But I’m Just a Tech!!

I haven’t written for a while. We’ve actually been very busy at work. A new doctor’s office opened in the vicinity and he works very odd hours… and lots of them, so he has been pumping a lot of business into our pharmacy. As well, the student that we had helping out has now gone on rotations, so we are down a body in the pharmacy. We are soon to have 3 vacant pharmacist positions in our general area within our company due to resignations and maternity leaves, and our script volume has increased enough to warrant another part time tech/student if not another full time one.

The thing that has irked me to write… is a situation that has bothered me for a long time, but seems to come around worse in cycles that peak right after Christmas. The bills start rolling in for everyone, and brokeness abounds. Everyone has something to complain about in regards to their finances.

I am a single parent. I have two kids, whose father doesn’t give me ANYTHING. Not a cent. I pay rent, childcare, utilities, groceries all on my own. All of my pharmacists are in marriages where their partners are also professionally employed. They earn over triple what I do on their own, not factoring in what their partners earn. They have regular bills, understandable, but it really bothers me when THEY complain to ME about how in debt they are. How their trip to <insert exotic place here> is costing them way too much, how their Gucci purse or Ugg boots were so0o0o0o0o0 expensive. The list goes on to refinancing mortgages to buy new BMWs , $10,000 credit card bills (on each of multiple cards).

I can’t afford to take a holiday… haven’t taken a week off work in over 2 years because I get paid holiday pay once a year… which usually goes towards paying off the accumulated bills that I have put off bit by bit over the course of the year, or perhaps treating my kids to a few new clothes. I really don’t want to hear about your trips to Hawaii or Florida or Mexico or Spain or Egypt.

My kids get their clothes gifted to them or bought at WalMart… I don’t want to hear about your kids’ Gap/FCUK/boutique type clothing.

My kids don’t have any extracurricular activities… we don’t have the money.. or the time. As a single parent it’s hard enough making sure I have child care during work hours, let alone trying to find time to schedule in some sort of extras. I don’t want to hear about how your nanny takes your kids to soccer, gymnastics, skiing, music lessons, swimming, etc etc.

If we get to go out for a meal, it’s to rotten Ronnies… We don’t go to gourmet sushi places… or where burgers cost 12 bucks a piece. We don’t drink expensive wine… then complain about being hung over the next day… . we drink store brand juice.. or milk.. and we don’t have dinner parties with 27 of our closest friends over for prime rib dinners every other weekend. I don’t want to hear about your shenanigans.

I am not going to argue that pharmacists earn every penny they get for doing what they do. I am also not going to argue that I should be getting paid more for what I do… but comparatively, I earn pretty well. What makes me so angry is that …. I live within my means. If I can’t afford it, I don’t buy it. I don’t even have a credit card… I got my vehicle on a lease. I could have probably gotten a bit nicer one if I had scrooged a bit more, but what I have suits what I need. I live in a rental apartment that isn’t a showpiece. I have hand me down furniture, that I don’t care if my kids spill on. We have everything we need… but it’s servicable, not luxurious.

I am the last person on earth that these people should be complaining to about their financial woes. While it’s nice for them that they have all the wonderful things that can be bought, I don’t want to hear about the debt they have because of it. Live within your means…. the more you have the more you spend? It shouldn’t be that way, but sadly society seems to say that the more you have… the more you need.

One of the positive things I can say about my company, is when they are having computer issues, they communicate to us at store level about it. Frequently. We get half a dozen faxes a day saying “your computer is going to do blahblahblah, and this is how you fix it”.

Recently there was an issue with our automatically generated orders having issues making it to our supplier. The company gave us directives on how to see if the order was transmitted sucessfully… and what to do if it wasn’t. Click this, highlight that, press this, retransmit and all will be well in the world. We ( the manager and myself) went over the procedures with all staff that would be working closing shifts to ensure that all procedures would be followed if and when the order transmission was unsucessful (because of course, it always WILL be unsucessful when someone other than the two of us is working).

In any case, Sunday’s order generates, and it’s a biggie. We have 3 days’ worth of merchandise to order and the order fails. Instead of whipping out one of the multiple faxes that has been sent to us over the course of the week that the transmission failures has been happening, the pharmacist takes their own initiative to “fix” the problem. This pharmacist is a wonderful person. I love working with them, but oftentimes they are stuck in a mode that doesn’t allow change with technology. The company has provided us with the equipment to make things a lot easier when it comes to placing our orders. Aside from following the above mentioned click, press, highlight, done method mentioned above… we can also manually enter the order into the web site from our supplier. The pharmacist in question KNOWS how to use this method, as this is the way we place our orders for expensive injectibles and odd items that aren’t in the computer system, and I specifically showed them how to use this if the order failed.

Now to the fuck up part of it. Instead of following the company directives first line… or my suggestions as a back up.. what does the pharmacist do? Pulls out the Telxon, hands it to the student (who has never even SEEN a Telxon, let alone tried to used one) and highlights two rows in the generate order print out. Says to the student “punch in the item number and then the quantity.”

The student says, “so I punch in item number 123456789, and then 100?” (the pharmacist had highlighted the number of tablets.. not the number of packs required).. and the pharmacist says “yes.. that’s right”. So, being the dutiful student… the order is keyed.

item #123456789 qty 100

item #234556789 qty 120

and so on.. for over a hundred items.

The order was transmitted via telephone to the supplier… who robotoic morons that they are.. pick as transmitted. They picked 100 bottles of each medication.. and packed it up and invoiced our store for well over$500, ooo worth of drugs. Not once did anyone at the supplier pick up on the fact that a store that normally orders 10,000 ON A GOOD DAY, has ordered enough merchandise to deplete their entire stock in some items. Or if they did pick up on it, they just shrugged and packed it up because they are trained not to question anything like good little doggies.

I get to work on Monday and see a case.. full of about 3 dozen tubes of some obscure cream sitting there with a credit request and say.. “what the…” to which the manager replies “don’t even start…”

If it weren’t for our very smart driver refusing to accept a delivery of 75 cases for us (when we normally get 5 or 6) we would have been sorting and sending back all of the other thousands of items.. and paying a 15% restocking fee. YOUCH $500,000 X 15% =holymotherofgodthatsmorethanImakeinayear!!

Thankfully, it all worked out in the end, but if the driver hadn’t been so quick to refuse.. or the pharmacist would have followed clear directions.. or the drones at the supplier hadn’t been so.. dronish.. we could have saved everyone a bunch of stress and anxiety. I feel bad for the people at the supplier who had to put all that stuff back on the shelves.. and the ones who had to cancel their orders to the suppliers to replenish the stock that they didn’t really need afterall.. wait.. no I don’t..

Well… I am not bored.. but I heard that at our pharmacy the other day. It actually made me quite angry. We are a little short handed ( but then again.. everyone it shorthanded these days), so we have another tech who is coming in to fill in some extra shifts. Like I have probably said before, we aren’t a very busy place yet. We do maybe 100-150 scripts on a good day. It’s busy enough for us to have a second tech some days, and these are the days that she picks up some extra shifts. She is used to working at a much busier pace… her home store does about 2700 a week. It’s never boring there.

We are out a pharmacist this week as well, because of a family matter, so the manager from that other store came to give us a hand as well. Well, the two of them were chatting about the day, which as usual at our store hadn’t been very busy. She went on to complain to him about “it’s SOOOOOOOOOOOOO boring here… it’s not busy and there is nothing to do!!” I just about smacked her right then.

I understand that coming from a busy pharmacy to a slow one might seem boring, but you will hardly ever see ME sitting around on my ass when there are no customers. Customer are business.. but they are not the only business that goes on behind that big counter. When I don’t have a customer, I find things to do that make the time go by. They might not be super fun activities, but you will never see dust on the shelves, way outdated product on our shelves, no garbage hanging around, no paperwork all over. Once she left I blew up… seriously.. she sat on her ass all day when she wasn’t directly dealing with patients. For her to have the NERVE to complain about working in a store where she could relax a bit and not have to deal with the stress of having to pump through so many rxs your head spins makes me nuts.

She is working tomorrow, and I left a really snarky note for her. I left the list out of “things to do if you’re caught up”. I put a sticky note on it that said ” If you get TOO BORED, here is a few things you might want to do”.

We have a set of regular customers who are seniors. She is quite a bit younger than he, but she is still what I would class as elderly. These people live in the neighborhood adjacent to the pharmacy where the cost of a house runs at 600k+ for a very modest shack. The reason I mention this will become evident later on, but I shall return, now, to the incident that makes me think that some people just expect WAY too much.

This couple comes into the pharmacy ever couple of months for their prescriptions. They come to the intake counter, order their his and hers medications. The list is long, and has a couple of unusual, pretty expensive medications. As you can imagine, we don’t always have their entire stock on the shelf, so we do what most places would do, and have to owe them. A few months back, this exact scenario played out, and when she came to the counter to pick up, I was at the till, so was the one to pull their bag and start showing them the meds and ringing them through. When I got to the meds we owed them on, I explained “unfortunately, we didn’t have enough of this medication in stock today so we’ve given you a 10 day supply. You can stop in any time after tomorrow noon to pick them up” That appeases most people but this lady became irate!

“We don’t drive!! My husband is very ill and doesn’t have a license any more and neither do I!! Every time we have to come here we have to take a cab and THAT costs US money!!! You people need to get more organized and make sure you have things in stock!!”"

I tried to explain to her that if she were to call in to the pharmacy a day or two ahead of when she knew she would be coming over for her groceries, we would be guaranteed to have the entire order ready with no owes. This wasn’t good enough for her and then her crotchety old husband piped up with some other crazy talk about “you people” GOD! I hate that… “you people”

The manager popped over to save me from getting cursed at and made a deal with them that she would have the remainder of the medication delivered to them within the next day or so… at our expense, no less. Since we don’t really have the demand to have a delivery service (yet), that means WE call a cab… and have the cabbie deliver the owe. Funny enough.. when we called to arrange a time for the owe to be delivered….. the people weren’t home… they were out… had a lunch date, card game.. whatever. Amazing!

I find it strange, that these older people have the cash to blow on a monster expensive house, but will complain about having to come back to the pharmacy in a week or two’s time (heck, I would have given them a months worth of pills and owed them the rest) . They can galavant all around the city doing who knows what sort of fun activities, taking a cab each time, but can’t find the time to come back to the pharmacy, when they probably have to shop for food at least once every couple of weeks, to pick up their medication.

And guess what?? She showed up again, at the intake counter, and ordered her meds. Didn’t call ahead. You people (*snicker*) need to take some friendly advise and learn that making a simple phone call and pre-ordering will save everyone a whole load of grief.

Sorry to the three people who read this on an ongoing basis. I have been very delinquent. A few relationship issues, working some overtime at another store to fill in for another tech who quit 3 hours before her shift, and getting so tired and worn down and getting sick from working so much and still trying to have somewhat of a life with my family have all taken their toll on my desire to write.

I just want to say that I think my personal physician is pretty cool. I thought I had a sinus infection, but with a few looks and taps and pointed questions he sent me on my way with a nasal corticosteroid. A lot of doctors would have given someone with my set of symptoms out the door with an antibiotic just to placate them. Mine wouldn’t… just the Nasonex. Now every time I do my snorts, I imagine the little bee with the Spanish accent saying it.. NASONEX!!.. Now that is good advertising!

Well… this tops it. For the length of time I have been in the pharmacy business, today we had the rudest person EVER. A very well dressed, older couple approached the counter while I was holding with an insurance company. I said that someone would be right over with them, and the pharmacist was, indeed with them in a short period of time.

Their situation? They were traveling and hubby was running out of his medication. They’re from the good old U. S of A. and they neglected to bring a proper amount of medication with them. They handed over a few bottles with labels on them to the pharmacist. Diovan and Metoprolol. One from a pharmacy inOttawa, dated from weeks ago for a very short supply and another from a pharmacy in the same province we are in, but prescribed by a pharmacist for 20 days worth of medication. This obviously means the people have known for probably close to three weeks that they should perhaps try to find a doctor to reissue a precription.

First things first. Yes, a pharmacist can help out by extending prescriptions or giving emergency supply medication. For people we know… or for people whom we can get documented rxs written by a physician.

Since these people are from New York.. we can’t help by extending the rxs, especially since they have been extended once already by another kind pharmacist. So, the pharmacist gets on the phone to the pharmacy in Ottawa that filled the rx three weeks ago. She gets the number of the physician who prescribed it. Then she calls the doctor to try to get a further extension on the rx. And is put on hold. He is gone for the weekend, it seems. Of course, they are 3 hours ahead of us. The receptionist jumped through some hoops to try to get another doctor to give an rx, but since no body knows who these people are, of course we don’t get one. I think finally the receptionist must have paged the doctor and he got on the phone. He has NO clue what we are talking about… he is an orthopedic surgeon.. why the hell would he have written an rx for a “heart medication” for a total stranger??? Dead end!!

Meanwhile the couple is leaning on the counter (blocking our entire drop off window)speaking in some foreign language.. I hear some German (which I speak) so I was trying to eavesdrop to see if I could figure out what they are saying. No luck, as only a word or two was German… maybe it was Yiddish?? Africaans? I don’t know. But in any case, I was asked to call a local Doctor’s office and try to get an appointment for this couple for today. It’s tough enough to get an appointment with your OWN physician in this city within a month or two, let alone getting an appointment for strangers for the same day. After waiting on hold for about 10 minutes, I finally speak to someone who says the doctor could see the person tomorrow.

We suggest to the couple that they could take one of these appointments, or make a stop at one of the local walk in clinics to get a new rx for their medications. They say they already have to go on Monday.. but they only have one pill left. We reiterate that they can see the nice doctor down the street tomorrow… but they don’t want to go there. They will go Monday.. but they still have to find a doctor to see. They are vehement that they have had to do so more than once on this trip, and every time they do, they have to pay 100-300 bucks for the office visit. Well… if you had had some foresight, and brought enough medication with you… this wouldn’t have happened!!!

Meanwhile we have filled a prescription for this couple’s friend/relative who has just been to a dentist for some obviously major work. She is from Toronto. This couple obviously gets around. If you have enough money to be traveling many many miles across the entire country of Canada…. having a few dollars to see a doctor shouldn’t be a problem. The pharmacist has now suggested that they DO go to the medicenter, at which point Papa nods and walks away. No “thanks for your time” “I appreciate what you have done” nothing.

Meanwhile Mama is wandering around the store calling for Papa, in the loudest possible voice. They reunite not far from the pick up window, and they come back to the pharmacist and Mama starts yelling about how we are not helping them. “what if Papa has a heart attack. It will be YOUR fault!! He is a sick sick man and you need to give him some medicine!!” Wait…. it’s OUR fault if Papa is sick? If he is so damned sick… stay home! If he is SO DAMNED SICK.. go to the hospital… or a doctor… cost shouldn’t be an issue. Why the hell would someone who could fall down and have a heart attack on the spot because they miss ONE day’s worth diovan and metoprolol, not go the hell back home when they found out instead of wandering around the whole country?

As I think I said in an earlier blog entry, I understand things can go wrong and you can neglect to take enough medication with you when you travel under extenuation circumstances. We bent over backwards for these people.. making multiple long distance phone calls ( one of which was at LEAST 1/2 hour long) and trying to get an appointment with a local doctor for them. T0 be yelled at, and berated and BLAMED for their problem which we gave them multiple avenues to solve.. what did we get?? A kick in the proverbial nuts.

Prexige (lumiracoxib)… released not all that long ago, has already been withdrawn from the Canadian market. I read the Health Canada warning about it, but since I am not in the position to make judgements, I can simply say, the company issued recall that we got said “not due to safety concerns–quality issue”. The recall issued by Health Canada says it has withdrawn market authorization.

The decision to withdraw market authorization for Prexige follows a review of additional safety information submitted by the drug manufacturer, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Canada Inc. The information was requested after Prexige was removed from the Australian market in August 2007, following reports of serious liver adverse events that were linked to the drug at doses of 200 mg and 400 mg daily. The experience of other international regulators is a potential source of safety signals for new drugs when the Canadian real world safety information is limited.

As a result of its review, Health Canada has concluded that the risk of serious liver-related adverse events with Prexige cannot be safely and effectively managed at the 100 mg daily dose.

I wonder if the pharmaceutical companies are releasing these medications far too quickly to accurately judge whether or not they are safe. This is the third Cox-2 inhibitor that has been withdrawn…along with Vioxx (rofecoxib) and Bextra (valdecoxib). Celebrex (celecoxib) has recently been changed from a drug that is freely covered by most drug plans, to a special authorization medication because of higher incidents of heart related issues. Do the benefits of this class of drug outweigh the contras?? As one who doesn’t suffer any type of joint pain…and a technician without the full knowledge of how the drugs work, I couldn’t say.

On a side note..we have all heard the sayings “for every doctor there is a pharmacist out there who saves his ass” and “for every pharmacist there is a tech who saves his ass”…. I was that tech today. We had an rx brought in today for levaquin 1QID X40. A pharmacist typed up the rx. I went to count it and said “WHOA!! Levaquin four times a day??? That’s not normal!! Can they do that??” to which a second pharmacist replied” I’ll call the doctor back.” Sure as shootin’, the doc wanted once a day dosing for 10 days. I think if I hadn’t caught it and counted out 40 and moved it down the line (back to the same pharmacist who had typed it up) and let them check it.. the patient would have walked out the door with the wrong amount of medication (and a HUGE bill to boot). I saved a few asses today. <pats self on back>

It really bothers me that teenagers have no common sense. I am a member of a forum community where teenage illiteracy, stupidity and lack of common sense abounds. They will announce who they’re dating… who they’re no longer dating, give details about their entire sexual lives etc. There are very many of these people who ARE very intelligent and have worthwhile, valid opinions and questions, which is mainly the reason I frequent those forums.

What bothers me the most, though, is those kids who have serious medical questions or questions about their medications. My response is ALWAYS ” call your doctor or pharmacist.” Most of them reply in a snarky manner about how they don’t want to waste their time by having to wait on hold… or how they are shy and can’t ask a question like that (whatever the question might be). This makes little sense to me, as it often takes hours to get a response to a thread. It would be like.. Asking the counter girl at Mcdonald’s how to make prime rib. You can get good reliable medical advice from your local pharmacist in probably under 5 minutes…. but only if you call.

A pharmacist is going to be able to tell you if you’re safe to have unprotected sex if you’ve missed pills out of your pack 9 days ago. A pharmacist can tell you if nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach, diarrhea is a side effect of your new antidepressant. It doesn’t even have to be YOUR pharmacist. If you are too shy to ask someone you have to see in person again, call another pharmacy. I don’t think he or she is going to laugh at you if you want to know in layman’s terms how your Paxil is making you feel better, or what will happen if you miss a dose or two of your blood pressure medication.

I am sure that the fine members of our forum community can give valuable opinions and experiences about how certain things have affected them. Unfortunately, their opinion is just that… an opinion, and not necessarily hard cold medical facts. Maybe THEY missed 2 pills out of a pack and had unprotected sex 8 days later and didn’t get pregnant. That doesn’t mean YOU won’t… they just got lucky. Medications affect each and every person in a different way, and what one person experiences may not be what happens to the next person. Having other people’s experiences are nice.. they gained weight with a depo shot, they didn’t like their skin after this type of pill, their whatever pill made them sleepy. This might help a person make an informed decision when talking to their doctor about side effects of medications they might be prescribed.

Doctors and pharmacists go to school for many years to learn about the human body and how it works… and which medications work for which conditions. You guys get paid the big bucks to share the wealth of your information with those less informed and I am sure it is a big part of the joy in your jobs to share this information with those who want it. I think the pharmacists I work with take immense amounts of pleasure when someone comes to them with questions that actually make them use what they have learned in a practical setting. “Where are the toothpicks?” is not quite what you went to school for, now, is it?

I understand by this entry and the people who might be reading it, I am preaching to the choir. You all know these things, but I had to get it off my chest.

We all know that most doctors have a problem with their penmanship. Illegible prescriptions are commonplace. Then they wonder why we “waste their time” by calling to clarify. One example is at the top of my mind when I am writing this. A doctor at a local medicenter type office that is notoriously busy scribbled out a prescription for a blood pressure medication for a patient. The writing was so bad that we (all 4 of us working that day) couldn’t make out whether it was 10mg or 20mg. The first digit was a squiggly line that could have been either, and since the patient was new to our pharmacy, we couldn’t even hazard a guess by comparing the written RX to what was on file. Phoning the office is a lost cause. They put you on hold for at least 15 minutes before they will even ask who is calling. “Blahblah’s clinic, hold!” click. Generally writing up a fax cover and sending it off will get a response….. in a week.

Anyways, after faxing a copy of the written rx repeatedly and phoning on a daily basis to ask if Dr Scrawl has had a chance to look at our request, we get a phone call. It’s Dr Scrawl himself and the conversation is along these lines:

Dr: So… tell me what you can’t read on this rx?

Pharm:We couldn’t decipher whether this was supposed to be 10mg or 20 mg

Dr: I can’t believe you have wasted MY time by phoning me with this. It’s clearly TEN mg. I took this RX to every other doctor in the clinic AND the pharmacist in the pharmacy next door and they ALL said it was clearly 10mg. Use your heads and stop wasting my time!

(sidenote-all the doctors in this office have equally bad writing, and the pharmacist next door to them would dispense arsenic if they told him to)

The pharmacist who took the call basically said “thank you I will fill 10mg” and hung up and was speechless. If the doctors would take 30 seconds to write each prescription legibly instead of scrawling like kindergarten children, it would save EVERYBODY time… Who wasted the time here?? We did… phoning, holding, faxing, dealing with irate customer who needed their medication and waiting. He did by taking the rx on the go-round of the clinic to see if the other doctors could read it instead of just clarifying it by writing TEN and having it faxed back to us.

On to the reading issue. I cannot count the number of times we have faxed things to doctor’s offices and received a fax back with “ok <insert signature>” Doesn’t matter if we are requesting a simple refill, asking them to submit a special auth to an insurance plan, or have written an essay regarding an interaction, “ok <insert signature>” This means we have to fax them back or phone and say.. “WTF!!!” Welll we don’t really say that, but boy, would I love to!!

One patient I can recall had a long list of medications that she had refilled once every 3 months. The patient would write out the list, take it to her doctor, who would sign the bottom and issue triplicates for the multiple narcotics on the list. What the doctor didn’t pay attention to is the fact that there were several medications listed more than once… there were numerous duplications in drug classifications (who in the world needs 5 different types of laxatives?!) “ok <insert signature>” I guess someone who is taking 1600 oxycontin 80, 400 percocet, and 800 tylenol 4, every 3 months… can’t poop… hell I am surprised she even manages to walk with all those narcs.

Maybe it’s more of spelling problems that peeve me. I am not claiming to be perfect at spelling, nor do I have perfect grammar, but it makes me very irate when I see educated individuals making very simple mistakes. This goes for fellow bloggers, those who comment to them and the general population. I spend a fair amount of my time outside of work online and see many cases of people who would sound incredibly intelligent, if only they would use proper English. It’s very difficult to take someone’s arguments or debates seriously when their spelling or grammar is so horrible, you doubt that English is their primary language.

There are a few reasons I will excuse poor language skills.

1. Having grown up speaking another language and having English as a secondary (or tertiary) language is a good excuse. I know of one gentleman whose native language is not English who can type far more fluently than a majority of teenagers out there, so this really isn’t a valid reason after all. The eduction system in North America really needs to work on enforcing basic spelling and grammar in elementary school.
2. Having poor typing skills is another valid reason. Some people just can’t type to save their souls. These people would benefit from a good spell checker. Some are even built right into the blog sites, or into their web browsers (I love my Firefox!!!). Other times people just type too fast and don’t catch errors. Another example of this is what I like to call “fat finger syndrome”. I sometimes suffer from this when I am very tired, and my fingers hit keys I don’t want them to hit. I wonder why the lettering is worn off my backspace key?
3. Sheer stupidity. This is not an excuse.

There are a few things I find inexcusable when it comes to publishing anything that anyone should be taking somewhat seriously, be it a blog, posting in a forum, or simply writing an email to your friends.

1. Misusing homonyms:- There, they’re, and their; your and you’re; to, too, and two; it’s and its; whose and who’s; you get the idea. This is stuff you should have learned in Grade 3. There is a place, they’re, you’re it’s and who’s are contractions, their, your, its and whose are possessives.
2. Using chat or text lingo in something you want others to take seriously. I don’t care if you have PhD, MD or a million other letters behind your name, if you want me to read it, type out the words. Things like “how r u?” are only acceptable if you are texting me from a cell phone that charges you a buck a letter. To read something like the following excerpt from a blog taken from a medical professional is actually kind of embarrassing.

“if u hav nvr taken it b4 in ur entire lifetime. You, however, would have the answer tho.. or at least in the near future. Its not really my fault when I wun be able to tell you if this medicine will close up ur airways and potentially shut u up forever.”

It’s very hard to take this person’s writing very seriously (even knowing the author is from a non English speaking background)

3. Streetspeak:- by this I mean “gangsta talk”. If you’re not a gangster.. I shouldn’t be hearing you say things like “word up homeboy” and similar phrases. At least in the forum community I frequent, most of the people are white, upper middle class teenagers. None of them are gangsters, gangstas or wiggers, so don’t talk/type like one.

If anyone actually reads this on an ongoing basis, I am sure you could probably find some sort of errors in my logic or in my grammar itself. I am not perfect when it comes to syntax and punctuation and I tend to overuse ellipses… but I like to think that I show that I am an intelligent person by my attention to detail. It’s what makes me a good tech.