Quick hello

I haven't written very much lately. For the past week and a half or so, I've been contemplating job moves.

For the past 3 years of my life, I've worked for the same Chain Pharmacy. The supervisors have pushed me to become the best I could, to take the top jobs I could take, and I've done everything they've asked of me. Last year, I took my PTCE, and passed with flying colors. I was promised a substantial raise, and they also promised me that, once I took the top technician position available, they'd give me a great raise there, too.

The head honcho locally came in a week and a half ago, and crunched the numbers. My "substantial raise"? That was supposed to bump me up two whole dollars?

84 freaking cents. A mere 3 cents short of the next whole dollar amount. And "we tried to round it, but they wouldn't let us."

BULL. SHIT.

50 cents of that raise was also my "CPhT" raise. Another crock of shit, if you ask me. My new job title did not get me a single penny in the raise.

I jumped into overdrive -- there's more chains opening up near me, and if I could apply for one of their jobs, that'd solve all my problems! I'm sure!

But as reality set in, I thought about it. I WANT to be a pharmacist one day. I WANT to reap the benefits of forcing my way through 6 years of school, busting my ass, and when I come out, dictating to THEM what they will pay for my services, not them dictating that I'm just not good enough. Chances are that I wouldn't even work for this chain when I was done, because of the piss-poor treatment they give to techs like myself. I want to get myself to become a pharmacist, and when our (non-pharmacist) supervisors come in for raise time, I'm going to give them hell until they begin to understand that my techs are absolutely important in the everyday business of my pharmacy.

It's ridiculous that my chain pays 6th year interns $17 an hour, yet I make WAY under $10. My newest employee is almost through with his 6th year, and we just hired him 3 months ago. So, he's making $17/hr, and after 3 years, I'm still below $9/hr. That doesn't pay the bills for me. And, he only works a few days a week. They should be more concerned with keeping ME around, since he's free to go anywhere that's willing to pay for his services in just a few short months.

So, my new plan will go into action. Starting as soon as possible, I'll follow the model of what classes you need undergrad, and I'll take them online or at a community college, bust my ass doing so, and transfer into one of the major local universities. I'll fight my way through 4 more years, and when I come out, sure, I'll still be cynical, but I'll be fighting for those who aren't going to do what I'm going to do, or those who just can't.

Busy month

You know, in January, we were hugely busy. February, pretty busy still. March, starting to settle down. And April, fairly slow. I don't know WHAT has happened, because school won't let out for a few more weeks around here, but all of a sudden, we're totally busy with not enough help. I've been working long days with no chance to run to the restroom, and no chance to eat half of the time.

We've been fortunate enough to get some rotation students, though, since colleges are letting out. It's been different, teaching them our chain's computer systems, and teaching them all kinds of different things, but our PIC has been doing pretty good acclimating them to the job.

Interestingly enough, I've got to say, things have been fairly smooth overall. With the exception of me always seeming to pick the wrong thing, whether it be go to the registers instead of the phone, or the drive-thru instead of the register, or something, of course.

Today was kind of weird, though. It felt like every person had a problem when they came in. There was a girl who had just gotten 3 months of birth control 3 or so days ago, yet said she left them at her house less than an hour drive away, and still wanted me to transfer them until she realized she'd have to pay about $60 for one pack. Then, one of our little old ladies came in and complained about something or other. Then, someone needed me to go point out eye care, right under the sign that says 'eye care', where it always is. On top of that, today was the day we write up our order for the next week, so that took some time. After that, we found out that our relief tech was sick. I had an appointment, so I could not stay. She did us a huge favor and sent in a friend, after we found out that our intern was sick as well.

I guess what I have to say, is that I don't have all that much to really say right now. Hopefully June rolls us back into our typical Summer Sloth mode. As much as being busy is nice, there is something to be said about kicking back, eating some snack food, and doing your CE's on company time if there is nothing left to do elsewise.

A big FUCK YOU! to Actavis Totowa

Those jerks are the ones responsible for the recall of Bertek and UDL's Digitek. Digitek has historically been the cheaper of the two brands of digoxin we've carried (Lannett and Bertek were our choice), so we let the Lannett expire. Plus, it WAS a good $3 cheaper, and at my CorpoPharm, we like to be nice to the old people for the most part. So, we got the cheap one, let the old Lannett 125's expire, and rolled on. Until just a few days ago, when we received notice of the Class 1 Recall. In my career, I've never seen a Class 1 Recall. My PIC (who, granted, is fairly young) could not recall a Class 1 before. So, we had to spend yesterday calling patients, and ask them to please return to us their Digitek, so we could give them our Digoxin stock, which, our wholesaler was out of. Yes, our wholesaler fucked up big time and RAN OUT of Digixon. They told me they won't have any until at least next week. We had some Lannett 250's that are expiring in August. The problem is that we only have about 6 patients taking 250's, and about 30 who are taking the 125's. I managed to procure 300 off of other stores, and I'm going to have to go on a mission to get more today. We already owe 2 people 90 day supplies. If worse comes to worse, we will have to partial them out until we can get SOMETHING next week.

If you're a patient and reading this -- chances are that your pills were NOT in the affected batch(es). You'd probably have some sort of sign of problem if they were double the thickness. There's a lot of fairly obvious signs of digitalis toxicity. You'd probably see at least one. I can't guarantee you would, but I think you're okay for now. See your doc if you're concerned. The docs we talked to yesterday said they're not too worried, and that they're going to do the blood tests as a precaution at their patient's next check-ups. They don't feel that a rush to get blood tests by their patients is warranted.

We had a ton of people come in and tie us up for over an hour, extremely concerned about the fact that they had a recalled medicine. I know it's scary, but TRUST US. It's our job to know what's going on. We also don't have any FDA info, nor an information sheet from Actavis Totowa with the specifics of HOW much % the affected pills were off from what they should be and technicalities like that. Stop asking us these things, and CALL the freakin' 800 number for the jerks at Actavis Totowa who are doing their job being proactive, but not releasing enough information to satiate the public's fear.

Like I said. JUST TRUST US. We're going to get you through this. Worse things have happened.