Five minutes after opening my keystone tech comes waltzing in and I just couldn't do it. It was witty maybe the first 25 times I said it, but the horse was just so dead that I would be beating. I sat in silence for maybe 30 seconds. Struggling. "Don't say it." I thought to myself. "Distract yourself with thoughts of scotch and such."
"I know, nice of me to join you." Blurted out my keystone tech as she put on her lab coat. We're getting to know each other too well I fear. I need some new material, and she needs to stop coming in late.
First words out of the first customer of the day: "Three years ago I had all my teeth" My hopes for the day soared. How on earth can any day that starts with those words be a bad one?
I settled into the Friday double-V routine. Viagra and Vicodin. I have Friday regulars for each. One of my Viagra regulars came in this week with his wife. I understood his need for the V. My Supertech rings him up and wifey explodes.
"WHAT??????!!!!!! WE'RE NOT PAYING THAT.....FOR THIS??? THERE IS NO WAY ON EARTH HONEY!!!!"
My Supertech does what she usually does in price-complaint situations. Checks to see what they paid last time. She broke the news to wifey.
"YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!!!!! FOR THIS????????"
I seriously think I saw the dude shrinking as he stood there next to his wife as she screamed that his intimate encounters were not worth $150 a month. I was distracted by the sound of the Red Hot Chili Peppers "Under The Bridge" wafting from the in-store radio system. I chuckled at the thought of a song about shooting heroin being played in the land of the squares where I now work. Later I hoped the shrunken dude didn't think I was chuckling at him. Uptight rich white people unwittingly listening to heroin music is way funnier than a guy who can't get it up.
Then the great bag crisis hit. It had been coming for some time.
My employer has a system that involves putting finished prescriptions and their paperwork in clear plastic bags to be hung up to await the customers arrival. Nothing fancy mind you, just a bag with a snap top closure. We've been running low for awhile and the pharmacy manager placed an order for more foolishly thinking that is how we would get more. It's not that simple with my employer, who has decided the bags are expensive. There are procedures to be followed. District Managers to get involved. "I"s to be dotted and "T"s to be crossed. My employer really doesn't have much money. We'd been going through the hoops for a month and now....there were no bags. I sent Supertech to the pickup wall to see if any customers had prescriptions in more than one bag. I imagined that my store's enforced bag frugality would be the one event that returned our company to profitability this quarter and felt good about my service to the corporation.
Is anyone else bummed out about how there is almost no classical music on the radio anymore? Back in the day you could count on National Public Radio to give you a fix in the afternoon or late at night, but then they discovered that more news = more dollars during pledge drives. So now in addition to the edition that comes out every morning and the consideration we give all things in the late afternoon, we're on point and listening to the world and importing news from the BBC and breathing fresh air, which used to be a show about the arts, and whoever decided to let the nails screeching on a chalkboard that is Diane Rhem's voice to ever be broadcast on the radio should be waterboarded.
Where was I going with this? Oh...the classical music. I found a great way around this problem. Anytime you wanna hear some classical music just call your local CVS. You'll be treated to a good 20 minutes or so before a clerk picks up and puts you back on hold to talk to the pharmacist.
And by 20 minutes I mean half an hour.
Ten minutes into this I took a prescription from a doctor's office bimbo. Tussionex suspension, two teaspoonfuls twice a day. Exactly twice the maximum recommended daily dose of two teaspoons in 24 hours. I asked if the kindly bimbo might double check the directions with the doctor. Because I am a goddamn Superpharmacist and you don't get this shit past me.
The least of your problems if you take twice the recommended dose of a narcotic cough syrup like Tussionex would be some opioid-induced constipation. As I was waiting for the return of the Bimbo a customer coincidentally asked if there was something he could take to get his pipes flowing again while he took his Vicodin. Remember it was double-V Friday.
"Why don't you use some Senokot. You can find it down aisle 5"
"Well what do you recommend?"
Bimbo called back. "The doctor said to change the Tussionex to one to two teaspoons every four to six hours"
"So...four teaspoons a day was twice the maximum dose...and you solve the problem by prescribing up to twelve teaspoonfuls a day?"
"I'll just phone it in somewhere else!!" And my license jumped for joy. Pharmacy students take heed. Your head is being filled with clinical situations, pharmacokinetic equations and such, but the times you will actually be making a difference in the real world of retail will more often than not just involve grade school arithmetic and letting people know you just made a recommendation.
I ran out of bags two more times before my store manager brought up a case from the back. The sticker on the box showed they had been sitting back there for 2 years. My store manager is the most competent person I have ever seen in my organization. He is new and I suspect if he doesn't cut it out he will be fired.
I also wonder if I'll have all my teeth in three years. I'm going to go floss now.
22 comments:
Gotta keep my DrugMonkey alive and cognitively intact. There is one Public Radio station that doggedly maintains it's classical music programming. WKAR FM90.5 out of East Lansing in the wolverine state (can't believe I'm helping an Ohio native...). It is available online if your buttfuq employer has a network that allows streaming media.
hahahaha, brilliant!!! These are the best. You should seriously make a book out of them once you get enough. This is gold
My worst nightmare is coming true. There's someone out here in pharmacy land that makes the same irrational observations I do, and I am absolutely positive there is nothing similar in our upbringing, lifestyle, pharmacy school graduation, nor subsequent lives. I don't even consider myself sane most of the time. I have got to get out of this blog before too much more is revealed.
Yes, first words out of the first customer always seem to set the tone for the day..call it fate, full moon, whatever..it never fails to disappoint. My best one was when I arrived a few minutes early, saw a man sitting in a chair, obviously waiting for the pharmacy to open. He greeted me with a perky "Good Morning", and then sat still and watched me open the pharmacy.
I put in my security code, opened two doors, opened the register, and began to log into 4 computers. Put lunch in the refrig, checked messages..hey, you all know the routine. All this was carefully watched by Mr. Perky First Customer of the Day.
Opened the gates, turned on the lights, and then asked Mr. Perky if I could help him. First words out of the mouth of first customer of the day were "Hey, did my Oxycontin come in today? They said it would be here in the morning". Oh yeah, and he did not have too many teeth either.
ATTENTION PHARMACY STUDENTS:
It is not too late to bail out. You can have a more exciting and rewarding life hauling trash.
Lately, I have had this idea that people, with the education of a pharmacist, could do most anything in life. So, why settle for chain pharmacy? Recently I worked for a guy that had been working in pharmacy for about 6 years. He said, " I am going back to college and majoring in engineering, where I can get a 'real job'".
I'm glad you found those bags because I was going to get your store number and send you some of ours!! Somehow we have WAY too many, because our district manager though ours looked "old"
Do a PGY residency - Poof, 8-4:30 Mon-Fri, not too many idiotic pt's (at least not in the form
of "customers") - no one asks me what aisle the "sanitary tissue" is on in the HTN or Coumadin clinic.
Most importantly, none of that corporate bologna to fuss with. Nice, long lunches - 12 staff pharmacists and 33 Technicians, with 7 ClinPharms for clinical / ambulatory care is suchhhhh a better work environment than retail.
Your blog keeps me motivated for my much lower pay in clinical work (residency only pays about $60k per annum)... worth every lost penny.
I am currently a first year student. What % of retail pharmacists do you guys think really hate their job that much? I hope MTM will soon be reimbursed by Medicare so pharmacists in the retail setting might be given the time by their corporate bosses to make more of each patient interaction.
I don't plan on doing retail full-time (want to work one day a week), so I am currently pursuing a dual degree in PharmD/Regulatory Science (M.S.) to improve my odds of landing a job in the industry.
With respect to Keith, I strongly suggest not going into engineering, since even people with BSMEs are out of work, as a growing number of companies are mandating MS degrees for work that a designer or drafter can do. I'm an unemployed designer, who has thought about going for his 4 year degree, and came to the conclusion that it isn't worth it.
To Pharmacy School Statistics:
I think that there is a VERY LARGE % of retail pharmacists who hate their jobs. Here's why. You spend 6 years of your life dedicated to intensive study. You will probably owe around $100,000 in school loans when you graduate and you are burdened with ALL the responsibilities of running a business, without any real autonomy, only to become what is the equivalent of a highly paid, highly educated cashier. Your boss doesn't care what you know. The customers sure as hell don't care that you spent 6 months learning pharmaceutics. You are an EMPLOYEE. A faceless peon whose job it is to sell as many "scriptions" as possible with a big smile on your face while some asshole welfare recipient screams that they "ain't got no dollar" to pay for a $500 rx. Furthermore, please remove everything your professors have taught you about MTM from your brain right now. That is a pipe dream concocted by some turd in a suit sitting behind a desk who has NEVER stepped foot into a retail pharmacy. Maybe in some utopian alternative universe pharmacists are "healthcare professionals". In this one, we are simply over-worked employees in the prescription mill.
Pharmacy School Statistics - anon beat me to it, but I will reiterate it. MTM is nothing like you are being led to believe. Also, in any corporate pharmacy chain, the MTM reimbursement goes to the company, not the pharmacist. My district supervisor just laid down the law at a meeting, telling us every pharmacist MUST start doing MTM. No excuses. He told us, "you will always be busy, so forget the excuse that you are too busy."
All that said, I do in fact love my job as a retail pharmacist. I have plenty to complain about, but I am still here by choice.
one of my first rxs yesterday (typed and faxed)
loniten 2.5mg 1 q 6 prn diarrhea
Obvious first question: if you have been reading this blog and have to ASK this question, what part of our anger do you not understand? My first suggestion to you and ANY person contemplating pharmacy school is to actually work in a retail store. You will see that 80% of all pharmacists do nothing but complain about everything you read on this blog, and the other 20% consist of new, inexperienced, unrealistic graduates, who just think they are in a "bad" store, oldsters just counting the days to retirement so they can be done with all the crap and are tired of complaining over the years, or just plain lazy pharmacists who do as little as possible and work to only get the paycheck to pay off that 100K loan for school. Customers are not stupid, they see our frustration, and even comment things like, "Gee, why did you go to school to do THIS?"
Making time for patient interaction with the idea that reimbursements will occur is a joke. Even if Medicare does that, what about all the other patients? We spend a lot of time with our seniors as it is, and the younger folks waiting in line behind them just shake their heads, pace and give us dirty looks each time we tell them to be SURE and take the potassium, but ONLY if you take the furosemide, four times over.
You say you don't plan on doing retail full time, and only work one day a week. HUH? Wake up, kiddo, part timers are being phased out for the more cost effective faction known as "floater pools". I have been doing this over 40 years and the former part timer niche is all but gone in retail. Oh, you might find a little independent (where, I have no idea) who needs you once in while, or a small struggling local chain, but don't bank on it for your long term plan.
The truth of it is that you, too, will be tempted by that 6 figure carrot dangling out there upon graduation, and the gi-normous sign-on bonus, and think, " I can do this for a while and then practice REAL pharmacy 'within the industry' after I pay everything off"..Sorry, this IS real pharmacy.
I used to work for your employer - I hated the library bag system. Even though I have thumbs, they are no Monkey hands. I could not work all of the snaps at the same time; quite frustrating. Good to see that ordering expense items hasn't changed in 2 years. You see, we were unable to obtain prescription vials. And Caps. And syrup bottles. Pretty much anything to repackage drugs and sell to customers were off limits. Have you ever dispensed 4 amoxicillin in a 60 dram vial (without a childproof cap - the rx was for a child). Good times. "Just do the best you can" was the DM's motto (district manager, not Drugmonkey). Sir, just hold out your hand or get a mason jar from the seasonal aisle and we'll have that right up for you.....
Not much else to say here is there? Thank you, I guess. Drug Monkey is my new favorite (after JP at large of course). I hate the pharmacy journal editorials which have been spouting about "the future of pharmacy" for so many years. MTM is a pure joke, similar to the PBM dream of many years ago (we all know where the money went with that one). My experience at an independent a few years ago was to try to sign up my eligible customers, only to find out that their (the customer) insurer's were doing MTM "in house" using call center pharmacists. Soon we will lose customers to vending machines. I predict that is less than a decade away. Hotel management might be good...
I love my job at walgrees as a pharmacist. All my techs rock and I have fun there. No job is perfect, but you just have to make the most of it. All my friends who are salaried at other jobs for like 50-60k end up working like 55 hours a week and bringing work home. I just go in and put in my 40 hours and get my 120k and if I want to make time and a half I can pick up extra shifts. Where else can you make this much money, and just have to put up with the occasional crazy asshole or stupid questions? We just laugh at these people and make fun of them and it makes the job more entertaining
Consider yourself VERY lucky Tyler. In many parts of the country (including where I live and work) the pharmacist shortage is over. In fact, we are now over-staffed in my district and I have had to use vacation time just to reach my base. Unless of course I would like to work every weekend and night shift. While the job is easy enough and leaving work at work is desireable, I can't help but think that pharmacy is a dead-end career. The corps. will keep tightening the noose, demanding more and more with less and less help. Re-imbursements are sure to decrease further if/when Obamacare passes because, well, pharmacy always takes the hit. Live it up while you can kids, I'm not very optimistic about our future.
I have had my share of industry, and it is no joke either. Deadlines, travel 300+ miles for a meeting and leaving on the same day, etc. If you are not part of the sales force, you are most likely going to get cut. Some of the jobs available have no room for growth, and they will stretch you as much as retail pharmacy (more work for less).
I'm just saying don't put your eggs into one basket (we all thought the same thing about pharmacy once).
Live it up in your Coumadin clinic, maybe you can get it through to the 5 day post-partum 17 year old DVT patient on Lovenox why a tattoo is not advisable...
Anon 7:56 let's at least be grateful she didn't want to tattoo the baby....or did she???
thank the lord I am not insane all these years I thought it was me !
free at last free at last! No more microwave pills !
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