Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Keep Yelling, That Will Make it Better!

Yesterday at work, 60% of the patients I dealt with within the 4 hours I was there, mentally beat me to a pulp. It was a horrible day in which I had to take a lot of abusive yelling and complaining and still keep on a smile. Experiences of why I do not want to become a retail pharmacists:

Women comes to counter to pick up her medication for a script that she dropped off earlier that day. We do not have the medication in stock so I tell her we have ordered it for tomorrow morning or I can call another store in the area and transfer the script. I immediately begin to get yelled at. The women was furious in front of her child, how could the store not have the medicine, why didn't we call to tell her, how could we be so disrespectful, why should she have to go to another store to pick it up, etc. I had to stand there and take it all and then apologize multiple times while trying to explain that we cannot possibly stock every medication and that I was willing to call another store and that I am sorry I was not there when she dropped off the script and that we have to run the claims through insurance before we even check the shelf for the med, etc. She calmed down but continued to complain about how inconsiderate of a person I am. Then a total 180 change when all of a sudden she needed my help finding a cold medication for her son, with "thank you darling".....Thank you, you know my what!

Another women drives up in the drive thru. She tells me her name and says she has a medication ready from last week. I tell her that we have nothing ready because we got her medication ready, it sat ready for over 7 days and then we put is back on the shelf. Legally we cannot keep ready prescriptions for more than 7 days. She begins to yell at me about how stupid of a rule that is and that she does not want to wait any longer. I ask her what medication she needed ready and then she yells at me some more because she does not want to say the medication name or what it is used for out loud. She yells at me that I am invading her privacy and providing poor service. I continue to get yelled at until I find one of the technicians who has seen this patient before and lets me know what the patient needs. We get the medication ready and get it to the patient. She drives off swearing and angry.

Plus about 5 more stories to match these two that came my way that day.

Come on people, have some patience, respect and humanity. I do not come to your place of work and just yell at you all day. I have learned how hard retail work really is due to the people you have to work with. Thank you to all the retail workers out there that don't get thanked enough!

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