Protect your personal information

To the editor: I want to take time to acknowledge a few hardworking folks who work on the other side of the counter at about any pharmacy you choose to take your business to.

I have only occasionally been required to wait an inordinate amount of time for my pharmacy items. I know the folks back there are working hard at what they have to do. These pharmacy folks have a job that has many factors involved in it that are tightly government regulated and believe me, these regulations are there for good reasons. These regulations add to our waiting time.

My knowledge of all these factors is limited, but for a starter, it could be a lethal issue to receive the wrong medication because someone was being pushed and they gave you the wrong medication.

I have stood in line on more than one occasion and watched some less-than-patient customer lose his or her cool, ranting and raving at the folks behind the counter. I am not going to say I haven’t been annoyed by a long wait, but I am going to say I am not going to complain of a long wait again.

Recently, we got a phone call from our medical facility asking if we had dropped a prescription refill at a pharmacy in Leland. As it happens, we had just recently had that prescription refilled and not at that pharmacy.

Because I normally go to great pains to tear up or otherwise destroy any items of a personal identification, it became obvious to me just what might have led to this incident.

I thank God that those pharmacy restrictions are in place (which do add to the customer’s waiting time). As it turns out, since it had just been a Christmas holiday week and our trash pickup had shifted to Saturday, I happened to spy my son’s empty refill box sitting on the counter by the phone. I carelessly tossed it into the trash without tearing it up.

This particular item was exactly what was showing up at the Leland pharmacy.

It would give me a great deal of satisfaction to know the law might have escorted that particular trash-picker out of the Leland pharmacy, but had the pharmacy not bothered themselves to check behind the refill box, someone would have obtained access to our medication.

So I say “thank you” to the waiting process at the pharmacy and I hope relating this one small experience will serve as a reminder to any who read this.

Destroy your personal information before tossing it into the trash. There are folks out there who are mining this source.