CVS Psychic?

We live right across the street from a CVS. Most of you know my hatred for CVS. I worked at Osco for eight years. I didn't love, love, love the job, but it was really very little work. Most times I would go to work, hang out in the stock room talking to my supervisors, ignore calls for price checks, take a long break and call it a day. I'm sure most of you are getting a bad impression of my work ethic. I assure you that it is good, but only for non-corporate things. I'm not one to complain about "the man," but I'm really bad at memorising stupid corporate acronyms such as "P.R.I.D.E." and the like. I think "P.R.I.D.E" had something to do with customer service, but I can't remember. I'm also not good at smiling just because someone tells me to smile. Anyhow, after eight years, I actually formed a loyalty to Osco. I told myself that Osco was much better than Walgreen's and it was certainly better than those crappy CVS stores. I mean really, who the hell carpets a drug store? It's wrong.

Well, I quit when I got the job teaching Latin, and less than 6 months later, CVS bought out Osco. I was crushed. Any company that let me get away with so little work for eight years had my sympathy. I also felt guilt. Had I played a part in Osco's demise? Did I take one 45 minute break too many? And I was worried that CVS would try to screw over my aunt, who worked for Osco for 27 years and had loads saved up in retirement. CVS fired lots of people, including my favorite supervisor, but they did keep my aunt. But I've heard that they have awful employment practices and everyone is always in fear of being fired.

So it is hard for me to go into a CVS. But as I live in a big(ger) city now, I feel that I should walk to the places I can because I don't want to move my non-power steering truck and come back to wrestle this vehicle in between two Jettas.

Last night I needed quarters to do laundry, and I thought I would go to CVS to get them. David says there is a man who works Sunday nights there and he is really friendly. Not only that, but when David went to buy aluminum foil at CVS, this man guessed that he needed the foil for grilling. Without a word from David hinting at such. Weird. So I'm in CVS and I pick up a tube of toothpaste and take it up to this friendly guy. He rings up the toothpaste and I debit five dollars back. Without a word from me, he says, "Doing laundry? I can give that back to you in quarters." My jaw dropped. I said that that would be great. I could have wanted the five dollars for anything, but this man knew it was for laundry. It's not like he said "Oh toothpaste. You gonna brush your teeth?" Just like the foil, it was not obvious what I was going to do with this money.

So I've devised this plan to find out for sure whether this guy has some kind of extra sense. The next time I have indigestion, I'm going to go in and buy a box of baking soda. It works wonders on an upset stomach. My dad uses baking soda for any stomach ailment. If he'd ever get an ulcer he'd just drink some baking soda and water, and I half believe it would repair the ulcer. Well, there have been entire books written about the thousands of uses of baking soda. Will the man from CVS "guess" that I have indigestion, or will he kindly posit that I'm trying to clean the grout between my bathroom tile? Or will he just flat out tell me that he knows I'm running an experiment to see if he's psychic? I'll be sure to let you know.