The Pharmacy Years: Institutional, Part II
My days in institutional pharmacy saw a few regime changes. When I started in '92, it was a family run business that had been around since 1979. As you read last time, it was a mess, literally. Housed in a what used to be the garage behind an old tackle store, the scent of mold was strong in ancient carpeting and the lighting dingy. Put frankly, there was shit everywhere. The unspoken motto seemed to be, "if there's a space, shove something in it". Hallways were narrowed by stacks of boxes. When fire marshalls came a calling, worker bees were recruited to haul everything somewhere else.
And management? Sporadic. The head guy was loud and occasionally iron fisted in his style but yet laissez faire at the same time. His son was even less consistent. The staff of techs were unruly, emotive. The hardest part of the job wasn't the actual work, but rather handling all the mood swings and outbursts. Also, disruptive nonsense such as the ex-husband of a tech calling in a bomb threat, or the boyfriend of another tech (and son of administrative co-worker) causing a ruckus by writing "I LOVE YOU" in shoe polish on the tech's windshield.
The employee shenanigans never really changed in my 5 off and on years there but in '94 we were bought by a regional firm, with occasional visits from corporate folks who oversaw a few cosmetic changes to the facility (the expression, "you can't polish a turd" was bandied about at that time). The pharmacy maintained a sizable load of accounts (nursing homes and rehabs) from Ft. Lauderdale to Okeechobee. The new company made no sweeping staff changes. We had the same duo of billers throughout, two older ladies who got very jolly in the afternoons for reasons that I won't speculate upon here.
I moved away twice during my tenure. First, to the Atlanta area in early 1995. I went to work for a similiar business in Tucker, outside the I-285 perimeter. Interestingly, the main boss and head pharmacist were also father and son, but far less combustive. In fact, they were very cool. This pharmacy was everything the one in S. FL was not: organized, efficient, clean.
But....I had a nemesis in the tech supervisor named *John who sported a white beard that earned him the moniker, Papa Smurf. He was infuriating to work with: smug and non-communicative. I used his (company owned) van to visit sites stretching south to Macon and west to Carrollton. I delivered meds and serviced oxygen equipment. I loved the days I traveled as I had no one looking over my shoulder and 99X on the radio. But that van was unreliable, stalling me out one time on the side of I-20. John insisted his brother-in-law had just worked on it. I'm not a person fond of confrontation, but when I returned that day he and I had a rather loud conversation.
The other debit of the Atlanta pharmacy: the group of techs I worked with. They could've cared less about the job, and may as well have been packing Skittles instead of meds. Now, I can bitch about the techs I worked with in Florida, but at least they were knowledgable and somewhat reliable. The women in Georgia were just clock watchers. I never really got on with them very well. It may have been cultural, but I had always had friends of different races and persuasions. I consider myself pretty easy to get along with. This group also seemed to resent the pharmacists and pharmacy interns they worked with too. It is unfortunate to report that within that workplace was a microcosm of Atlanta: lower paid African-American techs and Caucasian professionals. There was daily racial tension. Then I came in, a white boy from Florida. And I hung with the pharmacists, because I could actually have dialogues with them. I never really felt comfortable working there.
I also won't mention the time one of the techs stabbed her boyfriend right in the parking lot because he was late picking her up. Or the other time one late night I consumed a co-worker's Frosty that had been sitting in the frig for a week. I found myself in the boss' office face to face with the co-worker the next morning, grilled as if on trial. Should I also leave out the time I had an accident with the van? Though, it was my fault.
I returned to Florida and my old job later that year. Things hadn't really changed, and I had the best hours: 3-10. I loved that schedule. I was a night crawler in those days, not fond of waking up early (still not) and I relished the 11:00 wake ups. But a year later I had the itch to move to New York City and I found an institutional gig there...what happened?
I've already told you! Scroll back to the "New York" series from last year (repeated efforts to insert links to older posts are fruitless).
TO BE CONTINUED
*Not the real name
And management? Sporadic. The head guy was loud and occasionally iron fisted in his style but yet laissez faire at the same time. His son was even less consistent. The staff of techs were unruly, emotive. The hardest part of the job wasn't the actual work, but rather handling all the mood swings and outbursts. Also, disruptive nonsense such as the ex-husband of a tech calling in a bomb threat, or the boyfriend of another tech (and son of administrative co-worker) causing a ruckus by writing "I LOVE YOU" in shoe polish on the tech's windshield.
The employee shenanigans never really changed in my 5 off and on years there but in '94 we were bought by a regional firm, with occasional visits from corporate folks who oversaw a few cosmetic changes to the facility (the expression, "you can't polish a turd" was bandied about at that time). The pharmacy maintained a sizable load of accounts (nursing homes and rehabs) from Ft. Lauderdale to Okeechobee. The new company made no sweeping staff changes. We had the same duo of billers throughout, two older ladies who got very jolly in the afternoons for reasons that I won't speculate upon here.
I moved away twice during my tenure. First, to the Atlanta area in early 1995. I went to work for a similiar business in Tucker, outside the I-285 perimeter. Interestingly, the main boss and head pharmacist were also father and son, but far less combustive. In fact, they were very cool. This pharmacy was everything the one in S. FL was not: organized, efficient, clean.
But....I had a nemesis in the tech supervisor named *John who sported a white beard that earned him the moniker, Papa Smurf. He was infuriating to work with: smug and non-communicative. I used his (company owned) van to visit sites stretching south to Macon and west to Carrollton. I delivered meds and serviced oxygen equipment. I loved the days I traveled as I had no one looking over my shoulder and 99X on the radio. But that van was unreliable, stalling me out one time on the side of I-20. John insisted his brother-in-law had just worked on it. I'm not a person fond of confrontation, but when I returned that day he and I had a rather loud conversation.
The other debit of the Atlanta pharmacy: the group of techs I worked with. They could've cared less about the job, and may as well have been packing Skittles instead of meds. Now, I can bitch about the techs I worked with in Florida, but at least they were knowledgable and somewhat reliable. The women in Georgia were just clock watchers. I never really got on with them very well. It may have been cultural, but I had always had friends of different races and persuasions. I consider myself pretty easy to get along with. This group also seemed to resent the pharmacists and pharmacy interns they worked with too. It is unfortunate to report that within that workplace was a microcosm of Atlanta: lower paid African-American techs and Caucasian professionals. There was daily racial tension. Then I came in, a white boy from Florida. And I hung with the pharmacists, because I could actually have dialogues with them. I never really felt comfortable working there.
I also won't mention the time one of the techs stabbed her boyfriend right in the parking lot because he was late picking her up. Or the other time one late night I consumed a co-worker's Frosty that had been sitting in the frig for a week. I found myself in the boss' office face to face with the co-worker the next morning, grilled as if on trial. Should I also leave out the time I had an accident with the van? Though, it was my fault.
I returned to Florida and my old job later that year. Things hadn't really changed, and I had the best hours: 3-10. I loved that schedule. I was a night crawler in those days, not fond of waking up early (still not) and I relished the 11:00 wake ups. But a year later I had the itch to move to New York City and I found an institutional gig there...what happened?
I've already told you! Scroll back to the "New York" series from last year (repeated efforts to insert links to older posts are fruitless).
TO BE CONTINUED
*Not the real name
Comments