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Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Drive-Thrus

The Drive-Thru is the bane of my existence.  It was the worst addition to the profession of pharmacy in the last century.  We are a Healthcare profession!, not a quick-service food delivery system for a fat, lazy, American society that wants everything right now.  Seriously!  This is about your health, not about waiting on an order of fries to stuff your face while you drive and talk at the same time, usually while sitting at my window.
Here's what pisses me off:
1.  People on their damn phones while at my window and my techs are trying to offer counseling or just ask how many prescriptions they are trying to get.  Don't call me back complaining because we forgot a bag or didn't tell you about something important because you were too busy making your nail appointment to focus on me, the person actually standing in front of you, physically, trying to talk to you.
2.  People who call my store from IN the drive-thru line asking what is taking so long.  WTF?  Get your lazy ass the hell out of your car and come inside where I have fewer people.  Everyone gets the right to ask questions and have them answered, including you, so shut the hell up and wait your turn like everyone else.
3.  Sitting at my Drive-Thru like a spoiled 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum.  Well I am sorry that when you dropped off your scripts and we asked if you had insurance, you either gave me no card or the wrong card; or you now only want a 30-day supply because 90 days of something is too expensive or you didn't bring enough cash.  Whatever it is, it is going to take a few minutes to redo something we could have done right the first time with a little help from you.  This usually results in the 3-year old parking his/her car at my window, rolling up her window after saying "go ahead, call the cops. I'm not fucking moving and everyone else can wait like I had to so nyah!"  Really mature and usually caused by number one above and resulting in number two above.
4.  Treating the drive-thru like it's "Billy Bob's Brew-Thru".  No, I cannot go into the store and get you beer, cigarettes, lottery tickets, diapers, pseudoephedrine, or anything else.  Again, walk your lazy ass into the store.  My sign explicitly reads "Prescription Pick-Up" at the Drive-Thru.

The drive-thru was created for convenience in dropping off a prescription (mom with sick kids in the car, people who will pick up later on their way home from an appointment, or others who may not be physically able to walk all the way to the back of my store without suffering a heart attack) and returning at a later time to retrieve said prescription.  Thanks to our fast-food mentality, it is a commonly-held belief that if I drop off something at the first window it will be ready by the time I get to the second window after a lap around the building.  In case you missed it, the steps I have to perform include: typing your RX into my computer, billing your insurance, counting your drug(s), checking the accuracy of your doctor and my staff and your med history, and finally labeling and bagging that pretty bottle with the nice label for you to read.  If I forget something at a fast-food restaurant, your suffering will be limited to one fewer bag of fries, hamburger or mega-bladder-filling diet beverage which may actually be healthier for you.  If the same occurs at my pharmacy, the error could be much more life-threatening.  Shouldn't we want our healthcare to be more important than a $0.99 bag of fries?
In our gotta-have-it-now society, we don't even have the time to treat our healthcare professionals as such.  Apparently when I graduated from pharmacy school, I missed them handing out the paper hats.  I know you just wasted half your day in the doctor's waiting room reading 2 year old magazines and you are in a hurry to catch up on your important tasks for your day, but can you not have the patience to wait and act civilly when you come to my pharmacy?  Please?  It will keep both of us off high blood pressure meds a lot longer if you do.

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