I usually pick up my prescriptions at CVS. In fact, I’ll usually take any excuse to pick up anything at all at CVS. I love CVS. Except for their piped-in music, which makes me want to throw railroad nails. Anyway, I went to CVS the other day and tried to fill my prescriptions, but their system was down. I went to another CVS to fill my prescriptions, and their system was down too. Apparently, it was a  bad day for CVS.

I’ve also filled scrips at Target, which seems like a great idea considering you have the whole sales floor to entertain you while you wait. Unfortunately, their pill bottles are these horrid, cone-shaped, red things that make me feel like some kind of pariah every time I reach for an Effexor. So no more Target pharmacy for me.

It was this confluence of circumstance that drove me to refill at Stop & Shop pharmacy. I mean, I didn’t even realize that Stop & Shop HAD a pharmacy, but hey, I mean, pills are pills, right? They had all the usual trouble with my out-of-state health insurance, so I left them with my card and headed home with the plan to pick up my meds the following morning.

Next morning, I get there, and it’s too early to fill two of the prescriptions. Fine, that’s cool, I’ll just take the one. Except for how they only have ten pills in stock. So I get a partial. Weird but whatever, right? It’s just Stop & Shop.

Time comes to fill the other two prescriptions, and I show up at the counter, and the pharmacist informs me that they haven’t been able to get shipments of the one medication for over a month. They’re still out of Effexor. And they’ve also lost my insurance card.

“We don’t keep insurance cards,” he tells me, before poking lazily around and happening on a stack of – oh what – insurance cards. “Are any of these yours?”

So at this point I’m pretty annoyed. I mean, they’ve had my information for over a week, knowing full well the whole time that they wouldn’t be able to fill the scrip, and nobody even bothered to CALL me. I mean, CVS would have called me. CVS would have had my medication in the first place. And CVS wouldn’t have lost my insurance card.

Free Advice: If you have a prescription, and every CVS nationwide has fallen prey to some kind of server crash, suck it up and drive the extra mile to Walgreen’s. It’ll be worth it in the end.