1912 prices?

Okay, just so you know that stupidity really is everywhere - yesterday I mailed out a couple of bills. Before I put them in the mailbox, I carefully affixed a stamp to the corner of each of the envelopes. Unfortunately, I chose my TWO CENT stamps....... what the f*ck is wrong with me?

Trade school drop out?

A number of years ago we had our pharmacy remodeled. We got all new fixtures, carpeting, etc. We even got a new sink. Now I'm no plumber, but it seems to me that the first step in removing and/or replacing a sink would be to turn off the water...... Unfortunately, the (supposedly qualified) plumber we hired forgot about that one tiny step. Fortunately the electrician who was working in the pharmacy that same night had turned off the power or we'd have had barbequed workmen in our new indoor swimming pool. It was quite awhile before the carpeting stopped going "squish" when we walked on it. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Oh the weather outside will be frightful.....

I received a phone call today from one of our customers. We had run out of one of his medications yesterday and had only given him a few tablets to tide him over until today's order arrived at 3 PM. The gentleman called me about 1 PM inquiring about his drug. I told him that the order wasn't here yet but I would fill the balance of his prescription as soon as it did arrive. I then told him politely that they should have mentioned to him yesterday that the order doesn't usually arrive intil late afternoon. He told me that they did tell him that the order wouldn't be in until 3 but he was concerned that the delivery might not come because of the weather. You see we were expecting a huge snowstorm - ON SATURDAY! So yeah, I can see how Saturday's threatened blizzard might make it impossible to deliver drugs on FRIDAY. You never know just when a blizzard might decide to travel backwards in time to screw up the day before...... What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Do I look like the Bank Of America?

Like many retail establishments, our store takes debit cards and you do have an option to get a limited amount of cash back with your transaction. At our store, the most extra you can take out per transaction is $50. If you need more than that, then there is a regular ATM machine right next door. It would take literally less than 2 minutes to walk from the pharmacy in our store to the ATM in the grocery store next door. Well, apparently that was too long a walk for one woman. She wanted $150 and she wasn't about to walk all the way to the grocery store. So she broke her purchase up into 3 transactions - and took $50 each time. The only problem with that is that she wiped out the cash drawer in the process. You see, there is a reason we have a $50 limit - we don't keep a lot of cash in the register because we don't want to get robbed. But I guess it's okay that we didn't have any cash left to make change for the next customers - I mean we did save that woman that long long walk........ What the f*ck is wrong with you? (And what the f*ck is wrong with my company that they can't invest in a computer that will halt the transaction with a simple statement like "funds not available."?)

Watch out for that tree!

We get telephone calls every day from customers who are obviously calling from a cell phone. I don't have a problem with that (unless the connection is really bad) because I know some people will use their cell when they are calling from the doctor's office or from work, or there are even a few people who don't have a landline available at their homes. But what I can never understand is the people who call me while they are driving down the road. There is nothing scarier that having a customer trying to read a prescription number to you and then saying "Oops - I almost got into an accident." PULL THE FREAKING CAR OVER AND THEN TALK TO ME! What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Yeah that narrows things down

A woman came into the store today looking for a cream that a friend had recommended. Naturally she came to my counter to see if we carried it. There is nothing at all unusual about that except for one thing. The woman had no idea what the name of the cream was. She only knew one of the ingredients - vitamin K. I had no idea which product she had in mind, and when I consulted the pharmacist, he couldn't think of anything either. So I politely told the woman that we could be more helpful if she could find out the name of the item. So she gave us that one extra detail that made all the difference (NOT!) - she said "It comes in a tube." Yeah, that narrows it down to only 3 or 4 thousand products....... What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Her name is Mommy

A woman came into the store one day to pick up medicine for her elderly mother. She came up to the counter and asked if we had a prescription for Ann Smith. (Names have been changed to protect the stupid and those related to the stupid.) We didn't. The woman assured us that we should have a prescription ready for Ann Smith as it had been dropped off by another family member earlier in the day. So we checked the computer and found that we had no Ann Smith listed at all. The woman became rather upset and informed us that her mother had been a regular customer of our store for years. We explained repeatedly that we had no Ann Smith in our records and that perhaps she was confusing us with one of our competitors. (Our competitors aren't that close to us, but people still get confused from time to time anyway.) The woman insisted that she had the right store and eventually left in a huff. Some time later the woman's sister called. She explained that her sister had asked for the wrong name and that the medication shound be under Ann Jones. Now Ann Jones was in our computer as she really was a regular customer of ours for the last 20 years or so, and she did have a prescription waiting. The woman on the phone apologized and said that her sister had given us their mother's maiden name by mistake - a name that hadn't been used in over 50 years . Now I realize that not every person knows every detail about his or her own mother, but it never once occured to me that her name would ever be one of those missing details. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

I have to pay to do it myself?

I've never been a fan of self-serve gas stations mainly because I hate the smell of gasoline, so I really don't want to have to touch the nozzle. I'd rather pay the extra money to have someone pump it for me. But recently I've discovered that I don't have to pay extra for service. A couple of miles from my house there is a main street with 2 gas stations side by side. Both are name-brand companies and they are literally side by side. One is full-service and one is self-service only. And strangely enough, the full-service one is cheaper than the self-service one. So people using the self-service one are actually paying more money for the priviledges of doing the work themself and of having their hands reek of gasoline. I'm not sure which confuses me more - the fact that the owners of the station decided to have higher prices, or the fact that people use that station fairly often. What the f*ck is wrong with them?

I'll just wave my magic wand......

It's a pretty common occurance at my store to have someone come in looking for some special item that we don't normally stock. Most of the time it's no problem. Usually it's an item that our wholesaler stocks, so we place the order and that's the end of it. But every so often someone comes in with a request for an item we can't get. Usually it's an older person looking for a product that is no longer made. You would think that just saying "hey, they no longer make that product," would be enough to get the point across, but no. It isn't. Invariably the desired item is "the greatest thing ever made" and we get endless questions about why we can't get it and where else should they look for it. THEY DON'T MAKE IT ANYMORE! That means we can't get it and neither can our competitors. (And it probably also means that the item was a total dog so you were the only one buying it anyway.) It just doesn't exist so move on and find something else to use instead. We can't materialize what no longer exists. What the f*ck is wrong with you?

Don't come back until the credits roll....

I work in a pharmacy and sometimes we get busy. (Believe it or not - all those other people you had to wait for in the doctor's office came here to get prescriptions. Wild, isn't it?) Naturally when we get busy, we have to give longer wait times - partly because of the increased number of prescriptions and partly because of the increased number of interruptions. (The pharmacist can't check Mr. Smith's medication while she's counselling Mrs. Jones. That's just the way it is.) So if we tell you it will take 30 minutes to fill your prescription, it will take 30 minutes to fill your prescription. That sounds like common sense, yet it's surprising how many people just walk directly from the drop off window to the pick up window and wonder why their medication isn't ready yet. (These are usually the same geniuses who haven't figured out that it's a good idea to give us their new insurance information so that we can bill the correct plan the first time.) It makes me think that we should have a television by the pharmacy running nothing but TVLand all day. Then we could tell people not to come back until they have seen the whole episode of Gilligan's Island or whatever - making them attempt to tell time sure isn't working. What the f*ck is wrong with people?