For the shortest days of the year, winter sure has some of the longest days of the year for pharmacy employees. With the spike in colds and viruses eating their way through homes and businesses, flu scares, insurance changes, and holidays and inclement weather - it seems less like a Winter Wonderland and more like a "Winter Wonder-what-today's-issues-are-going-to-be". In remembrance of those working long days and hard nights, I'd like to take you all through a full day in the pharmacy.

Coming in early

Early on the Friday morning before Comic-Con, I'm preparing for my day and realize that I didn't have any snacks - and as anyone who's been to a convention can attest, food at the venue is expensive. Thankfully, the Corner Store I work at is on my way to the train station, and they open at 7. Even more thankfully, the parking lot is almost completely empty when I get there just after 7:30 - just the opening manager, an associate, and two other cars in the lot. After all, the pharmacy counter doesn't open until 9 am.

I hop out of my car, wearing an anime-print t-shirt and a Pokemon baseball cap, and a moment later the person sitting in one of the cars in the lot also gets out. I recognize her, she's a regular at the pharmacy - so I smile and wave as I walk in, making a beeline to the snacks and grabbing what I need. I pay, and start chatting with the manager about the Con, and what I'm looking for, just generally making small talk... until the lady from the parking lot walks up.

Being a good employee, the manager stops our conversation to ask the lady if she needs help finding anything. She ignores him and looks at me. "When are you going to open the pharmacy? I need my prescriptions."

>surprisedpikachu.jpg

It took a moment for me to process what she was asking, and another for me to actually respond. No ma'am, I'm not opening the pharmacy right now. Not only was I off today, but even if I wanted to, I didn't have the keys or the alarm code - oh, and it would be illegal for a tech to open the pharmacy alone, anyway.

I can see the wheels slowly churning in this lady's head as she considers this new information, and she finally responds with a healthy bit of confusion. "But... don't you work here?"

Well, at least her train of thought started on the right track, even if it did get derailed at the first turn.

The morning rush

Now normally in my store, mornings aren't very busy. That makes it the perfect time to train new pharmacy employees on how to use the register. So it was the day that we were training Hugo, a young man who had been hired directly to pharmacy as his very first job ever. He was nervous, understandably, and the opening pharmacist wanted to reassure him. So she said, and I quote, "We never get many patients in the mornings."

I'd never knocked on wood so fast in my life.

Still, it was too late.

The line stretched down the aisle for much of the morning, and poor Hugo was doing his best to learn the ropes with assistance from the pharmacist and myself, while I helped people on the second register as well. I told Hugo it helps to be conversational, and that a lot of our regulars had loosened up over the years - especially because I was so talkative at the register myself. But it seemed like most of the patients only had one topic of conversation on their minds.

"Boy, there are never this many people here in the mornings!" one of our regulars said.

I nodded, shrugging. "I guess it was bound to happen, one day."

A few patients later, and I was helping Hugo find a prescription for a different patient when she offered, observantly, "I've never seen so many people here in the morning!"

Hugo nodded, pondering this revelation. "I guess everyone else was thinking this would be the best time to come, since it's so slow."

The next patient at my register turned to glance back at the still-growing line, gesturing to his basket of non-pharmacy items, "I'll pay for these up front. It's usually never this crowded in the mornings."

And finally, blissfully, around noon... the line ended. Hugo clocked out, clearly eager to leave, and my pharmacist and I thanked him for hanging in there so well with the unexpected rush (which, I still contend, is entirely the pharmacist's fault). Hugo sighed and nodded, then paused as he was walking out and turned to me. He met my eyes, and I knew immediately. I implored him not to say it.

Hugo said it anyway. "That's okay. There's usually never that many people here, in the morning."

Lunch break

Fill in the blank:

"I'm on my lunch break, can you [___]."

Got your answer?

Good.

Did you say, "...get it done faster?" Nice try, but incorrect. Was your answer, "...just give me a couple, and I'll pick up the rest later?" Also a good guess. Also wrong.

The answer I was looking for was, "I'm on my lunch break, can you give me one of those big liquid bottles?"

I guess my blank stare was enough of a prompt to continue for the man, because he did finally elaborate. "We're not allowed to have water bottles at our desks, but no manager's going to look twice at a drug vial."

Fair enough, I guess. Also not the strangest request I've ever gotten. And just to make it more official looking, I suggested I could add a dummy label to the bottle. He liked that idea. "Sure," he said, "another copy of the one I'm picking up."

I looked down at the prescription that I had pulled for him. Sildenafil, 100 mg, UAD. "Are you... sure?"

"Yup."

Hell of a conversation starter, at least.

The midday rush

It was a typical, slow morning at my pharmacy (don't say it), and I was sorting through the day's outside vendor shipment when I thought I heard someone at the register. So I stood up, walked to the counter, looked around, saw no one, turned to my pharmacist to confirm that there was no one actually there and I was just hearing the voice of our store's resident ghost messing with my head, shrugged, and walked back to my seat in the corner.

My pharmacy is not, by any definition, a large pharmacy. The walk from the register to where I was sitting was approximately 10 steps - 13 if I'm wandering aimlessly for a moment.

So when I sat down, I was surprised to hear my pharmacist greet someone, and ask if they were picking up. I used the precious few seconds waiting for the patient to respond that, yes, they were picking up, to put a single bottle of a drug into its properly sorted basket. I stood up, and walked to my register...

And was met with a line of no fewer than 5 people, with another person walking down the aisle to join at the back of the line. Being conversational, and a little snarky, I used the break while I pulled up that first patient's information to ask, "What, did you all coordinate to come to the pharmacy at the same time?"

Without even hesitating, the patient nodded and glanced over her shoulder to see how long the line was. "Yup," she said. "We made a Facebook event and everything. Still missing some people."

We shared a laugh, and near the end of her transaction I saw another person walking down the aisle for the line. "Oh, looks like one of the stragglers arrived."

The lady turned, and then looked back to me and rolled her eyes. "He's not getting an invite to the next event."

Evening rush

One of the few days of the year where the evening is relatively slow, Valentine's Day tends to be a day of ringing people out for all of the condoms and other intimacy products, that people feel too self-conscious to be seen with on their way to the front.

The first customer to the register this night brings up the usual suspects - a box of chocolates, a little stuffed bear, and a box of their favorite one-finger glove. I mention how much I like those particular chocolates he picked out, and he agrees. He promises to let me have them, if his date doesn't go well.

The next up to the register is a younger man, who asks sheepishly for birth control. I offer to walk him to it, and as I walk out from behind the counter, the man behind him in line throws his arms up, exasperated by the concept of customer service and waiting in a line. What is with these millennials anyway? I apologize and tell him that I'll only be a moment, and walk Birth Control Guy over to the aisle to ponder his options - Plan B, or Aftera.

Back at the register, our impatient patient gives me his information, which I pull up for... ah, Cialis. Shouldn't be surprised, I guess. I turn around to get the prescription, and by the time I've turned back toward the register - he's disappeared. I call out his name, and I'm about to put the bag back when he finally pops back up from the greeting card aisle. After he signs for the prescription, he of course needs a pen to fill out his card, and he refuses to finish the transaction until he has - much to the dismay of Birth Control Guy, who's trying to simultaneously hide the big anti-theft box of Aftera under his arm, while also not look like he's stealing it.

I open up the second register to help BCG pay and leave, and as I'm taking his money, the patient at the other register decides he's ready - and he was first, so I should be ringing him up. And in one of the rare moments where I think of a good pun in a timely manner, I politely respond, "I don't mean to be too hard on you, sir, but I'm handling cash and the last thing I want to do is stiff this customer his change." I also immediately regretted it, because the last thing you want to do is poke the angry hornet's nest.

My pharmacist ended up having to come over to ring out the patient as I finished up with BCG, and after it all she asked what happened. I tried one last pun. "He was a raging dickhead."

She nodded a bit and walked back to her counter, paused, and turned back to me. "I guess the pills were working, then."

End of a long day

Sometimes, you have two patients that just share so many physical characteristics that - if they're at the other end of the aisle, and you have bad vision, you might get them confused. And if you're me, you don't always wait until you're sure who they are before you call out, "Hey, Mr. Smith!" only for the patient to walk up, and you realize it's Mr. Williams. The way I've learned to "play it off" is to turn toward the next aisle, as soon as I've realized my mistake, and go, "Have a good one, Mr. Smith!" Then I turn back to Mr. Williams and greet him like I knew what I was doing the whole time.

So it was that one day, I was working a full 12-hour shift, alone, with a floater. It was one of those days that just becomes a grind, and also one of those days where every single one of those doppelganger customers comes in. And eventually, it just got to be too much for the poor floater. I turned to an empty aisle as Mr. Smith was walking up to my register, and say, "See you tomorrow, Mr. Williams!"

The floater looks up, and to the aisle. Then she turns to me, annoyed and confused. "Why do you do that? There's no one there!"

Now, by this point I'm standing at the register, and Mr. Smith is right there with me. I can't let myself be caught, not for anything. I gave the pharmacist my signature blank stare, shrugged, and said, "I just have a lot of imaginary friends."

Mr. Smith is confused, and a little bemused. The floater stood there, open-mouthed, for a moment while I can only imagine she waited for her brain to crash and reboot. She didn't talk to me for the rest of the night. That's okay, I had an imaginary friend there to talk with instead.

Half an hour after closing

It's 9:30 pm, and the pharmacy gate has been closed for 30 minutes. The front-store manager has taken our registers, my pharmacist is already wearing her jacket ready to leave, and I'm trying to run around and clean up before we get kicked out by the front store at 10. From the other side of the gate, I hear someone go, "Excuse me!"

Because the gate is closed, my first assumption is that the front-store manager is walking around near the pharmacy, and the customer is talking to them. But then they repeat, louder this time, "Excuse me!"

I turn and look, seeing that someone is there on the other side of the gate, too short to see over the solid steel part of the gate easily - so they're alternating between looking through the crack underneath, and standing on their toes to be seen over the top. I let them exercise for a moment before walking over. "How can I help you?"

"You're closed?"

"Yes sir, we closed at 9 pm."

"You closed at 9 again?"

Now, I stress the word again both because that's how the customer said it, and also because that's the part that broke me a little bit. "Y-yes?"

At this, the customer throws his hands up and makes that exasperated noise. The one that people make when they just cannot believe what you just said. "Last week I came at 9:15 and you were closed, and now you're closed again!"

Well, at least we're consistent at something. "Yes sir," I said, "we close at 9 pm on the weekdays."

"No, you don't!" said the man through the closed gate. He let me respond with a dumb silence for a long couple moments before flexing his customer knowledge. "You close at 10 pm! That's what the sign says on the door, and that's when the other Corner Stores here close!"

Oh.

"Actually, sir, that's the time the store itself closes. The pharmacy closes at 9 on weekdays, and earlier on weekends. Our hours are posted on the door below the store's hours. And the other Corner Store's pharmacy is open until 10, but their store closes at midnight as well." I nod, giving my best apologetic look to the man.

I can see on his face that he's genuinely debating a response. He has just enough 'angry customer' to demand that I do something to 'make it right', and enough frustration to exclaim that 'this is ridiculous'. He finally settles on yelling and storming off, with a parting, "I'm not going to stay here if you're just going to waste my time!"

He also left a survey, saying that we closed early. Being a front-store receipt, the manager there had a very, very angry and accusatory district manager come in the next day - with the regional manager to boot - to review the security tapes and confirm that, actually, the customer was wrong.

Phew, what a day! Thanks for sticking with me through that, everyone!

...Oh, and of course we're not done. Because these days are never over when they're supposed to be, right?

Here's two bonus stories, just for hanging in there!

Calling out sick

A good portion of our regulars are people who work in the office building right next to our Corner Store. It's convenient, after all - even if it is a bit of a trek from home for a lot of them. I've learned over my time working at the pharmacy the basic heirarchy at a couple of the offices.

Steve walks in one fine Tuesday, but instead of his normal suit and tie, he's wearing jeans and a casual shirt. He tells me he's going into the city for a date, and he just needs a refill on his blue pills - you know the ones. I tell him not to worry, I'll get them ready right away so he can catch his train. We joke that it'd be funny if someone from his office walks in and catches him.

Not a moment later, the tech at the register goes, "Hey Aaron!" and the color drains from Steve's face.

You see, Aaron is Steve's boss. Not like his direct boss, but his boss's boss. The head of the company. Drives a nice new BMW and everything, even has his own reserved parking spot right near the building's doors.

Aaron looks over to greet the pharmacist, and sees Steve. He walks over to see how he's feeling. Steve stammers that he's not feeling great. He's wilting under the pressure. I could enjoy watching the drama unfold as he cracks and breaks under pressure. I could even help kick the crutch out from under him and wish him a good date.

But I just had to go and be a good person. I pipe up and walk over to grab the big bottle of Amoxicillin capsules, and a Z-Pak from the shelf that both Steve and Aaron can see. "I'll get these ready for you right now, Steve. Just give me a few minutes and I'll call you up to the register."

Aaron sees what I'm grabbing. He knows what they're for. He looks at Steve, who looks like he might be sick - just not for the reason Aaron thinks. He takes a half-step back from Steve, just in case Steve is still contagious, and wishes him well before going back to the register to get his prescriptions and leave.

Steve is very grateful. Steve still occasionally stops by and brings me Dunkin Donuts after he leaves work for the day, as thanks.

As for the date? Turns out Steve was already married. I found that out when his wife came in to pick up his prescription the next month.

Returns

Doing returns is annoying, especially since we rarely do them at the pharmacy - and even more rarely from anything that's not a prescription. In fact, we do them so rarely that most of the techs don't know how to. Or they pretend they don't, at least. They always call me over.

As I'm walking over to the register for a return, I realize that I vaguely recognize the customer. They'd definitely been in the pharmacy recently. I reach the counter, look down to see what we're returning, and then look back up at the customer. He looks thoroughly embarrassed, and holds out the receipt for the Aftera he'd bought on Valentine's Day, three days ago.

"It was too late," he said.

Oh.