Pharmacy should have respected customer's privacy

"Am I out of line here?" asks Kate, who lives in one of Chicago's far western suburbs.

Kate recently drove into one of the drive-through lanes at her local pharmacy to pick up a prescription. The sales clerk was helping a woman in the lane to Kate's right when Kate pulled up.

"She said her name," writes Kate. "I heard it." The clerk retrieved that customer's prescription, returned and asked, "The birth control, right?"

"That's information I wouldn't want announced for others to hear," writes Kate. Then the clerk asked her to verify her address. "I clearly heard her address." Then he asked the other customer to verify her phone number. "She hesitated but eventually gave it. I heard every number."

Then it was Kate's turn. It was the same routine, but "something in me rose up," writes Kate. When he asked for her phone number she replied, "It hasn't changed." But the clerk kept pressing her for the phone number. She finally told him that she wasn't going to say it out loud.

The clerk then went to get the manager who returned, read Kate's phone number to her and asked if it was accurate. Kate responded: "Yes it is, and now the people behind me in line have heard my name, address and phone number."

"No ma'am, the people in line can't hear you," the manager responded.

Kate got her prescription but she remains incensed about the lack of privacy afforded her and other pharmacy customers. She now wonders if calling out the clerk and the manager and mentioning that she heard the private information of her fellow customer was out of line.

Nothing Kate did was out of line. The pharmacy staff has every right to ask a customer for validation of their name to ensure that they are given the appropriate prescription. But gathering that information in a manner that violates the privacy of the customer is not acceptable.

In many pharmacies, there are good reasons why customers are asked to wait a certain distance from the customer in front of them. The clerk or manager could have asked to see a license or asked for a credit card or other form of identification to match up the name to the prescription.

Quibbling with Kate about whether she heard the private information of the customer in front of her or next to her was also inappropriate. The point was that the pharmacy staff crossed a line by not ensuring a customer's privacy.

Kate did the right thing by calling out the clerk and the manager. The pharmacy should do the right thing by re-evaluating how it delivers prescriptions to customers in its drive-through pickup lines. It should take every measure to ensure a customer's privacy is respected. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should typos rule out contractors?

A little more than 30 years ago, my son had just finished applying to colleges. In these pre-internet days, he had spent the summer sorting through the piles of college brochures he had received in the mail. Email wasn't generally around back then so he had to wait to receive any acceptances until the postal carrier delivered them to the house.

When Ed was shortening his list of prospective colleges to apply to, he had a variety of methods of deciding which ones fell off the list. Sometimes they didn't have a program he was interested in. Occasionally, they weren't in a part of the country he cared to spend four years. But one method he used was to eliminate any college whose brochures contained typographical errors.

I was reminded of Ed's sorting method after hearing from a reader who employed a similar mechanism toward ruling out which service providers he would use. The reader wonders if he's being fair to the providers by employing such a filter.

"The other day a flyer was taped to the fence in front of my house offering home improvement services," writes the reader we're calling Glen. "It featured 'spring services' including gutter repair, yard clean up, house painting, and a slew of other stuff." But Glen noticed that the flyer also mentioned "concete repair" and "preasure washing." Following his traditional typographical error filter method, Glen decided he'd pass on considering the local business.

"The typos don't really have anything to do with the quality of their work," writes Glen. "Have I been wrong all of these years not to consider using someone simply because they can't proofread?"

Just as Ed could use any filter he wanted to limit his choice of colleges, Glen can use any filter he wants. And just as Ed may have missed out on some fine college experiences at places with less-than-perfect brochures, Glen risks losing out on some fine workmanship from contractors who simply can't spell.

There's nothing unethical in deciding not to study somewhere or not to work with a particular service provider based on typographical errors. In some cases -- a resume service, a professional proofreading service -- it would seem smart to be rigorous about employing such a filter.

Colleges and businesses should take the time to make sure their marketing materials are professional looking and go the extra mile to make sure typos and other errors are avoided. With all of the options consumers (whether students or homeowners) have, every effort should be made by a college or a business to put the best foot forward.

The right thing for Ed was to choose the college where he thought he had the best chance to learn. As it turns out, he quite liked the college he chose. The right thing for Glen is to choose the best home improvement service provider he can find using whatever filters for choosing he can muster. I'd have gone with referrals from other customers rather than perfect flyer copy, but we all measure quality of work in different ways. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin

(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.