We bring the FAST and laughs to pharmacy.

Friday, February 18, 2011

Reminder To Warehouse Employees

Please stop pissing off Banner because "Hulk Smash!" when filling totes.

Thanks!

Monday, February 14, 2011

Showing Some Love

McDruggie's upper management, VPs, and CEO should all be ashamed of yourselves. You treat your store and pharmacy workers no better than if they were in a Chinese sweatshop. For all the massive profit reported for last year what investors are not told is how these "profits" were the result of extensive staffing and product cuts all across the boards. Not a single store was spared along with several upper management and VPs being cut loose with nice shiny silver parachutes.


With all departments' hourly employee cuts and a push for new services given by already overburdened pharmacists it is a wonder that all employees have not walked out. You would have an easier time getting fluffed (I mean frisked) by the TSA, flying to California and having a celebrity lick cocaine out of your butthole than waiting for a pharmacist to check your blood pressure/blood sugar/cholesterol/give a flu shot while attempting to get all their other work done (doctor calls, patient calls, consultations, data/product verification, insurance audits, drug orders, babysitting unqualified/undertrained managers working as technicians,etc) and the other 20 people waiting for the same services ahead of you. I have been told by several pharmacists that patients have walked out because their wait times were unacceptably long (meaning more than 5 minutes because we are an impatient society) and that people are unwilling to pay to have blood sugar/cholesterol measurements taken. They were mistakenly under the impression that those services were being offered for free like the blood pressure screenings for Feb, which patients are now going to expect 24/7 and all of these services are covered at their primary physician visit with one small copay versus multiple copays for different services at the pharmacy. What genius(s) came up with these programs? Maybe you should punch that one (those) in the face(s)...


Other complaints I have heard that are not being addressed by The Suits:

* Unfairness in holiday scheduling.

* The Suits use their blogs to blow smoke up the employees' asses and don't ever directly address ANY issue.


* The store brand Big Flats beer is terrible (watch YouTube reviews and Stephen Colbert's Tip of the Hat/Wag of the Finger segment that starts out talking about British Superman)...Hopefully the wine won't be as bad...


* All employees are treated like thieves under prison guard while at work.


* Having staff meetings when there is not enough staff to bother having a meeting.


* Floater pharmacists feel like they are treated like refugees/thieves/terrorists in every store they work at.


* Super low employee morale.

* Any questions to pharmacy supervisors are met with a standardized "yes man" corporate response.

* Assistant managers are treated like overpaid stock boys.

* Most stores don't have the hours to keep a cosmetician on duty, which is the highest and usually most expensive theft area.

* Under no circumstances is overtime pay okay in any department, even if you are left with only an assistant manager to play cashier.

* Not enough employee hours to properly train new employees in any department.

* Too many/too high performance goals for all departments working with a skeleton crew.

* The inability to meet the needs of all patients/customers due to all aforementioned factors.

* A deep sense of failure at not being able to meet every patient/customer need like they could in the old days.

* Complaints of record profit, execs taking huge salaries/bonuses, but employee retirement match considered too low compared to exec perks.

* Now touted as a "family of healthcare companies" but employees get the shaft when it comes to their healthcare plans and complaints that deductibles/copays are way too high for a healthcare company to justify.

The Suits may not be listening but the bloggers are. I hear others in your situations say "Be happy you have a job in this economy" but the truth is that you could hire on at a direct competitor that may or may not give you the satisfaction you are looking for. There are other job options in retail and non-retail for everyone. All you have to do is look around to see what is available and what you are qualified for. You must choose your path in this life and know that I admire each and every one of you that works like a chicken with it's head cut off because you are the backbone of the corporate machine, whether they appreciate all you do or not.

I am sure that Chuck Sr. is rolling in his grave. McDruggie's used to be a company about the people. I leave you all in the hopes that your corporate paymasters realize what a grave mistake they have made and make a 180 degree turn and come back to the roots of what this corporation stood for: the people!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Pray For Me

I worked at a 24 hour store in a poor neighborhood and was saddened by the lack of personal care. I had a girl call in because she got Suprax for gonorrhea but last time when she had trichomoniasis (a bacterial infection not to be confused with trichinosis which is a parisitic worm usually contracted from eating undercooked pork) she got Cipro. She wondered why the doctor didn't give her the same antibiotic as last time. She wondered why her boyfriend was given Flagyl when she had trich but was not given anything for gonorrhea. She wondered if Suprax would also kill chlamydia. She was happy for the information I gave her but seemed unbothered that this was neither her first nor second bout of venereal disease.



Which made me wonder why she was unbothered by a repeat of festering stinky baby gutter when there are are things far worse than chlamydia that can go symptomless for months or years before you even know there is a problem. Things like human papilloma virus (HPV) that can lead to genital warts, polyps, and cancer. Things like herpes that can infect the eyes, genitals, mouth, and cause blindness to babies during pregnancy (if untreated and in a small percentage of those being treated). Things like human immunodeficiency virus that leave you susceptible to several types of cancer, bacterial infection, fungal infection, viral infection, and horrible side effects from the medications that try to treat it, not to mention how much harder it is to treat the longer it has had to replicate in the body unchecked.



I had another guy who came in for a VD antibiotic and he seemed a bit more concerned and said "I am a nurse, I should know better than this but stuff happens." I chatted with him for a long time and somewhere along the lines church was mentioned so he asked me to pray for him. I don't think prayer is going to clear up your infection otherwise I know a whole bunch of AIDS patients who should be cured but alas religion has failed and chemical science has only fared a smidge better.

The point of all this is: Beyond saving you an embarrassing trip to the doc and the pharmacy for venereal disease, because yes I laugh at each and every unfortunate motherf*cker that comes in for venereal disease after they have left the pharmacy, condoms will save you from most of the horrible and currently impossible to cure sexually transmitted diseases. USE CONDOMS!!!! You can even get them for free from Planned Parenthood and other sexual awareness promoters.