Verilife in Arlington Heights is not prepared for COVID-19.
Diagnosed with significant digestive problems, my Physician suggested I experiment with legalized medical marijuana for holistic alleviation of my nausea, cramps, and pain.
Choosing Verilife in Arlington Heights as my medicine dispenser has proven to be a mistake.
When I first arrived, I had to fumble through their system, no one explained their process to me. Through trial and error, I figured out how to place my medicine order online, I thought I’d appreciate the convenience.
But often when I arrive for pickup, I am given the wrong person’s medicine order, as they begin ringing me up for payment. This has happened on a regular basis, and when you mention they’ve grabbed the wrong order, the youthful employees get embarrassed and rude as they sulk back to retrieve the correct medicine.
Today I ordered a medicine called “Cookie Dos” which I assumed was Spanish. When I arrived at the Verilife dispensary, the teenaged cashier was popping her gum behind her mask, and mumbled something to me I couldn’t hear. I asked her to repeat herself, and like a cashier at McDonalds, her eyes flaring, she became furious, shouting “Cookie Dough! Cookie Dough!” at me as if I was in a fast food restaurant instead of a medical office.
When I mentioned she had the wrong order, she spat, “No, YOURE wrong! You ordered Cookie Dough! Cookie Dough!” showing me the label in anger. I explained to her the label read “Cookie Dos”, she looked down, blushed a dark shade of red to match her purple hair, narrowing her eyes at me with absolute hate, saying, “Oh, excuse ME for not pronouncing the ‘S’…” she said sarcastically, as I stood there amazed.
Then another pink-haired employee came over to interrupt our transaction, neither identifying herself, nor introducing herself, I have no idea who she was.
“Is there a problem here?” she asked, ready to fight and being irrationally aggressive. I shrugged my shoulders, at this point, couldn’t believe what was transpiring. I calmly explained how there wasn’t an issue, as I was simply trying to clarify the medicine order I was purchasing. She became even louder, and several customers looked over to see what the shouting was about. “You take all problems to the Manager, you understand me? The MANAGER!” she yelled, almost hysterical.
I placed my money on the counter, and the teenager ripped the payment off the counter as if it was radioactive. She threw my change on the counter, a quarter rolled off to fall on the floor, which I retrieved. I looked up to see her turned away from me, in discussion with her co-worker, she didn’t count the change out for me, she didn’t thank me for my purchase, nor did she tell me to have a nice day.
I left the cashier area in absolute shock, walking into their lobby in a daze. I started talking to an employee when ready to depart, I couldn’t believe my fortune, their Operations Manager and owner Mr. Raussmussen approached me, saying he witnessed the altercation by his cashiers firsthand, so we calmly stepped to the side to discuss what had just occurred.
Turns out he was right there and watched the entire episode unfold, and agreed with my unbiased accounting of the combative, aggressive, and rude behavior of his employees simply because I could not understand the troubled teenage cashier through her mask.
In our very pleasant and calm conversation, Mr. Raussmussen and I both agreed both employee’s behavior were not only egregious, but also despicable and unconscionable, but I was more concerned with his patients receiving the wrong order and how that could open liability to overdoses, hospitalizations, or even death. He seemed concerned at this, as I continue to be.
But to my surprise, Mr. Raussmussen stopped short from agreeing that it was a breakdown in his employee training.
In my twenty years as a customer service professional with decades of daily interacting with Realtors, Doctors, and Lawyers, I have never witnessed such a childish display of aggressive and unprofessional behavior in the medical industry. If these were my employees to train, I would use role-play to devise scripted staff responses for each and every medical patient scenario, a system response, ensuring optimized language and perfect understanding. That training should include specific scripts on interacting with ill medical patients and how to properly read important product labels.
I was attempting to diffuse the situation by suggesting this was a teaching moment, but Mr. Rausmussen didn’t agree there had been a break-down in his employee’s training, so we failed to have a resolution, and were unable to come to a conclusion. The whole mess is unfortunate and preventable.
Not calling the pathetic scenario a breakdown in training is where Mr. Raussmussen and I disagreed, because if I ever had a purple-haired teenager popping their gum and being hostile, combative and aggressive with my medical patients, that employee would be terminated immediately.
If customer service during your medical treatment is of interest to you, I’d avoid Verilife in Arlington Heights, and I’m certain my 18,000 social media followers and 27,500 CRM past-client database of professionals will agree with me.
If you see one cockroach, you can rest assured there are fifteen you CANNOT see. If these teenage cashiers at a medical facility are hostile and aggressive with me, you can be certain there are dozens of unprofessional altercations occurring with terminally ill cancer patients, AIDS patients, and other unfortunates in dire medical situations.
Verilife is not prepared for the COVID pandemic, nor are they ready to serve their community. Stay away.