It's Not A Ghostwriting By Big Pharma Kinda Night. It's Definitely More Of A Highlights From Today's Pill Counting Action Kinda Night

The heat slipped into the pharmacy this day exactly the way mustard gas would choose to. Slowly. Seeping through the vulnerabilities of the building's insulation systems steadily and without mercy. Wearing away our comfort like the drip of Chinese water torture, which I forgot there for a second was renamed Chinese enhanced interrogation method by the Bush administration. Once a year, twice at most, it gets hot enough in my city that you might want air conditioning. Which means once a year, twice at most, we are reminded that my employer's air conditioning does not work. So once a year, twice at most, a member of management calls an air conditioning repair company who shows up and makes loud banging noises on the roof for a few hours. By the time the banging noises are made however, days have usually passed, and it has cooled down naturally, meaning there is no way to test that the banging noises were effective. Around a year later, my employer finds out the previous summer's banging noises accomplished nothing. Today was such a day.

The printer broke too. Which means I had, on average, to print 5 labels for every one that I could use.

The first words out of the mouth of the first caller of the day: "I DON'T KNOW WHHHHAAAAAATS GOING ON HERE!!!!!!!," and I could not have agreed more. I was immediately convinced, before the second sentence ever came out, that the caller, indeed, had no idea what was going on. In any aspect of their life.

He was out of refills and didn't understand what the words "no refills" on the label meant. The fact he looked at the label at all put him in the upper 80th percentile of my customer pool.

We had fans in the pharmacy while the rest of the store's employees did not. Because we are not stupid and they are. I took comfort in this and in the fact that warmer weather meant the chicks were wearing less clothing. I swear I saw areola at one point. I thanked the nipple Gods.

A prescription was presented for fluconazole 125mg, use vaginally at bedtime.

YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE VAGINAL ITCHING!!!!!! It was yelled. At the top of her lungs. And while I had to concede that the customer was correct on that point, I also had to explain that volume would not make her doctor clarify this turd of a prescription any faster, especially when directed at someone who did not write the prescription and who had no prescribing authority. I did much better with the next person to yell something out.

MY BLOOD PRESSURE IS 47 OVER 20!!!!!!! I NEED TO GO TO THE ER!!!!!! I sprang into action. Even though I am not qualified to practice medicine, I went through an objective diagnostic procedure. It went something like this:

I see sir, that you are an idiot.

Using the store's blood pressure machine takes, although a limited amount, some brainpower.

If your blood pressure were, in fact, 47 over 20, you would be dead. Or at the very least unable to yell at me while I am on the phone with a doctor.

Conclusion? You fucked up taking the reading. Savings to the health care system? Probably a thousand bucks or so if the person were on Medicare. Seventeen hundred if he was covered by a for-profit insurance company, who would have then immediately terminated his coverage.

You're welcome America.

Unfortunately it was now time for lunch, and to face my fear.

The lady at the fast-food Chinese restaurant has been giving me things. Last week she didn't charge me for my meal. A few days later she brought me over a newspaper and didn't want it back. Yesterday she threw in a bowl of soup. I don't understand, and quite frankly, am afraid she at some point might expect repayment in non-monetary ways, which wouldn't be so bad if she were attractive. At all. This whole situation has been a source of great amusement to my staff. After areola woman left I asked, "Why can't a woman like THAT ever give me soup?"

"Hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaa"......said my technician. "No soup for you." She is unaware of Seinfeld, and how she made the drugnazi thing come full circle.

She was also right. I chickened out and went to Subway. As the sun relented from providing the days heat, I thought of the annual banging of the air conditioning ducts and of the orange chicken I would never have again.