Your Complaint Deserves a Complaint

My boss recEIved a customer complaint about our pharmacy shortly before I went on leave. I thought it was somewhat humorous, so I'll share it with you. I've typed it word for word, letter for letter. I left out three words, however, and replaced them with "*****". Here it is:

I went the walmart pharmacy in ***** ***** located on ***** to get a perscription that had a free trial I was suppose to recieve thirty pills in that bottle I recieved ten. The free trial was good for only one time. I tried to get some help from that pharmacy why this was the case and they couldn't and wouldn't take the time to help. For a place that prides themselves in giving you the best deals and saving you the most money on perscriptions. They have costed me over three hundred dollars. And from the sounds of it other people have had issues as well when I have talk about that walmart they tell me they never shop there from the lack of help they recieve. I know you are busy, but would appreciate the oppurtunity to further discuss this matter and hopfully come to some kind of resolve. Thank you for your time.

Ok, so that was it. Besides the grammatical and spelling errors, this post is funny because she's complaining about something that's not true. Big surprise, eh? The free trial was for a 30-day-supply, and ten tablets constituted a 30-day-supply in this case. If two pharmacy technicians and the pharmacy manager trying to explain this to you and get you the most free tablets you're entitled to qualify as "couldn't and wouldn't take the time to help", then I guess we never take the time to help. Also, this was the first time she had ever come to our pharmacy, and I saw that she had never filled at a Walmart pharmacy anywhere, so the "they have costed me over three hundred dollars" complaint doesn't make sense, unless she purchased groceries that day that "costed" her that much. These are the people that get me excited to return to work.

I can't fill this Rx, but how about I get your wife fired instead?

As you can see, it's been a while since I've posted anything. Many of you know why I've been busy, but I've decided to post a little story that happened a year or two ago. This is a long post, so get comfy.

A Hispanic man (a regular at our pharmacy) handed me a prescription for some atenolol, which is a blood pressure medication. I noticed that in the teeny tiny space between the line with the man's name and the word "atenolol", there was something scribbled, in different handwriting than the rest of the atenolol prescription, that read "Oxycontin 80mg, #100". Hmmm. I looked at this prescription, then up at the silly man, then back at the prescription. I was sort of in shock, because usually when I receive a fake prescription, the perpetrator makes a much better attempt to pass off something like this as legitimate. For example, they usually try to write the fraudulent medication in the same color pen and in the same style of handwriting as the rest of the prescription. This man did not. They usually try to fit the name of the fake medication into an area of the prescription paper where there's a reasonable amount of room. This man did not. They usually do a little research and attempt to write a complete prescription with directions for a USUAL dose of the medication. This man did not. They don't try to write themselves a prescription for a C-II on the same paper as another medication (which was against federal law at the time). This man did.

Normally in a fake prescription situation, I tell the patient that I need to contact the doctor to verify something about the prescription before I can fill it or give it back to them. Then they normally say that it's no big deal and that they'd like to have the prescription back and they'll just come back later. I normally don't end up giving it back. This was not a normal situation, however, so when the man kindly requested that I give him back the prescription because he didn't have time to wait, I gave it back to him. Why? I just couldn't bring myself to turn in such a stupid person to his doctor and/or the authorities. It was obvious he wasn't the mastermind of some prescription drug fraud ring. I knew he wouldn't be able to get it filled somewhere else either. Also, the urgency in his voice in his eyes told me that he knew that I knew he had done something fairly stupid. I thought he learned his lesson, and I sent him on his way.

A few days later I received a phonecall from a doctor's office. The young woman on the other end was calling in a prescription for a person whose name was very familiar to me. Who do you think it was for? She called in Lortab in a fairly large quantity, but the directions seemed fine and I'd talked to this girl at this particular office before. I wasn't alarmed, but let's review what I'd normally do in this situation. I would call the doctor's office back to verify the prescription, since it was for a controlled substance. In this case, I did just that. I asked for the girl that had called the prescription in. She was at lunch and had been for a while. Isn't that the kind of employee you'd want? She was working hard through her lunch break. Anyway, the nurse I talked to asked if she could take a message. I said I needed to verify a prescription. She wasn't able validate the information right then, but she took down the information and said she'd call me back when she could. I received a call from the doctor himself about five minutes later. He sounded upset. He wanted me to explain to him what had happened. I could give you the details of our long conversation, but I'll just tell you the condensed version (now that I've already typed this novel). The man that had written his own Oxycontin prescription and had this Lortab called in for him was the husband of the girl who had called in the prescription. The girl had asked the doctor if he would authorize her to call in a refill for her husband's atenolol, and he reluctantly gave his permission. After she spoke with the doctor, she had a memory lapse on the way to the phone and had called in Lortab. Anyway, the doctor kept saying to me, "How could she do this? This is the one thing I stress in my office --- honesty! I tell everyone the day they're hired how important honesty is. Why would she do this to me?"

A week or so later the Oxycontin/Lortab man came into the pharmacy with a prescription for some Paxil (an anti-depressant). He explained that things had been hard lately since his wife lost her job. Interesting. I didn't tell him that I had helped with that.