The always amusing Pharmacy Chick, a retail pharmacist, is not shy about pointing out when customers get on her nerves.

She recented posted her “top 10 ways you can tell you are no longer welcome at a pharmacy.”

Here they are:

10. You tell them your name is John Smith and they ask you to spell your name…..twice.

9. Your pharmacy is out of everything you order…every month.

8. You find your child resistant bottles glued shut

7. The pharmacy staff seems all to happy to give you a 3 or 6 months supply of medication

6. Nobody says hello but everybody enthusiastically waves goodbye when you leave

5. If you special order something and ask when it will arrive, they respond “when Hell freezes over”.

4. When you call the pharmacy they always put you on hold…and never come back.

3. You’ve been coming to the pharmacy for 20 years and while you recognize everybody, they dont recognize you.

2. You call the pharmacy to ask when they close and they ask you “when are you coming in?! and they always “close” the hour before you want.

And the number one reason you can tell you are no longer welcome at your pharmacy

1. When you come to the counter, all the pharmacy staff huddles to draw straws and the one with the short straw has to wait on you.

I bet you never knew pharmacists had such thoughts — did you?

So much so that they are turning to Washington for a bailout — or at least for a sympathetic ear.

As Drug Topics reports:

The fundamental message of the 2009 National Community Pharmacists Association’s Annual Conference on National Legislation & Government Affairs is “get into politics or get out of pharmacy.” Putting these words into action, on May 13 pharmacists attending the NCPA conference will take to Capitol Hill to meet with legislators. Their goal is to make sure lawmakers understand what they do and how they serve patients…

Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) responded to concerns about the common misconception that mail-order prescriptions are less expensive than pharmacies. The speakers promised to continue to support pharmacy interests, including issues connected with pharmacy benefit managers…

The NCPA is not a small organization. Founded in 1898, it represents more than 24,000 pharmacies, more than 68,000 pharmacists and more than 280,000 employees. The nation’s independent pharmacies, independent pharmacy franchises and independent chains dispense nearly half of the nation’s retail prescription medicines.

But this is a fight it simply can’t win.

No matter how many independent pharmacists march on Washington, the fact remains that the traditional business model for dispensing medications is collapsing around them. On the one side, they must try to compete with mega-retailers like Wal-Mart. And on the other side is the even bigger elephant in the room: mail order.

People want the convenience and lower prices that they get from mail-order, whether ordering through their insurance provider or an online pharmacy.

Fighting to retain the old way of doing things is a losing battle. It would be more productive to find a way to participate in the emerging distribution system — and in fact, it’s really their only choice over the long term.

Rite Aid is a $24 billion company operating more than 5,000 drugstores in 31 states, making it the third-largest pharmacy chain in the United States. But unless this overpriced retailer receives some bailout money from heaven (’cause it’s sure not coming from Washington), the year 2009 may be its last.

Motley Fool has just put it on its list of 15 companies that might not survive the year. Says the Fool:

Rite Aid. (Ticker symbol: RAD; about 100,000 employees; 1-year stock-price decline: 92%). This drugstore chain tried to boost its performance by acquiring competitors Brooks and Eckerd in 2007. But there have been some nasty side effects, like a huge debt load that makes it the most leveraged drugstore chain in the U.S., according to Zacks Equity Research. That big retail investment came just as megadiscounter Wal-Mart was starting to sell prescription drugs, and consumers were starting to cut bank on spending. Management has twice lowered its outlook for 2009. Prognosis: Mounting losses, with no turnaround in sight.

Rite Aid’s story, full of waste and mismanagement, is a classic illustration of why Americans save so much money through online and mail-order pharmacies. Whether these pharmacies are based in the United States or Canada, they require a fraction of the overhead of a big chain pharmacy — particularly one as poorly run as Rite Aid.

Rite Aid has been in trouble as far back as 1999, when it was busted by the news media (and investigated by state regulators) for questionable business practices like selling date-sensitive products well past their due dates. Rite Aid also had a doozy of an accounting scandal that led to jail time for several top ranking execs, including CEO Martin Grass.

Like many bloated Fortune 500 corporations, Rite Aid tried to put lipstick on the pig by acquiring competitors like Eckerd. It’s a quick way to boost your top line to impress your stockholders without actually doing anything intelligent to help your customers. Rite Aid went deeply into debt in the process, and now they’re on death’s door.

In addition to its own incompetence, Rite Aid has been hurt badly by the trend toward mail-order pharmacies and by Wal-Mart’s $4 prescription drug plan, which savvier retailers (including finally CVS late last year) have copied.

In its own backward way, Rite Aid has been trying to catch up with its lower-cost competitors, but it’s almost undoubtedly too little, too late.

Rite Aid does frequently offer short-term promotions for consumers who transfer their prescriptions (for example, If you transfer two prescriptions to Rite Aid, you receive a $25 gift card for each — a $50 value.) However, their Rx Savings Card only entitles you to an $8.99 price for select generics — more than twice as much as Wal-mart and many others now charge.

That’s the best you’ve got? Good luck with that, Rite Aid. We’ll see you in the business obituary section.

Watch him in action.