The Pharmacy Chick

One of the things Pharmacy Chick thinks is important is the presentation of the prescription given to the patient. I do not like wrinkled tape on the label, the labels crooked on the bottle, and I don’t like to have mispellings. I cannot tell you how many times I have sent a label back to be retyped because pain was spelled “apin” or THE was spelled “hte”. To me, having something spelled wrong tells my customers ” I do not care enough about this process to handle the details and do it right”

Therefore when I got (for the thousandth time) a prescription given to me with the prescribed drug spelled incorrectly, I had to shake my head. Care to guess which two drugs are mis-spelled most of all? Vicodin and Percocet. Give me a break! These two drugs are so common that even the most newly hired medical assistants should be able to spell them correctly.

So why then, do I still see Vicodan and Percoset? What does that say to the patient when the physician’s office gives him/her a drug that they seemingly cannot even spell right? Its not like we are having them spell Afluxihydrodoxyaminodinodab (don’t bother looking it up, you won’t find it). I have seen Vicodin spelled wrong so many times that “vicodan” starts to look normal…

There are times I wish I could just hand the script back to the patient. “There is no such drug”, but for obvious reasons I can’t do that. So I just decided to add it to my gripe list….and blog about it.

Tags: pharmacy life, rambling | |

One of the results of my recent pitching fit was the abundance of returns. This time was no exception. As much as I try, I cannot keep from having returns. I can send anything back within 30 days without a restocking fee but most of the time I have to keep stuff for longer than that. My Man Friday is good for ordering stuff that one person asks about but nobody buys. In my opinion, if something doesn’t move in 6 months, then it needs to go back. Sometimes it becomes more problematic than I think it should: partials, outdates, etc. I try to send what I can back to my wholesaler, the rest goes to the company who handles outdates.

I have some specific gripes about returns. When I first came into practice we bought a significant amount of merchandise directly from the manufacturers. When they would introduce some new and wonderful drug, they would “guarantee” the sale for us. If we bought X amount of Wondermycin, they would take back whatever we couldn’t sell if we returned it within the specified time. What happened to that? Taking possession of something nowdays is like burning a bridge behind you. “Thank you very much, good luck with that…”

AND in the olden days of pharmacy our wholesaler rep used to come by a couple of times a year and handle returns for us. He’d sit in back with his Telxon unit amongst the boxes of outdates and make them vanish for us. That service is gone too.

I tried to return some Zyrtec syrup. I purchased it before it went OTC and now I cannot return it because its “discontinued” . Well I dont give a flying whup if its disontinued. It wasn’t discontinued when I purchased it, its unopened, in date and as long as I purchased it from my wholesaler, then they should take it back. Let them decide what they want to do with it. I only bought it 5 months ago. Now I get to sit on this til next year when it finally outdates and get squat from DrugDestroyers INC.

I’m learning also how to play their game. I send back anything that arrives to me less than perfect. If the box is bent and I keep it for more than 30 days, they will refuse to accept it because it “damaged” even tho that is exactly how they sent it to me. Therefore, if its not pristine and perfect, back it goes.

When I send back my outdates I get a report from DrugDestroyers INC telling me what they are crediting me for and what I get nothing: nada: zero: the big goose egg. I get $0 for too many items now days. And, for everyone of those items there is a reference letter directing me to the bottom of the page as to WHY I got no credit for that item. There are about 30 reasons for them to deny me credit. If they can think it up, its on this page: No partials: Missing seal. Product returned is less than mfr minimum. Not in original container. Item not returnable…And it goes on. They have a lot of ways to deny credit.

I just boxed up another $4000 worth of outdates. $4000 worth of drugs I didn’t sell. $4000 I spent on inventory that didn’t move. What really gets my goat is some of the items in the box. The bottle of Synthroid 200 (1000ct) I had to order because the 100ct were out…its mostly full, The bottle of Prilosec 40mg capsules and I used 7 on a coupon offer. It was never refilled. The Cozaar 25 (#90) that I special ordered, labeled and returned to stock when it was transferred to a nearby competitor for their gift card promo. The brand name Flonase that Mr. I-gotta-have-Brand wanted until his copay went from $25 to $75. The bottle of Dyrenium (triamterene) that I used 30 out of because the Dr didn’t like HCTZ….then put the patient on Dyazide anyway. A big tube of Elocon that we werent’ successful in removing the label (therefore non returnable to the wholesaler) and since its gone generic…never moved again. A box of Arixtra with one syringe out of it…the patient got the rest of the rx at the hospital pharmacy. A box of Nitro-Dur patches with 10 missing (ok, HOW many times do I have to say–no broken boxes of nitro patches??) 2 bottles of Meridia (30ct) because they come 3×30ct and I used one…

No wonder my old boss used to pop a vein when he did returns. Its like flushing hundred dollar bills down the toilet.

Tags: , pharmacy life, rambling, returns | |

It was Pharmacy Chick’s day off so Mr and Mrs Chick frequently use the time to run a few errands. Because we live in a metropolitan area, it often involves hopping on a freeway to get from point A to point B. Every freeway has an on/off ramp and on every ramp is a beggar. Your community may have them too, I dunno if panhandling on the freeway is allowed in your state, but it is apparently legal around here. Dirty men (and yes, women) holding a handmade cardboard sign extolling their hard-luck status in attempt to dislodge a few coins (or bills if you are a big enough sap) from your tight fist.

They are even more pathetic when its raining out, but they are out there, rain or shine. They have their corners staked out and God help you if you try to horn in on a prime spot. You’d have better luck ripping off the Mafia than stealing a good panhandle spot. Some bring a dog.

A few years ago our local paper ran an article exposing them for the scam artists that they are: a fairly well organized operation of panhandlers designed to rip you off, by pretending to be homeless, or veterans, or both. “every coin helps” says one sign. “homeless vet” says another “I have 3 kids” said a third, which was interesting cuz this guy looked to be about 65, so his kids would be, what, 30-40 years old by now??

One day I was in a long line by a metered on-ramp. It was almost 6 pm. This guy was standing there with his sign, staring off into space. He had a pack on the ground. Then he acted startled, looked at his watch (6pm), then folded up his sign, grabbed the pack and began to walk off the ramp. WHAT? Quittin time? The watch alarm went off? Time to head home? Trade places with Beggar on the opposite side? Who knows?

PC doesn’t have a heart of stone, she and Mr Chick donate over 10% of their income to charities of our choice, usually our church and a variety of non-profits of our choice. There are organizations in place for the homeless to receive meals each day, a shower and a bed. I am not going to give one man a fish when somebody more able than I can teach hundreds of them to fish and feed their entire families.

One brave soul I know spends a lot of time down town and was panhandled. He wanted money “for food” he said. Being the savvy city dweller, my friend wasn’t fooled. “lets go buy you some food” she said. “No, man” the beggar said, “I’ll buy the food, you just give me $5″. No dice.

I’ll never give them a penny, but I maybe I should keep a bag of dog bones in my car for the next time I see the dog.

Tags: non pharmacy stuff, personal life, rambling | |

For those of you old enough to remember the days before prescription insurance, this should be right up your alley. It used to be that if you received a prescription written for Drug X 30+11 refills, that it basically meant you had 360 tabs to play with. AND, provided it wasn’t controlled or you weren’t afraid the patient would hurt themselves, if they asked for 90 instead of 30, no big deal.

Then the insurance industry gathered momentum and power and ripped the spines out of pharmacists everywhere. Next, the govt got involved and politicians (Medicare/Medicaid) rewrote the rules for everything.

Today, to the consternation of pharmacists and patients everywhere, if you get a RX for 30+11, you better fill it for 30+11 or when you get audited, you’ll give that money back. You see, its fully ok, legal and actually encouraged to underpay pharmacies and rip us off, but if you have one clerical error or decide to make things convenient for the customer by saving them trips to the store, you are SO Toast.

You see, by now most Medicare D people have figured out that they can get 90 days on their plan. Pretty much every 90 day rx for a brand name med pays me under cost. However, Pharmacy Chick didn’t sign the contract so if her company is willing to take the loss, so be it. If they dont care, neither will I. I have bigger fish to fry. More and more customers are asking, no–demanding, that they receive 90 days, especially if they have met their deductible.

Problem is that the Drs seem to be a little slow on the uptake and continue to write for 30 days +11 refills (or “prn”). Take this for example: we have this HUGE clinic where 100+ dr’s have a central phone number for all their refills. We fax in our requests and it enters the big Black Hole of their refill service. Time and time again, we send in requests for 90 days and they fax back an automatic Rx written for 30 days +11. Since it takes up to 3 days for these guys to return our refill requests, I don’t have the time to send it back AGAIN. Does anybody even READ the things I fax?

Therefore I fill it as its written…30 days… I try to explain it to customers in preschool verbiage, but it doesn’t always sink in….”but I had 90 days last time…”

Sorry, but to me its the most stupid of rules. Just another way to screw pharmacies over the minutae by the insurance companies.

If Pharmacy Chick was queen of the world, I’d encourage doctors to re-think how they write their rx’s. If they want to give a years worth of refills, then write the prescription for HCTZ 25mg # 365 to be dispensed per pt or insurance requests. I did, in fact, have a dentist that used to write every fluoride prescription for # 365. Brilliant, he was. That way, every option is open for the patient , the Dr would get a lot fewer phone calls to change it, and the insurance auditor……..can go pee up a rope.

Seems like a win win situation from my perspective.

And, hope you all had a happy Independence Day. We spent all day outdoors and all evening INdoors trying to keep my drugged dogs from crawling under the couch. Pup-1 has no fondness for the fireworks….

Tags: customers, insurance, rambling | |

I’ve wanted to write a post on this subject (non pharmacy related) but didn’t know how to begin until when I came across a news tidbit that a Thai restaurant in Silverton, Oregon was banning children under the age of 6. He felt it was his place and his rules and kids didn’t fit in with the experience he wanted his patrons to experience and has no plans to change it. I say hurrah for having the guts to do what you want to do.

You see, The Chick’s like to go out to eat now and then. Its a privilege that two incomes can afford, and some things just taste better when somebody else makes them. We probably eat out more often than we should, but I believe its a knee jerk reaction to our childhoods where we almost never ate out.

I can honestly say that my brain has virtually no memories of dining out with mom and dad. First of all, there wasn’t much money in the household for such extravagances and second of all, when Dad DID decide he wanted to eat out, it usually involved He and Mom getting dressed up and the neighbor girl coming over to babysit while THEY went out. Thats just the way it was.

Quite obviously there has been a cultural shift, and I pity the poor restaurants….and the rest of the diners. One night I went to dinner and was escorted to a table. Before the menus hit the table, I took a look at the view and said (quite discretly and politely) “may I sit someplace else?”. Sitting closeby were PWSC Parents With Small Children. It was clear they had just arrived because they were in an animated discussion with said children about what they were going to order. It seemed to be a futile exercise. “Do you want the mac/cheese or the hamburger?” “HOT DOG!” “Honey, they dont have Hot Dogs here, How about the Chicken strips?” …..see what I mean? F.U.T.I.L.E.

I sat down a comfortable distance away from them, but I could still hear them. Two of the kids were arguing about who got the better chair and being admonished with empty threats from the parents. The one in the high chair had been given some keys to play with because we could hear the clang of keys on the metal tray over and over. It made me wonder: How desperate were the parents to eat out that they would endure this to not cook? It couldn’t be fun, it certainly wasn’t relaxing. They were playing referee to 3 kids under the age of 6. They might have well been nailing jello to a tree for as much success they were having at controlling the situation. Had they never heard of a babysitter? For what they were paying for the kids meals, they could have ponied up babysitting fees AND a pizza for the sitter and had a nice “date night” for themselves.

I tuned them out ate the meal and got ready to leave. PWSC had left shortly before us. The carnage they left behind was embarrassing. It looked as though the kitchen had exploded all over the table. I wondered, did the kids actually consume any food? Most of it was scattered on the table, the chairs and on the floor. Someone’s milk was tipped over and was dripping off the end of the table. The high chair had food smeared on it from top to bottom. It was every server’s nightmare.

The irony of the situation is that its not uncommon anymore to have this happen. Almost every time we go someplace to eat, we see “family” dining. I’ll bet every reader I have has has a similar story to share. Because eating out is expensive and a luxury experience, I am not afraid of telling the servers that I will not sit near PWSC. I am subjected to uncontrolled kids at work all day, I certainly am not going to SPEND money to sit near their crying, whining and mess on my own time. I am not a parent, but some parents seem to be caught surprised: even I know kids can’t, don’t, or won’t sit still or stay quiet for extended periods of time, both of which are required when dining out (I am not talking fast food here..I am talking about ordering from menus, waitresses, bread, salad, the whole thing). Now I am not saying that you cannot take your kids out to dinner, it is a free country after all, but sheesh, your paying for dinner doesn’t give you carte blanch to leave a mess that a HAZMAT team must clean up.

Because this IS a pharmacy blog, I can relate this to PWSC who cause carnage and disaster in my store. I understand that its hard being a parent of a tot, but I didn’t give birth to your walking wrecking ball, YOU did. Its not my job to keep little Stevie off of my blood pressure machine and off my displays, and if he breaks this $450 porcelain figurine display because he is running away from you, you are getting the bill for it.

I never hesitate to tell a parent of a well behaved child, what a great kid they have. There is a lot of effort that went into that child and it shows. Too bad I don’t get the same option of telling the parent of Satanette, what a brat they have. One kid grabbed the electronic signing pen from my counter and ripped it from the housing. Another got into a fight with his mother when she wouldn’t buy him Grape Benadryl so he knocked over several bottles of cough and cold products to the floor. Mom didn’t bat an eye, nor did she offer to pick them up. She grabbed the one she wanted and walked away, brat in tow.

Don’t tell me its the “cost of doing business”. Thats a cheap cop out excuse for not owning up to parental responsibility.

Back at the restaurant, a teen with a bucket of water and a vacuum was quietly going about cleaning up.

Tags: customers, personal life, pharmacy life, rambling | |

Pharmacy Chick hates working the day after a holiday. Let me repeat that: Pharmacy Chick HATES working the day after a holiday. She also isn’t so fond of working the day before a holiday either. Today’s excerpts:

1. Three people that decided that today was the day wanted to get an immunization. No, we couldn’t do it any other time, we had to choose today. What else do these retirees have to do on a tuesday? Bunco? Soap Opera? Checkers?

2. Some guy (who is still wearing the ER bracelet from 2 days ago) who hands me a script from Michigan….written in sanskrit (or looks like it) with no Dea number…with one of those generic scripts with someting like 6 clinics to choose from and he didnt’ bother to check which one he worked out of….for Vicodin and Ibu. Couldn’t have filled it in Michigan eh buddy?

3. Some girl who lost her Accutane Rx (good luck with that one). A few hours later its called in, from a different state. Thankfully Dr had the I Pledge number…but… No surprise that I Pledge Program said NO WAY. She had no insurance card (another long distance phone call for me). Finally SHE did her online stuff, then I did mine, and off she went.

4. Some gal with a script for a nebulizer…I dont dispense nebs…”whups, I needed Albuterol, can you call my dr?” (I make her do it). After much hand wringing, its determined that she already HAS albuterol and its PULMICORT that she wants..even tho she told the tech 3 times that she HAD pulmicort at home. She didn’t have her insurance card either. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when she called the Dr office back to get her insurance number also…

5. Some guy says he is sick and wants me to call his family to pick him up. I ask him if he wants an ambulance. He says no and I call his wife/girlfriend/whatever. They spend 45 minutes sitting in my tiny wait room. More than once I go out to see if they want medical assistance, water, a bucket?(PC does NOT want puke anywhere around the pharmacy. They always decline. Then they both vanish.

6. No trips to the potty and no lunch all day…all 12 hours of it. You know, if you go hungry long enough, you quit feeling the hunger. Pharmacy Chick starts getting grouchy when she doesn’t get to eat so there were a few techs treading lightly this afternoon.

7. Piss off to every one of you who handed me a transfer to price match for $4 and then had the nerve to hand me a gift card coupon. May your butt break out in boils all over.

8. The woman who drops off 6 rx’s for herself and her kids, PC and staff scramble to get them ready and she then says “I only wanted one today, I’ll get the rest tomorrow” (Boils for her too)

9. Pharmacy Chick hates seeing a tech return to the computer with a filled script when its being rung up. How can I tactfully say “so, what the hell is wrong with THIS one?” when this lady’s insurance charged her $59 and some change for her Yaz. She wanted to try her other insurance. That one broke the $60 mark so back to insurance 1. She held up the line, she tried my patience and wasted my time. Boils on her backside too.

10. And lots of Boils to the guy who hands me several rxs to do, and after I fill them all, bring them to the cash register, counsel and walk off only to have him say “these are workers comp”.

11. Some lady who comes in asking for 2 prescriptions. Tech asks for the name and she gives her own. We look her up and she hasn’t had a script for 2 years at our store. She makes some comment about the MD calling the wrong store “again” and leaves. About a half hour later, this lady’s husband calls and complains that we told his wife that we didn’t have a prescription for HIM. She didn’t ask for one for HIM, she gave HER name and told us it was TWO. We had ONE….for HIM. She pissed and moaned about coming back. Its all our fault.

But lastly, the only thing keeping me from drinking tonight instead of blogging: the wonderful thanks I got from a patient for whom I prevented a drug interaction when her Dr prescribed Levaquin and Zithromax last week,and the cute older couple who think I walk on water and thanked me (again) for always taking care of them….Y’all keep coming back ok?

I still dont like working the day after holidays, but I survived another one.

Tags: customers, pharmacy life, rambling, ranting | |

Pharmacy Chick was grocery shopping today and found an item that screamed :BLOG!

For those of you old enough to remember, canning food used to be a pretty popular thing. Giant pots of boiling water turning cucumbers into pickles, Apples into pie filling, and peaches into future cobbler.

When I was a kid, my mother used to can food. I guess “jar” would be a more appropriate word for it since it was all in glass. We had a big back yard and grew all sorts of veggies. She’d can tomatoes and peaches, beets, cherries, jam and pickles. She also froze whatever couldn’t be canned. Because canning jars were expensive, they were treated quite well. AND we would also save and reuse mayonaise and Miracle Whip jars.

Oh, that wonderful stuff called Miracle Whip Salad Dressing. I wonder how they got the name. Where is the “miracle?” It seems that most households are either “mayo” or “Miracle Whip”. Ours was both because Dad liked MW and the rest of us liked Mayo. Anyway, these jars were perfect for canning because they had a wide mouth that was the same diameter as the canning jars sold in the store. Every jar was saved and reused for mom’s canning projects. Even our non-canning friends would save jars and bring them over. In mom’s opinion, if you threw away a jar suitable for canning, you were throwing away money.

I never got the hang of canning food, I don’t have a garden, and mom died with all of her secrets. But she left behind all these jars. Hundreds of them. She hoarded them BECAUSE Miracle whip changed their jars from wide mouth to a narrower mouth many years ago. Actually both Mayo and MW went with this narrower mouth at about the same time. To her they were useless for canning. Then they went plastic. I am sure mother would think this was apostasy.

My dad asked me once if I wanted her jars. I graciously declined. As mentioned before, I never learned the art of canning. I could just see me giving my friends Tomatoes Ala Botulina Toxina. Nope, I think I will stick to professionally canned food ,thanks.

So today, when I was shopping, I was amused to see Miracle Whip in its plastic bottle, emblazoned with the words “NEW, IMPROVED WIDE MOUTH JAR”

“New and improved?”….not so much..for those of us old enough to remember.

Tags: drivel, life in general, rambling | |

Pharmacy Chick has about 20 white coats. Its embarrassing to admit but I still have some coats from my school days. Its not like there is Haute Couture for lab coats-what changes from year to year? As long as it remains relatively white (”relative” is the operative word here) then it stays in the lineup.

I do actually have a few favorites that make it to the front of the closet. I suppose all of us white-coat-junkies are kinda picky about our coats. I am no exception. Mine have to have 3 pockets. I keep certain things in each pocket and I like to keep it lightweight. One pocket has 3 pens in it. the other pocket has certain papers I use a lot. I also have a receipt from 2 years ago for a bank withdrawal for some money I lent a family member. He still hasn’t paid me back, the deadbeat. And, in my breast pocket I keep my sharpies, the greatest invention since the counting tray.

Years ago I loved my 3/4 sleeve “Consultation Jacket”. Real impressive. It had a fancy lapel and I wore a multitude of pins on it. I kept it crisply ironed, but I eventually wore them out. I still have 3 of them (among the 20) but I dont wear them anymore. They aren’t real white anymore and have stains on them. Since they quit making that style, I went on a mission to find the perfect coat, hence the purchase of the additional 17. I couldn’t find any brick and mortar store to buy them so I had to look online. Unfortunately I was too lazy to return the ones I didn’t like them so they joined an ever growing collection in the closet.

Some of them were made so cheaply they felt like paper–gone, out of the lineup. A couple more were free from the company but had only 2 pockets–gone, goodbye. A few more were long sleeve and they were hard to keep clean on the arms. Ciao. A couple others needed more ironing than a Chinese laundry. Outahere. Then one day an intern passed by and had this zip up jobby that reminded me of a barber. It was plain, but I liked it. I ordered one…then 2 more, and they are now my fav’s. Short sleeve (one point), 3 pockets (one point), no buttons (one point), and no iron (3 points).

I finally decided to clear out some of the coats. There probably isn’t much demand at Goodwill for old lab coats so I retired them to the garage as rags. I still have a dozen that I never wear but they get to occupy the closet–I can’t seem to ditch a perfectly white coat. I just keep using my barber coats over and over. No fancy lapel so no more pins. I’m lucky to remember my name tag. Not much form perhaps, but 100% functional.

Which reminds me, I better get them washed before they qualify as a Superfund site….

Tags: drivel, pharmacy life, rambling | |

Pharmacy Chick is not a cheapskate, she doesn’t like to waste money but she isn’t one to wear the face off a penny in my pocket either. She likes to buy stuff on sale (when she actually shops–PC doesn’t like shopping much either). However, in Sunday’s paper there was a huge several page ad for a department store for their Mothers Day sale. “BIG SALE” they said, and attached, wrapped in pink was a coupon for an “extra 15% off sale, new reduction, and clearance apparel, handbags and accessories for her, him and kids including fine jewelry, bridge and fashion jewelry*”

The dreaded Asterisk “*”. I pulled out my electron microscope to read the small print because there was a lot of it. Apparently there were some serious restrictions on this so-called “extra 15% off”. For your reading pleasure I will tell you exactly what I cannot buy in this store and my comments:

Excludes: Regular priced items (well, thanks, I wasn’t going to buy anything that wasn’t on sale anyway but that now excludes most things in your store), Cosmetics and Fragrances (so I cannot look or smell good on sale) Lacoste, The North Face, Burton Snowboarding(thank GOD I dont snow board), INC International Concepts, American Rag (I am not wearing anything called “rag” thank you) Impulse, Bridge Sportswear, swimwear, Kate Spade, Mephisto, Designer handbags(so they only meant CRAPPY handbags and accessories) and shoes for her, Coach, Dooney and Bourke (I thought they had already excluded the designer handbags, but we are going to mention them again), Levi’s, Dockers(which is probably 70% of the product line), Selected men’s designers (in case they forgot to mention any by NAME here) Tasso Elba and Material London sportswear, Vera Wang, Baccarat, Lalique, Lladro, Waterford (oh yea, I have that all over my house), designer bed, bath and table linens (but I guess the cruddy bed bath and table linens are ok), All-Clad, Henckels, Wusthof, ALL electrics and electronics, furniture, mattresses and area rugs. Not valid on Everyday Values(just on the stuff we mark way up), fine jewelry Super buys( So, its only on fine jewelry you have marked up to absorb the coupon loss huh?), Gift cards, specials, maternity, gift registry, previous purchases, or gift wrap. blah blah blah….

So the question that begs answering is: What is left? One small rack in the corner labeled “priced as marked” with a conglomerate of womens out of season clothing in either XS or XXL, stuff with a button missing or a torn hem? The coupon also states that you can get an extra 10% off shoes for her but then they specifically exclude shoes for her, so I guess that leaves me confused.

It basically leaves out probably 80 percent of the store. The entire 2nd floor is furniture, housewares, electronics and electrics, and everything you would buy for a gift registry (dinnerware, etc). So there is no point in even going upstairs cuz you can’t use the coupon there. Downstairs there is Cosmetics and fragrances, and shoes (whups, forget that…its excluded), all the handbags and jewelry (nope, fuggetaboutit). There is also the womens clothing but the stuff I like is either not on sale (exludes regular price items) or their private label Everyday Value (yup…exluded).

So whats the freakin point? To all you people who make these coupons, either suck it up and just give the people the sale price you allegedly advertise pre-micro-print or just forget about the damn coupon since there isn’t much you haven’t already exluded. Frankly don’t you think you might have used less ink if you put what WAS included instead of what was EXLUDED?

I stayed home instead.

Tags: personal life, rambling, ranting | |

I am gonna go out on a limb here and state that most of us who take vacations probably need a vacation AFTER we have cleaned up the messes and disasters created by those covering for us while we were gone. This is not going to be a rant about relief pharmacists. No way Jose, I am not cutting my own throat by insulting my fellow professionals. Its a hard sucky job. I run my store wonderfully, but I fully realize that if I had to walk into Big Box Pharmacy down the street and run their business, that I’d probably have it royally screwed up in oh, 1 hour tops. The fact is, every store runs uniquely. It cannot be changed. We will never completely standardize every single store in the chain, no matter how many corporate directives to the contrary. I must say however that I wish that more of my relief pharmacists would prescribe to “go with the flow” and work within the existing framework of the store instead of forcing my techs (who already know how I like the place run) to conform to a new and unfamiliar routine, thereby screwing everything up. That being said:

With the 5 total employees in my department, we have a combined 50 years of experience within our company, half of them in the two pharmacists alone. This means that we have accrued a significant amount of vacation time, 8 paid weeks between the two of us. Neither of us are workaholics that claim victory by never using vacation. I use every single hour of it. I earned it and I deserve it.

More and more however I am thinking I need to prepare my customers for my iminent departure. They just don’t seem to get it. Perhaps I need to create bag stuffers and distribute them a couple of weeks before I leave:

Dearest Customer: One of us is about to go on vacation. Because of this, do not expect that everything will run exactly as usual. In fact, it might actually get chaotic around here. It will likely take longer than usual to process your prescription. Thats just how it is. We’d be grateful if you’d make yourself scarce for a change instead of breathing down the neck of the staff wondering why its taking so long. The pharmacist you dont recognize will be a guest one day and the next day it will be somebody different. They do not know the store. They do not know you. They will not know that you go by “Scooter” but the name on your label is Harold. They will not be familiar with the store so don’t get your tail in a knot when they cannot tell you the aisle that the english muffins are on. Find them yourself or ask a courtesy clerk. Thats what they are for. The Pharmacist might not even be all that familiar with our computer system so if you need a prior authorization or a weird split bill for your loyalty card, accept the fact it probably won’t get done til we come back. Since they dont have any roots in the store they don’t have any particular allegiance to your needs so don’t expect them to perform any special services. Honestly, they are here just to keep the place open and legal… They may be unfamiliar but they are not idiots, so don’t lie to them. Don’t even think about saying “but Pharmacy Chick always does such and such for me”. Even if its true, doesn’t mean that they have to cater to your whim. I may do such and such just to keep you from throwing a toddler tantrum at my counter. I would also appreciate not hearing a blow by blow analysis of your miserable experience here at the hands of the relief pharmacist. It does not make me feel any better. It will only validate my opinion of you being an impatient impish whiner. If the pharmacist actually wigs out and calls you the impatient impish whiner that you are, then I will make a convincing but half assed apology to you but tell the pharmacist “way to go, gutsy dude”. In short, do us all a favor and cut us an inch of slack for a change. Thank you.

Oh, I know it will never happen. I’ll go away and come back to a weeks worth of unopened mail, a stack of notes to call a half-dozen people, and 50 phone calls within the first 15 minutes of my first day back (since everybody who asked was told exactly what date and time I would be back). This came to my mind today when I was fed a sob story of the horrible injustice a customer had to endure because the relief pharmacist changed (correctly) the quantity of a drug to meet the insurance company limits. The customer felt so wronged and didn’t appreciate my telling him the pharmacist was correct.

It will never stop me from going on vacation, but I’d like to have a little less anxiety about coming back.

Tags: customers, employees, general junk, pharmacy life, rambling | |