A guy is waiting for me before I open the door to the pharmacy. Now I've been down this road before so I try to keep my cool. I ask him how I can help him. He says he's there to pick up a prescription.
I ask for his last name. He mumbles. I can't help myself. I say, "You're mumbling." He tells me his name. I go to the will call shelf. Nothing there. I log in to the computer and load the software. I find out there is nothing in the computer that says this guy has a prescription waiting.
I tell him there's nothing here waiting for him.
"I know. It's not filled yet."
WTF?
I can't help myself: "You let me look on the shelf and load up the computer program KNOWING that nothing was waiting for you?"
Flustered and obviously feeling stupid, he says, "I thought it might be ready. It's supposed to be filled today. The doc wrote on the prescription not to fill it until [Today's Date]."
Again, I can't help myself: "You came to the pharmacy RIGHT at opening... knowing we couldn't fill your prescription until TODAY, thinking it would be ready to pick up?"
"I just thought I'd check," he says.
What a complete buffoon. Seriously, anyone who would do this is a complete idiot.
I tell him I'll have it ready in 30 minutes.
In 22 minutes, he's back, sweating and shaking... every minute until his next hit an absolute nightmare, I'm sure. The med: Oxycodone.
But there's no opioid crisis in 'Merica, folks. Don't worry.
5 comments:
i've seen this in the wild.
We get this all the time and it drives me nuts. We always tell them it will not be ready until 90 minutes after opening. The delivery driver usually arrives at 9:10am and we have a bunch of escripts from the urgent care across the street from us to process first thing every morning, then you get these yahoos who are milling around the waiting area, who say, "Oh, I thought it might be ready when you opened." Uhm, No, now come back when I told you.
What? You don't have pharmacy elves to get those rx's ready overnight? We can only dream...
If we have to order a med for the next day, we tell the patient to come after 3p. Our wholesaler's warehouse in SoCal is 2 counties away. We are one of about a dozen stops on the driver's route. A customer showed up about noon and we told her that our delivery usually arrives between noon and 1pm. She said we should tell the driver to get to the store on time. Well, ok....
Maybe there's a crisis, and maybe not. Is this guy a frequent flyer? Is he bringing multiple 'scripts to you? Does he continually try to refill early?
Just wondering how you decided this guy was an addict, and another of the "crisis" statistics.
Or haven't you heard of the very real condition called "dependence"? It's a sad truth that those who depend on opiate medication for pain control invariably become dependent. Uh, you do know there's a difference between that and addiction, right?
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