This guy will make your husband look like THE BEST EVER!

I didn't help this fellow, but I heard him. I heard him all too well. He walked up to the window to drop off a prescription for his wife. It is standard procedure to ask for the date of birth of the person for whom the prescription is written, so my technician asked, "What is her date of birth?" Irritated, he replied, "I don't remember. How would I know something like that!?" My technician asked, "Well, can you remember what month? Can you guess a general range of dates? We just need the birthday to verify the patient." Even more irritated, he shouted, "I don't know! You figure it out!"

We have a lot of husbands come in who have a hard time remembering their wife's birhday, but they try. Oh how they try! It's one thing if your husband forgets your birthday. It's another thing entirely when he refuses to remember/know it and acknowledge the importance of it. So today, let's give our husbands a break, unless your husband is this guy. Then you have my permission to kick him in the shins.

If You Steal, Run Away

A man picked up and paid for 3 prescriptions for his wife, and before he left he decided to stop off in the men's restroom, leaving his cart (with the medications) just outside. A young whipper-snapper saw an opportunity to steal some medications, so he covered them with a piece of paper he had in his hand, looked all around, and scooped up the medications with the paper on top. He went out to his vehicle, rifled through the bags, decided there was nothing of interest, and brought the medications back into the service desk. After this, he continued to shop in the store. Well, our store has cameras. How about that? The police came, identified him, and took him away! Then the police officer came to the pharmacy for some information. A cashier said to me, "Hey, 'the law' is here to talk to you." I thought she was joking, because as I looked out, I saw the head of a 12-year-old wearing a baseball cap that said "police". As I came around the corner, I was tempted to say, "Hey, great costume." I realized he was an actual police officer for our little town, so I helped him out with his request to get a cost on the medications that were taken. I also made sure no tablets had been removed from the bottles. I noticed one of the medications was diazepam, generic for Valium. Usually when a doctor prescribes a brand name, it'll say the generic name on the label, and then underneath it'll say it's a generic for whatever brand was prescribed. In the case of the Valium, the brand wasn't prescribed. Just diazepam was written, so the poor thief didn't realize he had 100 generic Valium tablets in his possession for a brief time. HA! He brought them back. HA HA! Bail set at $600. HA HA HA!

So, the value of stolen medications: 50 dollars
Value of stolen medications if sold on the street: hundreds of dollars
Paying 600 dollars bail because you forgot to run away: priceless.

More Of The Same

I'm deciding to share an example of something that happens to me pretty much every day. A customer tells me something is true, I tell them it isn't true, they tell me it is, I tell them it's not....etc. It's sometimes the other way around. Anyway, a woman came to pick up a prescription for a friend, and it wasn't ready because no prescription was even dropped off. She left, and about 20 minutes later I got a phonecall from the patient. She was very upset that her prescription for Mobic (which she pronounced "mo-beek") had not been filled, since it had been dropped off by a male friend earlier that day. Sometimes (1 in 5,000) we lose a prescription that's dropped off. I told her I'd look through the pile of prescriptions from the day and that I'd check with my staff to see if it had been misplaced. I asked her about what time her friend dropped it off, and she said, "Oh, it was around 2:00 or 3:00." That gave me an idea of where in the stack to search; however, I found nothing. I took her off hold and told her that we definitely did not have a prescription. She said, "That's not true. It was dropped off, but actually it was around 4:00 or 5:00." I searched again, but still came up with the same result. I informed her of this, and she said, "That's just ridiculous. It was dropped off! I know it was, because I specifically called around 3:00 to ask if it was ready and if it was a narcotic." I said, "Wait, I thought it was dropped of at 4:00 or 5:00." She said, "Well it was." I was confused. Anyway, I told her I could page the doctor to see if he'd call it in for her after hours, since I absolutely couldn't fill it based on her word. She called about 5 minutes later and chewed out a technician, saying, "This is crap. I switched to you guys from another pharmacy because they always screwed up my stuff. I'm gonna tell everyone you lost my prescription." Then she asked to talk to the manager (which was me), so I picked up the phone to tell her again that we had nothing for her. I asked if her friend remembered the person who helped him at the drop-off window. He couldn't remember. So, I said, "Was it a short woman with long black hair and glasses?" She asked him and he suddenly remembered that's who it was that had helped him. That's interesting, since we don't employ anyone that looks like that. I told her once more that we'd just have to wait and see if the doctor was going to be nice enough to phone in a prescription. Well, the doctor did call, we got the prescription ready, and the patient herself came in to pick it up. Now, it took a lot of guts for her to tell me what she told me upon her arrival to the pharmacy. She held up a prescription for Mobic and said, "This was in my truck the whole time. I'm so sorry." Yeah you're sorry.