Growing up I can remember one of my favorite things about going to the doctor was talking to the pharmacist, Dr. Frakes. He was a nice man and pretty much knew everyone that walked into his store. I hadn't experienced his level of service until recently when I went to the Publix pharmacy.

Let me interrupt my story first by sharing with you how I got switched to Publix. I had been a Walgreens customer since I went to college and could have my prescriptions filled at any Walgreens from Las Vegas to New York City. This was quite a convenience but came at a cost of customer service. My last straw was when I has my wife's Z-pack antibiotics filled at Walgreens. A Z-pack is a small package of 6 pills that the pharmacy simply needs to stick the label to and hand to you. I was told at 10AM that it would be ready at 12 Noon. Seemed about par for the course. I returned at 1PM, waited in line of 6 cars for 30 minutes, making it 1:30 when I got to the window to be told that it wasn't ready yet. I asked that since I had waited in line for such a long time if they could just grab the medicine for me, no luck. We returned at 6 PM (time spent NOT getting my wife better) to finally pick up the medicine. The next week my son caught what she had and was put on antibiotics as well. This time I went to Publix, who filled it quite quickly and to my surprise FREE! I had heard about the free antibiotics program Publix had started, but never got to experience it.

Back to my original story, this weekend I fell to what appeared to be the same bug the rest of the family had. By the time I got out of the First Care center, it was 6:40 and the Publix pharmacy closed at 7. We rushed over to see if they could fill it for us (not being very hopeful, but definitely not wanting to go back to Walgreens). The lady was very friendly and said "of course" and we were on the way home with my meds in less than 5 minutes! WOW, what a difference! Needless to say, we've switched our other prescriptions over to Publix now.