The Oh So VERY Important Conference Calls

Place: Goofmart Pharmacy
Time: Opening

If you're a pharmacist or pharmacy technician, YOU KNOW how critical opening is to any retail pharmacy. There's a stack of reports, a queue of scripts to process, and quite probably a pile of labels of medications to fill from the previous day. And in most cases... a line of people waiting for service.

OPENING is not the time to deal with a conference call.

And yet, there she was was, our illustrious RPM, requesting us to call in for a conference call right at the opening bell. You know the time... when the Zombies are looming around the pharmacy, dragging one foot, waiting for you to open so you can fill their narcs that have printed "DO NOT FILL UNTIL [today]" plastered all over them. 

And then there's the people who used the texting service or called the dial in number sometime in the night and punched in their Rx number (and were texted back or told that their prescription wouldn't be ready until a couple of hours AFTER opening) who are out there with the Zombies. 

OPENING is a magic time, not much different than CLOSING time. The twelve or fourteen hours in between opening and closing won't do. No, we MUST conduct our pharmacy business at these two times. A close third is LUNCHTIME because no one would go to the pharmacy at lunchtime, would they?

So I dialed into the conference call, punched in the secret code to get in, and listened so very intently as the Zombies paced back and forth. And there she was, our illustrious RPM, spending the first FIVE MINUTES of the conference call talking about her daughter's volleyball tournament coming up the following weekend.

No, I'm not kidding you. She wasted FIVE MINUTES of our precious time talking about that. I was stunned, almost catatonic like the Zombies bumping into each other just outside the gate waiting for their narcs. Surely, surely there was something incredibly important about to be discussed in this conference call. 

And then, for all my hoping, NOPE, nothing was said that was of any value, whatsoever to the normal operation of the pharmacy. Nothing. There was nothing in the phone call that mattered to anyone in this entire universe. It was a complete waste of time. WHAT A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME!