Dear Every Pharmacy Student Sweating Out Exams Right Now. Working At Save Mart After You Graduate Will Make You Feel Really Good About Your Education.

Especially the physics classes you took. Because if you work at a Save Mart pharmacy after you graduate, evidently you will be expected to bend the laws of time and space. Or just not pay much attention to the prescriptions in front of you, one of the two:

Modesto, Calif., September 17, 2008 – Pharmacies at Save Mart stores now offer customers speed as well as accuracy. Effective today, their “19-Minute Promise” guarantees that they will fill up to three new prescriptions presented at their counters in 19 minutes or less. If the pharmacies fail to meet the mark, the customer receives dinner and a movie – a $10 Save Mart gift card and a coupon for a one-night redbox movie rental.

“Every pharmacy needs to fill every prescription accurately. Our pharmacies already provide excellent customer service, and now our 19-Minute Promise will ensure that we also deliver prescriptions quickly,” said Michele Snider, Senior Director of Pharmacy at Save Mart Supermarkets.

At a press conference that didn't actually happen, Ms. Snider was asked if the 19-minute guarantee was made possible by the addition of new technology, an increase in average store staff hours, or some combination of both. Her answer was a bout of hysterical laughter. 

"Why neither," she didn't say after 30 seconds. "The key to our new program was the realization that our pharmacies were actually filling customer prescriptions too accurately. Our legal department ran some numbers last month and decided we could afford an average of three malpractice suits per store per year. We have several stores that have not had a malpractice payout in over a decade, which coupled with a little 'outside the box' thinking really gives us an outstanding opportunity to distinguish ourselves from the competition." 

"If John McCain's malpractice reform proposal is ever enacted into law, we plan to change our guarantee time to ten minutes!" Snider never said. 

"There is another important plank that made this exciting new program possible" Snider added in my imagination, "and that's respect. Some of you may remember when Domino's Pizza ended its 30-minute pizza delivery guarantee due to concern over accidents. Well at Save Mart, we don't respect our pharmacists nearly that much. They're just a bunch of pill counting monkeys after all. If it weren't for the Board of Pharmacy and their outdated thoughts regarding licensure, we would happily replace each and every one of them with illegal Mexicans tomorrow."

"We also don't respect our customers very much. That's why we're doing something that will increase the chance they'll get the wrong medicine. Or something that will interact with another medicine we never really checked to make sure was the right thing." Snider never said but I wouldn't be surprised to find out she thinks. 

Now get back to your books pharmacy students, and work hard for the prestige a 19-minute prescription filling guarantee will give you. 

Or maybe you could just look into that Domino's job. 

Thanks to the alert readers who tipped me to the story.