pharmacy probz

I pick up one of the calls. 

me: Hi blah blah pharmacy how can I help you

possibly insane lady: HI SO I REALLY HAVE A PROBLEM HERE BECAUSE I AM GOING ON VACATION AND I WILL NEED REFILLS RIGHT AWAY BUT I JUST CHECKED AND SOME OF MY PRESCRIPTIONS DON’T *HAVE* REFILLS, AND PLUS EVERYTHING WAS REALLY SUPPOSED TO BE SYNCED UP BY NOW, AND [YOUR OLD BOSS] SAID IF I JUST PUT EVERYTHING ON AUTOMATIC REFILL IT WOULD SEND REFILL REQUESTS FOR EVERYTHING AUTOMATICALLY? BUT I NEVER GOT REFILLS AND I DON’T GET THAT SO I REALLY NEED SOMEONE TO HELP ME WITH THIS BECAUSE I’LL BE LEAVING TOMORROW AND I NEED ALL MY MEDICATIONS

[Yes, literally 60+ seconds in which I could not even find a proper time to cut her off and ask her who the hell she is--information she at no point volunteered to me. But all that time was plenty of time to look around me, to just look at the state of the pharmacy in that moment.]

me: .... okay I can try to help you with that, would you mind if I just put you on hold for a moment

kookoo lady: yes that’s FINE

me: okay

also me: literally puts her on hold and walks away to help drive-thru

man: I’m in here because there’s a big truck blocking your drive-thru!!

me: [???? ... oh!] Oh! Yes, that is our warehouse truck, it unfortunately blocks the drive-thru entrance for some ti--

man: I UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS! I JUST DON’T THINK I SHOULD HAVE TO COME INSIDE BECAUSE OF IT!

This is what it is to be overwhelmed.

I had this woman in the drive-thru today. She was there to pick up a prescription for her infant daughter that we had gotten probably like 10 minutes prior. Yeah, it’s not ready. But whatever. I have to ask for insurance first anyway and it’s for a baby so whatever, I’ll just rush it through.

So I ask, is there insurance? Because we obviously aren’t going to have insurance on file for a 5-month-old. This is the first time your 5-month-old is getting a prescription. 

“You don’t have it?”

No. We don’t have it. For your baby. Every person has a separate profile. How would we have your baby’s fucking insurance?

She passes me a card in the drawer, and I go to the computer. I get momentarily tangled in the wires for the keyboard, the telephone, and the scanner. Fml. It takes another minute for me to get untangled and then get to the patient profile. Then I actually look at the card. Wait, what the fuck. Oh, goddammit. This is not fucking prescription insurance.

I’m already exhausted with this woman and her ‘you don’t have it?’

So I go back and I slide the card back and I say, this isn’t actually the correct insurance, do you have prescription insurance?

“No??? This is our only card?”

I try not to kill myself right then and there.

“Okay, this isn’t prescription insurance though. Does anyone else in the family fill prescriptions at this pharmacy?”

“Yeah. My name is [Idiot McStupid].”

I look up Idiot McStupid. Oh look it’s [ConcernBlemish]. The same insurance that this exact situation always happens with because it requires a separate card for prescription benefits and this is just TOO MUCH!!! for the common-denominator brain to handle.

“Yes, okay, looks like the insurance is [CONCERNBLEMISH], so I can copy that over to [your poor poor child]’s profile.”

Mind you, she’s also rolling her window up after every sentence. Shoot me.

I copy it over. It all goes through so she only has to pay $2 instead of $20. I do everything for her. She’s clueless and clearly thinks I have an attitude when really I contained myself pretty well for how much I hated her guts. We get the prescription done in 60 seconds. I have someone else ring her out because... ugh.

The faster option, for ALL parties involved, is for the patient to call the store where they want something filled and ask for it to be filled there. This is always the easiest, fastest, simplest, most stress-free, mistake-free way to go about transferring your prescription from one location to another. 

I say to the patient the easiest way is just to call the other store and have it transferred back. At this point I think the conversation is going pretty normally. 

Then all of a sudden: “Um, well, I really don’t think that’s very good customer service. I mean, you want me to call them to fill my prescription? That’s not good customer service, but that’s just my piece! Fine then! Bye!”

me, tired of all these douchebags coming for flu shots when JANUARY is HALF OVER, but still smiling: “We do not have any but our clinic next door should still have them”

same douchebag, pointing up: “UM WELL YOU SHOULD TAKE YOUR SIGN DOWN THEN~~”

PSA #1: If you call a pharmacy and tell them you need “everything transferred” from another pharmacy and you’re not willing to give them plenty of time to do that for you (I’m talking minimum of 24 hours), and you’re having to argue with them that you need them right now!! and they’re telling you they’re extremely busy and they need at least 24 hours for that and you’re still arguing over it, please just don’t go to that pharmacy. They already fuckin’ hate your guts because you have poor planning skills and you think your emergency should be their emergency, too. Plus they’re obviously very busy and you’re an impatient twat, so you’re never going to be a happy customer there. Go elsewhere. Thxbye.

PSA #2: Please don’t accuse the pharmacy of doing something illegal because your birth control has a copay. Sometimes birth control has a copay. We don’t fucking set that shit. Call your insurance. Please stop yelling about Obama and Trump in the middle of our pharmacy, thank you.

I know this is a common metric and it’s something I feel like I should know!! But genuinely I have no clue. And even if I did know at one point it wouldn’t matter because our store at no point that I’ve worked there has ever stopped growing and growing and growing and seemingly consuming the entire town. We have a “competitor” chain right across the street and every hour for the past week I have somebody asking us to transfer their scripts from there.