Hellish day in the Pharmacy from Hell, Dunstable
Yesterday I got up at 7.50am, looking forward to my one day of work this week in a pharmacy in Dunstable which is so quiet I spend most of my time there just reading. It's great, it's easy for me to drive to, 9am-6pm, and the shop even closes for an hour for lunch. All the customers are old regulars who are used to the odd eccentric foibles of the understocked shop, and it is virtually a walk in the park, plus I get paid per hour.
Unfortunately, when I got there, I found out that another pharmacist had turned up to do the day there, due to some double booking misunderstanding. There was, however, a solution to this dilemma, which was a second pharmacy owned by the same man, which was now waiting pharmacistless, for one of us to go there. The only problem was, was that this pharmacy was also known as the pharmacy from hell, open from 9am to 9pm, with a clientele which included some 20 methadone addicts, as well as just addicts, and was currently understaffed due to people leaving from bad working conditions imposed on them by the boss.
Me and this other pharmacist stood there looking at each other, and it took less than a minute to realise that neither of us wanted to go there, but apparently least of all him, a hospital bred perfectionist who apparently freaked out at mere dispensing details, even in a pharmacy as quiet as this. So thus I felt obliged to be 'the man' and go to the Hell's pharmacy, which I couldn't help feeling was kind of unfair, after all I was here because I was booked by the boss himself, whereas he was here because his friend, the usual pharmacist who is himself just a locum asked him to come. Plus, why should I have to be the man? I'm a woman, I'm not cut out for stress of unusual cruelty that I always seem to find myself in busy community pharmacies.
So my day quickly turned into a trial of mental and physical endurance, beginning with driving down to the Hell's pharmacy and spending 10 minutes finding somewhere to park, then having to wait with the other staff out side the shop for the boss to come down and open it, because nobody there had the keys. Right from the minute I stepped into the pharmacy and took my coats off I had prescription after prescription to churn out, interspersed with surly methadone addicts looking ill and borderline cold turkeyish trooping in and drinking their dose in front of me, which is the requirement to stop them from the selling the stuff. One of them downed the stuff into his mouth, and I could see that he hadn't swallowed it, because he couldn't reply when I asked him if he was alright, and ran out of the shop (with his partner's methadone, because she doesn't have to drink it in front of us) with his mouth bulging. Apparently they've been known to spit the methadone back out of their mouths, and then sell that on, which just makes my mind boggle. What a world they live in. I barely had two minutes together to sit down and eat my sad coronation chicken sandwich, which I couldn't finish.
Just as the evening was coming to an end, and I dared to think I had gotten away with doing an entire day at Hell's pharmacy without any incidents, then wouldn't you know it. A woman came in to pick up a prescription that she had left in the pharmacy the day before for us to process, and guess what, it hadn't been done. My God, her fury was cold and cutting, if she had slapped me it would have been less painful and humiliating. The pharmacist on duty the previous day had promised her that it would be ready for her by the following evening, and then left it abandoned, without any message attached to it, with a stack of other prescriptions which looked like they'd been there since time immemorial. If we'd known we would have done it, but although we saw it there, we didn't know what was going on with it . Being new to the place I had little idea of their filing methods, there were prescriptions everywhere, lying around like dead bodies. Then to cap it all, we couldn't even do it then, because the most crucial item on the prescription, for Parkinson's disease, had either not been ordered or was unlocatable, with the stress of her screaming at us that she needed it for her sick mother straight away and that if anything happened to her it would be our fault, the pressure was almost unbearable. So what else could I do, I had to grovel for forgiveness, and admit there was nothing I could do, and then I prayed that she would go away. Right after she went away, a methadone addict came in requesting his dose, only when I went to find his prescription, I found it in the 'done' pile. But I couldn't for the life of me remember whether I had seen him already that day, and disbelievingly I told him that he'd already collected. 'Have I?' he said innocently. My God! I thought, what if he denies it? I really couldn't remember myself, what if I'd accidently given it to someone else? What if I had given it to him, but he pretends that I hadn't, and kicks up a fuss? Then saints be praised the counter assistant spoke up, 'That's right, I remember, you came in already today, I was wondering what you were doing back here again!' I walked away almost gagging with relief.
But I wasn't to get away with it scot free, some one was determined to get me tonight, and sent my nemesis in the form of a young Asian drug addict, who was there to pick up his daily tablet for Subutex, which his precription clearly stated should be taken in front of me. When I held out the unwrapped tablet, he took a look at it, and then spent the next 5 minutes trying to convince me to let him take the tablet away with him instead. 'Oh, but the other pharmacist has been letting me do that, it's much better for me this way, because I can adjust it myself and take less it I want, one whole tablet it too strong for me, it'll knock me out.' On and on he went, and when I refused, he became unpleasant. 'You obviously don't know what it's like to take this do you? If I take this in one go, I might pass out, then I'll come back and blame it on you, you don't care anything about my welfare do you?'
And just when I thought he'd finished and was finally going to take another tablet, he looks at me, and then accuses me of smirking at him. 'Do you think this is funny? I don't think this is funny at all!' and off he goes on another tirade, accusing me of looking sanctimonious and smug. The worst thing was that I couldn't walk away until he had taken his tablet, but he had provoked me so far that I was arguing with him like an alley cat. Even when he had taken it he was still provoking me, and the counter assistant was trying to get me to walk away. I did, in the end, back into the dispensary, after which he still prowled around the counter for a good minute, still insisted on accusing me of smiling, to which I couldn't stop myself from screaming back at him, 'So what? Am I not allowed to smile? AM I NOT ALLOWED TO SMILE?!!' Then I went back to some paperwork pretending like nothing had happened, trying to still the tremble in my hands and ignoring the flush in my face.
Even when he left I couldn't relax, I found myself worrying over the methadone scripts, hoping that I'd processed and recorded them all properly. And then I found out that there were still 5 prescriptions to be delivered which were waiting for me to signed off by the dispensary girl, who was also new there, and with all the closing procedures and checking, I didn't manage to leave the shop until 9.30pm. I was so wired I almost forget that I hadn't had dinner, and my stomach was tied up in knots. I bumped the back of my car into the car parked behind me when I drove off, which I'm normally so anal about, but my nerves were so frazzled I didn't even care.
When I got home it was 10pm, and after eating the dinner that my amazing mum had saved for me, I went to sleep not long afterwards, and didn't get out of bed till 11am the next morning.