Corporate Headquarters
One CVS Drive
Woonsocket, RI 02895
I’ve been to my fair share of CVS stores. In Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts and Maine they’re all the same. The red sign with the inexplicable slash mark. The gabled entryway that disguises the flat roof. The parking lots in the back and the front. The slight awkwardness of never being sure whether by saying “CVS store” I’m being redundant.
All of these things are a comfort. Whenever I travel to a town with a CVS, I know that a little piece of home has followed me there. Without even entering I know where to find the skin-tingling moisturizer that also highlights my hair, or the Hello Kitty Wart Remover, or the organic Tibetan shampoo made from minerals found at the top of Mt. Everest. Back-left aisle, back-center aisle, and front-left aisle respectively. I know I’ll find signs that say, “WOW” that point put the best deals. The ExtraCare card on my keychain will earn me the respect of a high elder in pharmaceutical consumption and savings as if I were blackmailing the manager.
Some women, when they feel as though the cardboard-box-fortress of their lives is tumbling around them, head to the mall to buy shoes or designer bags. Not I. I head to CVS and buy ibuprofen and Twizzlers. First I head to the back-center aisle (a different one the Hello Kitty Wart Remover Aisle) and then to the front-right aisle. Then I return to the cash register/entrance area and hesitate. Where do I go?
There are six cash registers all in a horizontal line. They share a single counter. Only three have cashiers standing at them. One is somehow associated with the 1-hour photo development station. It’s probably the one on the left. I’ll go with the one on the left. Sure. That makes sense, right? Right. Two registers left by the process of elimination.
I stand looking at the two registers, and it is at this point that I notice everyone else. They seem to have no more idea of what to do than I do. They cluster into some globular shape staring at the registers. A cashier looks up, and the cluster bustles. Mothers with small children use their peripheral vision to check for any forward motion; older men use their baskets to try and edge forward. The cashier calls, “Next” and at last a woman in a business suit darts ahead of the pack with her Tide To Go. The rest resume staring at their feet. I am crestfallen. That should have been me. That shrew only just popped out of the aisles.
Eventually I dispense with all ethics and step on any who get in my way as I advance towards the register. A senior citizen with a walker is approaching and I stick out my foot: somebody’s grandparent has just broken a hip, but at least I can pay for my items. I exit, disgusted with myself and too disheartened to eat the Twizzlers. I open them and leave them in the glove compartment so that the car will smell of sweet sugary cherry. Alas, that pleasure will not take effect for many hours to come. No amount of ibuprofen can sooth the pain in my heart. I want to stress that this does not happen just the first time I enter a CVS. It happens every single time.
Why, CVS? Why must it be this way? What don’t you understand about lines? Everyone loves lines! From pre-school on we are taught to color inside the lines, to toe the line, and never to cut in line unless we have first asked the person ahead of us what scissors do and received the appropriate reply. Lines are the preferred shape in which people wait to purchase items of low to medium value. It calms them. Amorphous blobs, on the other hand, are provoking shapes. Think Rorschach tests, stains, The Blob! Nobody functions well like that.
CVS, what in the world made you think your register setup is such a good idea that it should be in every CVS store in the United States? Maybe nobody’s told you but it’s terrible. Every time I exit a CVS I consider, if only for a fraction of a second, breaking in at three in the morning (when, even if the store is still open, the employees aren’t going to be self-aware enough to notice) and building a fence to force people into a line out of materials I can find within the store. Now I’m not a licensed contractor and I don’t think my handiwork would hold up well, and so I generally refrain from carrying out my wishes. But that doesn’t mean that someone over there at CVS HQ can’t change the way we buy organic Tibetan shampoo forever, and make it possible for me to enjoy my Twizzlers the very moment I leave the store.
Si se puede,
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