Hitting the druggist's drive-thru lane

SAN ANTONIO -- Drive-thru service is seeping into every area of life, from dining to finance. It's life in the fast lane. In and out in a flash.

These days, you can even get drugs at the drive-thru. That is, more pharmacies allow you to pick up medications in the fast lane. (Prescriptions, however, are one thing you can't supersize.)

"Everything is becoming drive-thru nowadays," says Penny LaFlam, 32, of San Antonio. "It's just more convenient. You go to a window, and they hand you everything. I think it reflects our laziness. That's the way our nation is going." She's right. In Idaho, there is Java Detour, a drive-thru espresso bar. A Winston-Salem, N.C.-based supermarket chain recently introduced drive-thru grocery service. And, believe it or not, a doctor in Royal Oak, Mich., administers flu shots to people sitting in their cars. Marketing types blame it on the increased demands of work and family, life in the `90s. "Our lives have gotten so complicated or oversubscribed that we want to do our shopping as conveniently as possible," says Joel Saegert, professor of marketing at the University of Texas at San Antonio. "The workplace has gotten so demanding that some customers are looking for ways to cut corners and save time." "We have more two-income households than we did 15 years ago," adds Mark Alpert, professor of retailing at the University of Texas at Austin. "We want to take care of the mundane tasks quickly and spend more time with the family, or doing other things." But do we really need drive-thru pharmacies? Isn't there ample room for error there? Customer demand drives the service, says Michael Polzin, spokesman for Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen. "We compete by being as convenient as possible," he says, explaining that 25 percent of Walgreen's customers use the drive-thru. Polzin adds proudly: "We actually pioneered the concept of the drive-thru pharmacies in the early 1990s." The service is popular among the elderly and parents of small children, Polzin says. "You don't have the hassle of having to park and then come into the store," he says. "For parents, they don't have to worry about getting a sick child in and out of the car seat." Although a drive-thru lane implies fast service, don't expect to drop off a prescription and get your medication in the same time it takes to bag a burger. Most pharmacy customers must drop off a prescription and come back later for the drugs. "Our goal is not speed of service. It's convenience," Polzin says. "This is not hamburgers we're dispensing. We take it very seriously, whether it's in a drive-thru window or a walk-in pharmacy." At Walgreen stores, the inside drive-thru lane is designated as the pick-up window so customers can talk to a pharmacist face-to- face. But Carol Fisher, director of adjudication at the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, questions whether a drive-thru is a suitable place to dispense prescriptions. "With this drive-thru, McDonald's mentality, people don't want to slow down enough to get counseling," she says. "It's an I-just-want- my-drugs attitude." Texas law requires pharmacists to counsel patients on all new prescription drug orders, providing directions, answering patient's questions and discussing possible drug interac

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