Nothing chews up time like errands, the going hither and thither to pick something up or drop something off. When it comes to procuring prescription medications, the task usually requires two trips -- one to present the new prescription slip or the bottle for refill, and another to fetch the fresh supply. 

At the pharmacy we use, getting a prescription filled always takes at least a half hour, even if the medication comes pre-packaged. Last Friday I was the only one at the counter just after the store opened when I handed the clerk the slip. She reached up on the shelf, took down the twin-pack of special fluoridated toothpaste my husband needs, and said, “That’ll be about an hour.”

No one in this household is sick very often, especially since we left the toddler ear
infection years. But my thyroid gland was removed in 1988, and I must take a synthetic replacement for the hormone it produced, one pill of minute dosage a day, every day, for the rest of my life. Even though this is a “maintenance dose,” my insurance will not provide more than a thirty-day supply at one time. Thus I’ve been making the twin treks for drop-off and pickup every month for more than a decade.

Today, for the first time, I tried the pharmacy’s on-line ordering system for refills. I typed in the prescription number, the computer checked to see that it was valid and that the pills were in stock, and I chose the time I wanted to pick it up, building the stop into my trip to the post office with our tax materials. At the end, the system asked if I would like to save the information for future re-orders. To do so I would have to create a new account.

The first thing I had to do was type my last name “exactly as it appears on the prescription label.” When our name, DeAngelis, is entered on computerized lists, it’s usually in all caps, and that internal upper case A gets lost. (When someone on the phone asks for “Mrs. Dean-gellis,” I’m quite certain it’s a telemarketer.) Sure enough, the label had the name in caps. I dutifully typed the caps.

Next I had to choose from a pull-down menu of titles. Only three were given, “Mr.,” “Mrs.,” and “Ms.” What happened to “Miss,” I wondered, knowing that some people still think “Ms.” is the choice of unmarried women who wish to disguise their outcast state. In addition, what about “Dr.,” “Rev.,” and “Sr.,” for “Sister,” used by Catholic nuns? You can bet that should I ever acquire that Ph.D. I’ll flaunt it!

I chose “Ms.” and moved on. The next line had “First Name,” and underneath, in smaller type, “How should we address you?”

I would have let the title thing go. But this increased my irritation level. I wanted to put “Ms.,” since I would prefer to be addressed by store personnel as “Mrs. DeAngelis.” But I knew that they were looking for “Margaret,” possibly so I would be distinguished from my husband and my daughter and any other DeAngelises who use this pharmacy. I hesitated a moment, and finally decided that since I wanted the service, I had to play it their way, so I typed in "Margaret.” Sure enough, the next screen said, “Welcome, Margaret.”

I know I mark myself with a certain fuddy-duddyness here. And of course there are far bigger societal issues that need to be addressed -- think of world peace, poverty, hunger, and opening the American baseball season in Japan. This morning, however, it seemed important to make one small stand against over-familiarity and the assumption of an intimacy that does not exist.

I expressed my concerns on the form I accessed on the customer service screen. Store personnel are not my friends, I wrote, and I would prefer a more business-like form of address. Further, I said, the menu of titles seemed incomplete. I pressed send and forgot about it.

Within a few hours I received a reply. It began “Dear Mrs. DeAngelis,” thanked me for my input, and remarked that at drugstore.com they “strive to make the shopping experience unique to each shopper, allowing him or her to be addressed properly.  It appears we need to go a little further along these lines.  Thank you also for bringing this to our attention.” It was signed “Bob in Customer Care.”

If I were still in the classroom, where formality in address was never abandoned, no matter what else in academic standards and practices was relaxed, I would add this to my lesson on irony.