An Open Letter To Boots the Chemist.

Dear Boots the Chemist.

How are you?

Are you alright?

No, but really… are you alright? I worry that maybe because you’re a chemist, everyone’s so busy asking you if they’re alright, they just assume you are. But that doesn’t necessarily follow, does it Boots the Chemist? Everyone can have a little wobble from time to time, even 177-year-old high street retailers. So… yeah. How are you doing?

The reason I ask, Boots the Chemist, is that I was passing one of your branches the other day, and I saw the poster you’ve put in the window. Just one poster, but quite a remarkable one. I took a picture.

Yes. So… I don’t know if, now that you look at it again, Boots the Chemist, you can see why I thought I might just check in with you, see if everything’s ok? …No? Perfectly normal piece of advertising material, you think? Ok.

Well, I’ve found a higher res version online, so let’s have a quick look at what’s going on in this little vignette you have created, Boots the Chemist, to entice customers into your shop.

So. This, evidently, is Jaya, and she’s having a cosy evening in. She’s wearing her comfy clothes and her slippers, she’s made herself a cup of tea… but unfortunately we join her at the traumatic moment where she discovers that she is the victim of a home invasion. Specifically, her standard lamp has just taken off its lampshade, and revealed itself to be a pharmacist from Boots the Chemist.

Now. Just in passing, this particular pharmacist is, I would say, quite an intense lady. One shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but I somehow get the sense she would be quite a lot in any circumstances. Let alone the circumstance in which you have discovered her hiding in your house, pretending to be your standard lamp.

Not that she’s not pretending anymore. The gloves are off and so is the lampshade. And so now it’s time, surely, for the former standard lamp, current pharmacist slash house-breaker to explain to Jaya what’s going on, and why she shouldn’t call the police.

But the pharmacist from Boots the Chemist goes a different way. What she chooses to say at this crucial moment, to diffuse the tension and put Jaya at her ease is:

Now. That’s a… remarkable opening gambit, wouldn’t you say, Boots the chemist? “I can diagnose that UTI, Jaya” As a line of dialogue, I think it would sound a little awkward even in the best possible circumstances - say, if we were in a branch of Boots the Chemist, as a reply to, “Hi, I’m Jaya, I think I may have a UTI, could you diagnose it for me?” And that, of course, is not where we are. We’re in Jaya’s home. One of us in comfy casuals; one in smart business attire and a pink lampshade as a hat. And under those circumstances, Boots the Chemist, I wonder if having the intruder reveal not only that they know the householder’s name, but also the current condition of their urinary tract, is as reassuring as you seem to think it is.

Because, of all the remarkable words in that short sentence, the one I keep coming back to is ‘that’. “I can diagnose that UTI, Jaya.” Not ‘any potential’ UTI. That UTI. The one that our pharmacist friend is somehow already certain is troubling Jaya, even though it is, of course, currently undiagnosed. It does make you wonder precisely how long she’s been standing in the corner of Jaya’s living room, studying the way she walks, and watching the face she makes when she sits down…

Now, how does Jaya react to this? Let’s remind ourselves: