As Taliesin has pointed out, Walgreens photo department sucks. Well, they don't suck as much as, say, Blockbuster's pricing (five dollars a rental? I could go to a movie... no wait, they cost ten bucks), but there's definitely something weird going on down at the Wall of Greens.

It seems that the famous Walgreens family insanity has infected their clerks. Sometimes they are so surly that I feel like I surely must have misunderstood them, they didn't really say what I thought they said to a customer. But it really gets weird when it comes to pricing and services (but remember this may be a product of the lunacy of my local Walgreens staff):

I bought their free-refills camera. The deal is, as long as you get one-hour photo developing, you get the camera refilled for free. I carry a camera at all times and don't want to worry about an expensive digital camera, so seven bucks is perfect for something that could be crushed or soaked or whatever.

Now, you can't just get the picture CD without prints. I can understand that. I can picture the machine that develops the film, scans the negatives onto the CD, and makes the prints not having a no-prints setting. So even though I only want digital copies, they give me prints anyway, and I usually just give them to the subjects.

You can either get one-hour developing, non-one-hour developing in-house, or the kind where they mail it out. The weird thing is, it's cheapest to get it done in one hour. It's more expensive if you want to wait three days, though of course you can just have it done in one hour and not pick it up. I can only assume that Walgreens wants to lessen the load on their bulk processing centers, or drive customers to the one-hour deal, or it costs more to mail it, or whatever. Fortunately, my local Walgreens has the ability to develop film in "one hour" (usually three or four but I don't mind) and scan it onto a picture CD, thus satisfying the free-film deal and getting me what I want. In this case, the weird pricing benefits me.

The trouble comes when I go to the other Walgreens, a few blocks north, which I would only do if I was also going to the video store. They don't have the CD machine there. And they won't let me pay for one hour developing but let them take longer to send it out! If one-hour cost more, it would be simple, I would just pay the higher price and I'm sure they wouldn't care. But because it's less, it's like I'm scamming them by paying to have it done in one hour but allowing them to take three days. I can't pay for the three-day developing because then I don't get the free film. AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! It's like I have to bribe the lady... "Psst... I'm going to pay you to develop this in one hour... but I'll slip you a little something if you'll take three days to do it."