowledge that I will get there eventually.

We are social media friends, and both of us are big baseball fans. I've followed his son's career from club ball through our local high school and summer ball. He now plays for the university where I work, which has one of the nation's best NCAA D3 baseball programs and a legendary coach. LeRoy's wife is a nurse practitioner with her own clinic, and she's treated me for everything from multi-day hiccups to a sliced finger.

In a day and age where so many businesses seem as though they exist only to extract money from you, LeRoy and his pharmacy are a total exception. He gives unfailingly polite service and always makes me feel welcome and cared for. He inquires about my wife, asks about my job, and tells me about his last baseball trip. Everyone should be so lucky.

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