Monthly Archives: October 2006

The Wonderful Public

Types of Patients, part cuatro-o!

12 Comments

Again, my own:

  • The Gang Banger: Comes out in full gang gear. Probably is packing more firepower than the coast guard. Makes you start to reach for the guns and the panic buttons. Then when you consult with him, you realize that he’s a really nice guy and that your store has been taking care of his mother for the past 30 years.

  • The Boob Rester: Always a very large, very ugly woman. Comes mouth-breathing into the pharmacy. Decided years past that bra’s were the devil, so her boobs sag to her waist and gently bump into each other as she waddles to the counter. Upon reaching the counter, she plops her mommy-bags down making a large “kerplop” sound. During the winter months (when you have the heater on) she starts to sweat making two puddles where her hidden midgets lay. Always has to show you whats growing under them. You hope you find a rare indian head penny or maybe some gold dab-loons tucked away under there but alas, only angry red under-boob-skin.

  • The Senile Old Fart: Should of gotten a dose of cyanide instead of a medicare card, this person comes in confused, confused, and wait, more confused. Decides it would be a good idea to put all of his/her medication in a big bowl for easy grabbing, only to forget what goes with what. Always calls in stuff 3.5 weeks early, and is always 5 months late getting things filled.

  • The Bagger: Person comes in with either a dirty plastic or paper bag and just hands it to you. Has about 200 bottles from 20 different pharmacies ranging from last week to that refill of Reserpine before it was taken off the market (like 25 years ago!) All the bottles have a film of yuck on them, and you ask your techs to read you the numbers. Gets angry when their Rx’s aren’t filled in 2 min’s or less.

  • The Nasty Tube Lady: This woman brings in a tube of miconazole vaginal cream (why must it always be vaginal creams!) that looks like the life has been sucked out of it. This tube is 1000% empty, and the label is clear from some sort of grease that has gotten underneath it and coats the first 2/3rds. You have a good idea where she stuck this tube to get the label nasty, but have no idea how she got every square ounce of cream out of it. Best handled with gloves, a clothespin or a tech you dont like. Resist the urge to smell the tube, you really dont want to know where its been.

  • ViagraMan: This happy fellow brings in an Rx for 20 viagra, then has you do a price quote for every damn quantity from 20 to 1. Then to make matters worse, he takes his Rx back and gets it filled someplace else.

    From Natalie in NY (shes got some good ones)
    The New Customer
    you have all seen it. the one who shows up at the pharmacy because they had their doctor fax over to you and is APPALLED to find that you do not have their information on file
    The Technology Nazi
    usually old, but not necessarily. the ones that call up and say “DON’T YOU HAVE IT IN YOUR COMPUTER” because we have some maaagical computer that tells me which “pink pill” you want refilled out of HCTZ, celexa, and ISMO. and by “pink” you actually mean “white” or “orange” because you are not currently taking anything pink.
    The Lonely Elder
    oh yes. my favorite. the old people that live alone and when they get the call from you to tell them their script is ready, they keep you on the phone for the next hour and a half telling you about their neighbor, the weather, their in-home nurse, the economy, the president, their dog, their cat, their slippers, their doctor, their teeth, their arthritis, their kids, their grand-kids, their GREAT grand-kids………..you get the point.
    The Wait-n-Stare
    almost always old. those that drop off their scripts and continue to stand at the drop-off watching you. you tell them it will be a few minutes and they continue to stand and stare, as if they haven’t heard a word you said (and most of the time, they really haven’t).
    The Old
    yes, they deserve their own category. those that still think pharmacists are druggists and they are all male. those that think that mercurachrome is still on the market somewhere. those that want some obscure herb supplement because their neighbor told them about it. Those that need to bring their 60-year-old children in to help them walk to the counters and explain in a loud voice EVERYTHING to them. those that can’t see, can’t hear, can’t walk and still pull out their car keys when walking away from the drop-off. those that wonder how long it could possibly take to “slap a label on a bottle.”
    The Large Purse Woman
    this is the woman that comes to the counter, says she has a prescription to turn in, puts her ungodly huge purse/sack/carry-on luggage on the counter and starts rummaging through it, pulling out things that dont even belong in a purse to find her script. papers, receipts, about 4 wallets, umbrellas, small pets and children….only to find a small wallet jam-packed with assorted money, papers, receipts, credit cards, pictures and has to sort through another mess for the next 3 minutes to find the script all while saying “i know its in here somewhere” because that will make me feel like standing here watching you is a great use of my time.
    The Space Invader
    now, our drop-off counter is about 2 and a half feet wide. it’s kind of hard to get in someones face over a 2 and a half foot counter, but people DO. those that decided that sprawling on my counter, putting their dirty greasy hands all over my counter, leaning over my counter to talk or to hand me a script is okay. its not. my counter is a no-touchy zone and y’all need to back off.
    The Know-It-All
    found most often in insurace issues. those that KNOW their copay is only $2 and that it CAN’T be anything different. we must be WRONG. those that know that the OTHER drug store had a lower copay (at which we just throw up our arms in dispair, give the script back, and let them go). those that will not admit when wrong.
    The Screw-Face
    you all know it. those that give you *that look* when things aren’t going their way. ie: we have to call your doctor to verify your script, your copay is more than $1, your 5-month-old script for amox is expired because you’re on medicaid, your wait time is more than 30 seconds (apparently the time it takes for you to slap a label on a bottle)
    The Valley Girl
    the 15-year-old gum-chewing, short shorts wearing, hair-and-makeup professionally done gal there to pick up her birth control or valtrex. usually found talking loudly on a cell phone about “OMG lyke did you SEE what she was WEARING”
    The Generic Hypochondriac
    yes. those that believe that their doctors told them NEVER EVER take a generic. the ones who need the spotted vicodin, the ones that have “bad reactions” to generic drugs (all of them). the ones who make you special-order Mevacor, Zestril, and Ventolin because the “other ones” just dont work.

    • Pharmacists

    Fucking DrugNazi

    11 Comments

    So i’m happily at work being my usual angry self yesterday, when in comes this fax.
    It has handwritten “This is the funniest blog i’ve ever seen, you must read this” with a bunch of text. I have to take a class-3 shit at the moment, so I decide to take the pages into the restroom for some reading material.
    I start to read it, and its really familiar, like really really familiar. I ask my boss’ son (who also reads angry pharmacy blogs, and is one of the 2 who know my secret identity) if this looks familiar. A few seconds of research and THIS SHIT! comes up.
    Now I love the DrugNazi. He’s a bit liberal at times (ok, all the time) for my taste, but his heart is in the right place. In fact, someday i’d actually like to meet him in person. But what the fuck. Why are my local pharmacists circulating HIS blog around when I’m fucking just as angry as he is!! Why arent my blog entries being faxed and pharmacist laughing!!! God dammit! He’s just a Nazi! I’m THEE angry pharmacist!
    I was so pissed off when I found out HE was getting attention I even yelled “GOD DAMMIT! IM TONS MORE ANGRIER THAN HE IS! I EVEN HAVE ‘ANGRY’ IN MY URL!!!! THIS IS BULLSHIT!”. Yes folks, thats jealousy talking right there. Then I shut the fuck up knowing that if anyone found out that I had this blog I could get in serious shit at work.
    So my boss reads the DrugNazi’s post about pharmacy, laughs on how true it is, then faxes it to his friends. All while i’m sitting there just fuming and my boss’ son is laughing his ass off. Nice, really fucking nice.
    But on another note, go and pick up the latest issue of Drug Topics. The title is:

    New Strategy for Growth:

    Targeting Minorities

    I read this, and my sick sense of humor immediately said “Do they mean with open sights or is a scope alright?”. Yes boys and girls, you may think that I (and the DrugNazi) are going to hell, but for all the shit we put up with at work, we could run down a whole crowd of minority toddlers with a giant rotor-tiller and still get into the pearly gates.

    The Wonderful Public

    Types of Patients, part three-o!

    10 Comments

    Yes! More!
    First my own:

  • The Bait and Switcher: These patients usually call in a laundry list of maintence med prescriptions that all appear to be on time. However they sneak in their pain pills that are 2 weeks early hoping the’ll get ran through by accident with all the other medication. When you fail to refill said pain pills, they get upset and dont want to pick up any of their other medication.
  • The Bullshitter: These people waltz in with a new Rx for Soma or Vicodin thats 2 weeks early, and start off their conversation with “You see, heres what happened” or “Okay, i can explain”. At this point my brain shuts off and I really dont hear anything else they say other than “blah blah blah, excuse excuse excuse”.
  • The Mistery Caller: This person calls you up, says “I NEED MY PAIN PILLS REFILLED” then slams the phone down without giving a name, and Rx number or anything. Then proceeds to call 1 hour later yelling at you because they arent ready yet. I knew I shouldnt of fell asleep during that mind-reading class.
  • Worst Luck Ever: This poor soul has had their medication stolen, burnt, blown up, vaporized in an auto accident, impounded, mugged, lost, dropped in toliet, vacummed up, taken by ex-boy/girlfriend, etc. This person also has a family member die every week, and for some strange reason it only affects their pain pills or soma/valium! It never seems to happen to their blood pressure medication, or diabetes medication! Amazing! This poor soul also gets very upset when you dont take pity on him/her and demand a police report or some verification that this indeed really did happen.
  • Lost Soul: Similar to “Worst Luck Ever”, this person cant seem to remember where they put their medication! Commonly with birth control or prenatal vitamins (that are given in 3 month bursts), this person expect you replace the lost medication at no cost to them. You know, because life works that way. I lose a pocket knife so I expect the store that I bought it from to replace it free of charge. Usually pharmacies do replace the birth control, because we dont need idiots like these reproducing.
  • The Mouth Breather: 5’2″ and about 300 lbs comes storming in gasping for air demanding the 4th albuterol MDI she’s gotten in 2 weeks. Then she proceeds to mouth-breathe her ass outside where she lights up a cig and talks on her cell phone for 3 hours. All on your tax dollar. Also seen bringing in Rx’s in for ‘ensure’ because she cant eat normal food that doesnt start with Mc or Jumbo Bacon.

    Heres some from Dean from NY:
    I just want to say that you are awesome, and you have pretty much tacled every topic that i bitch about, however, there is one that I am not sure if you have…..The fuckin’ Drive-Thru!!!!!!!
    Dude, I don’t even know where to begn with this one. They drive up to the window (half the time, they go to the pick-up window for drop-off and vice versa) then they either slam on the call button as soon as they pull up, and most of the time somone is standing right at the window waiting on an in-store customer, or some of them aren’t even smart enough to know what the call button does, and they either rev their engine, or honk the fucklin horn for 5 minutes til someone answers them. Even when you do answer right away, they tell you “I’ll be back in 5 minutes”. On what fuckin’ planet am I going to fill 10 scripts in 5 minutes?
    Another thing is the old foolks in the drive-thru. They pull around the corner, and almost slam into the divider, then when they finally do get up to the window, they are 10 feet away from the drawer and proceed to either give you a stupid look, or yell at you that the drawer isn’t going out all the way. I usually just look at them and say that it’s as far as it goes, but really I want to say that maybe they shouldn’t be on the road if they are going to be that stupid.
    Then after the 5 minutes have passed, these people roll back up in, just like you say, a huge ass SUV, or a more expensive car than Hugh Hefner owns, then proceed to argue with you about how they are on Medicaid and they shouldn’t have to pay their fuckin dollar co-pay because they gave all their money to their kid, yet the kid is in the passenger seat saying “No you didn’t, Dad.” Or they sit there for 10 minutes while you finish, or hit the button 50 times because their insurance was wrong because they haven’t been to the pharmacy in 10 years, and they expect you to know that it is different. Then the people that are behind them are honking their horns because they don’t want to wait 2 minutes, then they proceed to burn out in the drive-thru, then come into the store and say that drive-thru is for FAST service, and how we are wasting their gas.

    From Robin:
    Heres my most annoying type of patient.
    Patient: My dr faxed/phoned in my prescription 1/2 an hour ago.
    Me: I don’t have anything yet.
    Patient: yes you do, I watched them send it. Its here.
    Me: (trying to figure out how to pull a rabbitt out of my ass) I really don’t have it. No faxes, no messages.
    Patient: I know its here. This translates into “you are a lying sack of shit who just doesn’t want to fill my prescription.”
    I think in the future I’ll just tell them it came in but I threw it out because I just didn’t feel like filling it.
    Keep them coming folks!!!

    • Pharmacists

    For all those pharmacy students out there

    33 Comments

    If you’re a pharmacy student, thinking about getting into pharmacy, or a pharmacy professor, please read this (or read this to your students). This should be the new pharmacist creed. (This starts off sappy, but it gets better).
    Being a pharmacist, by the Angry Pharmacist:
    Theres a lot of things that you will experience once you’re a pharmacist. You’ll be asked questions. You’ll be praised. You’ll be thanked. You’ll see children grow up. You’ll see grandparents pass away. You’ll be the person to translate between medical speak and common english. You’ll give relief to an nervous mother. You’ll give people hope who have none. You’ll smile. You’ll laugh. You’ll joke with your patients. You’ll see your patients go to the prom. You’ll dispense that Plan B Rx to that girl who was in diapers just last week (so you thought). You’ll be asked questions that involve the word penis and vagina. You’ll be asked to look at rashes, and pink eye, and wounds. You’ll be trusted when their doctors cannot be. You’ll save lives. You’ll drive a nice car, have a house, and a good living. You’ll be hounded by family and friends for advice. You’ll be the first to hear about test results and what they mean. You’ll be the most trusted person in most people’s lives.
    However!
    You’ll be bitched at. You’ll be taken for granted. You’ll be the target of angry words, attacks, and threats. You’ll be lied to. You’ll be bullshitted. You’ll be overworked and understaffed. You’ll have no gratification from the people who owe you their lives and well being. You’ll be used. You’ll see the shit at the bottom of the pond of society. You’ll (somehow) be the person responsible for slavery, poverty, and all that is evil in the world. You’ll be cried at one min, and yelled at the next when you wont fill soma early. You’ll be the target of con scams, stories, and shit. You’ll become callous and jaded to the world around you. You’ll see not things as right and wrong, but truth and bullshit. You’ll be able to tell a crackhead the moment they walk in the front door. You’ll see addiction, thievery, and diversion. You wont have one min to yourself without being interrupted by an idiot. You’ll see stupidity. You’ll get a gun shoved in your face for money or narcotics (i did, twice even!). You’ll be the target of crime and theft. Your car will be stolen or vandalized or hit in the parking lot by someone with no license, no insurance, and is here illegally (but gets more health benefits than you, on your tax dollar). You’ll sit there powerless to do anything about an addict because you lack proof. You’ll see crooked doctors write out gallons of vicodin and get away with it. You’ll get audited by insurance companies and the DEA and the state board over stupid shit. You’ll see doctors who will rather listen to a big boobed drug rep than you. You’ll be fucked over by the chains and mail order pharmacies who are supposed to be on your side. You’ll get shafted by insurance companies. You’ll see that AWP-25% + 1.50 and think its a good deal. You’ll be left on hold for an hour because the doctors office is too cheap to buy a fax machine. You’ll deal with ignorant doctor office staff who should be cleaning toilets than calling in prescriptions. You’ll get orders wrong because the fucking nurse cant speak clear english. You’ll get a glimmer of happiness when you see a cash customer, only to have it be snuffed out when he wants his Rx’s transfered to a mail order pharmacy because its ‘cheaper’ (after you did all the work to fill them). Your time will be worth nothing to the patients. You’ll get mad. You’ll get frustrated. You’ll consider going on medication. You’ll go on medication. And at the end of the day, when you get home and stare down at the bottom of that third glass of gin; you’ll wonder why in the fuck you went to school to deal with this.
    Remember, 98% of the world are good people, but it just takes a fraction of the 2% of assholes to really ruin your day.
    If you end up reading this to your staff, printing it out for your pharmacy wall, or read this to your students, let me know so I dont feel like I wasted time thinking of all of this.. 🙂

    The Wonderful Public

    Types of Patients, part duex

    5 Comments

    Thanks to all who have written! Here are some more customer types:

    From Rebeccah in a ‘college town’
    The Overprotective mother (or OPM as we call them). .These are the ones that call in pretending to be the patient (who happens to be college aged and SHOULD be able to function on their own). They call in their daughters birth control pills or bitch us out because little tommy cannot swallow pills and how dare we give him a swallow tablet..They also call every 5 minutes to make sure susie’s doctor called in her prescription, because somehow little susie cannot possibly open up her cell phone to check on it herself. And half the time little susie is on her cell phone when she comes in to pick up the rx.
    The no refills/expired RX patients. Those who believe that expiration and no refills do not pertain to them. that refills and new expiration dates are automatically entered in the system with an unlimited amount of time and fills regardless of whether or not they actually see their doctor. One patient came in the other day (on her cell phone) drops off her rx, I politely tell her that we need to contact the MD to get more refills, she says okay and walks away. I overhear her say into her cell phone “I just dropped off my birth control at CVS and the girl there says I have no refills. I know I have more refills, she’s just lying to me!”
    the Plan B crew. We dispense a TON of plan B (and by a ton, I mean I need to keep at least 6 packs on the shelf per week). Now this wont be as applicable come November 1, but we get a lot of people who think we are lying about needing an Rx to get plan B. “I know it’s over the counter, I cant believe you are telling me I need to get an Rx for it, I never needed one before.” And not to stereotype, it’s the Asians who get really insensed when we tell them you need an Rx in order for us to dispense it.
    we also have a lot of what I call “Counter Hoverers”. These are the types when you tell them it’ll be about 10 to 15 minutes to fill their prescription, they say okay (as if it’s a reasonable wait time) and then go to the pick up counter and just stand there. They play with the counter displays and the magazine rack and occasionally will look up at you every few minutes. You tell them to have a seat so they aren’t blocking the pick up line (because at this point there are 5 people behind them) and they just look at you like you’re nuts. Then when you say “Please move so I can take care of someone else in line who is picking up their prescription), they move, but give you an irritated glare..

    From Count By Five
    The early riser-
    They beat you to work. They’re waiting for you, and they are pissed as hell that today isn’t the day you mistakenly showed up for work an hour early. How dare you?! Get to work slacker.
    Oh guess what? The script was dated for 2 months ago. YOU HAD ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD! I can remember the last specific day and time you were last in my pharmacy, and this Rx is older than that.
    The supervisor-
    Fuck you. When you interrupt me checking my email for the 57th time today, and I say your prescription will take a couple minutes, that is not an invitation for you to hold up your end of the counter and stare into my eyes. Go walk around, go check out the merchandise, and let me check my email. This ain’t fast food. Lets take our time, make an event out of it. Nevertheless, let me do my job. I want to do it right, and do it under my clock, not yours, so go take a look around.
    But you my friend, you are a double edged sword. You can be the best part of my day. Why? Because I can be the worst part of your day very easily. You are ready to go, you want to get going, but, oops, I can’t just quite read what your physician wrote. I think I’ll give them a call. Whoopsie daisy, I had to leave a message. Get your fucking hands off my counter and call back tomorrow. Thanks with a smile.
    Fucker.
    The completely clueless-
    This one is pretty simple. They are their own self-written joke. What are you here to pick up? What is it for? What letter does it start with? What does it look like?… I dunno. Even asking them what their name is results in a pathetically long pause. The truly sad part is, they aren’t drunk, they aren’t high, they are just dumber than rocks. Part of me feels really bad for them, but then again, my feet hurt and I don’t really like standing longer than I have to while they figure out if they want to form an intelligent thought or not.
    Shit, I wish Aricept actually improved memory and made people smarter. Suddenly I would be making a shit ton of mis-fills.
    The spelling bee champ-
    “Hi, pick up for Davis, D – A- V- I- S.”
    Me, “N O F U C K I N G S H I T”
    Tell me where my fucking car keys are in the morning if you want to help me out, but the next time you tell me how to spell a common, American last name, I am going to punch a baby. Apparetly you think a pharmacy degree can be obtained by buying enough boxes of Cap’n Crunch and sending in for it. Apparently you think the job is limited to putting pills from a big bottle into a smaller bottle. Wait… anyways, the fact that I am upright and breathing should prove that I can spell your damned name. Thanks for the tip asshat.

    From JN:
    Hopefully I didn’t miss this in your entry, but I always get the customer that doesn’t want counseling about their new medication because “I’ve been taking it for years, I could probably teach you something about it” (I think this overlaps with the pseudopharmacist), only to have them return in 2 hours wanting a refund because I screwed up and gave them the generic when they wanted the brand (even though their MD wrote for the generic its still my fault).

    Keep them coming! Im dying over here!

    The Wonderful Public

    Types of Patients (see what I deal with?)

    13 Comments

    These are the people that make pharmacist drink heavily. Enjoy!

  • The Waiter: This person loves to sit there and ask you or the staff every 2 min if their Rx is ready yet. If their Rx is not immediately taken down from the ‘waiting’ basket area, they bitch and complain as to how long its going to take. They think that having you respond to a question every 2 min (and break your train of thought) will make their Rx magically be ready sooner than just shutting up and sitting down.
  • The Starer: This person sits there at the counter and stares at you. Makes you feel like you’re in a zoo, or have a booger hanging out of your nose. Upon looking up, you find this person intently staring as if he/she can see behind the counter at everything you are doing. Also feels that by staring at you it will make your Rx magically get filled faster. Whoops, wrong.
  • The Inconsiderate Mother: Usually around age 16 with 2 children already, this patient sits patiently as her kids tear your shelves to pieces. Upon being yelled at, she half-assed disciplines her children and then continues to do nothing as they proceed to tear your store apart. This patient is usually getting OTC shit filled from the ER because she enjoys wasting taxpayer dollars with ER visits for free OTC Tylenol and dimatapp DM.
  • The Accident Waiting to Happen or The Liability: See “The Inconsiderate Mother” but have the two children be twins, with a names that only differ by 1 letter. Thats right, they have the same birth date, but one has an M in their name when the other has an N. Of course she gets offended when you get her children mixed up, because everyone should be able to pronounce Latafishina and Latafishima correctly. The saving grace is a different middle name, but you know that it wont be that easy.
  • The Palendrome: Usually found with Asian names, is the first name the last? Or the last name the first? No comma, they don’t speak English to ask a birth date, and both exist in your computer! Guess? Sure! Its only their lives and your license! Oh, and if they do have a birth date, its almost always 6/15/xx.
  • The Crackhead: Almost always seen 2 min before closing (when all of the doctors offices are close) with an Rx for any/all of the following: Some hydrocodone product, valium, soma, codeine containing product. Their profile consists of any/all of these medications and nothing else for the past 20 years. If they are on-time to get their dope..er..prescriptions filled (from your store), your computer magically tells you via their insurance company that they got a month supply 2 days ago from some chain down the road. Upon which the patient goes through the following stages:
    Denial: “Nu-UH! I did NOT get my Vico-DANS filled there!”
    Anger: “What do you MEAN i cant get my SOMAS filled!”
    Acceptance: “Yeah, I did, but see I take 9 a day because i’m in pain!”
    Bullshitting: “Call my doctor! He told me i can get them filled early! He’s not in? Well I guess you’ll just have to fill them and call me in the morning”
    Bargaining: “Can I get them if I pay cash?”
    and finally, Rejection: “Gimme my Rx back! Im going to Walgreens!!!”

  • The Mind Reader: This person loves to call in “All my monthly medications”, then proceeds to call and yell at you that you either forgot a medication that he/she got 5 months ago (that you’re supposed to magically know he/she needs now) or that you filled a bunch of shit he/she didn’t want and doesn’t want to pay the copays for. This person is the cause of most substance abuse among pharmacists.
  • The Pseudopharmacist: This person was either a Nurse or some medical person 100 years go, and somehow has the ability to know more than you do. He (but usually a she) knows ‘her body’ and ‘what her body needs’ (a kick in the ass) and will argue with you until closing that she doesn’t need that high blood pressure medication. Loves to use big medical words that really have no application in what he/she is talking about, but makes her look smart. Who needs to go to college to be a pharmacist, obviously this ex-nurse back in the 50’s must know vastly more than you do.
  • The ‘Is It Due Yet?”: This person will call you every day asking when his/her pain pills are due to be filled (See “The Crackhead”). This person unfortunately lacks the basic brainpower to realize that if you take 3 pills a day, that 90 pills will last 30 days (or 1 month). 90/3 is too hard to comprehend as well as a month has 30 days; so he/she must call you and check. This person really flips out in February when the month has 28 days.
  • The Closing Shopper: This person (who usually is on the state system) sat on his/her ass all day, but must come into your store 2 min before closing with a handful of Rx’s (that he/she wants right now). Either this, or they call you 2 min before closing with the phrase “Wait up for me, i’m on my way!”. What did you do all day asshole? Obviously not work! Must be nice.
  • The Mystery Name: These people will respond to any name you call saying their Rx is ready. Almost always are people who don’t speak English. If you shout out a name, they will come up to get the Rx regardless if its them or not. Quite a sight to see a name being called out and half the store come saying they are that person. Pretty sad when you need to interrogate your patients to get the proper name from them.
  • Whats Your Name?: These people have “ethnic” or “heritage” names that are unpronounceable by the human tounge, yet when you ask them how to say it they get offended as if you should of known. See “The Race Carder” below.
  • The Race Carder: “You wont fill my narcotic prescriptions early because i’m (enter race/color/creed/religion/etc here)”. Yes boys and girls, people still do play this shit. It doesn’t matter if the entire store is filled with the same race as him/her, or if some of your employees are the same race as him/her; he/she thinks you’re a bigot. These people end up pissing off the staff, and are usually booted from the pharmacy.
  • The Insurance Chode: This person appears in two forms: The first form is not having any insurance card, then getting upset when you cant fill their Rx’s with said insurance. Also gets mad when you refuse to sit on hold for 30 min to get their ID number when they live 2 mins away and can drive.
    The other form gives you an insurance card, but allows you to do 30 min worth of guess work (and asking them 30 times if they have any other cards) before giving you the correct and current insurance card.

  • The Frugal Shopper: This person asks for the cash price of all the Rx’s he/she brings in. He/she is okay with the prices and gives you the OK to fill. When you are finished, he/she sees the total and wants all but 1 returned to stock and the not-filled ones transfered to a mail order pharmacy because he/she gets “3 months for 1 copay”. This person also thinks that pharmacists work for free, the power that runs the lights for free, and your staff works for free. Obviously time has no value to them since they are either: old or retarded. They also think that $15 is too high for a $400 dollar Rx and decides to argue with you about it. These people should of not gotten a Medicare card upon 65, but a gun to blow their brains out with.
  • The Baby Momma: This person is like “The Inconsiderate Mother” but all of her children are named after their fathers so she can keep track of which one goes with which baby-daddy. Ouch!
  • The Cell Phone Shouter: This person comes in talking on the cell phone. The cell phone never leaves her (its always a her) ear, and she must always shout into the cell phone at 100x normal speaking voice. Its like the cell phone is a can connected by a piece of string or the person she’s talking to is across the street. She also gets rude and obnoxious when you ask her to keep it quiet or to use the phone outside. When you are explaining her medication to her, she continues to blab on the cell phone about the most pointless drama you’ve ever overheard. Makes your mind boggle as how someone on the state system can afford the luxury of a cell phone with unlimited mins.
  • The Blinger: This person is driving a car thats nicer than yours, wears clothes thats nicer than yours, has a 24k gold tooth ‘grill’ and/or gold chains and rings, and also has a state welfare card that copays are lower than your own private insurance. All this and not having to work a day in their life! Some people have all the luck!

    If you know any other ones that I missed, email me at druglord@theangrypharmacist.com and i’ll put up a part duex.

    • Pharmacists

    Not a Rant, but a welcome

    1 Comment

    I’d like to publically welcome Mandy of “Drugs ‘R’ Phun” (http://mandyiscool.blogspot.com/) to the links on the side of my page.
    She started a really really neat thing, “Bad Name of the Day”. God, she has no idea the stuff I see every day. I’ll have to write them down and just list them all in clumps.
    Go visit Mandy’s site. Shes angry, funny, and will fit in with myself and the drug nazi.

    Nurses and Hospitals

    The County Hospital

    3 Comments

    Now feel free to correct me if i’m wrong, but is every county hospital the most mismanaged, poorly ran, sinkhole of my tax-paying dollars on the planet?
    Why dont I just throw 1/3 of my paycheck into the air and let the retarded rejects of the medical profession (if you want to associate them with that) pick up the free money?
    Now i’m just going to be talking about the county hospital in my county. This may or may not apply to yours. Where should I start bitching:

  • Refill requests take over a week to get responses on. All clinics have different fax numbers, and instead of giving us a note saying “not our patient” or “we’re forwarding this to the proper department” they just throw our faxes away. By the 10th fax (and 2 weeks later) they finally write in big nasty letters “NOT OUR PATIENT”. Thanks fuckheads.
  • Good luck getting a diagnosis for anything that requires a prior auth. Some douchebag intern wrote an Rx for Zyvox. We asked for a diagnosis and a C&S (culture and sensitivity) report. Yanno, because the state-plan this person was on didnt feel like shelling out a few grand for 20 tablets. The damn hospital not only didnt fax us the C&S report, but the diagnosis was “HTN, Depression, Lupis, etc”. Not ONE fucking thing that had to do with Zyvox. What makes this worse, is that we had to fax it over 7 FUCKING times and took over 19 days to get a response!@#!
  • Doctors are idiots over there. Now I understand that interns and residents are still learning, and I need to cut them some slack. But when I correct the SAME FUCKING MISTAKE you have made 5 times, you should fucking LEARN NOT TO MAKE IT!!! Also, just because a drug is NEW does not mean its BETTER or COVERED. Give me your credit card number and i’ll fill the newest drug that some drug rep scum sucked you off on so you’ll write for it.
  • The staff are idiots. I swear, the county hires the lowest of the low. Called the ‘public trough’ by some, they hire barely compentant staff, and provide too much red tape to actually fire them. Huge payroll with people barely doing enough to justify their existance. Just to give you an example. We fill some county clinic Rx’s with a separate stock. Mostly condoms, foam, and birth control shit. We use their stock, but we bill them a dispensing fee. The accounting department doesnt want any sort of patient information (Medical record numbers, names, etc) due to HIPAA on the bill. So in theory I could bill them for 1.8 trillion dollars, and they would happily pay it because they have NO verification of the patients serviced. The other side of the billing department wants the patient list so they can see the usage and by whom, but dont want any billing information given because its ‘not their department’. Left hand, I would like to introduce you to right hand. Another example of employee douchery involve a bunch of the staff who got the novel idea to take our faxed refill requests, highlight the name of the patient, the Rx number, and the drug with a dark colored highlighter (because the highlighters are paid for with MY FUCKING TAX MONEY) and then fax it back. They were completely unaware that the fucking highlighter make the text appear BLACKED OUT like some secret government document. 5 faxes saying “DONT HIGHLIGHT PATIENT INFORMATION” and the finally got it. 5 faxes.. FUCKING 5!!@#!
  • English + medication names + me = this blog. Ive bitched about this enough, so I dont need to rehash it. But I will say that if you cant speak english, you have no business calling in prescriptions. The Rx’s from that place are already so fucked up initially, that garbling drug names with your accent really doesn’t help the situation. I’m glad you immigrated to this country, i’m glad you’re working rather than leeching off the sys..er..scratch that. But the harsh reality is that if you fuck up, your license that you spent 7 years of college is not on the line. Your 4 month program at a community college might be, but not your pharmacy license. Trust me, get someone who can speak fucking english. You wouldnt want your parents getting Rx’s called in by you, I dont either.
    Anyone who is in favor of socialized medicine needs to deal with a county ran hospital. They can fuck up a free lunch. If the county ever hired someone with any management brains over there, there would be a whole shitpot full of walking papers given.
    As I said before, there are a ton of county workers who really do work hard, and do a really good job to keep that place together. Whats even funnier is that the inpatient/outpatient pharmacy there is the island of sanity and dignity that place has. My hats off to them, they must drink and take more medication than I do.

    • Drug Trivia and Rants

    Drug Reps, part Duex

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    ** I got this information sorta second hand, so it might be wrong **
    (But if it is wrong, who cares! Its about dumbass drug reps!)
    So I heard today via the pharmacy grapevine about how this Rep for a reputable blood glucose monitoring machine gave another pharmacist both barrels. You can probably guess from the story below who this person works for and exactly what i’m talking about.
    “But why!” you may ask. “Why would a drug rep give a pharmacist both barrels about something!”
    Its because they were primarily dispensing a competitors machine, thats why. Heres the backstory.
    STORY TIME! STORY TIME! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
    It was a typical day in pharmacyland. The soma was flowing, valium were chirping (uhh, more like sleeping), and the patients demanded their Vicodin ES a week early because they “lost them”.
    You see, this blood glucose monitor started out as a very small company. The reps were very nice, and stopped by at a somewhat regular basis to see how we were doing, etc. They would give us free machines, and pamphets, and would be in contact with our local wholesaler to make sure strip supplies were up to specs. I had his work and cell number, and whenever someone had a problem with a machine he would make sure it was right. He even paid for a huge window painting in our front window as advertisement to bring people into the store. In fact, I didnt know if he was just really really nice, or wanted to get into my angry pharmacist pants. Disturbing, but hey, cant blame him!
    Anyhoo, Grade A guy from a grade A company. Small company, good service.
    Then a larger company bought this small company. This company wanted to get in on the big boom of blood glucose machine. Obviously this company wasn’t happy with making products such as Depakote (heh) and making all their pills smell like jordan almonds with their tasty candy coating. This company was greedy because they already had their own brand of meter.
    So our friendly rep came in, and said that he wasnt going to be our friendly rep any longer because his company was being bought out. I said goodbye to the friendly rep, and wished him well. I was sad, because I liked this small company’s machines, and they had this nifty deal called a “Value Pack” where a free machine was packaged in with 100 test strips! No more diddlying around trying to get the machine /and/ the strips to go through some douches insurance. You can just run through the 100 strips and give them the meter! I was also sad because I knew that it was a big mistake giving a ton of these machines out, and I just dropped the proverbial soap in front of this big company. My pooter was right there plum ripe for the screwing I was about to receive.
    Time passes, and things don’t seem that bad. We can still get the “Value Packs”, and although we don’t have the friendly rep bringing is donuts and the foreign concept of ‘personal service’ we haven’t got screwed over (yet). We can get the strips, and our diabetic patients are happy.
    (for some reason I switch into 3rd person here, i have no idea why)
    Then tragity strikes. The ‘Value Packs’ get harder and harder to get. “Oh no!” said the angry pharmacist (actually it was more like “aww fuck!”) “I cant get the value packs! What if a new diabetic needs a new machine! I cant put them through calling the damn 800 number, talking with a drone and having one shipped out for me to get zero profit on but have to show how to use!”
    The angry pharmacist was.. well.. angry (duh). Although he was angry, he had a plan. “I shall continue to support the patients who have this machine, but I shall find a /new/ machine to give out to the new diabetic patients!!!” and so he did. A nice rep from a small division of a larger nicer company (herein referred to as ‘small company’) came bearing gifts, a whole big box of free machines! “Hooray!” said the angry pharmacist “Where am I going to find the space to store this big box full of free machines!!”. The rep was nice, very nice, and didn’t dress like a damn skank like some other drug reps that I see once in a blue moon. Although they werent ‘value packs’, she was from a small company, and free machines were just a phone call and a UPS package away.
    So fast forward a few months to the present. It turns out that the big company didn’t like us pharmacies dispensing a competitors product so they yelled at us bad pharmacists. “BAD PHARMACIST” said the angry big-company drug rep. “Here are some coupons so you can give away OUR machines for free too! Because we’re a big company and we’re SMRT like that”. The angry pharmacist was not amused. He didnt want to have to add /another/ insurance to a patients record to make 5 bucks. He was lazy, and lazy means grabbing a free machine and not having to turn it into an Rx.
    Then the angry pharmacist makes another discovery. “These strips are 2/3’s the cost of the big company strips! Huzzah! Now cash paying customers wont have to take out a second mortgage to afford test strips! Free machine s, low cost test strips, AND personal service from the company? I must be in angry pharmacist heaven!” the big bad drug company didnt like that, and yelled at the poor pharmacists “BAD PHARMACIST USE OUR STRIPS THEY ARE BETTER. HAW HAW HAW”.
    The End (actually I need to find out how this resolves tomorrow).
    And thats pretty much it. Yeah, anticlimactic i know. However after reading this story back I cant stop laughing. Remember! This is second hand information! Well, except the big bad company, they just suck ass for stopping the value packs, thats first hand information. Actually everything is first hand except for the actual yelling by the drug rep.

    Doctors and Stuff, Drug Trivia and Rants

    Ambigious drugs, fortune telling, and doctors who dont know shit

    2 Comments

    How many of you have been in this position:
    You get an Rx for a medication; say, Effexor. Doctor has a strength; say 37.5. Doctor wrote directions; say once a day.
    Now if you read this literally, you would dispense Effexor (standard release) once a day. However the sig suggests the extended release (XR) that is once a day and not the regular release that is usually given more than once a day (but sometimes given once a day as well). Do you dispense regular or XR? Does the doctor even know it comes in a regular and and XR?
    Now you would think (common sense here), that the drug company would get their collective head out of their asses to make the XR product have a different miligram strength as to avoid this problem. You know, so if the doctor forgets the XR part on the Rx, you can tell its the XR by the strength.
    Of course not. That makes sense, and if it makes sense (and totally fucks over the pharmacist), then its not worth doing. They need to do the paper work for the new formulation, why not change the miligram strength by 0.5? Why not have it be like percodet/percodan and have 0.45 mg of oxycodone salt A, 0.923423 mg of oxycodone salt B, and (5mg – (Salt A and Salt B)) of oxycodone salt C (to really confuse the fuck out of us).