Climate Change Is Real

CP: I challenge you that climate change is real. 

ME: Yeah. We know. 

MICE ELF: How is this relevant to #Pharmacy?

CP: I'm talking on a smaller, yet global scale. 

ME: Again, we know. What of it?

CP: I posit that climate change exists, in microclimates, in every pharmacy and retail outlet in the world!

MICE ELF: <best Goody impression> Settle down. 

ME: <resigned exasperation> I'll entertain it. 

MICE ELF: Let's hear it. 

CP: There exists, at every pharmacy counter, a microclimate that negatively affects all humans who enter or even approach it. 

ME: How do you mean?

CP: Ever notice how, before you can see or acknowledge a person at a pharmacy window, the weather affects them?

MICE ELF: Like how?

CP: Like just by getting within the area of the drop off or pickup window, all patients seem to manifest the same side effects. Our counters should come with warnings: Danger! Achtung! Warning! Approaching the pharmacy counter has been shown, anecdotally, to cause a dry, scratchy throat, sudden coughing, sniffling, instant urge to clear throat, loss of decorum, and an inexplicable loss of dexterity and motor control rendering patients unable to hold on to their keys or to place them gently on a countertop. 

ME: <laughs at "inexplicable loss of dexterity"> 

MICE ELF: I've had the same thoughts. 

CP: I almost want to go back to school to study Sociology. My thesis would focus on people behaving differently from the time they park, to the time they near a retail building, to the time they enter the outer doors, to their standing at one of the windows, waiting for another human with whom to interact. 

ME: Like, are they coughing in the parking lot? or as they cross the threshold of the store? or once they abruptly halt their momentum at the counter? 

MICE ELF: Right?! And is this common among pharmacy shoppers only? Is this only in my neighbourhood? nationwide? globally? 

ME: We are humans. Humans do human things. Behaving poorly in public is universal. 

CP: We already established what I do when people knock on my counter. 

ME and MICE ELF: "IT'S NOT A DOOR!"

CP: I think the next time they cough or clear their throat, I should reply with: "Are you dropping off? Or do you just have a question about that cough and mucous you just ingested in front of everyone?"

ME: What about when they drop their keys? 

CP: We sell wrist braces in Aisle 13 so you can grip those keys as well as purses and pants with pockets for you to place the keys so as not to lose them or forget them on counters. 

MICE ELF: Not bad. Better than "you must be a janitor; sounds like you dropped a whole school's-worth of keys on my counter". 

ME: Idiots. Both of you. 

CP: How about #CoughMedicineIsInAisle13?

MICE ELF: I so want to take this class now.