Cork chemist finds a creative way to share Christmas treats with customers
A prescription of Christmas chocolate from Hickey's Pharmacy in Thurles. The Tipperary chemist inspired a Cork pharmacy to share something similar with its customers too.
This year we’re living through a Christmas unlike any other. Families are unable to come together as normal to celebrate on Christmas Day, office parties are cancelled and you’d be lucky to see the inside of a pub, never mind 12 of them.
Often it’s the small acts of kindness and community that make Christmas special, and one small thing many people miss is the experience of sharing sweets and treats with friends, family, coworkers and customers. A pharmacy in Co Cork missed placing a big tub of sweets on their counter for customers to rummage through so they borrowed a genius trick from a Tipperary chemist and soon went viral.
Acknowledging that having strangers taking sweets from a shared tub during a pandemic isn’t the best idea, Crosshaven Pharmacy instead began ‘prescribing’ some treats to their regulars.
Customer Antoinette Switzer’s niece was so impressed by the little prescription of Roses given to her aunt, marked ‘Take one three times daily. Take with a cup of tea’, that she shared a photo of the idea on Twitter. Keira Gilleechi’s tweet has been seen and shared by thousands since Monday evening.
My aunt just got given these in her local pharmacy and honestly this is yet another reason why I need to move to Cork pic.twitter.com/VTtlZtGPH5
— Keira Gilleechi (@gilleechi) December 21, 2020
Staff at Crosshaven Pharmacy are delighted, saying they “did not expect the reaction” to their way of sharing something nice with their customers. They said the idea came from another pharmacy, Hickey’s in Thurles.
“The idea came from my friend Gillian Hickey from Hickeys Pharmacy in Thurles], whose sister Debbie came up with the idea,” they said.
“Since the usual practice of leaving Christmas sweets out for customers seemed in Covid times unsafe, and since we loved Debbie’s idea, we decided to do the same. We certainly did not expect it to go viral, but since it did, we would like to give the credit for the lovely idea to Debbie at Hickey’s Pharmacy in Thurles.”
Hickey’s Pharmacy responded, saying it was “lovely to see the Christmas joy spreading all the way down to Cork.”
