That's a No Phrom Me

Needs One Pervasive Excuse: I am here for my covid shot. 

CP: Glad you're finally making it in to see us. 

NOPE: I'd like the J&J if you have it. 

CP: We do. We vend a vast variety of vaccines. 

NOPE: I shall prefer that one. 

CP: Of course. We also like to call that the 1-800-Safe-Auto vaccine. 

NOPE: Why?

CP: Because you are looking for the bare minimum to either stay in school or keep your job and you only want one shot, aka the "cheap" option. 

NOPE: Exactly. 

CP: I just need you to fill out the paperwork. 

NOPE: First, I have a question for you. 

CP: Shoot. 

NOPE: Do you aspirate the covid shot? 

CP: Nope. 

NOPE: Why not? 

CP: Because there is no reason to aspirate on an IM injection; this hasn't been taught for years. 

NOPE: But, even though they are tiny, you could still inject it into tiny vessels. 

CP: No. No I really couldn't. Those little vessels are called capillaries. Aspiration of an IM injection could cause problems, especially in small children, cause pain in patients, require unnecessary distraction from the injection itself, and prolongs patient exposure to the needle. 

NOPE: So you won't do it?

CP: NOPE. I have given thousands of shots and never been asked to aspirate, nor considered it. But I can tell you've been reading "reasons to not get the vaccine" or "how to annoy your pharmacist" on the internet for many months now so you must be well-educated. Please explain why you require this. 

NOPE: Major side effects of heart issues from shots being administered into the bloodstream. 

CP: Uh-huh. I see. And how is your familiarity with human biology, anatomy, and the circulatory system? 

NOPE: Huh?

CP: Do hospitals take blood from your deltoid muscles?  

NOPE: Nope. 

CP: Why?

NOPE: <shrugs>

CP: Right. No major blood vessels located there. 

NOPE: But there could be really deep ones. 

CP: Have you looked at your skinny arms lately? You can barely conceal the bone under the skin, let alone any major blood superhighways. 

NOPE: But I'd rather be cautious. 

CP: And I'd rather not have to explain how to do my job to everyone that doesn't believe the experts who study these things for a living. I'd rather not spend my days proving decades of knowledge to random internet sleuths all day. But here we are. I'm stuck arguing my facts against your "reasons to avoid getting vaccinated". I will not aspirate. Now do you want the shot or not?

NOPE: I have to get it for work. 

CP: Then pull your arm out of your sleeve, shove it in your mouth, and let's go.

How Have You Survived This Long?

CP: Did you ever wonder how some people have made it to adulthood? 

CPP: Every day of my retail life. And every time I phind myself in public. 

CP: These people are born, grow up, walk among us, drive vehicles on the same roads we drive, and they vote. It's scary. 

CPP: What story-of-the-week prompted this? 

CP: When you buy a car, where do you go to buy the petrol to make it run? 

CPP: Is this a trick question? 

CP: No. 

CPP: Gas station? 

CP: Not the dealership? 

CPP: No. That'd be stupid. They sell cars, not the zoom juice that makes it go. 

CP: Next question. You decide you want to upgrade parts on your new ride. Do you go the original dealership? Or to an auto parts place that carries all kinds of specialty parts? 

CPP: The latter. 

CP: Is a business obligated to offer replacement parts to the original products it sells? 

CPP: It seems that would be a lot of inventory to carry. 

CP: Indeed.

Story Time

Guy Asking About Replacement Batteries Actually Gets Enraged: Can I ask you a question?

CP: I would have to say yes. Yes you can. Judging by the start of your sentence with "Can" and ending with an upward inflection and question mark, you're either Canadian or asking a question, eh? 

GAARBAGE: How does my meter work? 

CP: It sucks blood into itself and tastes for sugar. 

GAARBAGE: No. Do I need a battery or a charger?

CP: Did it come with a charging cable or a charging port?

GAARBAGE: No. 

CP: Is there a battery cover o the back?

GAARBAGE: Yes. 

CP: Battery for the win!

GAARBAGE: How do I get a new one?

CP: Go to the battery store, or grocer, or pretty much any place that sells batteries and buy one. 

GAARBAGE: Which one?

CP: Open the battery cover, remove battery, read the number. Or take it to said location of phuture purchase and show it to them. They can matchy-match it phor you. 

GAARBAGE: Don't you sell them? 

CP: We do not. 

GAARBAGE: Why not? 

CP: We don't sell many batteries so we don't stock them. 

GAARBAGE: Why not? You sell the meters, you should sell the replacement parts. 

CP: They're not really replacement parts. 

GAARBAGE: Cadillac sells Cadillac parts. 

CP: Sort of. But this is a Lifescan meter and we are not a Lifescan store. We are a retailer of many phine brands. Batteries can be found everywhere. 

GAARBAGE: I've never heard of running a business like this. 

CP: I don't run it, sir. I just listen to people complain about things to make themselves feel better. Just helping do my part.

If It Sticks

CP: What's brown and sticky?

CPP: A stick!

CP: Brilliant! Did you ever wonder if there is another profession that allows phellow practitioners to practice by throwing everything at a wall to see if it sticks?

CPP: Besides home chefs with pasta? 

CP: Not reliable. But yes. We have to be the only profession that oversees and willingly allows another profession to take advantage of us, but not actually doing their job correctly, and throwing shit at the wall to "see what sticks" by calling it "practice". 

CPP: Shouldn't prescribers become "experts" at some point?

CP: <best video game voice> LEVEL UP!

CPP: LOL!

CP: Seriously. Anywhere else and these professionals would be fired for too many mistakes, errors, not phollowing the law, etc. 

CPP: Yeah. Not phollowing the law is a big one for ME. 

ME: Nothing like the State Board of Medicine shrugging their shoulders, and saying "meh. they need time to adjust. they're busy" while ignoring most law changes for, rough estimate, 23 years. 

MICE ELF: Phrustrating as phuck. We in pharmacy have to be compliant the literal day the law takes effect. Prescribers? Oh, well they were warned for a couple years, then the delay was extended, then it went into effect and somehow we are on the hook but they are not. 

ME: And when we call them on it, they plead "this is the phirst we are hearing of this". Bitch, it's been on the books since 1996. 

CP: They're right though. On top of that, especially with e-scripts, we see all types of "good enough, just hit send. the pharmacy will sort it". 

*Handwritten Rxs - MUST have a numeric AND spelled quantity on all controls. Period. 

*Random medications selected-eh, so the strength/dosage form/quantity don't match. I'm sure that after I hit send, some magical trolls phix it before it gets to the pharmacy and they speak troll there and it will come out the way I intended. 

*Duplicate Drugs with different sigs: I'll send over one thing, change my mind, send another e-script and not tell the pharmacist which is correct or new or needs canceled. She's smart. She can sort it. 

*Missing information-well the system didn't give me one of those little red (*) to indicate this is a "required phield" so I just thought I could ignore it. 

*Too much information-I know this is the "directions phield" but I'm going to also add the drug name and strength and my mother's secret cookie recipe here and hide the drug directions within the baking directions so the pharmacist can hunt and seek. 

ME: You should name it Helen Hunt's Cookies. . . so the pharmacist has to "go to helen hunt for it". 

MICE ELF: Old. But still phunny. 

CPP: Seriously. Where else is a professional allowed to just make up random shite to send to another profession with the intention of "let them phix it". 

CP: Could you imagine a car manufacturer building every car with mistakes (mismatched wheels, missing seats, no windows, a stick instead of a steering wheel) and expecting the car dealership to phix them all once they arrive on the lot?

CPP: Sounds like that Yugo our phriend had in college. 

CP: The pharmacy equivalent of this Orangutan Practise would be to grab random bottles off the shelves, dump some into your hand, slip them comfortably into a bottle, and use a random sig generator to assign directions for the label. Makes me want to bring our college dartboard to work.

CPP: Maybe today you die? Maybe tomorrow? 

CP: And there is only one thing we say to Death: 'Not today'!

Illusory

Irritating Seer Explaining Ephemera Now: I am here to pick up my subscription. 

CP: Prescription. We are doms, not subs.

ISEEN: Perscription. 

CP: PRE-scription. We come first. 

ISEEN: Is it here?

CP: No. 

ISEEN: But she sent it? 

CP: How do you know?

ISEEN: I seen it. 

CP: Saw it. 

ISEEN: Huh. 

CP: Like the old man with the hammer? 

ISEEN: Huh? 

CP: "I see", said the blind man to his deaf wife as he picked up his hammer and saw. 

ISEEN: Um. . . 

CP: Or Caesar? "Veni, Vidi, Vici"? We came, We saw, We conquered? 

ISEEN: I watched her send it. 

CP: Eyewitness testimony is unreliable. I cannot accept your account. It is biased with prejudice. 

ISEEN: I just want to know where it is!

CP: I watched a magician make something disappear. But did it? I may call him prestidigital, but I don't believe anything really disappeared. 

ISEEN: What did I watch? 

CP: The back of her computer while she was texting her girlfriends about meeting for drinks after work.

ISEEN: So is it here? 

CP: No.

ISEEN: This is such a pain. 

CP: In the immortal word of the great, mystical poet, MJK, "All this pain is an illusion."

Don't Know What's Missing

VS: I need my whole profile transferred to you. 

CP: Sounds good. How many medications am I expecting? 

VS: All of them. 

CP: Any names to clue me in?

VS: All of them. 

CP: They must have royally pissed you off, eh?

VS: Hosers!

CP: Right. Ok. Careful what you wish phor. 

VS: Huh? 

CP: I shall call those philthy pig dogs and request "a profile transfer" as you wished. 

VS: Good then. 

 

<hour later>

VS: Did you receive my profile?

CP: Yes. We received all 6 prescriptions. 

VS: Why aren't they all there?

CP: As far as I know, they are. They sent us 6. 

VS: "We are not off to a good start."

CP: Well if the old pharmacy had issues, and our only discussions thus far have been about transferring your profile, and you are already experiencing issues, I'm going to suggest the problem may not be the pharmacy. 

VS: Are you saying it's my fault?

CP: Nope. Merely implied there may be a common denominator. Anyhow, as I attempted to elicit earlier, can you indicate anything about your profile? Names? Number of Rx's? What they treat? 

VS: I need everything. 

CP: Well we see how well that worked the first time. Perhaps the phault lies with the pharmacy you are leaving and not of the new one you selected. Mayhap it would behoove you to call them yourself to prod them along?

 

<hour later>

<phone rings>

<nose goes ensues>

Uber-Tech: NOT IT!

ME and MICE ELF: NOT IT!

CP: Damn. . . Did you call them? 

VS: I did. 

CP: And?

VS: They said they'd send my insulin over. 

CP: Anything else I can expect?

VS: I know I had at least 12 or more. 

CP: Uh-huh. So that's 12 total? Or 18 total: original 6 plus at least 12 more?

VS: Whatever they send you. Just fill it and I'll call back to see if you don't fill anything. I'll watch on the app. 

CP: I can only fill what they send me. I don't know what I am requesting so I don't know what they are not sending. 

VS: That makes no sense. 

CP: And this is why you have problems at the pharmacy. May I offer you our special transfer deal?

VS: Okay. What is it? 

CP: I will receive all of your prescriptions from Phormer Pharmacy and, phor phree, transfer them to another pharmacy phor you. This way, we can skip right past the phirst date anxieties and awkward sex and skip right to breaking up but without all the emotional drain and drama?

VS: Sure.Where?

CP: Who have you not dated yet?

VS: Um. . .