NYC 24 Hour Walgreens... Classic!

About a year and a half ago I found myself in the waiting area of the Union Square 24 hour Walgreen's listening to a youngish white woman with streaked makeup and poor genetic luck, cursing up a storm as she argued with the West Indian pharmacist (condemned due to her foreign birth to work the graveyard shift at the Union Square Walgreen's in the first place), over the reason that her doctor's signature on her script for Oxycontin was signed in purple Sharpie. "It's real, I need it for a medical condition... this is unbelievable!" A down at the heels boyfriend with suitably downcast eyes stood in her radius trying to pretend he was not with her. Doubtless at least half of the "medical condition" so reported was his. Simultaneously, a tall black man in a bright yellow sweatsuit with matching sweatbands and non-matching hospital discharge bracelet stood at the busy prescription counter taking lots of space and time attempting to put a large square box in a small square bag. It was a truly striking example of what is clinically referred to as "perseveration", in which an individual continues to attempt to complete an impossible task despite all evidence that confirms it as such. He went so far as to solicit the assistance of the pharmacist with various schemes to make the impossible come true. Using a pair of blunt scissors he slit the bag on all four sides, placed the large box inside the small bag and then attempted to staple and tape the sides closed, cursing and shaking his head all the while. As if that was not enough frustrated desire for one night at Walgreen's, a disheveled former(?) businessman who had not yet gotten the memo, walked in a slumped posture and a grubby trenchcoat barely covering a grubby suit towards the counter. He (inaudibly) asked the pharmacist a question. After her clearly unsatisfactory response to his query, he threw his hands up in the air exclaiming: "Screwed Again!" and walked back to the row of seats where I sat patiently waiting for my entirely legitimate prescription for anti-depressants to get filled in the next century. It was enough to send a pharmacist back Trinidad. Screwed again, indeed. I was like 16x more depressed than I was when I arrived here too, and I am from this dirty city.