a tale of two pharmacies

After spending much of my life going to big chain pharmacies like Longs, CVS, RiteAid, and Walgreens, a doctor recommended a small, independently-owned pharmacy in Palo Alto called Maximart Pharmacy. It's about the size of my living room, but has been such a great experience compared to the big chains that I thought I'd jot down some of the differences. For reference, Maximart is part of a retail co-op called Good Neighbor Pharmacy, which has 2,700 member pharmacies in the country, so find out if there is one near you.

Big Chain Pharmacies

• Stores are huge and less than half the products are even remotely health-related, meaning it takes a lot longer to find what you want.
• Stores are usually brightly lit with crappy fluorescent lighting, giving it a hospital operating room feel.
• Loud music is typically blaring, interrupted by ads for various products you can buy in the store.
• Prescriptions take a maddening amount of time to fill. Even with no one in the store, I've never gotten a prescription filled in less than 20 minutes in my life. My recent suspicion is that this is intentional so that you wander around the store to buy plastic crap you don't need.
• They typically have these big banners up talking about how they are "your local pharmacy", which is complete bullshit, of course.

Maximart Pharmacy (Good Neighbor Pharmacy)

• Small and cozy store that's really about the size of my living room, but as far as health care products go, they have what you need. If they don't they order it for you and will even stock it regularly if you ask.
• Pleasant, quiet, classical music playing as background music with no ads shouting at you.
• Prescriptions filled in 5 minutes. Don't know why they can do it and no other pharmacy in the world can't, but they do, even when really busy, which they typically are.
• They don't need big banners, because they really are a local pharmacy, where all the profits go to the local business owner.

I've probably ranted about it before, but a good rule of thumb is just to avoid large chain stores at all costs. The money leaves the community and the fact that they don't care about anything but profit shows in so many ways, it's hard to keep track.

So go to the Good Neighbor Pharmacy website and find the one nearest you and leave the big boys behind.