I think the rain makes people cranky.
After a gorgeous, hot summer, the recent turn of the weather to drab, gray and rainy must have made people cranky. Summer brings the typical things like people asking endlessly where to find the sunscreen (turn around and check out the HUGE DISPLAY of sun care products, Skippy); bug spray (that one is a little harder to find, but still right out in the open); or the “best thing for a sunburn” (right beside the sunscreen you should have asked about a few hours ago).
This rain has turned our thoughts to fall. We have to dig our jackets out of the closet. There are large selections of school supplies everywhere (I need an EASY button, dammit). People get cranky.
For example, the gentleman (I use that term lightly) who came in on Thursday wanting “the other half of my medication that YOU PEOPLE wouldn’t give me the last time I was here”. So I check the will-call thinking that we owed him something, and nope, nothing there. I check his file and, of course, the refill was there. I try to fill it and get a rejection from his insurance that it’s too early to fill. I explain to him that his insurance won’t let me bill it, at which point he gets incredibly irate, yelling that we are incompetent and the last time he was here (2 months ago) we wouldn’t give it to him either. He is going away, you see, in a week, and needs his medicine. By our estimation, he should still have at least 40 tablets at home, so.. trying to be pleasant I tell him that it has nothing to do with ME, but the automated computer system at his insurance company that won’t let us do it. Unless you want to pay and submit…
Nope, that isn’t what he wanted to hear. He starts cursing again about how we don’t know what he wants and that he will never fill a prescription at our company again… blah blah blah. I offer to call the plan saying that if he were to give us his vacation dates, we could perhaps get an early release authorized, to which he vehemently declines. Finally, the pharmacy manager comes over after overhearing the whole scenario and offers the same thing to which he also declines in the rudest manner possible. He then declares that we don’t know what we are doing and that 2 months ago when he came with a fresh RX for 6 months worth, we wouldn’t give it to him. No, we can only bill 3 months at a time… according to your insurance.
Anyways.. he came back Friday (my day off) to pick up the pills… I don’t know how the manager got them to go through.. she probably called anyways, or it was 70% through the last fill, but Mr. Grumpy got his meds. Hopefully he DOES take his business elsewhere and someone else can tell him the same thing next time.
Today we had a MISS Grumpy. She called and asked me if, by chance did she have an RX on file for something for her bladder infection. Her doctor ALWAYS gives her a back up because they are recurring. I check the file… no refill on the RX for Cipro we filled for her in May. I offered to pull the original to see if we overlooked the refill. No refill. (we are perfect, afterall…LOL). I put her on hold to speak to the pharmacist, perhaps she can offer another solution. The pharmacist listens.. confirms that no, there was no refill, no she isn’t able to provide an emergency refill on an antiinfective, and maybe Miss Grumpy should stop into a local drop-in clinic.
“But I don’t want to wait 6 hours in a clinic, ” she says. HANGS UP. The pharmacist, thinking she was inadvertently disconnected, tries to call back. No answer. In the meantime, Miss Grumpy has called the store general office and spoken to the Assistant Manager in a very abusive and foul way, who basically tells her that while the pharmacy is part of the company, the pharmacy has it’s own rules , regulations and legislation that it has to follow, which he has no power to override. I love that guy… did I mention that, yet?
We discussed this afterwards… the pharmacist was dead set against giving someone an antibiotic when there are plenty of doctors available on a Saturday afternoon. She is not comfortable with that being outside the scope of her practice. What if it WASN’T a bladder infection? What if the medication made her really sick or masked the symptoms of something more serious (or gave the lady the thought that she didn’t have to go get checked out in case it was something else). Symptoms for bladder infections don’t come on from one minute to the next… if it was that serious.. why didn’t she call yesterday when it was possible for us to contact her physician?
(edit added Aug20/07) Miss Grumpy came back the same night after I had left and had a 2 month old prescription in her hand for the same med (lower dose, longer duration). I guess that was the back up she was talking about her doctor having given her. No apology to either the pharmacist whom she hung up on, nor the Assistant store manager. Today with a new rx for more antibiotics and she was as pleasant as punch. No cursing, rudeness or anything of the like. I guess she realized she screwed up, and hoped we would forgive her faux pas. Forgive maybe, she was probably in pain and irrational, but forget? Not likely. (end edit)
I hope we get a nice Indian summer so people will be happy and joyful again.