Rant about French pharmacies

[Booboostoo]

I live in France where pharmacies are on strike today protesting the government's plans to allow non-pharmacies to stock non-prescription items. They will be closed as standard tomorrow and Monday so the earliest I can get to one will be Tuesday morning.

France has a system of pharmacies de garde, one pharmacy in the larger area is open during normal working hours on non-working days, and pharmacy de urgence, one pharmacy in the larger area is open during non-working hours for emergencies. Because today is a strike which continues until Tuesday what should be the local pharmacy the garde will only respond to emergencies.

I woke up with a cold sore and have run out of compeed patches, hardly an emergency but I have a newborn. I can easily avoid kissing him during the day but we co-sleep at night and I can't guarantee not touching him with my lips accidentally at night. The herpes virus can be lethal to children under 2.

AIBU to ask the pharmacy to agree to sell me the compeed? The closest open pharmacy put the phone down on me while I was, very politely, trying to explain the situation, the second refused to accept it was an emergency and luckily the third one, more than an hour away, has agreed to sell me the bloody things.

Ironically had non-prescription items been available in non-pharmacies I could have just bought the patches in any of my town's many stores.

May is a joyful month in France as well. Last May we needed a large delivery of hardcore. The quarry didn't have a large enough truck to make this viable (!) so we had to rent a truck over four days. We had to avoid weekend truck rental as that was more expensive. Easy to arrange you might think as any Monday - Thursday or Tuesday - Friday rental would do, but May had four bank holidays falling on Thursdays so the quarry took the Friday off as well every single week and as a result there wasn't a single week in May we could do a four day delivery.

Good question starling. By the principles of homeopathy the weaker remedy should have more of the active ingredient, or perhaps you shake it less, or make it up with water in the early stages of dementia?

Ah, yes, welcome to November in France.

Round here, everyone does 'the pont' from about mid october until, uh, sometime in January.

Trying to get the simplest of things done is well nigh impossible.

I once went back to a shop for a part of a fireplace that had not been delivered with the rest and which therefore rendered installation impossible.

The attendant told me it would take 10 working days. This being the end of October, I assumed I would have it for mid-november, but no. Between feriés, ponts, and who knows what else they could promise it for maybe the end of the month.

You would have thought that a fireplace manufacturer would try and make themselves available in November for all those people trying to get their fireplaces in for the winter, but not in France.

The worst of it is that we had originally gone to order the fireplace in August, knowing that it would take a couple of months to get delivered and wanting it in place for the winter.

And then we were sent away because they were all closed for the entire summer holidays, so you couldn't place an order before September. Which means that in order to actually have it for the beginning of the fire lighting season (early November) you probably have to order it sometime around May.

But wait, that's a month which is all bank holidays too....I think it's time to leave this country, it's starting to really get me down.

You tried to do business in August? Off to the guillotine with you Liara.

Our local builders' merchant who delivers supplies on a regular basis cannot believe our British builders kept working in August or that they work in light rein!

Re the homeopathy thing, it's just water anyway so matters not.

Re the French pharmacies, they're so much better than the ones in the UK (albeit wildly expensive) so cut them some slack...otherwise they'll just end up like here and everything will be supermarkets, rubbish old Boots, or a decrepit local shop with a couple of sundries, prescription counter, and a surly attitude...

No wonder the French economy is in trouble. In the States, we have WalMarts with almost everything conceivable open 24/7/363. I close on Sundays, and customers complain bitterly.

My favourite quote was when the local paper ran an article about Sunday opening and a shopkeeper said, "Customers have got to learn that they can't have everything they want". Oh and when we spent 2000€ on a ride-on mower and the man in the shop said, "I can't sell it to you now it is quarter to twelve and nearly lunchtime".

One of our local boulangeries started opening on a Sunday using family members to run the shop and by-pass the laws limiting how long you can be open for. All the other owners got together and put in a complaint that his shop was full of customers and he was making too much money. They succeeded in stopping him from working Sundays.

I am not too sure anyone has noticed the economy is in a mess yet! My fringe manages a local food production factory. Another factory closed down
and he offered to absorb as many of the 170 employees as possible (he is not French). Not a single person took him up on his offer. Their severance deal gave them three years compensation at their salary level and then they would have great unemployment benefits for another two years.

Doncha love the southern Europeans and their work ethic ?

Its definitely different here isn't it!!!

Its crazy that you can buy as much as you want at a time too... I was once creating 'hangover kits' for a large wedding and had to buy 180 Advil. The pharmacist didn't even blink!
It would have taken me weeks to buy that many in England!

I'm always gobsmacked by the sheer no of pharmacies in France

"rubbish old Boots"

Gasp! I love Boots and miss it dearly. I'd say I get marginally better actual advice from French pharmacists than British ones, but Boots's range of products, price points and promotions is amazing. French pharmacy cosmetics are all well and good if you don't mind spending €€€ on a moisturiser, but there's very little at the lower end of the scale.

I popped into a pharmacy the other day to buy toothpaste, the cheapest one they had was 7€! It wasnt even a 'special' brand or medicalised one, AND this was on the edge of a cité (council estate). Went into the Franprix over the road and got a decent brand for €3.50.

That factory story doesn't surprise me at all. It's a gift to be made redundant here, the employment benefits are so good that very few people are in a hurry to look for another job before at least the 6 month mark. But one question, who is this 'fringe' who is managing the factory? Am trying to work put what that got autocorrected from and can't...

I rented a flat to a girl whose parents ran a chemists in Antibes.from their tax return (for the caution) they were paying something like four thousand euros a month in tax. Heaven knows how much they were earning. The markup on stuff like Doliprane is insane.

There is an even less deserving cause though. The notaires were on strike a few weeks back

I still don't quite understand the particularities of notaries. Am I right in thinking there is no British equivalent?

All I know is that whenever DP and I talk about moving house he always ends up saying 'but the notaire fee! I can't bear it!' and thus ends the discussion. Don't they get something like 7% of the house value?

Yes, for "handling" the paperwork, i.e. mastering the art of cutting and pasting in Word. Bunch of shysters.

Ok my fringe doesn't manage aaa huge factory, it can barely manage itself. It's my friend who is the manager.

I thought it might be frangin. speaks the lingo