Tuesday, May 25, 2010

I Live An Episode Of "The Office"

So I met both the district managers today. For those of you not in the pharmacy biz I'll tell you management chores in a corpro-pharmacy are usually split into two tracks. A pharmacist DM who is theoretically there to deal with things professional and another DM who is there to deal with everything else. The regular DM usually has some sort of business degree, which means the following story shouldn't surprise you much.

The pharmacy DM comes in and does her thing. Looks through paperwork, does crap on the computer, takes calls from other stores having some sort of crisis, and generally gets in the way of those of us filling prescriptions. They always ask before they leave if there's anything they can do for you, but they never mean it. I decided to test this one.

"Yes" I said. "You can give me a supervisor number." I always thought it odd I'm trusted to be alone in a room full of drugs but not to OK a $20 void sale.

I'd been asking for a supervisor number for four years, through three store managers, three district managers, and more pharmacy DM's than I can name. Five minutes later I had one. The fact I was actually able to convince someone in power to make a small, common sense change that would have a big impact on how easy it is to run the pharmacy gave me kind of an endorphin rush. These moments don't happen often. The last time I remember a Pharmacy District Manager doing something helpful was three years and three DM's ago when one of them scored us another refrigerator. I basked in the feeling of the runner's high.

Then the business major came in.

He's still fairly new from his last gig at a retailer that went bankrupt and eager to show he's in charge and ready to bring some of the magic from his last employer to his current one. He whips out some charts or something that purport to show our prescription counts are down and wants some "input from the team as to what might be causing this"

Unfortunately I'm acutely aware I'm the team member who's gotta do the talking. My keystone tech doesn't get paid nearly enough to deal with this crap.

"Well the first thing that comes to mind is the phones" I say. I've written more than once here about my store's phone problems. There have been 4-day stretches where people were unable to call the store because the technician didn't work weekends. The best phone function we had for awhile was to periodically go to the back room and reboot the system throughout the work day. Angry customers were telling me they literally spent weeks trying to get through to us.

"That's interesting" says the business major. "Because I do mystery calls to stores to ask how long it would take to have a prescription filled and they tell me not many prescriptions are phoned in"

I swear he said that.

I'm going to set aside the fact that calling a pharmacy to ask how long it will take to fill a prescription is the stupidest goddamn question I can be asked. I can tell you how long it will take if you're here now. I cannot tell you how busy I might be when you decide to come and drop off a prescription at some unknown point in the future.

I'm also going to set aside the utter implausibility that someone would tell this man not many prescriptions are phoned in. Maybe someone did. As some type of joke.

My point here is that I started out this day trying to find a way to diplomatically explain, in a way that wouldn't get me fired, that not having reliable phone service probably has a net negative impact on our business.

I found a way. Because my other choice would have been to suggest the elimination of phones altogether as a cost saving measure that would have minimal impact on sales. That probably would have gotten me promoted, and I don't feel like being on the road all day long.

12 comments:

Từ Thanh Giác said...

This is definitely a pharmacy Dilbert.

Anonymous said...

Betcha didn't remember that Irona was Richie Rich's housekeeper.

You crack me up, DM.

Anonymous said...

DM: are you in the Tampa, FL area? because I had an amost identical experience today... same Know-Nothing District Manager, same Do-Nothing District Pharm. Supervisor we don't have the phone problems, but they did want to know why our "something something initiative" numbers weren't up to par: (um itssummer and 75% of our customers just flew back to Canada) grrr...

DrLucyVanPelt said...

At least your DM has some sort of business degree, my last 2 or 3 were just HS graduates that were very good at politics and kissing ass... but I guess I am redundant.

Anonymous said...

Is that really how he gauges the performance of his stores? Mystery calls?? I bet he types the results into a spreadsheet. Douche bag. Did he offer his theory as to why script volume is down?

pillroller said...

you should have said
Is that all you have lord vader, a mystery phone call to back you up! Your the evil empire for gods sake
you have stats for every heart beat, eye blink down to the nano second! I am really disapointed

Amelia Ramstead said...

Heh, sounds more like "Office Space" to me. Did you get the memo about the TPS reports???

Tonina said...

Wow. Soooo...did he ever address the fact that, you know, customers might want to call the store for something other than a refill? Like for a question? Did he ever acknowledge that medical professionals and insurance personnel might need to contact your store and would have neither the time nor the patience to play the "Are the phones up today?" game? Oh wait, this is a business major type...er, did he respond to the significant drop in script volume and general revenue the store has probably suffered as a result of your lousy phone system? I definitely would switch pharmacies if I couldn't get through to mine when I needed to (granted I have to call a bit more often than the usual person, but the point remains), and I've been with mine for the past 8 years!

Those are just a few of the issues I can think of off the top of my head. They're probably the very tip of the iceberg, because I'm not a pharmacist. On the other hand, I'm not a business major either....

Keith said...

What is it about management that makes them so stupid? Ever so often corporate comes along with some stupid idea to waste pharmacist's and technician's time. We have something called Southern Hospitality. We have a Team Champion...the unlucky tech that got picked for the job. She takes conference calls from a DM that is about as happy with this whole idea as we are. I am calling it plain discrimation and I want to launch a lawsuit. Why? I want to do Northern Hospitality...or Western Hospitality...or SouthWestern Hospitality. Why am I being "picked on" to do Southern Hospitality? Just because I live in the South is no reason to FORCE me to do Southern Hospitality. Why can't I polish a nortern accent and say, "Yes, broad, we have them creams". I don't want to say, "Yes'um, we be pleased to find tha crams for ya". :):)

Anonymous said...

Thats briliant. Since no one calls Rxs into the pharmacy, there is no real need to have phones. I wonder if I could convince my DM to pull the plug. We do 300+ a day and there is hardly a moment when someone isnt on one of our lines. I think that would make life just a bit more bearable

Anonymous said...

Hmmm - I think there may be a plot afoot. If the customer can't CALL in- perhaps they will COME in - and if they are not disposed to perusing the aisles for all the wonderful retail items available, they can entertain themselves by standing in front of the Pharmacy Counter staring at the criminals that required them to COME IN and WAIIITTTTT!!!!! for their Omeprazole/vitamin/ass-plug/ect.

My favorite latest directive from WAY-UP is that we can only order 3 boxes of glucose strips daily from our wholesaler. We must order them from the wharehouse for the "truck" order, However, ordering more than 3 of one item requires a fax to the district office to explain WHY we need more than three boxes of One Touch strips in the 100 count. Ummm..... because we have several customers using 200 per month?

So naturally - we skip that onerous step and order THREE higher priced boxes daily from the wholesaler.We fill our scripts, customer happy. Management angry.But then again "We Take It Personal"! Ha

Anonymous said...

Really you guyz..If you want to stay in retail you have to let it all go..If the "experts" want to do something stupid..let them...the path of least resistance should be your goal..take it easy..Agree readily then do what you want..Unless those well cooked numbers are acceptable up the line nothing you do will matter or change anything. You have to accept that retail is at best a supply function......good luck Rex