"You can't return medication to the pharmacy. I'm sorry. I can give you credit toward a future purchase, however."
"Yes, that will be fine." She hands me a bottle of generic Macrobid that was dispensed to her a few days ago.
"What seems to be the problem?" I ask.
"I'm allergic to blue dye."
I look in the bottle. The capsules are not blue.
"I know they're not blue on the outside, but I opened one of the capsules and there are tiny balls in there. Some of them are blue."
I resist the urge to say, "Tiny blue balls... that's what SHE said!"
I look at the lady. She's wearing a royal blue blouse and has blue eye shadow on her eyes. I open my mouth to say something snarky, but I just sigh and give her the store credit. Choose your battles wisely, friends.
"I only opened one capsule. You can give the rest to someone else. There's nineteen unopened capsules in there."
I shake my head. "No, when we get something back like this it gets destroyed." We always destroy returned medicine, but I admit that I say this because I want them to feel bad about what happened.
She doesn't feel bad. Nope, she just strolls off, credit in hand, with her blue blouse and blue eye shadow.
Just another day at Goofmart Pharmacy.
2 comments:
Holy Cow, you give a CREDIT for unused, returned meds? Why on Earth do you do that? Is it a corporate, keep the pt thing? We give a refund if we've clearly made a mistake, but if it's the doctor's mistake, we do not give any refund/credit and if the pt neglected to tell us something important about her allergies/meds filled elsewhere/neuroses... it's a judgement call really, but I can't imagine trying to keep track of someone's Credits!.
A Northern Pharmacist,
I'm allergic to red dye 40. I can have small doses in medicine. Any significant amount, I'm covered in hives. But, I generally have to ingest it to react. I can wear red lipstick and clothes. I can't put red lotion on my skin though. Just bc she was wearing blue doesn't mean she isn't allergic to red dye.
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