Ready for a Vacation

At my pharmacy the OTHER pharmacist is the popular guy. He's the one that breaks the rules for people, always has a smile on his face, and gets all the Christmas gifts every year. 

He's also the one that doesn't know much about modern day pharmacy. It took him two years and a threat from The Authorities to finally start giving flu shots. He's the one that ignores the computer when it says "too soon" for narcotics and has accepted a number of prescriptions as legitimate when they were clearly fakes. Among many clinical aspects of pharmacy, I had to explain to him what INR means and why we need to be careful with interactions with warfarin. I've saved a lot of people from serious problems overlooked by Mickey behind the scenes without the patient knowing. I keep to The Code.

And yet after all these years, he continues to slide by without reprimand. In fact, he has the The Authorities pretty snowed in a lot of ways.

I can deal with all that.

But what really, really bugs me lately is when people come in and see that he's not here.

"Where's Mickey?" they ask.

And then it happens. They do it every time. They lift themselves up on their tippy-toes and look over my shoulder, apparently looking to see if I've tied him up and have hidden somewhere in the pharmacy. This has happened so often I'm just thoroughly annoyed.

I'm ready for a vacation.

P.S. When searching Google for an image using the words "Tied Up," you might want to make sure your kids are not in the room. You've been warned.