Frowning drug store clerks

Belen J. Bolaños, 84, a resident of Capitol East Village in Pasig City, sent her maid to buy her medicines from Mercury Drug-Kapitolyo.

The maid came home empty-handed; she said the drug store didn’t want to accept P100 in coins as payment.

The coins were in five-centavo, P1 and P10 denominations.

The octogenarian was fuming when she came to my “Isumbong Mo kay Tulfo” office.

“Why can’t Mercury Drug accept Philippine money? Those coins are Philippine currency,” she told my staff.

Confronted, Syrel Mendoza, the store’s branch manager, later apologized.

Mutilation of Philippine money is a crime, but nonacceptance of Philippine coins is not.

But there ought to be a law against business establishments that don’t accept coins as payment.

Our coins, no matter how many people regard them as without value, are still Philippine legal tender.

By the way, Mercury Drug, the largest drug store chain in the country, should teach its store clerks to smile when dealing with customers.

I’ve bought medicines at Mercury Drug in various places in the country and I notice that most of its clerks are frowning.

The management of the drug store chain should remember that most people who buy medicines have problems because either they or their relatives are sick.

Smiles from the store clerks can ease their customers’ burden.

A smile has the power to heal.

I remember Ms Bolaños, who is known to friends as “xerox queen.”

She’s a big fan of President Digong.

When then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was being urged by his friends to run for president, Bolaños approached him at Choi Restaurant on Annapolis Street, Greenhills, San Juan City, sometime in early 2015.

The mayor had just come out of a lunch meeting with friends from one of the function rooms when Bolaños approached and handed him a photocopy of a cut-out of a column I wrote urging Digong to run.

I recall her telling the mayor: “I’m now campaigning for you by distributing this to everyone I meet.”

When Digong sheepishly accepted the piece of paper, the elderly lady said, “I know you will win.”

Bolaños’ words were prophetic.

Demonized in the media, embattled Mighty Corp. welcomes the P9.5-billion tax evasion case filed against it.

The trial of Mighty will give the cigarette maker a chance to “clear our names and show we violated no tax laws,” said the company’s lawyer, Sigfrid Fortun.

Some officials in the Duterte government want to stomp on Mighty for reasons only they know, forgetting that it’s a homegrown cigarette brand unlike most of its rivals.

One of its principal competitors is no saint either.

Philip Morris, for example, has tax evasion cases in Thailand, South Korea and the United Kingdom.