As far as I can remember I have never had a truly awkward experience when buying diapers, however, living in germany, there is always a bit of a hassle involved in the process. For a start, usually you won’t find diapers in supermarkets or drugstores. They have pants and other supplies, but if you are looking for proper diapers, you won’t find any. That leaves pharmacies and medical supply stores, except, you don’t go there to buy diapers unless you have a prescription. Diapers are of course prescription-free, but if you need them, public health care pays for them. But even if you have a prescription, you don’t go there to get them directly, you get them delivered. All-in-all, going somewhere to buy diapers is possible but not really usual, so be prepared for raised eyebrows when they ask for a prescription when you don’t have one.
Pharmacies don’t sell diapers on a regular basis, but typically will order them for you. This also means, that they don’t know anything about diapers and even if you know what you want, they have to search for them in their computer systems to be able to order them. Now imagine a pharmacy, a handfull of other customers waiting in the line, and you standing at the counter repeating over and over the maker, the size, slips not pants etc. and after what feels like an eternity they tell you, that they can’t order them, because the company making the deliveries doesn’t have the right contract to get you exactly what you want. (Just to make it a bit more ironic, the law that requires everyone to have a contract with everyone else to be allowed to sell certain medical supplies was made by free-marked ideologs).
I don’t really like going to medical supply stores. These are strange places with a very unwelcoming atmosphere. I don’t know exactly why, but it feels so bloody serious, so no nonsense, so instrumentally rational, that no one in their right mind would go there to buy diapers for fun. And so I went there to buy diapers for fun :smile1: There is one quite nearby where I live, in which I bought diapers for the first time only half a year ago. I knew that they have Seni and so I went in and said, much to the surprise of the clerk, exactly what I wanted (doesn’t seem to happen that often). Of course he asked for a prescription, of course I said that I don’t have one, raised eyebrow, he went to fetch them, I paid, done. Last week I went there again, not really planned but I happened to be in the area. It was in the evening and the store was about to close, so I went in and asked for incontinence briefs (I really don’t know why I didn’t go for the direct path, since I know that they have Seni diapers). There where only two female clerks in the store, no other customer. One of them starts to ask what exactly I need, the size, pants or the ones with tapes. I answer ‘Tapes in size M’ and off she goes. Halfway through the store, the other one who stayed at the counter suddenly shouts ‘Get the Seni Trio, the thick ones,’ then looking at me ‘that are the ones you had before, right?’
I was speechles. I mean, how on earth… but after leaving the store and contemplating for a bit, I came to the conclusion: I’m obviously not the only AB/DL who buys there. But then I realized: THEY KNOW!
