For years, I had avoided CVS stores because they wouldn't let me buy a newspaper the proper way -- skipping the line and slapping two quarters on the counter while briefly waving the paper in front of the cashier. One such cashier sent me to the back of a parade of peevish customers, saying I had to wait my turn to get my item "scanned," and I vowed never to return. (And look what's happened to newspaper circulation!)
Now I live in Malden, and there are more empty storefronts than operational businesses on my street, but there is a CVS a few blocks away. The alternative is a Walgreens in a strip mall, and I figured CVS deserved my patronage for remaining downtown. Last night, I decided to get a six months' supply of mouthwash (when I run out of something, like napkins or physical contact with other human beings, I tend to go overboard in my determination to never let it happen again). Well, CVS happened to have a "buy one, get one free" deal on their store brand of mouthwash -- Rictus Rinse, or something like that -- so I loaded six bottles into my basket.
Unfortunately, the cashier informed me that the 2-for-1 deal was only for members of CVS, meaning those people willing to carry around yet another "discount" card in their wallets. I put the mouthwash back, explaining that I had no interest in joining a drugstore caste system. It's not the privacy issues that bug me. I buy stuff online all the time, and Amazon is always reminding me that it knows what silly or perverted things I've already purchased from them, and therefore I should be very interested in a brand-new and particularly reprehensible piece of merchandise that's lying around in its warehouse. But that's a price for the convenience of buying things online and having them brought to my door. If "brick and mortar" stores are to survive, they must play up their advantages over Internet sellers. And being able to quickly buy things with cash, at the same price given to everyone else in the store, is at the top of the list.
So goodbye CVS, I'm placing my order with Drugstore.com.
