Chapter 1: He can read minds. No really!
On a slower day in the pharmacy we were standing behind the counter having a chat. It was just myself and the two technicians I was working with. It was most likely a Friday evening. Anyhow, the technician was in the middle of telling a story. Just then a real beauty of a gentleman walks around the corner.
Now, I’m not a profiler, but nine times out of ten, when I see a person walking towards me with a dishevelled “I just woke up in the gutter down the street” kind of look I brace myself for what comes next, because it usually ends up with the whole “Tylenol #1 or Gravol” question. Anyhow, the gentleman who strolled around the corner had just this look. Just as he came around the corner the technician said, as a part of his story “and so I told the guy I could read his mind”. Mr. Shitty pants thinks he’s really cool so he says to the technician “Ok, if you can read minds, why am I here?”
Without hesitation the technician looked at him and said “You want a bottle of 200 generic acetaminophen with codeine”.
The guys face goes white… “How did you know?”…
Needless to say I was rolling around on the floor laughing my ass off.
Chapter 2: Bad Timing
During my internship in my fourth year of pharmacy I was working a night shift with my preceptor. At around 9:30pm or so this rather stunning young lady came stomping down the aisle with a prescription in her hands and a rather pissed off look on her face.
She slaps down the script: “Azithromycin 1 g stat”… aaaah Chlamydia, what a great disease.
Anyhow, I take the prescription from her and tell her it will be just a few minutes. I go up and get everything ready and chat with my preceptor about what I am going to counsel the young lady on, etc.
I walk back down to the waiting are and hand her the prescription and proceed to counsel her “Take all four tablets at once… blah blah blah”. When I’m done counselling her I ask if she has any questions, at which time she snaps.
Her: YA, I’ve got a question for you. Why are all men dirty pigs?
Me: ummm
Her: My boyfriend was screwing around on me and now he gave me a goddam STD from that skanky whore he’s been banging. I already chucked all his shit out of the house, it’s laying on the front lawn. When he comes home he better not come in the house or I’ll cut his balls off
At this point she stormed off. I stood there stunned for a second and my preceptor just had a laugh. I was just about to step back up into the dispensary when my preceptor whispered “She’s coming back”.
I went back down to the counter and asked her if there was anything else I could help her with. She told me she was sorry for blowing up on me and that she had just needed to vent to someone. I told her it was ok and that I imagined it was a little stressful. The next exchange stunned me, here is what was said next:
Her: Anyways, you’re new in town, did you just start here?
Me: Yep, last week, I’m doing my internship here.
Her: You should give me your phone number; we can go out for drinks some night. As you probably guessed, I’m single now.
Me: (at this point I didn’t know what to say, because a woman who konws I know has an STD is asking me out) Uhhh, I’m only here for 2 more weeks doing my internship then I’m moving back to Saskatoon to finish school.
Her: Oh, well, make sure you come out to the bar on Saturday; I’ll be there with some girlfriends. I’ll buy you a drink and make sure we show you a good time and see if we can’t convince you not to move back.
At this point she turned around and walked away and left the store. My preceptor and I stood there stunned and then she looked at me and said “I guess she likes you, give her a week and she’s good to go”. I stayed as far away from that bar as possible.
Chapter 3: For a newspaper? Seriously?
I was working one day in Calgary. It was not a particularly busy day, and the technician and I were just moving things along. At one point I was behind the counter on the phone answering a question from a patient while the technician was receiving a prescription from another customer at the drop-off counter. As I’m talking with the patient an elderly gentleman (mid 70’s) is hurrying down the aisle waving a news paper at me with an angry look on his face. He comes to the till and shouts at me “Get over here now!” and points at me. I covered the receiver up on the phone and told him I would be with him as soon as I was done with the phone call.
I heard him mutter some other obscenity and he waved the newspaper at me and kept talking so I just turned my back to him, now facing my technician, and kept speaking with the person on the phone. The technician suddenly looked at me wide eyed with this “WTF” look on her face and I wondered what was going on. Then it happened. I felt a very forceful tap on my right shoulder. I turned around and was standing face to face with the little old man. He had walked behind the till and let himself into the dispensary. Very calmly I asked the woman on the phone to hold for just a moment.
Before I go any further I will say one thing. I’ve only ever actually lost my mind and snapped once in my pharmacy (this was it). I’ve gotten irked and made some snide and smart ass comments on occasion (i.e. daily) but I’m generally a very calm guy.
Anyhow, I turned around and just lost my mind on the guy, asking him what was so goddam important that he thought he had to let himself into the pharmacy, to which he replied:
“I bought that copy of the Globe and Mail at the front and I wanted the Calgary SUN and that girl at the front told me I had to come back here to get a refund.”
Now this made it worse, for some reason this ass thought a refund on a Globe and Mail was of earth shattering importance. I reached in my pocket, took out a $2.00 coin and told him to get the Hell out of my store. He said, very snidely “I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry” to which I replied “Don’t give me some half-assed apology, I better not every see your impatient ass in here ever again”.
I think I handled it quite well.
Chapter 4: There’s no way he’s going to come back here… WTF, here he comes!
One night a particularly grubby looking guy plops himself in front of me and shows me this prescription:
Oxycontin, 40mg
Take 1 tablet twice daily
Give: 120 tablets
I could immediately tell the prescription was a forgery. This dude obviously had stolen the physician’s triplicate prescription pad. He then says to me “Do you have this in stock because I was just at the pharmacy across the street and they don’t”. This of course means the other pharmacist recognized the forgery as well. Quickly I said “No, but if you like I can order them for tomorrow”. To which he says he would try a couple of other pharmacies instead. I told him I would order them anyhow if he liked, but to do that I would need to set him up a file.
Now, this scumbag was smarter than most. A lot of idiots, when they forge prescriptions, get greedy and will write stupid shit like “give 1200” or write ridiculous instructions like “Take 1 tablet every 30 minutes”. He wrote for 120 tablets, and the directions weren’t ridiculous.
Anyhow, I convinced the guy to let me set him up a file. I got his Driver’s license number, his health number, his address and his phone number. At that point he left. Once he was gone my technician said to me “There’s no way that dude is coming back here tomorrow”.
The next day I did the standard call the doctor, confirmed it was forged, no I didn’t fill it and then I notified the police about what had happened. Pretty straight forward. At around 7pm the next night guess who comes traipsing down the aisle? You guessed it, Mr. Scumbag. The tech starts freaking out “Oh no, he’s back, what are we going to do”. I just told her “don’t worry, I’ve got this.
He asked me if I had the stuff. I said I did, but it would take 20 minutes to get it ready because we were busy. He said no problem, handed me the prescription and left. As soon as he was out the door I called the Police and told them to meet the store manager at the back door, and that I had told the guy it would be 20 minutes so they had better hurry.
In about 10 minutes the guy comes back and sits down in the waiting area. Of course, it’s not busy, and now I don’t know how to stall him. I just had the tech pour out and count tablets repeatedly from the same bottle, while I would randomly call out names for prescription pick-up and then look puzzled when the people never showed up. All the while Mr. Scumbag sat there with a smirk on his face already counting the money he was going to make selling the stuff. Finally the phone rang and it was the manager. The police were in the back. He showed them the surveillance camera so they knew what he looked like. I saw them coming down the aisle. Thankfully Mr. Scumbag was sitting with his back to them. The one officer pointed at him, I nodded my head and the officer then said “Excuse me, Mr. Scumbag”. The guy, still oblivious, turned his head. He then turned back and just frowned. I smiled and just looked at him as the officers asked him to stand up and they cuffed him. I gave them the forged prescription and he was on his way to the big house.
Funny thing is, he never showed up for his court date (which of course I was summoned to) so I never got to see him again.
J
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