Thursday, June 9, 2016

Logic Escapes the Minds of The Authorities

One fine afternoon our Regional Pharmacy Manager came into the pharmacy and demanded to know who worked the previous day.

 I told her that it was me and the technician with me.

 She then demanded to know WHY we had not scanned any prescriptions on the previous day.

Like most pharmacies, we have a scanner which we use to scan the label and the medication when filling. It gives you a verbal announcement that you've chosen the right medication and shows this visually on the display. At Goofmart, all technicians scan when they're filling and the pharmacists re-scan in addition to both doing visual verification of the NDC.

 This is a procedure all technicians and pharmacists do a thousand times every day without thinking about it. It is as deeply ingrained in us as eye blinking.

 And yet here is the RPM thinking we didn't scan ONE SINGLE prescription all day long on the previous day. She just accepted her computer report as accurate and now she was here to give us the inquisition for our insubordination.

 "I don't know what you're talking about," I said. "We scanned all day yesterday, just like we always do." As I'm saying this, the technician and me are filling prescriptions, SCANNING as we always do, right in front of the RPM.

 I'm stunned. Stunned that such a report would exist. More stunned that the RPM would just take it as Gospel and wouldn't even think that something else might be wrong with the reporting software or equipment.

 "Well I have to tell the Pharmacy Director something," she said. "What should I tell him to explain WHY you didn't scan anything yesterday?"

 Wow these people are stupid, I thought to myself. I told her again that we scanned everything all day long just like we always do. The technician swore to her that I wasn't lying. 

 I told her to tell the Pharmacy Director that there must be something wrong with the equipment or the software and to call the IT people. If he isn't satisfied with that, have him call me.

 I never heard any more about it. But really, seriously, what a bunch of imbeciles.

 This blog post originally appeared HERE.
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1 comment:

  1. AnonymousJune 9, 2016 at 7:12 AM

    Metrics, the bane of my retail existence. Almost as bad as incompetent corporate flunkies looking to make their annual bonus on the backs of Rphs and techs.

    Clearly, common sense goes out the door once you walk through the doors of corporate america. A sane person would have taken a few moments to think about just how insane it would be to do something like that. It's like deciding not to answer a single phone call for an entire day. Or just deciding, screw it, I'm not going to verify a single Rx today but I'll let people pick them up anyways.

    Clearly something that could have been cleared up with a short email or phone call but instead, a face-to-face confrontation because, clearly, the 'staff' was at fault, not corporate.

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