Fun Stories In Retail

[Triangulation]

Yester-night, I returned from lunch to find a herd of teenage dudes asking me and the pharmacist for a band-aid. I asked what he needed it for and he turned around and said "this"

"This" was a two inch bleeding gash on the back of his head. The kids were all completely plastered and laughing about it especially the bleeding one. I asked how he did it and he told me someone broke a bottle on his head (at least he was honest). Crazier part is he wouldn't leave. I kept telling him he needed to get it stitched up and he kept asking if that was what he had to do. I then handed him some monster band aids and he asked if that would be enough. Make up your mind dude!! Do you want me to tell you to go to emegency or not?!?!

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[LoneCoyote]

okay, i'll add to this thread because i need to start trying to find some humor in what has turned out to be a really awful job. i am a clerk, soon to be tech once my certificate comes, at a rite aid in san francisco. as of july 1, our store got the contract for all of san francisco's indigent patients who receive drugs through the city health clinics. pretty much this has meant about 100,000 new patients coming into our understaffed location and no end in sight. everyone is pissed... my co-workers and i who are working overtime until 1 am with no time to take any breaks for food or the bathroom, and of course the patients who are getting screwed when they can't get their meds for like five days. pretty much my day is a line of angry people cursing at me while i run frantically around trying to find their meds in the never ending pile to be done in the back. did i mention that i started 2 weeks ago, have not been trained, and am pretty much lost most of the time?

so anyway, the other day we have a line backed up down the aisle and everyone running around like crazy trying to find people's stuff. they called in an assistant manager to help us try to ring people out and he had never worked in the pharmacy before. so he is standing there screaming at a clerk to show him where the bags were. this customer finally steps up to the counter and says "here's a dollar, why don't you all just go buy a clue." it was really hilarious given how hopelessly chaotic everything is. i knew i shouldn't laugh but it was so right on in so many ways. i also got a good laugh out of the guy who kept screaming at us to take his 3rd party check for his vicodin. when the manager refused he said "call the bank and ask them. it;s my brother's check." and the manager is like "on a sunday? how can we call the bank?" and he yells back "well i have been shot and i need my meds now." and the manager is like "what does that have to do with your 3rd party check?"

my store is crazy. if i can survive this i am sure i'll have lots more stories to come....

 

[Triangulation]

I know. Retail in SF is nuts. You're gonna have a jillion stories. I could fill thousands of toilet paper rolls writing really small with the stories I've got from working in the mission district.

Hang in there AZ!!! Keep you eyes open for something less hectic (community pharmacy, Kaiser, UCSF, etc)

 

[Triangulation]

I'm actually serious about this:

While you're applying, move to LA AZ (that's punny ) Your pay will be the same if Rite-Aid is the same as Wag's but housing is about two-thirds the price and the pt load is tiny.

It can be too tiny on slow days. They've got a plaque on the wall for the busiest day at my new store and it's like 343 scripts, that was like how many scripts we did by noon on a slow day at my store in SF.

We don't take our breaks at my new store on slow days, bc we feel kinda guilty taking breaks from doing nothing.

 

[LoneCoyote]

that's interesting to hear about LA... it's definitely something to consider... i was also thinking maybe of trying to move up to the sacramento area and getting a transfer up there. though i know the pay goes down because we have people commuting from vallejo to work in my store for the pay. it is crazy. how long do you have to work at one of these jobs before they will tranfer you? they probably won't take kindly to my request after 3 weeks of work, only 2 of which were in the pharmacy, especailyl given that NO ONE wants to work in this store. now i know why....

 

[lord999]

I had a guy come up to my window in stealth fashion.

Him: I think my father's on drugs.

Me: Yes, that is an Rx. bottle in your hand. Pharmacies sell drugs (I wanted him to leave.)

Him: I think he's getting marijuana?

Me. Really! What do you want me to do about it? Need a test?

Him: I didn't know you guys sold marijuana?

Me: Yes, we sell Marinol, a drug that uses the active ingredient, delta-nine-tetrahydrocannibol. It is a CIII Rx. used for N&V and sometimes pain.

Him: Well, I know that AZ passed a law to legalize marijuana. Those bastards at the FDA want to arrest you guys for selling this stuff. Well, I'm proud of ya.

Me: We don't sell straight marijuana, sir."

Him: Oh yes you do. I've got a bottle of the stuff right here. It comes from Switzerland. Bless them.

He shows me the bottle: "Pot Chloride 10MEQ ER Tabs" "Mnfr: Geneva"

Me: "Are you serious? (snicker)"

Him: "Yes, is it a controlled rx. you say?"

Me: "No....(laughter)"

Moral of the story: Use the chemical abbreviation for potassium chloride, or you'll have junkies getting arrhythmias from abusing their prescription "pot."

 

[Triangulation]

I've got another fun story for tomorrow. I can tell no one's gonna get any sleep tonight in anticipation

 

[Pontifex Maximus]

I sure won't

 

[phuture pharmer]

As interns, we get to counsel patients as we progress in school. I was told a pretty good story about an intern picking up a box of vaginal suppositories and explaining to the patient how to turn her head and apply them to her ear to relieve her pain. (They picked up the wrong bag and thougt they were getting ear drops.)

 

[LoneCoyote]

okay, so another for the thread as i just came off my shift for the day....

i come back from my lunch/dinner/whatever break (which i amazingly was able to take today), and heard a loud argument coming from one side of the pharmacy area. i could not see around the corner but saw a lady turned with her back to the pick-up window screaming at someone for being an idiot and losing the prescription. and the person, who sounded male, then would yell back at her that she was the idiot because she never had a prescription in the first place and why didn't she just get on out of the store. anyway, this continues for about 15 minutes at which point the other clerk and i think we need to call security because the argument is getting pretty ugly sounding. we still cannot see what is going on over the pharmacy wall but all we can hear is tons of foul language. all of a sudden it stops and i look over and see the woman sitting there alone. i figured the other guy had finally left. pretty soon she comes up to the drop off window and tell us she dropped her stuff off at 4 pm. so we look and look and cannot find it, which is typical in our chaotic store these days. it's almost closing time so we're frantically trying to find it while she tell us a big long sob story about her life, her time on the streets, her bad boyfriends, and what happened to her script. finally the pharmacist pulls me aside and says "she never had a prescription. that whole time she was arguing with herself about either losing it or not having one to begin with." and then it hit me that she was arguing with one of her multiple personalities the entire time and we, not being able to see what was happening, only to hear it, had actually thought she had dropped it off. once again, it was not something that should be laughed at because the woman is clearly very mentally ill, but the whole scene was so ridiculous it was quite amusing.

i have tomorrow off so more to come this weekend

 

[Triangulation]

all that stuff about my store being slow must've po'd the retail gods, bc my pharmacy has been blitzed lately.

Every night last week we had to get pts to come back in three hours or the next day. Part of this is bc my manager is a knuckle-head, but even if his head wasn't so knuckly we'd still be hella busy. Fortunately the pharm tech extern who just started is all bright eyed and bushy tailed so she's dealin well (partiuclarly considering tech externs aren't paid.)

Overally, i've had great experience with pharm techs actually much better than pharmacists.

 

[LVPharm]

Originally posted by Triangulation
Overally, i've had great experience with pharm techs actually much better than pharmacists.

I've had the same experience with both new and veteran technicians. I've been particularly impressed by the veterans. They've taught me more about pharmacy administration than some of the pharmacists I've met. The tech at the Rite Aid I was at really did know it all...some of the "fresh out of school" floater pharmacists we had simply can't run the pharmacy without an experienced technician. In those situations, you wonder who REALLY "runs the show". It's actually amusing to see a tech "scold" a newbie pharmacist.

 

[Triangulation]

A young woman came up to the consult window and asked if we did emergency contraception. I said, 'yes,' and told her to wait for a pharmacist. Pharmacist comes over and starts speaking with her and then asks her to fill out the information after completing the top of the form and entering her info into the computer the pharmacist asks her how many hours it's been since she had sex to which she replies, 'Oh it's not for me it's for my friend." The friend was around the corner looking at what was on ad at walgreens for the week. It's good to see that people aren't taking this too seriously.

 

[loo]

A very nice Korean grad student comes to my pharmacy and asks to speak to me. I take him aside and he begins to speak to me in broken English and I'm having a hard time understanding him. He keeps repeating a phrase that sound like "whatimpenim".

Feeling somewhat embarrassed because I cannot get ahold of my partner (he is Korean); the young man motions me over and starts unzipping his fly. Oh my God, you mean wart on your penis! No, No--please show the doctor at the student health center! Bless his heart. My partner laughs when he hears of my encounter. He said many Koreans go to the pharmacist before the doctor!

 

[GravyRPH]

When I worked retail my co-workers and I thought it would be a fun idea to write down all our funny, wierd stories we encountered in a little notebook. We had some crazy stuff in there. I am itching to get a look at it again to remind me of all the funny stuffy we saw.
Like, the 80 year old prison deacon who kept coming in to ask what he could get non-prescription to kill his neighbour's dog. Only to see him in the paper a few weeks later arrested for trying to smuggle in medicine to a prison for an assisted suicide of an inmate.

 

[EarlyEditionDude]

BUMP....



Keep the stories coming!!! These are hilarious!!!!

 

[MNnaloxone]

This has to be a favorite:

I tend to work a fair amount out on the floor at my Walgreens, especially when the pharmacy closes at 6 on weekends, and I'm not quite ready to come home yet. It was one of those nights that this happened:

It was about 8 pm, and the pharmacy had long been closed, leaving me the only guy in a white coat in a couple mile radius. I turned a corner to find a fairly well-dressed middle aged man (I work in a fairly affluent suburb) and his almost teenage daughter. As he spotted me, he exclaimed: "There's someone who might be able to help!". Being the nice guy that I am, I identified myself as a pharmacy intern, and that I would be happy to assist.

He started, "I have a little problem", to which his daughter whined, "No, Dad...that's gross, don't show him." The man insisted, and pointed to one of his teeth, an incisor that had been pretty much shorn off. "Wow, that's pretty sexy" I replied. He then proceeded to pull the broken part of the tooth out of his pocket to show me. "I'd go to the dentist, but I know he's going to charge me an arm and a leg for an emergency visit (like he couldn't afford it...), and just need something to get me through the weekend". No problem-I showed him to the temporary tooth "glue" kits we had.

"Nope, I tried those. They didn't work. Hey, what do you think of SuperGlue?" :0

I explained to him that while Superglue would probably work great for putting the tooth back together, the dentist would probably have some choice words for him when the time came to break that bond and actually repair/cap/whatever the tooth. "I didn't think of that", he said. No, really?

"Thanks for the advice, I'll just have to see what I can do". I wished the man good luck, and continued on whatever task I was doing before that. A few minutes later, I rounded another corner, and encountered the same man and daughter again. This time he had a hot glue gun in his hands. I had to absolutely choke back the laughter. "I thought this would work, I'm going to try it. It's only a couple of bucks." Between the tears of laughter, I cautioned him to be careful, while his daughter whined, "But Dad, we've already got one of those!" I held back the desire to point out that he could label this one "For Dental Use Only". He then asked how it was powered. I replied that it plugged in-he would have to use the outlets on his bathroom vanity. As he left, I asked him to let me know how it turned out.

I never saw him again.

 

[Triangulation]

when i played hockey in 9th grade we superglued a kid's chin back together when it was bleeding all over the ice. it worked like a mf. i was told that that's how it was originally used (not for hockey, but for emergency stitching)

 

[LVPharm]

Originally posted by Triangulation
when i played hockey in 9th grade we superglued a kid's chin back together when it was bleeding all over the ice. it worked like a mf. i was told that that's how it was originally used (not for hockey, but for emergency stitching)

...and still is! "Dermabond" from Johnson and Johnson is also a cyanoacrylate used for closing lacerations and some surgical incisions. They have a commercial on TV about their product being an alternative to stitches.

I did use superglue once when I sliced a part of the very tip of my left pinkie on a piece of gym equipment. I was adjusting a slant board...I pulled the pin holding the bench up but didn't realize that my pinkie was resting on one of the little holes where you insert the pin to hold it up. Sliced through the tip of the finger like a guillotine. I freaked out and ran back to my dorm room with my finger wrapped in my workout towel, grabbed the superglue and glued the flap of skin back in place. Worked great! Luckilly nothing bad (infection) happened, I just have a weird fingerprint on that finger now (and numbness on the very tip of the finger) Kids, don't try this at home, seek proper medical attention

 

[MNnaloxone]

Then there was the time that my RXM sent me out to help these two guys in the OTC aisle. One spoke nothing but Spanish, and the other guy spoke nothing but what I assume was Somalian. The Somali guy was in quite a bit of pain, and the Hispanic guy kinda knew what was going on with him. I dusted off my high school spanish after 7 years, and through my crappy spanish to the hispanic guy who tried to communicate with the Somalian, figured out that he had one hell of a toothache going on. Ambesol+IBU, have a good day, guys.

I wonder what the story was there-two guys that didn't share a lick of language.

And then you get the everyday comedy like last week. An elderly woman stopped me to ask what aisle the Celebrex was in. Maybe these commercial things have gone too far?

Thanks to the creator of this thread for reminding me that the past 5 years at WAGs haven't been a total waste-I've got a lot of stories to show from them.

 

[Triangulation]

I pulled the pin holding the bench up but didn't realize that my pinkie was resting on one of the little holes where you insert the pin to hold it up. Sliced through the tip of the finger like a guillotine. I freaked out and ran back to my dorm room with my finger wrapped in my workout towel, grabbed the superglue and glued the flap of skin back in place. Worked great!

HOLY **** THAT'S FUNNY!!!!!!!! RIGHT ON LV!!!

I dropped a 50 lb dumbbell on my birdie finger re-racking it once and it sliced the piss out of it, but I was able to hold it together for like a wk and it was okay.

 

[loo]

A very concerned woman calls the pharmacy.

"My son's guinea pig has given me fleas."

Oh, what do they look like?

"Well...let me take a look--oh my god!"

Do they look transparent and run away from the light?

"EXACTLY!"

(pubic lice)