If you have time to review Walgreen's, you should be volunteering at a soup kitchen, people!

Yelp is a valuable app/website everywhere, but here its very, very helpful.( In case you don't know, Yelp is an app/site that gathers user reviews for stores, restaurants, services, etc...in any given neighborhood. You can read between the lines and see if you agree with the reviewer's point of view, and you can avoid anything that only gets 1 or 2 of a maximum of 5 stars across the board*.)

 Since almost of my travel into Manhattan consists of me walking or taking a bus to a subterranean hole, hopping on a train, and then popping back out to the surface 3 - 12 miles away, it is very difficult for me to orient myself to a new area. Plus, I am no good at reading maps, so I just get all turned around...I do OK by myself, but shamefully, when I am with Josh, I just follow his lead and trust he knows where we're headed.

So - we attend an event, go to a movie, end up in a new part of Manhattan, we look to Yelp, which helps us find decent places to eat based (roughly) on our current location. I have few problems with Yelp itself.

But people! PEOPLE! They love to review the most mundane things as well as the little indy businesses that are all over NYC. Inevitably, they review things like each McDonald's location, or each Walgreen's. Inevitably, these reviews are universally horrible:

Walgreen's on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn:
"After going nuts looking for the perfect gift for my baby niece,(a pillow pet btw),I went around in circles trying to find someone to help me, but no one was avilable. I would've gave them a single star, but they get two stars  because my little niece received a nice Christmas gift, a ladybug Pillow Pet,but this place is definitely, messy, wrecked, disorganized,poor customer service. The cashier that assisted me was flirty I mean, more friendly than usual.;D!"

You searched for the perfect gift for your niece, and the first place you thought of was Walgreen's? I can say with certainty that the staff is not used to personal shopping as an offered service. Also - did you like the flirty-ness? Seems so - give them 3 stars for that, baby!

"don't ever go to the pharmacy at this walgreens on atlantic avenue.

going to this pharmacy could be a risk

the staff is rude and ignorant about medication

the pharmacy does not know what is going on

the pharmacy is unprofessional

the pharmacy is confused

the pharmacy should be shut down

the pharmacy treats people badly

i will never go this pharmacy ever again

this pharmacy lies about medication

the pharmacy is run poorly.

the pharmacy is dangerous"

Wow! Call the Health Department, don't just review it on Yelp, people! Must have been the same staff that transferred my prescription the same day I dropped it off, and called me twice to double check my insurance and the spelling of my name to make sure everything would go through smoothly. I hate customer service!

"This place is terrible. You can never make it out of here in less than 30 minutes because 1) there are not enough people working the registers, or 2) the employees don't understand someone's coupon/request/language, or 3) 90% of the products are locked behind plexiglas -- always the sign of a class establishment -- so you must find someone willing/able to unlock your purchases, or 4) some ungodly combination of these factors."

It's not shocking that they lock stuff up. This is Brooklyn, people. The liquor store on our block doesn't really even let you in the store - you have to look at everything behind plexiglass - this is a result of the bad old days, peeps.

All of the employees at this Walgreen's were nice-to-super nice, it was just crazy-busy like all places here, since one Walgreen's serves about 500,000 people, unlike FL Walgreen's - one or two on each corner, every mile or so.  

But why spend time reviewing Walgreen's? I know, I'm spending time reviewing reviews, but it just seems weird that people take their time to spew random reviews about chains on the interwebs when everyone has run into a grumpy cashier or two everywhere.

*Josh and I did find Yelp very useful on an evening when we were about to go on an evening cruise on the" Queen of Hearts" party boat to see the band one of his co-worker's is in. It looked old and creaky, and it had hardly any outdoor deck, so I looked it up on Yelp. 2 stars average - and mostly 1 star reviews. They said it was stinky, hot, horrible, leaky, had horrible food,you couldn't see any sights from inside the 500 passenger boat, and that it twas generally all around miserable. The crowd waiting to get on the boat looked miserable - a mix of retirees, couples who didn't make the upper age cut off to star on "Jersey Shore", barely legal girls in prom dresses (why?), and us. We bailed on that experience. Thanks, Yelp!