Even on my day off….
Yesterday was my day off. Most times on my day off I try to relax and totally avoid the pharmacy, but yesterday I decided to go visit my former co worker at the store I used to work for. We still talk a lot and I was really sad to leave there, because I really liked most of the people who worked there. Anyways.. I get there and there are 2 pharmacists and 3 techs standing around in the front, and not being able to work. It seems that their computer system fried, and the IT guys were having a hell of a time getting things back up and running. Usually having one of the computers go tits up wouldn’t be much of a problem, because there are 5 or 6 or 7 computers in each pharmacy. The problem was…. it was their mainframe computer… bad news. None of the satellite computers could be fired up or used, because it was the one with all the network connections and all the data on it that fried.
In any case.. they were mostly just standing around… doing the manual things they could do , scribbling down script numbers and names etc and trying to be polite about the fact that there wasn’t really much they could do to help anyone much at that moment, could you please call back in a few hours.
So my friend and I went for lunch, came back, at which point she offered to go home for the day, rather than just stand around holding the counter up. She was asked to stick around, so that once the computers were back up and running they could fire through as many of the stack of requests that had built up during the day as she could. At this point a gentleman walked up to the till and the conversation went sort of like this
Man: I’m here to pick up a prescription that I called in this morning.
Tech: I’m sorry, sir, our computers have been down all day, and we haven’t been able to access any information to fill any refills
Man: well, I called it in… we’re leaving on vacation tomorrow morning at 7.
Tech: I am really sorry, but we
Man(getting angry): I need my refill..
Tech: I understand, sir, we have had IT working on is since..
Man: this is why the world shouldn’t be computerized. Who’s your manager.
Tech calls manager
Man (very angry now): Why can’t I get my medication???
Manager: (goes through the whole apology again )
Man: don’t you have back ups??? This is ridiculous!!!
Manager: Of course we have data back ups, sir, but a back up isn’t going to help us if we don’t have a computer to plug it into. You’ll have to be patient ro come back tomorrow.
Man : but we’re leaving at 7 am tomorrow morning.
Morale of the whole story, in my opinion… think ahead… don’t leave your refill requests until the DAY BEFORE YOU LEAVE!!!He’s lucky that the medication wasn’t something unusual or very expensive that the pharmacy doesn’t keep in stock and have to order. People should pre plan.. this is medication we are talking about…. it’s YOUR LIFE!! We are not your babysitters. If you need medication to survive and you are going somewhere.. give us some notice and you won’t have a problem. Make sure you have refills before you go to Zimbabwe for a month. Don’t come to us the morning of your Remicade infusion and just HOPE we have it in stock..