I had this woman in the drive-thru today. She was there to pick up a prescription for her infant daughter that we had gotten probably like 10 minutes prior. Yeah, it’s not ready. But whatever. I have to ask for insurance first anyway and it’s for a baby so whatever, I’ll just rush it through.
So I ask, is there insurance? Because we obviously aren’t going to have insurance on file for a 5-month-old. This is the first time your 5-month-old is getting a prescription.
No. We don’t have it. For your baby. Every person has a separate profile. How would we have your baby’s fucking insurance?
She passes me a card in the drawer, and I go to the computer. I get momentarily tangled in the wires for the keyboard, the telephone, and the scanner. Fml. It takes another minute for me to get untangled and then get to the patient profile. Then I actually look at the card. Wait, what the fuck. Oh, goddammit. This is not fucking prescription insurance.
I’m already exhausted with this woman and her ‘you don’t have it?’
So I go back and I slide the card back and I say, this isn’t actually the correct insurance, do you have prescription insurance?
“No??? This is our only card?”
I try not to kill myself right then and there.
“Okay, this isn’t prescription insurance though. Does anyone else in the family fill prescriptions at this pharmacy?”
“Yeah. My name is [Idiot McStupid].”
I look up Idiot McStupid. Oh look it’s [ConcernBlemish]. The same insurance that this exact situation always happens with because it requires a separate card for prescription benefits and this is just TOO MUCH!!! for the common-denominator brain to handle.
“Yes, okay, looks like the insurance is [CONCERNBLEMISH], so I can copy that over to [your poor poor child]’s profile.”
Mind you, she’s also rolling her window up after every sentence. Shoot me.
I copy it over. It all goes through so she only has to pay $2 instead of $20. I do everything for her. She’s clueless and clearly thinks I have an attitude when really I contained myself pretty well for how much I hated her guts. We get the prescription done in 60 seconds. I have someone else ring her out because... ugh.
A lot of the goings-on at my pharmacy lately have been pushing me towards the edge. We’re in horrible shape. We used to be a “sure come on over it’ll be 15 minutes” kinda place. Now 1 hour wait times are a daily occurrence. 2 hours sometimes. Everyone’s miserable. Everyone hates their life. Everyone wants to quit. I’m surprised only 1 person (thankfully a part-timer) has. I don’t want to get into it because I’ll be here for the next few days just trying to list off all the problems. But this story exemplifies why I’m so over retail pharmacy lately. People coming over from the doctor’s office immediately and expecting things to be ready. People not having a fucking clue about their own insurance. People expecting us to hold their hand and wipe their ass for them. I’m so over it. This job would be fine if human beings just had reasonable expectations for what we, the pharmacy, can and should do for them. But they don’t. And they’re terrible. And I don’t like them.
