Dear CVS

I know you are a big conglomerate drug store and all and that you can’t possibly be expected to know everything about your customers (clients? guests?) Although —and this is a sidebar—you seem to know that Ernie has been sneaking into your store and buying verboten candy bars. You rewarded him with a frequent-Hershey-muncher coupon. But I do think you should make an effort to learn something about the locale in which your stores are situated.

Detroit has its share of problems: it’s always fun to hear visitors wrestling with the pronunciation of streets such as “Livernois”, “Gratiot” and Detroit’s nod to the German immigrants, “Schoenherr.” Grosse Pointe is, on the whole, genteelly anglicized, naming its streets after English counties and the odd Prime Minister. There are exceptions: we tell our visitors to exit from I-94 at Cadieux (and helpfully supply the pronunciation, “Cad-you”.) A few inhabitants have to admit to living on a street called “Goethe”, which has been surgically de-umlautized to become “Go-thee.” Your Grosse Pointe store is on Kercheval. That’s KER-cheval in Grosse Pointe speak. So you can see why it is unnerving to place a phone order for a drug refill and be welcomed by a recorded voice announcing, “You have reached CVS, located at 17120 Ker-CHEV-al Avenue in Grosse Pointe.” Look into it, would you. Make it part of your next “in order to better serve you” exercise. After all, if we allow you to get up close and personal and sell us Depends and Athlete’s Foot medication and . . . well, other stuff, you could at least attempt to pronounce your own address correctly. There’s always Walgreens.

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I don't believe this. I wrote this entry this morning after I called to refill a prescription and was welcomed by the message that had upset me for months, if not years. It is now late at night, and before posting the entry, I thought I would call and check the wording of the recording. In the last twelve hours, they have changed it! If this entry had appeared yesterday, I would have thought I had global power. As it is, it's just plain creepy.