I can haz vaccine appointment?
I may have a vaccine appointment next week. Actually, I definitely do.
Somewhere.
The fact that most vaccine venues only let you sign up online or through apps has become An Issue for me. We've just spent a year in this country discovering that a sizeable swath of the population does not have regular internet access, and that "Just do everything online!" leaves a lot of people out in the cold. So now we get to the actual life-saving vaccine part of the process, and the option for people who can't sign up online is...?
For my mother (who has neither computer nor smartphone), I was willing to jump through those hoops. (Though I find it significant that for the local hospital where she finally got her shots, I spent half an hour fighting with their terrible web site only to ultimately be unable to schedule the appointment, and had to phone up and talk to a human being anyway. Said human being was polite and helpful and when I mentioned the web site, she said "Yeah, it's terrible.") But for myself (who has both computer and smartphone, but really hates doing that sort of thing on crappy web sites and really really hates doing anything via the smartphone interface), I'm willing to make something of a cause of it.
Meijer will let you sign up in person... if you can find a pharmacy staffer who knows how to do it. I had to go through three of them, and only persevered because my mom had signed up there on her own, and I knew she hadn't done it through the smartphone app they kept pushing at me. Rite Aid has only the online and app options, and when I asked the staffer there what people without access were supposed to do, I stopped existing for her; she literally ceased even acknowledging that I was standing there. (I guess Rite Aid figures people without internet access can just die.) Lansing Urgent Care also has only online sign-ups, but at least the person I spoke to there was apologetic about it, and agreed it was not cool and said she'd forward the issue up the food chain. (Whether it will do any good is another matter, but at least it's something.)
Walgreens, bless 'em, has an automated voice-phone thingy where you can sign up for vaccine appointments. And it's pretty well designed: their general store voicemail offers it as the first option, and while it starts by telling you the wonders of signing up online or via app, it does so fairly quickly and then gets on to business. It doesn't collect any more information than it needs (ZIP, phone number, date of birth, and name). I had to spell my full first name three times before it finally got it right, but we got there in the end. (Amusingly, I had resisted saying "zed" instead of "zee" because I didn't want to confuse it. That still seemed to be the sticking point, and when it finally spelled my name back to me correctly, it said "zed". Apparently it was programmed by a Canadian, which perhaps explains why it was remarkably polite and pleasant for a voicemail thing.) It was a bit tedious, but I ended up with an appointment for Tuesday. Whee! Except...
The address it told me does not exist. The street address is on the main drag that runs all the way through the metropolitan area, so it could refer to a store on the other side of town, but it very clearly said the barnacle-city where the store I thought I was calling is located. I tried googling the address provided; according to Google Maps, that address is a tree.
Probably it's just a mistake for the address of the store in question; it's only a difference of one digit. But I have a thing about getting to appointments at the right place & time anyway, so I wanted to make sure. So I went to the store in person last night. Unfortunately, by that hour the pharmacy was closed, and the regular staff have no access to pharmacy information. (Also, the cashier I started with was rude and stupid. "You just have to look it up. Just look it up." Uh, the point is that it's obviously a mistake; I just need to know whether the mistake is the number or the city. Your precious smartphone is not going to tell you that, child.) The best the manager could tell me was that the pharmacy opened at ten today.
So I called after ten today. And I waded through their regular voicemail system (which was evidently programmed by different people, as it mispronounced the city it's in), and got to a live human pharmacist... who agreed that it's probably a mistake for their address, but can't tell me for sure because they don't get the printouts of their schedule for the week until Monday morning. So I should call back then.
Thank goodness I don't have an appointment first thing Monday, is all I can say.
Monday morning was already going to be devoted to calling mechanics, because the exhaust pipe on the car broke right behind the engine yesterday (on the way to Walgreens, in fact), and I need to find out if it's going to be an expensive repair or an it's-time-to-junk-the-car repair. So I'll just add calling Walgreens to the list. And it'll probably all be fine, but the number of things I have to hurry up and wait to deal with has officially reached the red line, and I just want to get something settled, dammit!
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/235319.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.
Somewhere.
The fact that most vaccine venues only let you sign up online or through apps has become An Issue for me. We've just spent a year in this country discovering that a sizeable swath of the population does not have regular internet access, and that "Just do everything online!" leaves a lot of people out in the cold. So now we get to the actual life-saving vaccine part of the process, and the option for people who can't sign up online is...?
For my mother (who has neither computer nor smartphone), I was willing to jump through those hoops. (Though I find it significant that for the local hospital where she finally got her shots, I spent half an hour fighting with their terrible web site only to ultimately be unable to schedule the appointment, and had to phone up and talk to a human being anyway. Said human being was polite and helpful and when I mentioned the web site, she said "Yeah, it's terrible.") But for myself (who has both computer and smartphone, but really hates doing that sort of thing on crappy web sites and really really hates doing anything via the smartphone interface), I'm willing to make something of a cause of it.
Meijer will let you sign up in person... if you can find a pharmacy staffer who knows how to do it. I had to go through three of them, and only persevered because my mom had signed up there on her own, and I knew she hadn't done it through the smartphone app they kept pushing at me. Rite Aid has only the online and app options, and when I asked the staffer there what people without access were supposed to do, I stopped existing for her; she literally ceased even acknowledging that I was standing there. (I guess Rite Aid figures people without internet access can just die.) Lansing Urgent Care also has only online sign-ups, but at least the person I spoke to there was apologetic about it, and agreed it was not cool and said she'd forward the issue up the food chain. (Whether it will do any good is another matter, but at least it's something.)
Walgreens, bless 'em, has an automated voice-phone thingy where you can sign up for vaccine appointments. And it's pretty well designed: their general store voicemail offers it as the first option, and while it starts by telling you the wonders of signing up online or via app, it does so fairly quickly and then gets on to business. It doesn't collect any more information than it needs (ZIP, phone number, date of birth, and name). I had to spell my full first name three times before it finally got it right, but we got there in the end. (Amusingly, I had resisted saying "zed" instead of "zee" because I didn't want to confuse it. That still seemed to be the sticking point, and when it finally spelled my name back to me correctly, it said "zed". Apparently it was programmed by a Canadian, which perhaps explains why it was remarkably polite and pleasant for a voicemail thing.) It was a bit tedious, but I ended up with an appointment for Tuesday. Whee! Except...
The address it told me does not exist. The street address is on the main drag that runs all the way through the metropolitan area, so it could refer to a store on the other side of town, but it very clearly said the barnacle-city where the store I thought I was calling is located. I tried googling the address provided; according to Google Maps, that address is a tree.
Probably it's just a mistake for the address of the store in question; it's only a difference of one digit. But I have a thing about getting to appointments at the right place & time anyway, so I wanted to make sure. So I went to the store in person last night. Unfortunately, by that hour the pharmacy was closed, and the regular staff have no access to pharmacy information. (Also, the cashier I started with was rude and stupid. "You just have to look it up. Just look it up." Uh, the point is that it's obviously a mistake; I just need to know whether the mistake is the number or the city. Your precious smartphone is not going to tell you that, child.) The best the manager could tell me was that the pharmacy opened at ten today.
So I called after ten today. And I waded through their regular voicemail system (which was evidently programmed by different people, as it mispronounced the city it's in), and got to a live human pharmacist... who agreed that it's probably a mistake for their address, but can't tell me for sure because they don't get the printouts of their schedule for the week until Monday morning. So I should call back then.
Thank goodness I don't have an appointment first thing Monday, is all I can say.
Monday morning was already going to be devoted to calling mechanics, because the exhaust pipe on the car broke right behind the engine yesterday (on the way to Walgreens, in fact), and I need to find out if it's going to be an expensive repair or an it's-time-to-junk-the-car repair. So I'll just add calling Walgreens to the list. And it'll probably all be fine, but the number of things I have to hurry up and wait to deal with has officially reached the red line, and I just want to get something settled, dammit!
This entry was originally posted at https://lizvogel.dreamwidth.org/235319.html because I got tired of dealing with whatever LiveJournal had broken this time. Comment whereever.