The Demands of the Public

First, Do no harm. Wait, that's physicians.
Pharmacist Oath says: "I will consider the welfare of humanity and relief of suffering my primary concerns." Apparently not important to these patients.

In the course of 5 days our pharmacy received two very different complaints.
The first was from an old bitty who likes to abuse our staff. She brings a cart full of groceries to the Rx counter and insists the pharmacy ring everything for her. When we point her to the front end, she proceeds to tell us she only brought one check with her. We tell her she can write for more than the amount up front and return with the cash for her prescriptions. She then complains to the manager and calls corporate who sends her gift cards. Then she returns next month with the same game and we are forced to ring her cart. Lesson learned? Absolutely.

The second complaint was a rambling email calling out every employee by name like Santa mushing his reindeer. She even named people who were on vacation and floaters who haven't been around in years. Anyway, her chief complaint was that our staff "offers to ring out everyone's groceries, regardless of the number of people in line and how long the line is". We don't. See first complaint.

When my boss called for resolution of these two issues I gave the simplest solution. Give each woman the other's phone number. Let them get bitchy with each other. Then call both of them down to the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions that aren't really there. Let them raise their hackles a bit then introduce them to each other. We can sit back and laugh and watch the fireworks without intervention. Perhaps call one of the local law enforcement officers to monitor from afar. Let him handle the fallout. After a couple arrests, no more problems. Customer Cage Match! Two bithchers enter, one bitcher leaves. Fun for all ages. I'd even offer to live tweet from the event and post the video here online. I think this could solve many of our problems.

Realistically however, the other customers would keep asking "what's taking so long?' and "why was theirs done first?" and saying "you told me 20 minutes!".  They'd just stand on the dead bodies so they could lean a little further in to the window to yell at us. You just can't win in retail pharmacy. Perhaps I'll repost my "Close the Pharmacy" piece. Or you could just search for it. It's worth it.