A bitter pill

: A spoonful of service sugar will help the medicine go down.

When Fortis HealthWorld, an organised retail pharmacy chain opened, it seemed that buying boring old medicines could even be fun. The store layout looked nice and inviting and the predominant use of soothing colours gave the feeling of comfort. But appearances can be deceptive. For this column, I walked into a Fortis HealthWorld outlet in New Delhi and I was greeted by an army of sales staff all bowing and wishing me a very good evening. Nice, I thought. From here the story, or rather the experience, unravelled pretty fast. I walked up to the counter to ask for some medication prescribed by a doctor. The gentleman at the counter wearing a nice tie asked me to spell it out. Hmm...

Having found the medicine on the computer, only after I had dutifully spelled out the name, the gentleman returned with a plastic box and started rifling through it. As the clock ticked away, the gentleman couldn't find the medicine even though I could see it as plain as the nose on the gentleman's face. Finally, unable to wait endlessly for him to see what was right under his nose, I just put my hand in the box, and took out the medicine.

Had this been my first such experience with Fortis HealthWorld, I would have forgotten all about it and never gotten down to writing this. But on an earlier occasion too, at the same outlet, I was looking for the same medicine and the experience hadn't been too different. Only then the gentleman, even then outfitted in a tie, hadn't been able to find the name, after he had asked me to spell it out, on the computer screen. Then I had to help him locate it on the computer screen.

My travails weren't over, as at the cash counter I was accosted by the Vichy salesgirl who, after some polite sales pitch, pronounced that my skin was patchy and there was pigmentation. Hmm... again. That kind of in-your-face approach has never worked well with me. But since I was unprepared for this kind of assault, I muttered something defiantly, saying that my skin wasn't patchy at all and walked out into the gentle evening sun, miffed at not having had the presence of mind to come up with a witty retort. On some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

Score: 5/10. The staff smiles a lot, is well-meaning but isn't well-trained or well-versed in what they stock.

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