Consider the following interactions with customers. And the post title proposed by a friend/co-worker that knows I blog.
– An elderly man handed the word Alleviate that he clipped from a magazine ad – think old fashioned ransom notes where all the words are cut out from magazines – to me, wondering if we had the product in stock. I asked the manager on duty. She stated, “that’s not a product it is a word; a part of a sentence.”
– When I asked for an ID for a Pseudoephedrine purchase, the customer stated she had a Drivers License from every state and for me to pick one.
– A man slides a piece of masking tape toward me, asks me to identify the microscopic bugs he collected from his body attached to the tape, then wonders what he can take to get rid of the bugs. Or, better yet, if smoke bombing his house would help.
Of course there’s more. There always is when you work retail. David Letterman had his ‘Stupid Human Trick’ segment. Wal-Mart has that YouTube video of shoppers in their pajamas or whatever the hell it is. The list goes on. But to blog about it regularly … . No thanks.
With pharmacy, the majority of the interactions are funny, often hilarious, but only to the personnel involved. The customer really is serious and/or that fucking stupid. When the anecdote is told out of context, the humor falls flat. The statement – ‘you had to be there’ – always resounds.
A perfect example is my book My Life As A Retail Pharmacist – A Fictionalized Memoir. Yes, that shit really happened. No, I didn’t get fired – yet. And No, I don’t have 4.4 million dollars. But the uber-bitch really did butt into a transaction with a patient and I seriously did lose it. It bothered me for two years before I formulated a way to conceptually present the situation in a readable fashion. Then it took another two years to write about it. That’s why I formatted the book as I did. Limiting the pharmacy scenes allowed for a more enjoyable end product. Or so I’ve been told.
As for this blog, it took a while to find it’s rhythm. There are numerous other pharmacy websites and blogs that ‘blog about that’, presenting everyday situations on a humor intended basis. Personally, I work that. I don’t want to read about it on my down time.