Quotes of the Day

Just another quick post for today.

The second customer I wait on today brings in a new prescription. It's for prenatal vitamins. Since we have just opened, we have ~25 prescriptions that were called in overnight waiting to be filled, so we're pretty busy. I get her information, ask if she's going to wait (yes, of course), and tell her it's going to be about 30 minutes.

She stands at the counter stuttering, apoplectic at the thought that a prescription would take that long to fill, and walks away.

A couple of minutes she walks back, and I say, "It's not ready yet," thinking she's coming back to pick it up.

Nope.

"Can I pick that up at the Wal-mart near K-mart?"

Wait, wait, wait... I don't work for Wal-mart. I don't work for K-mart, either. The nearest Wal-mart is half an hour away without any traffic. Did she really just ask that? Is she really this stupid?! What.. the.. hell..

...

The second Quote of the Day didn't happen in our store. We got another one of those corporate-wide e-mails I'm so fond of.

From: Manager_0022@company.com
To: Every store in the Chain
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 3:23 PM
Subject: Quote of the Day

"I already know how to take that medication so you don't have to put the label on the bottle and I won't tell."

*world-weary sigh*

I Hate Vicodin

Say the word "VIKES" and watch me cringe.

Seriously, I swear Satan had a hand in marketing this stuff. I can say with reasonable accuracy that everyone who is chronically on Vicodin is an abuser of the stuff (or at least physically/psychologically dependent on it). Nearly every incident we have in the pharmacy deals with Vicodin. Either:

1. It must be filled now, even though it was filled 3 days ago for #120.
2. We shorted them 15 tablets, even though we double count all Vicodin prescriptions and our counts match exactly.
3. The patient's directions changed, and they are now taking twice as many as our prescription says, even though the doctor never gave them a prescription reflecting this change .
4. We filled for generic Vicodin, but they demand Brand Vicodin(R), because they're allergic to generic.
5. (TRUE STORY) They went canooing over the weekend, and in the middle of the river, their canoe overturned, their prescription bottle magically unzipped itself, unburied itself from beneath the layers of clothes packed on top of it, fell out of their bag, and floated happily down the river.
6. (TRUE STORY) They were standing above a sewer grate, and the tablets fell down the drain.

So, today a lady called about her Vikes. She's known in our pharmacy for her Vicodin addiction. She had two prescriptions that we partially filled, because the doctor wrote for some ungodly amount and the insurance would only pay for a thirty day supply. She wanted the remainder (76 tablets on one prescription, 45 on another). I told her flat out on the phone:

"I will fill the 76 tablets for you, but you cannot get the 45 from the other prescription until those 76 are finished. These 76 tablets will last you 19 days. That is when you can have the second presctiption."

Come 5:30PM, the lady rolls in to pick up her prescription. I assume she thought I would be off, but surprise! I'm working the middle shift. I'm good at hiding in the back, so she didn't see me. I hear her talking to the tech:

"I have another prescription in the computer, and I would like to pick up the remaining pills tonight."

The technician went to the computer with the intention of looking up this prescription (and probably going ahead and filling it without knowing anything about the prior conversation). So close... I came around the corner (being the only male in the pharmacy, she knew it was me that she had talked to earlier in the day), and the look on her face was like, "Awwww, shit.. You caught me."

"Katherine," no, not her real name, "I told you on the phone that you could not have those filled until you were finished in 19 days with these tablets."

"Oh, I was just making sure they were on hold still."

LIE! I heard you, bitch! You were trying to scam some poor technician who was only trying to do her job!

In a "I know you're lying but I don't want to fight with you voice" "OK, well give us a call in 19 days, and we'll fill the rest of these tablets for you."

Damn Vicodin.

A Quick Quote

"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

From Prince of Chaos by Roger Zelazny, part of The Great Book of Amber, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite fantasy series. I don't think it's quite as amazing as the Wheel of Time series, but I haven't been able to put it down since I got it.

Regarding the quote: Those're some pretty powerful words, especially when taken in the context of my current life situation. I usually come home wondering why in Hell I went this way with my life. With my grades and SAT score coming out of high school, I could have done anything.

But I thought about the quote and thought about why I went into pharmacy. I didn't do it for the money or the job security. I didn't do it for the prestige of being a "Pharmacist" (or as Amybanana would put it, "Pharmacist at Law"). I did it because I wanted to help people. True, there are other paths to be taken that would have achieved such a broad goal as "helping people," but this path utilizes my special skills and abilities.

It sounds sappy, and probably overly-corny, but yeah. I'm not going to school for Greatness. I'm going to school to help.

Exams, Thieves, and Trannies

It's been a long, long time since I've written here.

But I have two exams tomorrow, and I don't feel like studying, so I figured this would be a reasonable alternative.

Pharmacy Law has got to be the most mind-numbing subject ever created. I skipped pulmonology and endocrinology yesterday morning to catch up on the readings. I only read 60 pages, but last night at work, I was in my own world the entire night and felt like a zombie. I think there's something in the pharmacy law textbook that literally sucks the life out of you as you read.

On a similar note, law class is 3 hours, from 2:30-5:30pm. The professor has the most amazing sedative effect I've ever encountered. I begin class wide awake (with my crossword and sudoku hidden cleverly behind my notebook), but within 10 minutes, I am dead to the world. Normally, I wake up when he gives us a 4 minute break (4 minutes?! c'mon, I can't even run to the bathroom, unzip, unleash, pee, repackage, zip, and wash my hands that fast), and run at the door and into my car and drive home. But today, I decided that since the exam is tomorrow, I really should stay and pretend like I'm paying attention. Instead, I played Scrabble on my phone. For 3 hours.

The manufacturers of all these sleep aids should really look into "Professor Gainor on Tape," instead of all these drugs with weird side effects such as nocturnal binging.

Coffee and EQ2 appear to be reasonable antidotes for my current zombie state. I have a cup of the former on my desk as I write, and I shall partake of the latter after I finish this post. I quote from a text message to Amybanana earlier today: "studying is for weenies" (maybe I said class, but I'm almost positive it applies to both).

I also have an abnormal psychology exam tomorrow night, but that's an elective, and everyone knows you don't study for electives. Besides, working in a retail pharmacy has given me first-hand experience on just about everything abnormal the DSM-IV has to diagnose, and I could probably give you a clinical presentation of each category better than most psychiatrists. Case in point: Yesterday alone I dealt with a schizophrenic, a bipolar, an obsessive-compulsive, and an epileptic patient in the same evening.

I should probably feel more guilty about not studying, but after 4 years (going on 5) of this stuff, I'm finding it hard to even go to class let alone set aside time to study.

On the subject of thieves:

One of the technicians was fired on Friday for creating false scripts, filling them, taking the medication, credit returning the script, and keeping the medication. By doing this, she made it so that the computer showed that the scripts were never filled, but the counts were off (by 200 on the Tylenol #4, 100 on the Norco). Since they're both C4's, normally this wouldn't have been noticed until the next biennial inventory was performed (see, I did pay some attention in Law). However, she was becoming neurotic at the end of her stint, and began to say we were messing up her own, personal prescriptions, and then trying to fix them or fill them too soon. The pharmacists eventually caught on, called the DM, and she was confronted and confessed. I don't know what's going to happen besides being fired. According to the Controlled Substances act, the DEA and the police need to be notified immediately when a theft in a pharmacy has occured.

However, on the more personal side of the issue, this lady was a genuinely nice lady. She was friendly, she was personable, she did her job well, she has a kid who goes to the same elementary school I went to... And now, now her life is practically ruined. Not only do I feel horrible thinking about what she's going to have to go through now (even though it was her fault and she could have prevented it), I have to feel even worse for her son, because I went through the same scenario when I was around his age (i.e. my father was fired and thrown into rehab after stealing narcotics from the hospital where he worked). I mean, that literally ruined that portion of my life and shaped a major portion of the person I am today. Granted, I personally don't dwell on the past and strive to let the incident be a part of my growth, but who knows how the technician's son will react to this? How will this shape his life? Will he learn and grow from it like I did, or will he let it steer him into the same downward spiral that his mother was trapped in?

Hmph...

On a lighter note:

Saturday morning, I was ringing up the first person of the day who was picking up his two prescriptions. I'm not a morning person, so I really wasn't paying attention to what was going on. He was an older (50-something), overweight man with long, scragly hair and reeking strongly of cigarette smoke and last night's beer binge. All I saw was that we owed him 100 tablets of the one medication, and the other had to be ordered for Monday. I told the customer this, he got pissed, and asked me which one we owed him on. This is how the conversation went (patient=normal, me=bold, my thoughts=italics)

"Which one do you owe me on?"

"Premarin." Wait, wait, wait.. What's Premarin? Isn't that... yes.. that's definitely estrogen.

"Ok, and which one will be in on Monday?"

"The spironolactone." Huh, that's a pretty high dose of spironolactone. Well, he must have some bad blood pressure or something. Wait.. Didn't Dr. Volmer tell us that one of the side effects of spironolactone is man boobs? Oh... Jesus Christ...

"Ok.. Fine.. Can you ring this up for me, too?"

"Ok." Yep, that's bright red hair dye he just put on the counter. Oh look, he shaved his arms, too.

*twitch*

The relationship between forms of communication available and intelligence is inversely related

I'm in the pharmacy now, because we're unusually dead. The pharmacist is actually cleaning off the shelves because we're so bored. Something has occurred to us (intern, technician, and pharmacist), and this something is what I like the call "The Third Law of Pharmacy."

I don't know what Laws #1 and #2 are, so naming this #3 gives me wiggle room to improvise later. Maybe we can fit this post into another law.

This Third Law states that:

As the technology and forms of communication increase, the apparent intelligence of the communicator exponentially decreases.


And as every good scientist knows, a Law must be proven with facts that fail to disprove the Law. So here we go: All of these stories occurred today.

---

About an hour after I arrived, I'm standing in the back of the pharmacy pulling scripts off the refill line when one of the technicians runs back laughing so hard I think she's going to pee herself. Between gasps of air, she tells us that on the phone is an elderly lady with a very important question:

"I have an MRI tomorrow. Do I have to get naked?"

Everyone cracks up. Unfortunately, by the time we can breathe enough to answer the question, the lady has hung up.

Fortunately, about 15 minutes later, she calls back.

With a new question:

"Can I wear a pants suit to my MRI? Or maybe a skirt?"

Now, there are a number of things wrong with these questions. Probably most important is that we are a RETAIL PHARMACY. We are in the dead center of a grocery store, and I personally have never seen an MRI machine except for in ER and Scrubs.

---

Ok, so the next one is a bit of a flip. I always talk about how stupid customers are, but this one, a pharmacist gets the credit. We're a chain, but we're also small enough that we have corporate-wide e-mail systems in which pharmacies can send out e-mails to every single pharmacy in our chain. I dread to even think about the havoc this would have in a business like Walgreens...

I'm counting tablets, when one of the pharmacists begins to bust out laughing as she's staring at the Outlook window on her screen. Looking over her shoulder, I see the subject of the e-mail:

"WHO TURNED OFF THE HORN???"

No body, no signature, just the subject. Anyone who works in the chain knows that the horn this poor sap (probably a floater) is referring to is the horn that beeps when the pharmacist scans the wrong bottle of medication. On the same page, anyone who works in the chain also knows that if the horn on the computer isn't beeping... IT'S BECAUSE YOU HAVE YOUR SOUND TURNED OFF.

I assume some pharmacist, after laughing his/her ass off, responded to this guy, because a couple of minutes later he sends out another corporate-wide e-mail, this time with a subject.

"THANKS!!!!!!!! HOW DID YOU KNOW?????"

It scares me that this person went to college for 5-6 years, graduated, and now holds the lives of many people in his hands.

---

And the last story involves another phone call. The pharmacist answers the phone, says, "Ok..." and a couple of minutes later throws her pen at me. She likes to do this a lot. I don't really know why.

Anyways, she gets off the phone, and I say to her, "Do I want to know?"

"No, but I'll tell you anyways. The lady called and said, 'I have a weird question,' so I'm like, 'Ok...' Then this moron says, 'I brought a prescription to another pharmacy and there was a problem with it and they had to call the doctor. Can you tell me if they called my doctor or not?'"

...

^ That's really all I can say about this.

Some people are so polite...

^ sarcasm

So, we have this one customer who from the first time I waited on I immediately disliked. This is mostly due to the fact that he started screaming at me and the pharmacist that we were trying to kill him. We shall refer to him as Ass.

This first incident happened almost a year ago and stemmed from Ass having no refills on his warfarin prescription. Warfarin is a blood thinner and patients need to be closely monitored while on this medication or else they bleed out and die from internal hemorrhage. Ok, yeah that's a little dramatic, but it can happen.

Ass had called his prescription in a couple of days earlier, but having no refills, we contacted his doctor's office. They told us he hadn't had his INR read in a year and as such, they would not authorize refills for this man. He came to the counter, I explained this to him, and he began to scream, "I don't NEED a prescription. You don't NEED to call the doctor. You just GIVE me the medicine." I said we could not do this until he had his INR checked.

This started a bout of "You're trying to kill me! I'm going to die because of you!"

The pharmacist came over and told Ass that we had given him a grace refill the last time, and due to the response from the doctor's office, we were absolutely not going to give him another grace refill. I told him that warfarin was originally used as a rat poison, and as such it's an extremely dangerous medication when you don't follow the doctor's orders.

So other customers in line who have no freaking clue what warfarin is or what procedures for authorizing refills are begin to take the side of the screaming lunatic in front of me. A lady behind him holds his arm and says in a soothing voice, "Here, take my cell phone and call your doctor so that you can get your medication."

Uhh, lady, we already did that, they said no. Be quiet and wait in line.

The pharmacist called the doctor's office back and told them what this freak was doing, and they said to just give him the damn refill, but to also explain to the man that this is the -ABSOLUTE- last time this will happen unless he gets his levels read.

Yeah, you know that's going to happen.

^ sarcasm.

So Ass comes back about a week ago, again without refills on his warfarin prescription. I wasn't there at the time, and from what I gather, the pharmacist said that she was only going to give him enough tablets to get him through the weekend until they contacted the doctor. She documented on his bottle, on his bag, and in our log book that we forwarded him four tablets. I assume the doctor phoned in the refill, because he came back with the remaining thirty tablets that he had picked up a couple days prior (the prescription was for 34 tablets).

I saw Ass get in line, and I immediately turned around and began to refill a couple of other customers' prescriptions because I really did not want to wait on him. I was praying that the tech would wait on him, but the pharmacist on duty at the time wasn't aware that I was trying to hide from this guy and she asked me to help the tech at the counter because a sizeable line was forming.

I ask loudly if I could help the next person in line, hoping that just once that someone would cut in line and I could wait on them while the tech waited on Ass. No luck.. Why is it that people act like bloody kindergarteners and cut in line and then bitch that "He cut me!" when you just want to clear the line, but when it's a matter of my personal sanity no one is willing to be a dick and cut? He canes his way up to the counter and sets his bag down. I can see written in Sharpie a slash through the quantity and a humongous "Bal: 30" written in place.

"The lady told me she was going to give me four warfarin, but she only gave me two. I came to pick up the rest, but there were only thirty in the bottle. So you can just give me two pills."

"Wait... what? It says right here she gave you four tablets and we owed you thirty..."

"Well she only gave me two, so you just give me two more."

"No, I'm not just going to give you two tablets. She gave you four, then you came and picked up the other thirty, so you have as many as you should."

"She didn't give me four, she only gave me two." He pulled out the old bag, but mysteriously missing is the bottle.

"No, she didn't. It says here FOUR, WE OWE YOU THIRTY" I pull out the log book, "and it says here FOUR."

Beginning to scream, "Just give me two pills! I don't care what it says there! You made a mistake!"

"I'm not just giving you two tablets, and I'm not going to listen to you yelling at me like this. We gave you four." The period was emphasized. "You picked up the other thirty. Thirty plus four equals thirty-four."

"JUST GIVE ME TWO TABLETS! THIS IS WHY I HATE AMERICANS! CAN'T EVEN GIVE ME TWO PILLS! WON'T ADMIT WHEN YOU MADE A MISTAKE!"

"You got your medication. If you have any further problems, you're welcome to speak to the pharmacy manager tomorrow when she's in. I'm done with you."

At this point, I turned away from the counter and walked to the back of the pharmacy. He stood at the counter and screamed for about five minutes about how he hates us, hates Americans, and is going to die because we wouldn't give him two tablets.

True, warfarin is dirt cheap and we probably would have saved this whole screaming match if I had just given him the tablets, but it's the principal of the matter. We've had problems with this bastard before and we firmly told him we weren't putting up with it anymore.

About fifteen minutes passes and the guy comes back to the counter. The pharamcist told me to just continue doing what I'm doing and let the tech deal with him.

Ass: "I want to talk to that guy again."
Tech: "About what? Is it something I can help you with?"
Ass: "Just let me talk to him."
Tech: "Why? I don't want another commotion at my counter."
Ass: "I want to apologize."

Understand, at this point, I suffered a minor heart attack.

Customers NEVER apologize even when you slap them in the face with the fact that it was, in fact, they who made the mistake.

I walked up to the counter and just kind of stared at him. He pulled out the old bottle with the four tablets in, which HE HAD THE ENTIRE FREAKING TIME, and told me he had made a mistake, that we had in fact given him four tablets before, and that he was sorry for any harm he may have caused me.


Yes, he really said he hates Americans. Where's Homeland Security and the Bush administration when it actually matters?

The PoS Interaction

No, that's not piece of shit interaction, although I continue to giggle quietly to myself when someone refers to it by this term. It's the "Point of Sale" interaction, and it is by far the most trying part of my job.

The pos interaction involves four questions:

1. What's your name?
2. How many prescriptions are you picking up?
3. What's your birthdate?
4. Do you have any questions for the pharmacist?

How four simple questions turn into a grueling experience in which the facts must be driven out from the customers using every method short of Chinese water torture is beyond me.

For example, I had this pos interaction the other day:

"What's your name?"

"John Doe."

I search in the drawer for five minutes, pull up his profile in the computer, and see nothing filled.

"I don't see anything filled for you. What were you picking up?"

"Oh, I'm not picking up for me. I'm picking up for my grandma."

I roll my eyes. "Well, what's her name?"

"MaryLouise Doe."

I find it immediately. "Ok, what's the birthdate?"

"Whose? Hers?"

I take this moment to stab myself in the eye with my red checking pen so I can go home early.

I totally don't understand how someone can be THAT stupid. And I'm being polite when I say THAT stupid.

Another example. Now, I have a professional voice that's deep and clear. I speak well, and I don't really use slang. I face people when I speak to them, and usually look them in the eyes. I've been told many times I should either be on radio or do voice-overs.

"What's the birthdate?"

"John."

Pause to verify that the birthdate is, in fact, not John.

"No, the BIRTH DATE."

"JOHN."

"WHAT DAY WERE YOU BORN??"

"Ohhh... June 6, 1944."

The worst was early on in my internship. Young lady comes up to the counter asking for her prescription. Again, I began the futile search for her bag in the drawer and checked her profile. Of course, nothing was there so I asked what medication she should have had filled.

This lady looks me straight in the eyes and crosses her arms. She cocks her head as she boldly states as if I was the stupidest MF'r around:

"Pills."

I honestly had to walk away from the counter I was laughing so hard.

And then, no matter how many times or different ways you attempt to verify how many prescriptions a person is picking up (because honestly, we fill prescriptions at different times and the bags get separated), we're always, ALWAYS wrong.

A person says they're picking up two prescriptions, they call back 15 minutes later screaming that we forgot their third and they want a refund because they have to make the trip back down to the store. (I'm sorry sir, I missed the day they were teaching mind reading, so I didn't know that when you said TWO your mind was thinking THREE)

A person picks up two prescriptions, moments later the person's wife is calling screaming at us that she only wanted one of her prescriptions. (Well why the HELL did you not tell your husband this?)

I swear, it scares me to the core of my being how thick people can be. How the hell do these people even function?