Sometimes It Can Take You An Entire Weekend To Recover From A Black Friday Retailing Experience. Sometimes You're Just Lazy And Don't Post.

Let's not kid ourselves. It's not called, as the mainstream media will tell you, "Black Friday" because that's the day retailers finally break into profitability for the year. It's called Black Friday because of the foaming at the mouth barbarians who'll gather in a store's parking lot at 3 in the morning whipped into a frenzy for a chance to participate in that ultimate of sacraments in American culture, buying stuff. It's kinda like this country's running of the bulls. Even down to the occasional casualty.

That's not to say retailers don't make money on this day however, and my employer wanted in on the action. They decided to swing the doors to the store open at 7AM so they could catch a few of the blizzard of dollars that were sure to be flying around that day. Thankfully, prescriptions as a rule are not included in the Black Friday madness, so I was spared the crack of dawn opening experience. Store sources reported it went like this:

Store manager shows up.

Homeless dude sees store manager. "Bob! what are you doing here??"

Bob: "Opening up...we're starting things a little early today"

Homeless Dude: "Sweet!!!!!"

Homeless dude then proceeds to buy a 40 ounce Miller Genuine Draft. This was the grand total of the store's first hour of sales. If you were saying to yourself as you were reading that opening paragraph, "Um...I'm not sure how the Brut cologne you buy at the drugstore for the person in Accounts Receivable you barely know but whose name you drew in the office Secret Santa pool fits into the whole Black Friday paradigm," you have a bit more sense than the executives who run the corpro-pharmacy that employs me. Although we did have one very satisfied customer that morning. I dunno. Maybe those executives are crazy like a fox.

My day, however, started with immigration issues. It seems the manager used some of his early morning free time to catch up on paperwork, and something was evidently amiss with my I-9 form, which is used to document an employee's eligibility to work in this country. I have been with my employer for over 3½ years now, but this day I was apparently facing possible deportation. I almost jumped for joy at my good fortune. I wondered if they might send me to Canada, my favorite country in the world, whose Conservative Party includes a major section on environmental protection in its election platform.

No such luck. They just needed a copy of my passport. Which I will someday use to immigrate to Canada.

Within the first 15 minutes I fielded a phone call from someone desperate to get a hold of some Rogaine. I almost forgot they still sold that stuff. From the tone of of his voice, I suspect he may have been the guy who told me over 4 years ago about an alternate Rogaine use, which involves rubbing it on your willie as a Viagra alternative. I have no idea if it works, but please do not start rubbing Rogaine on your penis. Just don't.

The first customer of the day said he didn't have a lot of time to wait for his prescription, so he just wanted 4 tablets. Obviously, he was hip to the real reason your prescription takes so long to fill. The fact we painstakingly hand-inspect every tablet before it goes into your vial. Despite the customers request we cut corners, I refused to compromise my commitment to quality. Out of the 180 tablets in his prescription, two were rejected for an imprint slightly off-center, and one more for a color variation not in keeping with the other tablets. I'm sure an hour later when the jackass picked up his prescription, he appreciated its flawless nature.

"Coffee......coffee.......coffee....." chanted another customer on the way to the bathroom. I wasn't sure if he was interested in making a purchase or a deposit.

Doctor: "ARE YOU THE PHARMACIST???!!!"

Me: "Yes"

Doctor: "I WANT TO KNOW WHY YOU CHANGED THE LABEL DIRECTIONS ON MY PATIENTS PRESCRIPTION!!!!!"

Me: "You mean the warning not to take more than 6 tablets in 24 hours? The maximum dose of acetaminophen is 4 grams a day. You knew that, right?"

Doctor: Silence.

Me: "There's 650 milligrams of acetaminophen in a Darvocet tablet. Your instructions were 1 to 2 tablets every 3 to 4 hours. Why don't you do the math? Were you calling to thank me? Because I bet your patients liver and your malpractice insurance company sure do."

The doctor hung up on me. I'm not kidding. I suppose I could have been less of a dick about it. But so could he.

A customer walked by chanting "Safeway.com......safeway.com." I do not work at Safeway. The customer was wearing a sweatshirt that said "Canada," prompting me to re-evaluate my immigration plans.

By the way, why does every single prescription drug stock bottle have a "Usual Adult Dose" section on the label, and then say "see full prescribing information?" Why do they even pretend like they're gonna tell you? Pondering the point of this took up most of the rest of the day's free time. The ink, the time of the graphic designer who has to work this into the label. WHEN WE ALL KNOW THEY'RE NOT GOING TO TELL YOU UNLESS YOU READ THE PACKAGE INSERT! I didn't even ask what was going on when I looked over and saw my tech giving what looked like CPR to the credit card signature device. Not mouth to mouth, more like the chest pounding stuff. I couldn't be bothered. I want to know why they pretend like they're gonna tell us the usual adult dose and then never do.

Only the last question of the day snapped me out of it. "Drugmonkey, am I allowed to take my lab coat home and wash it?" asked the new clerk. The new clerk has been working here for about 6 months now. I thought about fucking with him and saying no, but I figured the coat might start to smell before much longer. Like the early morning homeless dude that I would be willing to bet was getting ready to take advantage of our store's late night seasonal closing time to get another 40 or two.

Fortunately for me, I still had some leftover turkey to add a nice tryptophan buzz to that provided by my usual tumbler of scotch. Unfortunately the tryptophan buzz is not permanent.

Goodnight.