I liked being a pharmacy technician, but I didn't like everything that every customer did.
A woman once brought in a prescription for an antibiotic for her child. She left the prescription at the counter and then walked around the store while we filled it. Her child had Medicaid, and something was wrong so that the insurance wasn't working to pay for the prescription.
The cost of the prescription without insurance was almost $20. When the woman walked to the counter again, she was holding cigarettes that she wanted to pay for at the pharmacy register, with the prescription. When she found out that the insurance wasn't working, she didn't take the prescription. She put a $20 on the counter, paid for the cigarettes, took her change, and left the store.
Maybe she felt that she needed the cigarettes before she could deal with calling Medicaid to ask why the prescription wasn't being paid for. Maybe she went back to the pharmacy at another time and bought the prescription. However, a prescription for an antibiotic means that the patient for whom it's prescribed has an infection, and the sooner that you treat an infection, the sooner the patient stops being sick.
It doesn't often happen to me that I'm so angry that I don't talk about something at all for a long time. Everyone who has read my blogs knows that I don't tend to be inarticulate when I'm angry. I was so angry at that mother that I didn't talk to anyone about what she did, for months after that incident.
Another incident that I'll never forget was when a father brought in a prescription for medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, for a child who wasn't older than 6. The first thing that you have to ask people when they bring in a prescription is the date of birth of the person for whom the prescription is written.
The father didn't know his daughter's birthdate. He had to call the mother to ask her what it was. Who had the attention deficit problem?
Copyright L. Kochman, June 27, 2017 @ 1:28 p.m.
