Bad Job Theater, Part Two

First- a housekeeping note- the spiffy blog that I read this morning and served as inspiration for Bad Job Theater is Thoughts From The Hold Music and it is well worth the look-see. Thanks for the shout-out, and MAN, when will TN update? I'm getting petulant and whiny too. No Fug Blog, no Tomato Nation, and my favorite shows on TWOP are pretty much over for the season. (All hail Miss Ali!)

Secondly. For the ranting I do about my current boss being flighty, difficult to track down, perpetually late, and usually slack when it comes to providing stuff I need to do my job, the woman can really pick out a Holiday gift. I didn't expect one, because you don't expect stuff from your boss, but damned if she didn't present me with one totally bitchin' pink ipod mini. Now I can listen to that instead of lugging my entire CD library to work. I was flabbergasted by her generosity. I'll hold off on the pepper spray for a little while longer. (Yes, I can be bought.)

On... to Bad Job Theater. Walgreens Style.

Walgreens may try to tell you that with the aid of their stores, your life can get just a little bit closer to "perfect". However, if you work in their stores, you can blow perfect right out your damned ass. I was a pharmacy tech for five months at a Walgreens in Florida. This job actually ties the DMV as being the worst job ever. Imagine if you will, having to deal with angry, sick people all day long, most of whom either don't speak English, or left their brains back on the mainland when they embarked on vacation, or are military and bitchy because TriCare bumped their copay from 0 to 3.00.

On a slow day we served an average of 300 prescriptions on day shift alone. At the first of the month, when medicaid and medicare refills got churned out, we could easily surpass that. That's one prescription every two minutes. That's a shitload of people. And nobody ever wanted to wait. And they alllll thought they were the most important person in the store. Here, go ahead and bitch because we're taking too long, let me just shove some random drug into a bottle and fork it over to you. I hope it kills you, Bossy McShorttemper.

My favorite guy was on medicaid, and HIV positive. We had a lot of clients like that, and did what we could for them. One guy was always completely nasty every time he came in. One Saturday the phones were ringing off the hook, and the pharmacist and I were the only ones on. We were knee-deep in prescriptions and this guy throws a temper tantrum at the registers, wanting his shit. He started yelling about "With all the money we pay you for drugs, you sure as hell could hire more staff" and on and on and on. I apologized for his delay, and told him I'd be right with him. When I got his pills, they were covered by medicaid. As I scanned them out for him, I said "Thank you ever so much for your patience sir, and here are your medications, which you do not actually pay for! Have a pleasant afternoon!" in the most disgustingly sweet voice I could muster. He shut up and left.

When customers weren't screaming at you, coughing or hacking in your face, or trying to weasel extra painkillers out of you (we had a lot of those too) the job did have perks. If you waited on someone really hot, you could find out right away if they had any kind of communicable funk. Otherwise the job kinda sucked. Did I mention the perpetual screaming? And the "I'm not paying THAT" people? (It's obscene what drugs cost in this country, but that's a rant for another day.)

Oh, well, there was one other bright point. It did give me the idea for a totally fabulous band. An all-pharmacist/pharm tech funk band named "Wally and the Ketaconazoles". So named, because Ketaconazole is what they give you when you've got the funk. (Be it yeastie, or otherwise, it's funk) Maybe you just had to be there.


Anyway, despite my quasi-medical background, I did not have the patience for the job. Again, with the screaming. And the slip of a keystroke could kill someone. I don't like working with that degree of accuracy. When the bank job opened up, I took it in a heartbeat. (Gee, daytime hours, great benefits, no weekends, and I get to sit on my butt and surf the net in the drive up all day? No, no, don't let me!)