that damn call button

The window is huge. I can see you, you can see me. Why do you feel the need to push that god forsaken button. I have stopped even picking up the phone to say "I'll be there in a minute" I just pick it up and release the connection. Just because you have pulled up does not mean that I will immediately stop serving the other person because you are now unfortunately in my line of vision.

If you know that you have a shit load of medication then you know that I can not fit it through the tube. No I will not send them one by one and no you can not get out of your car and walk over to the first lane. If your kid is asleep in the car then get in the frst lane and wait or come inside those are your choices. The end.

If you left your Percocet prescription in New jersey that is just too damn bad. No we can't transfer it. The doctor can't call it in, he can however call in Vicodin. Oh you only want the stuff with the oxy then I suggest you go back to Jersey to get your prescription.

Oh and by the way yelling at my pharmacy manager that you hope she dies in pain is not a good way to ensure customer service b/c I am almost sure when/if your doctor does call in a prescription for you it won't be ready until tomorrow afternoon.

Your name is scratched out. We can not take it. I don't give a damn if you did it because the doctor misspelled your name. We can't take it. I don't know what the original name was so I don't know that this is yours.

You, who forged that Percocet prescription, it was good, the signature was almost a spot on match, however try not to let the little things get you. Like the fact that you wrote "tak 1 tab q h daily". So... every hour daily... nope not suspicious at all. Especially not for a quantity of 120.

I hate mondays.

For the 10th time I don't speak Spanish or Creole

I had a patient come in today, who did not speak any English whatsoever. Every other time she had been in the pharmacy she always brought her son or husband. (Both speak English better than me) She comes to pick up prescriptions she dropped off yesterday. I look her up in the computer, her insurance isn't covering either prescription and one is OTC. I try my best to explain this to her. The pharmacist on duty told me where to find the medication for the woman, and after telling me she starts laughing hysterically. When I get to aisle 3 I realize three things. Thing # 1: I have come into the feminine hygiene products section
Thing # 2: There is a very strange smell emanating from the woman
Thing # 3: I owe my pharmacist big time for this.

So the right drug is found, I bring it back to the register, and the woman bust out a crisp 10 dollar bill, already I am planning my supreme retribution on my pharmacist when the lady starts yelling at me in broken English to give her 9 dollars. I explain to her that when I said 9 dollars and ninety-nine cents, that did not mean it was $0.99. So I call the manager for a refund, hand her back the prescriptions and explain as best I can that she needs to take these back to the doc to change them something that is covered, the manager finally gets there and I'm thinking to myself something else is going to go wrong I can feel it. So then it happens: this lady won't budge, and she is absolutely positive that I am somehow stealing her medication, so I explain and explain and explain some more. She finally leaves and I turn around to 4 women laughing so hard one of them almost fell on the floor.
... About two hours later the woman comes back and THANK GOD she is with her husband. Before I can even say anything the husband starts apologizing, explaining his wife walked to the pharmacy without him, and translates for me as I re-explain what I said earlier. He actually asked me, "Was that all."
What did I learn from this: The staff pharmacist is a jerk, I need to learn to say basic things in Creole and Spanish, I suck at the whole empathy thing

doctor's call? yeah ok.

I'm sitting at in-window, yes I was sitting, there was a chair, no one was using it so I did. Anyway I'm sitting there typing away at the 34 images that managed to build up between my scanning, drive-thru and our neighbor stores routing shit to us. I wish my manager would let our stock run out so we could route crap to their store for once. But anyway the phone rings, I look around and oh yay I'm the only reasonable choice. ::sigh:: ok,
My comments are in bold, my thoughts are italicized.

"Hello, soul-sucking corporate pharmacy, how may I help you?"
'Um yeah I need to spell Megesterolol Ace-tat (megestrol acetate)." ...oh how tempting it was to say its spelled exactly how it sounds, but i digress.
m-e-g.. etc.,
"How much is it?"
What strength?
"What do you have?"
Are you serious?
"I need the liquid one."
Ok, 40 mg suspension, $149.99
"Ok the pill."
....do you have a prescription?
"I need a prescription for this? But I don't have a doctor right now." Then how in the blue hell did you come up with megestrol acetate?!
I'm sorry but you need a prescription for us to sell it to you.
"Fine!" Slams phone.

Okay back to my... 38 images? What the hell?!
Phone rings again.
Insert greeting here.

"Um.. yeah I need to call in a prescription for um me-ges-ter-ro-lol acetate"
you have got to be shittin' me
sure whats the quantity and the sig?
"um, one bottle of the liquid, and um just um tell 'em to do whatever the bottle says."
right... and ths is doctor...,
"Jackson"
and the DEA# is..."
"insert random numbers"
okay since this is clearly not a doctors office I'm going to hang up now.
"yes this is and I want..."

I hung up so I didn't catch the rest, but i was mentally hugging my high school diploma.

today was monday

Why are Mondays always so horrible? The store is 24 hours. We never close but Mondays are always terrible.

If you have express pay on your profile then use it. I can not "override" it. If I could then I could potentially have lots of fun on your credit card. But if you really want to use that gift card then fine, I will take the express pay off your profile, reprint the damn labels and have the pharmacist do the consultation that the register is more than absolutely going to make me do. Fine 15 minutes of my life gone, in drive-thru no less.

$130 worth of medication... the gift card had $13.90 on it. You son of a bitch. Then you have the nerve to tell me that you want to use your express pay for the rest. No, I had to take it off your profile, so yes you will have to reach your obese hand into your purse and hand it to me you evil, annoyingly cheap bastard. I might be more forgiving for the gift card incident if you weren't driving a Lexus SUV.

Oh yes, can't forget this, why in God's name would you think being deaf and going through the drive-thru would be a good idea? Oh and then you misspell your name, your own goddamn name...

Oh and on a final note please I am not a pharmacist. So don't walk up to me, pull down your pants and say, "what will get rid of this spider bite?" ...Prayer. That was the nastiest looking thing I'd ever seen, and it looked severely aggravated, why was it aggravated you ask, oh because he tried to suck out the poison with a vacuum cleaner. Times like this I am so glad I am an intern and not the pharmacist because I get to say this sentence, "Pharmacist, you have a consultation." Take that for all those insurance calls you hand me.

Hello

Hello, I will also be contributing to this blog. I am also an intern at a large retail chain. My store is apparently somewhat high volume, but you really couldn't tell this summer. This is my 2nd summer working for them, and my 1st summer working as an intern. My pharmacist is really good about doing hands-on training and I do feel like I am learning a lot. That being said, let me also say that i'm also lazy and very impatient not a good combination in retail. I must warn that i'm not really an old man, but I might as well be... zero humor, but my girlfriend is an excellent writer and I'll be contributing from time to time.

Soap is on Aisle 2

So I have 30 minutes to go before I am off for the day, and I'm at the register and here comes what I'll refer to as a walking infection. As soon as they get within five feet of the counter I get hit with a scent that I will call eau de god awful. Now I have set the pleasant welcoming expression on my face so I will not make any offensive expressions. So they come up, I get there name and check on their prescription and thank you god its ready, unfortunately I was right in my initial assessment of them, it is an amox-clav suspension so I will have to mix it. Which means that i will be downwind of them a little bit longer.

So I mix the suspension as quickly as I can, making sure to beat the powder loose before I put any water in it to avoid any troublesome clumping. As I'm mixing the tech in drive-thru is freed up so she takes the next customer in line and the walking infection asks, "do you guys sell liquor?"

Well a new tech is at the filling counter and just loud enough for us to hear she says, "nope but the soap is on aisle 2."
...all i can think in that moment is please do not have let them have heard her. Apparently prayer works. or maybe there was enough dirt to block the sound waves because the person takes their prescription and walks out of the store.

Unfortunately the smell lingers until we attack it with some neutralizer. ::sigh:: at least they didn't have any questions.

The beginning

Recently me, my boyfriend, and the rest of my study group all became interns at different retail pharmacies. And I learned why when I said I might be interested in retail for my career I got that pitying, "poor stupid intern" look. So after reading a few blogs I decided that I might as well throw my experiences in as well, along with that of my friends as well whenever they feel like contributing.