I just want to gloat about my dispensary in here. We’re definitely where the cool queers get their weed. I’ve never been treated with anything but love and respect. The GM and AM both have significant personal connections to trans people in their lives. (The AM is my best friend, and I’ve seen her tense up at the notion that a random woman looked enough like her to be her sister, because she doesn’t have a sister, and she will fight about it <3) The weekend closing manager is me. We are the only dispensary in town with the “Transgender safe space” tag on Google. (There are several with the LGBTQ friendly tag.) It’s just all around a wonderful place to work and shop.
Honestly not what I’d expect interacting with businesses as a customer. It feels to me like there are a lot of places where there should be some sort of training or guidance on interacting with trans customers and there just isn’t.
Pharmacies especially seem to do a pretty terrible job with literally just the most basic accommodations. I couldn’t get a flu shot that I’d scheduled recently literally because the pharmacy tech was so uncomfortable about talking to me that it took like 20 minutes for them to whisper to their coworker about me and put a and b together rather than just asking me. Even then, she couldn’t figure out how to put me down as female to match the consent form I’d signed at home and they literally sent me away.
Half the time I call any call center i get repeatedly misge dered, no matter how politely or insistently I correct them.
If anything it seems like bigger businesses are worse about it.
Big businesses are definitely worse about it because they don’t have real training and nobody feels they have the authority to act on things in the moment. I work at a small location for a medium sized business. If there is an issue with how a trans person is addressed, I can swoop in and make sure it is immediately corrected and understood. I have been fast enough to stop potentially uncomfortable moments before they happened. (I like to think nobody at my dispensary would do worse than an uncomfortable misstep, but I try to prevent those too.) There is no equivalent to that in a large, faceless corporate workplace. Managers, regardless of their quality or training, aren’t going to be reliably present. Employees are on their own with their existing skills, training, personalities, and biases. You can find a small business with a culture of respect you can count on. You’ll always be gambling with a big business.
Right, but there’s a difference between not being able to adequately respond to a unique situation and not having any training for a fairly common recurring situation. Pharmacies around here service thousands of people, and they’re where any trans people on HRT are getting their hormones. People may tend to cluster toward pharmacies where they have an easier time (I certainly do at this point), but it’s still going to be a fairly regular occurrence for them to be dealing with trans people.
A company the size of Walgreens, in this instance, has no excuse. If a heartless union buster like Starbucks can manage some basic training on how to not be completely flummoxed and unprepared for the existence of trans people, a critical point of contact for trans people like a pharmacy can do the same.
You’re not wrong. I stopped going to CVS in part because only a portion of the pharmacy staff could be respectful. Two of the three actual pharmacists (both of the men -_-) obviously didn’t care if I got my estrogen or injection supplies. They also couldn’t keep my supplies in stock or get them in a timely manner, then treated me like I was seeking drug paraphernalia when I constantly needed syringes.
I guess I just don’t trust that anyone has adequate training and policies for this. My experience is that, if there isn’t anyone with authority making us a policy priority, we are at the mercy of the personal beliefs and opinions of whoever is working at the moment. =/
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