We bring the FAST and laughs to pharmacy.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Remember When...

* pharmacies used typewriters.

* birth control was expensive at $21.99 per pack.

* albuterol inhalers were $12.99.

* compounding was the only way to make medications.

* everything was cash and carry.

* you were young and happy before retail destroyed all sense of self and worth.

* motrin was the latest and greatest prescription pain reliever.

* brown industrial paper towels were absorbent.....never...

* boards required you to pass a compounding practicum.

* lawsuits were few and far between.

* 100 prescriptions per day was a huge volume.

* we had tech help instead of running the sh*t with 1 RPH and 1 tech for a 500 rx per day store.

* pharmacists were sane.

* the law did not allow us to discuss medications with patients.

* you went to school for pharmacy and didn't end up the "head cashier."

* you went to school for pharmacy because you wanted to help people and ended up being the janitorial/maintenance person cuz you work overnights and apparently have to babysit the day staff who leave food, beverage containers, coffee stains, and paper garbage ALL over the pharmacy but don't clean up after themselves....pigs!

* hand sanitizers weren't sitting out on EVERY available surface of the counter.

* patients were nice.

* welfare had yet to create an elite class of babymakers with no responsibility whatsoever and no respect for others.

* that one douche bag pharmacist was diluting chemotherapy and made us all look bad along with drastically shortening the lives of cancer patients who could have survived.

* nobody had a cell phone in the pharmacy.

* life was SWEET without a double or single drive-thru window. You want fries with that?

* medical office staff weren't total b*tches when you called for an rx clarification (and some docs, nurses, and pa's for that matter.....you know who you are).

* pain management wasn't a lucrative alternative to street dealing.

* there weren't 4 oxycodone related overdose deaths per day in the state of Florida.

* Christmas songs didn't make the muzak worse until after Thanksgiving.

* a pharmacist actually got to sit down uninterrupted for 30 minutes to eat their dinner before it got cold and de-stress before they b*tch slap somebody.

* Marinol was a CII.

* Primatene inhalers were $8.99.

* people were embarrassed to pick up Viagra.

* The minimum dispensing cost was $6.99.

* McDruggie's carried penis vacuum pumps.

* we didn't have touch tone refills and had to talk to EVERY patient for refills.

* people actually went to a primary care physician instead of using the ER as their dial-a-doc.

* junkies were few and far between.

10 comments:

Filet-o-bitch RPh said...

Great post Tasty!

Rachael said...

actually, I don't really remember any of that....

Anonymous said...

Im only 26 but I do remember those days, or maybe it was just the independent I worked for, either way, I long for those days!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I have only been out of school since 1997 and I remember most of those things. How truly sad we have become.

Ardosa said...

i am somewhat saddened about how many times i nodded 'yes'

Grumpy, M.D. said...

Albuterol came in MDI's instead of HFA's.

The Ole' Apothecary said...

...sulfasalazine was salicylazosulfapyridine?

...phenytoin was diphenylhydantoin?

...docusate was dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate?

...Tagamet was the only H2?

...Zomax dominated the NSAID world and was suddenly removed from the market?

..Dimetapp, Actifed, Benadryl, topical hydrocortisone, and Motrin were Rx only?

...you numbered prescriptions with this heavy metal object called a Bates Numbering Machine?

...you could fill a prescription by just typing a label, putting the drug in a vial, figuring a price, and ringing it up for the patient (with nobody else around, total time from receiving the Rx to ringing it up would be faster than fast food)?

...the average retail price for a prescription was $7.00?

...you had to take hours to write up annual prescription receipts by hand?

...cranking (yes, you read that right) your analog cash register during a power failure?

..having hair on your bare skull? (Remember, I'm the OLE' Apothecary!)

Anonymous said...

It wasn't that long ago. (But, haven't there have always been
'junkies', just not as high a survival rate?)

Anonymous said...

How about when you couldn't refill your prescription if you didn't have the number because they were all on pieces of paper in a drawer somewhere and we wouldn't know what it was without it...

(I didn't personally experience this, my prof in pharmacy school told us about it... I thought wow, we'd never fill any refills then!)

Anonymous said...

I may simply be too young of an RPh to remember these times, but two specific ones stand out.

1. Pharmacists were sane. Really? This was a persisting condition, and not just a fleeting grasp at reality?

2. Patients were nice. Haha... That ranks up there with the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and WMD's in Iraq!