“Pick up your prescription.” Simple, easy, clean. Should be an easy thing to cross off from my to-do list. So easy, in fact, that I’ll add some extra words to it like: pick up your prescription “…from Duane Reade after work” so it feels even better when I cross it off. Perfect. I go over the details in my head: “name, check. date of birth, check. address, check.” I’m ready. I have to use all the brain power I have left over from the day to fight my muscle memory of walking into my building after I make the right onto 2nd. “Keep walking, you’re picking up a prescription, keep walking, don’t turn.” I’m not exaggerating.

I walk into Duane, with purpose but not eager. I get to the back where the “pharmacy” is located, where the man tells me to wait behind the line of tape on the floor despite no one else being there. Off to a bad start, I think. After one minute he waves me over. I start reciting the script I memorized. He looks at me…lost. I repeat my last name. Finally his typing cuts the silence. With a sigh he goes, “Looks like your insurance hasn’t covered it yet.” Perfect.

“So…what now?” I say, in probably a friendlier voice than I intended.

“Come back tomorrow and it should be all good.”

Ok, I think, that’s easy enough. When I go home I scribble over “pick up your prescription from Duane Reade after work” and copy the same thing onto tomorrow’s to-do list.

Tomorrow arrives. I walk into Duane, this time tipping more on the eager scale. My main concern: will it be the same dude? To my relief…it is! Surely he’ll remember my face.

“It’s me. I’m back,” I smirk.

Blank stare. “Name?”

I sigh and hesitate, out of practice from yesterday. I give my name and start saying buzzwords hoping he would catch on: “yesterday, insurance, you, return today…” Nothing’s ringing a bell. I’m pissed. Especially because I was so confident this task would be completed today that I added “…ensure insurance covered it” to the end of the task this morning.

He finally looks up from the computer and goes, and I’m not making this up, “Looks like this was never logged in the system. I’ll put the request in now, but then your insurance will take some time to cover it.”

“But sir, I was here yesterday and you told me to come back today,” I protest.

The next day I go in sprinting. “Picking up a prescription,” I say with confidence. It’s a new guy. Perfect.

He types in the first three letters of my last name and goes, “Yup, it’s right here.”

“Let’s fucking go,” I say out loud, inhibitions gone. We complete the interaction. I get home, open my planner, and cross “pick up your prescription from Duane Reade after work ensure insurance covered it let mom know you got it and she no longer has to ask” off my planner.

Two hours later I go to grab the new container of pills I battled for and…wait…………what’s this………..why are THERE 12 INDIVIDUAL PILLS in here? It was supposed to be a 12 MONTH supply.

Being in your 20s sucks.