A typical day...

Hello and welcome to our irritable little blog. I'm a first year pharmacy student and an intern at a major chain pharmacy. I've been working as a tech there for far too long. Naturally, I hate it. If it weren't for my (thankfully) exceptional coworkers, I would have left long ago. If I hadn't realized there was a job for me other than baby-sitting technicians for 12 hours a day in a chain pharmacy after graduation, I probably would have never gone to pharmacy school.

Where to begin, to describe the last time I worked? First of all I walked in at 3, already in a raging fit of PMS, to find my station an absolute hurricane of prescriptions waiting to be typed. It took me close to 5 hours to catch up with the insanity.

Oh, our regular pharmacist also called off, so we had a fill-in all evening. He's a pretty awesome guy, one of my favorites to work with. His pastimes include prank phone calls to other pharmacies and dancing like Michael Jackson, so a shift with him is usually pretty interesting.

Other than the sheer volume of scripts I had to type, the first case of insanity didn't come for another hour or so. I'll spare you the details, but she started going apeshit on our pharmacist, and the rest of us, because her doctor sent us an entirely illegible fax that was supposed to go in conjunction with a script we had never filled for her at our pharmacy before. We also had no script for her, but she insisted she had dropped it off yesterday. She flipped out to us, to our manager, and even called our district manager when our pharmacist said that, even if we had a script, he would refuse to fill it until the doctor sent legible blood work results over in conjunction to the script. (Of course, it's Clozapine, but you could have guessed that by how unstable this lady was...and it can't be dispensed unless the pharmacist has blood work to review and verify along with it).

A few hours later she came back, after our pharmacist had been trying for a while to get in contact with the doctor to help this lady. The script was sitting at the other chain up the street, where she had dropped it off the day before.

I hate people.

Next weirdo of the night: This guy is a 70-something year old man WHO WILL NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP. EVER. He had been bitten by his mangy old cat and naturally it got infected and swelled to gargantuan proportions. I mean, the guy's cat doesn't even like him! I heard the whole 30 minute long story yesterday. He came back today with a script from his doctor for brand name only Ultracet because that time he got the "genetic" Ultracet, it didn't work. Never mind the fact that we had never even filled Ultracet for him before, he had Ultram. And naturally Ultracet is going to have different effects than Ultram because it has an additional ingredient of Acetaminophen. I argued with him for a while over this before I gave up. Whatever, you old bat, I'll fill it for the brand name, I'm not the one paying for it. He had the nerve to complain when it cost more. No shit, there has been a dirt cheap generic out for years.

After telling his cat story to every person who walked by him, he also started telling our patients how bad "genetic" drugs are, inducing a panic in the pharmacy and an influx of questions of "Is this true? I demand brand name!"

If you listen to some old crackpot standing in line at the pharmacy, and believe him, then you are a moron. Your punishment for being a moron is a higher co-payment and having to wait 24 hours while I order the brand name that we never keep in stock, because no one ever fucking gets it, because yes, the generic is just as effective.

Then this guy calls up later and says he is allergic to any Vicodin ES that has the "M320" printed on it. Sorry, but that's all I stock. Unless you have an allergy to things like red dye, you are not allergic to generic drugs, genetic drugs, or even geriatric drugs, you are just a paranoid dumbass who probably also buys things like clothes based solely on having the brand name because you think the others are grossly inferior. Tell me you have an allergy to Red Dye #40, or a specific binding agent, and I will go out of my way to find a manufacturer that doesn't use it. But you are not allergic to "M320," or any other pills you don't find aesthetically pleasing, so STFU. I'm not ordering another manufacturer of Vicodin ES so I can give you 16 tablets and the rest can sit on my shelf taking up space for years, go somewhere else or suck it up.

Back to "genetic" man. This guy ALWAYS tells every female in the pharmacy that he has the body of an 18 year-old. It is not just enough to tell us this, no, he has to give you a visual every time by lifting up his shirt and showing you his leathery old stomach. His claims are definitely an exaggeration.

Anyway this asshole is standing there lifting his shirt up at me, and I'm trying to ignore him and get back to work, when our pharmacist comes over to save the day.

"Sir!" he says, in a ridiculously pompous tone. "You need to put that away right now! Your behavior is inappropriate! My intern is trying to work and we do not appreciate your nudity in our pharmacy! Your prescription is ready, I must insist that you leave!"

The guy grumbled that the pharmacist was just jealous, but eventually left.

Then the pharmacist proceeded to rant about dirty old men, but I guarantee you that he will be a dirty old man someday. In fact he's already a dirty young man and hits on almost every female he works with. But at least he's 27, and not 72, and so far the most he feels like he has to do to impress women is dance.

--IISgirl, going back to trying to pay attention in a painfully boring physiology class