Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Ms. Robinson please return to the pharmacy

There comes a time in every professional career where you realize at some point that this job seriously has it's pitfalls and seriously is driving you to the break of insanity. Pharmacy is not void of this nor does it ever lack a good story.

Every person who works in pharmacy has a story to tell about some moron who did some stupid thing with his or her medication or they showed up showing them something that no eyes should ever see. And don't forget the stupid questions that are available at every turn.

Retail pharmacy always keeps a pharmacist or pharmacy technician on their toes. Just when you think you have seen it all, someone slaps a Gangrene sock on your counter, told you that the suppositories they got yesterday really don't taste right, or that the whole teaspoon of antibiotics just wont fit in little Johnny's ear.

And I want you to safely know that if you come up to a pharmacy counter and ask a stupid question, make a stupid remark, complain, bitch, moan, or just act like a flat out jackass...the pharmacy is bound to repeat the story at some function. Usually drinking is involved. After all, we need to party too.

I have compiled a list of things you MUST know when you come to the counter of your local pharmacy. These are all things we wish we could say to you, but we are duty bound to act like professionals and actually care about your sorry ass.

1. Drumming your fingers or credit cards on my counter will NOT make me move faster. I am on an important call and simply can not cater to your sorry ass.

2. Yes that is right, the doctor did not call in your refill. Asking me to call him after you have been out of your medication for a week will not constitute him moving faster. Apparently you are not dead, you can wait another 24 hours.

3. Calling me 50 times a day asking if your prescription is ready will not suddenly magically make it appear. I told you I would call you when it's ready. Trust me when I say I want to give it to you so you would leave me the hell alone.

4. When I ask for your insurance card it is because my special super powers are down and I simply can not remember how to reactivate them at the moment, so yes it is crucial I have your card.

5. Giving you a upset stomach is not an allergy. No matter how you insist it is, its not. Get over yourself and eat something when you take the damn medication.

6. Bitching about a $10 copay is really ridiculous and just shows how stupid you really are. Do you realize that brand name Valtrex your getting for your herpes is like normally a $100?

7. The white pill? Seriously you don't know the name of what you need or what it's for? All you know is little white pill? Let me go get all the little white pills and you tell me which one it is.

8. So you took all of your anti-anxiety meds with you on your day trip...and lost them? And need some more? And it's only been two days since you had if filled? Hmm...first time, I give you the benefit of the doubt. But seriously coming back and telling me that SAME story two days later...either your a moron or well your just a moron.

9. Getting mad at me because I don't have a medication in stock is absurd. I can not have every single medication in the world! Every heard of a business, inventory control?

10. You don't have enough money for the pain medication and the antibiotic? How convenient that you would only choose the pain med, tell me you would come back the next day, and here it is a week later and I am returning the antibiotic to inventory. Um yeah strike one in my book, I don't trust your sorry ass.


So in conclusion boys and girls, if you are going to come up with an excuse please come up with a real doosy. We need better stories to tell than those of our professional colleagues.

2 comments:

hangel said...

Nice vent! I can really understand :-)

I do like that you have instructed patients to come up with a new brand of stupid. Come on...we have seen all those dumb things before. Like you said, we need newer and better stories to tell!

Andi said...

Sadly my mother is one of those who comes up to you and wants more pain meds b/c she "lost" them or something else insane.

I always am nice and courteous to my pharmacy people, even when the bastards don't deserve it. There's this one woman who was a total bitch to me one day for NO reason.