Impatient patients

[SG15Z]

So I was working in the Pharmacy again (whoo...). This lady drives up to the drive through to drop off a script. Now she's a regular and our wait time is usually an hour or more so she should know this right?

SC: Please tell me the wait is 15 minutes.
Me: *Ha!* More like an hour and a half.
SC: *gives a defeated look* Oh come on can't you do it any sooner.
Me: nope still and hour and a half.
SC: But I'm out of this medication and I'm late for work. Is there any way to get it faster.
Me: No mam it's going to be at least an hour.
SC: Fine I'll take an hour.
Me: At LEAST an hour.
SC: OK be back in an hour.

Ok really, you're gonna negotiate the wait time because you're late for work. Sorry not good enough, if you want to be put in front of the line you're gonna have to be a bit more creative than that. BTW her script got done in an hour and a half just like I said.



Also to the person that decided to skip the drive thru line and get in the second lane (why we have a second lane I'll never know) you're still gonna wait. I'm gonna take care of the people that were here first, so stop trying to get my attention, just wait like everyone else.

[Whiskey]

I'm not following her train of thought there. Shes late for work, implying she's already supposed to be there (therefore on her way to work as to not be even later), so she wants her pills in fifteen minutes. When realizing it's not going to happen, she has an hour to sit around and wait? Or she can go to work late, be there for an hour, then leave again to go pick up her medicine?




Trying to make sense of some customers is impossible.

[bainsidhe]

It's the same as the customers who ask lead time and:

Me: It takes 7 business days to produce XYZ
Customer: So...a week then?
Me: Well, it's 7 business days, so more like a week and a half.

Sometimes it's our customers being sucky and sometimes it's them being....cautiously optimistic?

[alowlypotato]

It's the same as the customers who ask lead time and:

Me: It takes 7 business days to produce XYZ
Customer: So...a week then?
Me: Well, it's 7 business days, so more like a week and a half.

A lot of people really don't get the whole "business day" thing. And a lot think that, if the establishment is open, it must therefore be a business day.

Monday through Friday, people. Always Monday through Friday. A store or bank might be open on the weekend, but that doesn't mean that everything necessary to the operation of that business is also open (generally speaking, something very important related to processing/manufacturing/etc is closed). And that's why the weekend doesn't count.

[SG15Z]

I'm not following her train of thought there. Shes late for work, implying she's already supposed to be there (therefore on her way to work as to not be even later), so she wants her pills in fifteen minutes. When realizing it's not going to happen, she has an hour to sit around and wait? Or she can go to work late, be there for an hour, then leave again to go pick up her medicine?




Trying to make sense of some customers is impossible.

Yeah I didn't understand her logic either.

[EvilEmpryss]

Late for work? Probably not. It was likely an excuse to try to get your sympathy and bump her to the front of the line.

Unless the lack of medication is life-threatening (and I'm pretty sure the Pharms would fill it quick if it was), if you're late for work you drop off your 'scrip and pick it up on the way home. It will be there when you get off work. Honest.

I wonder if SCs treats pharmacy workers bad because they know they can generally get away with it with impunity. Consider: you tick off a waiter, and you might get bodily fluids in your food. Pharmacists would get serious legal ass-whoopage if they intentionally fouled a 'scrip fill... Federal ass-whoopage, I believe. Does anyone think pharmacy SCs are worse (or more frequent) than others?

[RxBoy]

Ah yes, we get impatient people all the time. People come in to get a script filled and when we tell them the wait time they ask if they can get it sooner. Don't they realize the whole reason that the wait time is long is because there lots of other people also waiting who got there before them?

We try to encourage people to call in refills 24 hours ahead of time, but for some reason most of the people don't get it. They come in the store and hand me an empty bottle and then get upset because I tell them it's going to be a 30 minute wait. Nine out of ten times the reason for the long wait is because people bring in tons of refills and they wait in the store for them. If everyone called in their refills one day early there would be virtually no wait at all.

[EvilEmpryss]

Oh, so it's everyone else's fault that the SC has to wait, because if *all of them* had called in their 'scrips then the SC wouldn'thave to wait?

[AccountingDrone]

Ah yes, we get impatient people all the time. People come in to get a script filled and when we tell them the wait time they ask if they can get it sooner. Don't they realize the whole reason that the wait time is long is because there lots of other people also waiting who got there before them?

We try to encourage people to call in refills 24 hours ahead of time, but for some reason most of the people don't get it. They come in the store and hand me an empty bottle and then get upset because I tell them it's going to be a 30 minute wait. Nine out of ten times the reason for the long wait is because people bring in tons of refills and they wait in the store for them. If everyone called in their refills one day early there would be virtually no wait at all.

I absolutely adore CVS and the online refill request ... and once I get stabilized on the cardiac meds, I will be getting them autofill/delivered instead of picking them up.

[South Texan]

Also to the person that decided to skip the drive thru line and get in the second lane (why we have a second lane I'll never know) you're still gonna wait. I'm gonna take care of the people that were here first, so stop trying to get my attention, just wait like everyone else.

YOU ARE MY HERO!!!

Nothing irks me at Walgreens than waiting patiently for my turn behind the one car in front of me in the drive through only to have someone drive up to the second lane and be waited on before me.

[RxBoy]

Oh, so it's everyone else's fault that the SC has to wait, because if *all of them* had called in their 'scrips then the SC wouldn'thave to wait?

Basically, yes. When they see that they only have a few days supply left, they can call in their refill. Then the next day they can walk right in and pick it up. Then they would be bypassing all the SC's who choose to come in to order their refill and then have to wait.

[SG15Z]

Basically, yes. When they see that they only have a few days supply left, they can call in their refill. Then the next day they can walk right in and pick it up. Then they would be bypassing all the SC's who choose to come in to order their refill and then have to wait.

Exactly. If everyone just dropped off their scripts and picked them up a day later and don't come earlier then you said you would come, their would be no wait time. But alas that would require SCs to think.

[draco664]

Exactly. If everyone just dropped off their scripts and picked them up a day later and don't come earlier then you said you would come, their would be no wait time. But alas that would require SCs to think.

No, that would require SCs thinking like a smart person.

Dropping off the script and picking up the meds a day later is, in SC land, *A WHOLE DAY WAIT*.

Whereas if they go in and hand over the script to pick up, they only have *A HALF HOUR WAIT*.

It's the same sort of thinking where SCs vote down a $20 tax decrease because *someone else* is getting $40. They'd rather be worse off, so long as everyone else is just as worse off.

[LadyAndreca]

At first, I didn't know I could get my scripts auto-refilled at my pharmacy. I'd just drop it off, shop for groceries and such, and come back when I was done to pick it up. But the pharmacy was always constantly low on my medication, once even being completely out of it, so one day I did something astonishing...I asked. Lo and behold, when I asked if there was a way to ensure my medication would be in stock when I needed it, the pharmacists were suddenly extremely helpful and got me on auto-refills and set up so my husband was authorized pick it up if necessary.

But then, I'm not a SC. I'm willing to make a little effort in the short term to make things easier overall. And if it hadn't been possible, I'd've just kept making sure I got my refills before my old one ran out.

[EvilEmpryss]

At first, I didn't know I could get my scripts auto-refilled at my pharmacy.

When you get a prescription filled at the Veterans Administration pharmacy, you get a notice telling you to call the refill line immediately to refill your prescription. That never made sense to me: if I just got a 3-month supply, why should I call to have the next 3-month supply sent to me? I don't need six months of meds laying around.

I just found out yesterday (after 6 YEARS of using the VA pharmacy service) that calling in my prescription won't cause it to be dispensed immediately, but rather sets it in the system to be mailed to me when I'm due to run out. All this time I've not used the phone refills because the note about refills isn't clear about when the meds will be shipped.

I also found out I have the ability to order refills over the internet... *much* easier for me than the phone system, since it shows all the active 'scrips I have, their refills, and when I last filled them. Efficient, easy, and I don't have to leave the house and wait in lines.