Expectation vs. Reality

          If the real world worked as people believe Pharmacy does, we'd be either the most efficient and productive country in the world or the rudest, slowest most incapable idiots to run a superpower.  If I were to place an online order at Best Buy for in-store pickup (or ordered a pizza for that matter) and was told a specific time to arrive, would I expect my order to be there if I placed it from the parking lot? As I was entering the store?  Not hardly, but that is the reality of retail pharmacy today.  I'm not making you a pizza or unloading a Blu-Ray player dumbass.  The steps in every other retail outlet are simple: walk in, pick out a prepackaged product from the shelf, put it in a cart, walk it to the teenaged checkout girl who scans it, slides your credit card, you sign a receipt and walk away.  Simple, right?  What about the magical process at a pharmacy? the one shrouded in mystery since all we do is "put a bunch of pills in a bottle", right?
          I take your prescription, and assuming it's the only one I take all day, I begin work on yours immediately.  We have to enter into our computer your name, your doctor, the drug, the strength, the directions, the quantity, the refills, the date your doctor wrote it, and your insurance information.  Now we send it to your insurance and if by some small miracle you gave us the correct card and it works correctly, we get a label and receipt (which has your copay on it from your insurance).  Now we have to pull the drug, then count the pills, then, wait for it, put them in a little bottle!  Then this gets handed to the pharmacist who will now check all of this critical information against your original prescription to make sure it is correct, that the drug in the bottle is correct, that there are no drug interactions with all the other crap you're taking you don't get at our pharmacy because you like to use coupons to pick a pharmacy.  Then we give it to our techs who call your name and charge you your copay, from your insurance, that you will complain about because "that's not what I pay at my other pharmacy" or "that's not what I paid last time" or "my copay is always $5.00 even though this is new insurance", or "I have this other card, would it help?", whatever.  This will cause us to have to redo your prescription causing a delay in processing everyone else's stuff because you are too lazy to read the explanation of benefits that comes with your insurance card every damn year that clearly explains what YOUR copays are, dumbass!  After all of this, with a smile on our face, we still take it in stride as you walk away and mutter "I'm thinking about changing pharmacies, this is some bullshit right here".