The Pharmacy

I retired from teaching English five years ago. Since then, I’ve had five or six different part-time jobs, but the most interesting has to be as a pharmacy technician for a Kroger Pharmacy. I’m into my fourth year now. As you might expect, I have some stories. Some are listed below.

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Our lead tech once had to answer the phone as a doctor called in her father’s prescription for Viagra. She was also there when he came to pick it up.

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I waited on a patient who picked up Fluconazole, which is for fungal infections. She asked to speak with our pharmacist, who cautiously prepared to give instructions for the usage. “I’m not sure what you’re using it for, but…” She was cut off as the young lady announced far too loudly. “It’s for my vagina!”

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A customer came in and asked our pharmacist if we had any tablets. Well, we have all sorts of pills, capsules, and tablets, so the pharmacist said, “We have a lot of different kinds of tablets. Can you be more specific?” The customer responded, “You know…iPad, Android, Galaxy…”

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At the drive-through at the pharmacy, at times, the line was extraordinarily long. One day a customer pulled up after a long wait and looked at me through the window, standing there in my Kroger pharmacy smock. He said, “I’ll have a venti caramel macchiato, steamed, two shots vanilla, and caramel sprinkles.” I stared at him a moment and said, “This is the drive-through for the pharmacy. We don’t take Starbucks orders.” He said, “Oh, man, I’ve been in this line for a half hour. Can you run down to Starbucks and get it for me?” I said, “Um, no sir. You’ll have to go inside.” It’s worth saying that I’ve also had a person drive up and ask for me to get him some ice cream and beer. I didn’t; however, I did have his cholesterol medicine.

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A lady called one of our techs for help finding a man. She wanted a travel companion and claimed she’d pay for everything. Her only stipulations were he had to be single, couldn’t have tattoos, and with great emphasis, she said he must have “No moostache.”

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I listened in to a conversation with a male customer and our female pharmacist. “Why are my blood pressure pills keeping me from having an erection?” I guess that was a less uncomfortable discussion than the one from the guy from the nudist colony (yes, apparently, there is one in our community). He was picking up his Sildenafil, the generic for Viagra. He told our female pharmacist he called it his “Sildena-feel good.”

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A confused technician, after reading doctor's directions for a prescription for Diazepam, the generic for Valium, asked our pharmacist, “It says here for the patient to insert the pill into her vagina. Is that a thing?” The pharmacist admitted it was unusual, but yes, it was a thing. So the technician said, and I quote, “If she needs a Valium for her va-jay-jay, she needs to take a break.”

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On a rainy, gusty evening, a regular customer pulled up—a customer who always, and I mean always, looked confused. He handed me a written prescription for Hydrocodone for pain. I checked his profile, and he didn’t have any other previous prescriptions for the medicine, so I knew our pharmacist would have to check his history in the database before we went through the process of filling the controlled substance. He asked when he could have it, and I told him we’d need about an hour. He said he wanted it “Now.” I told him that wasn’t possible and there were many reasons. He asked to have his prescription back, so he could go somewhere else. I told him it would probably take longer somewhere else since he was our customer, in addition to having the same issues we had, but he demanded I give him the script back. I shrugged my shoulders and put it in the drawer and pushed it open. He grabbed the paper, and then a tremendous gust of wind blew it out of his hands. We both watched it flutter away into the darkness and pouring rain. He stared at me with his mouth hanging open, that same confused look I was accustomed to seeing. I felt I had to say something, so I said, “I’ll see you in a month, Mr. ______.”

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There used to be a regular customer in the drive-through. He couldn’t hear a word I said, no matter how I said it—even through the phone he could access outside our window. But at the beginning, I didn’t know he was nearly deaf. So the first time, after shouting at him “What is your birthdate...date of birth…the day you were born!?” with no word recognition, I decided to write him a note. I took a white paper bag and wrote in huge letters, “What is your birthdate?” He took the bag from the drawer, looked at it, stretched it as far from his face as he could get it, and finally said, “I can’t see this!” I struggle sometimes to keep my sarcasm to myself, so I said, “You did drive here, didn’t you?” He shouldn’t have. He didn’t hear me. He drove away empty-handed.

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A lady, after waiting quite some time in the drive-through line, finally got up to the window. Obviously, she hadn’t put her car in park because while looking through her purse for her credit card, she managed to step on the gas, and her car shot forward out of view. Immediately, the car behind her pulled up to the window as I stood there stunned from watching her car zoom away. Eventually, she walked up and stood between the new car and the window and dropped her card in the drawer.

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A car drove up. The driver parked past the window, but the back seat window lined up perfectly. He reached down, grabbed the lever for his reclining seat, and dropped backward, nearly parallel with the ground. While lying on his back, he reached across his body and rolled his window down. Straining, he lifted his head, telling me his name and birthdate through his back window. As humorous as that was, it was nothing compared to his efforts to reach from his back, through the window, to place his money into the basket to pay for his transaction, an action only a contortionist could pull off. “I don’t need a bag,” he announced from his prone position. That was nice of him, but he was getting 93 cents in change, and we were out of quarters, so he got nine dimes and three pennies I had to put in a little basket he could only reach because of some miracle of nature. He caught the edge of the basket in his fingertips and carefully swung it through the window, dumping two pill bottles, three receipts, and twelve coins on his face. Sheepishly, he raised his seat back up and drove away.

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A transaction was taking too long for the car next in line, so the driver kindly started honking his horn like an idiot. Well, the passenger in the car at the window turned and flipped off the kind, patient driver behind him and started swearing like “a sailor.” He wasn’t a sailor because had he ever been in the military, he’d have died in action. The dumb passenger climbed out of his passenger door and continued to swear at the honker, who incredibly told him to get back in his car before he shot him. Yes…true story. Dumb Not-a-Sailor started yelling, “Go ahead and shoot me. I dare you.” What? Why? I had to ask the customer I was waiting on to get his friend to get back in the car before a murder occurred. We called the police, and the customer with the gun never got his prescription. Another Valium customer? I wonder where he inserted his meds.

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A guy drove up to the drive-through and asked if we gave flu shots. I said we did. He asked, “Could I get one right now? I’ve been waiting in this line forever.” I told him he had to come inside to register and that if he didn’t have an appointment, there could be a long wait. He replied, “The pharmacist can’t just give me a shot here in the drive-through?” Stunned, I was almost at a loss for words—almost. “How do you suspect you’re going to get your shoulder inside the building because I’m certain you can’t fit through the drawer.” I even pushed it open for him to visualize.

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A fun customer stepped up to the register inside the pharmacy just as the power went out. Though the power came back on quickly, all of our computers shut down and had to be rebooted, which, unfortunately, doesn’t happen quickly. I told the man the computers went down. He said, “What’s the delay?” I said, “The computers need to reboot.” He said, “Well, that’s not my problem.” I don’t know whose problem it was if it wasn’t his.   

I have to say, I don’t have the retirement thing figured out what with two part-time jobs, an editing business, and novel writing, marketing, and sales, but there’s no denying people are interesting creatures and great characterization material. If you’re a writer and have the need for an editor, there’s information here on my blog. If you’re a reader, please check out my eight novels. I would love for you to give them a try.