Evening star., 1899-01-28
DRUGGISTS PROTEST

drug store in the northwest section,
which was formerly branch post Office,
but which is not now displays this sign in
large printed letters, conspicuously, in its
two windows:
WE Do NOT SELL STAMPS.
You'd think those signs 'ud keep the
stamp buyers put, wouldnt you?" said the
proprietor of the store to a Star man the
other afternoon. Wei, they don't. Eve
seen people stand outside those windows
and look inteptIy at those signs for fully two
minutes, and then walk in here and. lay
down two coppers with request for 2
cent stamp. What's more, people who live
right here III the neighborhood, and who
pass those sigps several times every day of
their lives, walk in here frequently and ask
me II We got any stamps todayy The
reason why | don't sell stamps is because
the chap VINO runs the drug store up on the
next corner is smarter than | am, and he
got the branch post office away from me a
while back; then naturally enough, / got
sour and Grabbed and declined to purvey
stamps to folks who never, under any cir
cumstanceS Whatsoever, bought anything
else here. Say, dye know that these peo-
pie who come in here for stamps, despite
those two large-almost vulgarly large
signs, often get ugly when l tell 'em l
don't sell stamps? What's more, they want
TO be waited on at once. Often. when I'm
u
buyers will come in, shuttle around ner-
vously and angEily in front of the store for
rev minutes, growl about not being wait
ed on, ETC., and then, when l finally get a
chance to go around front, tell me in
tone of command that he wants 2
cent stamp. and that he's been waiting
for half an hour to be waited on
Queer, anyhow. isn't it, how so many
people seem to think that drug store is a
sort of phiianthropie institution? Now,
there's not day passes that L don't get
dozen Or so telephone messages from men
down town asking me to send around word
to their wives that they're detained and
can't get home to dinner, or late afternoon
messages from young women to their mo-
theirs. saying that they're going to spend
the night at this or that girl friend s house,
and SO on. Some of these messages require
half-mile trips on the part of one or other
OF the men in the store.
Now, here's a new way the people who
tn1nk drug store is a sort OF benevolent
public institution have of getting their
moneys worth. You don't know, sup
pose, do you, that it's new custom with
great many women to drop in the corner
drug store on their way from the butcher s
or grocers to have the stuff they have
bought at those places weighed in order
to ind out whether they've been cheated
or not? Well,' that's what whole lot of
them do, nevertheless. Some of them may
buy 30 or 40 cents worth here occasionally
and others may not, but they don't exhibit
the least hesitahcy in the world about
traipsng in here and plunking a brown
paper parcel of steak or chops or dripping
corned beef down my scales. Some
times they'll weigh these goods themselves,
put Just as often they'll request one of the
clerks to do the weighing for them. Pretty
raw work, that isn't it? Even worse than
this happens once in a while. The other
day woman in the neighborhood who
haSnt bought anything from me for fully
SIX months sent her small boy here with a
bottle OF perfume, with a note to me asking
What the perfume was worth. She had
bought 1t at another drug store, and then
the idea taking possession of her that she
had been done she sent to me to reassure
herself. 1 call that gall, pure and simple.
Another thing, Do you know that it's
becoming more and more of a custom
among people who live near corner drug
stores to run over to the druggist whenever
they hurt t'er burn themselves to have
their wounds dfessed-free of charge of
course? They never offer to pay for the
medicines we use in fixing them up but
take it all as a matter of course. 1t there's
any branch of the trade that's more i'm
posed uponAin general by the public than
the pharmacy business I'll just let you
name it. and If you succeed III do the
buying" sr,