The Ole' Apothecary

Earlier, I observed the completion of more than three decades as a pharmacist. Tonight, I contemplated that, despite the usual shortcomings of any job, my present position is the best of the lot.  I can sure tell you about the worst times, though.

They weren't in the chains, or in a busy, indifferent hospital. They were had during two part-time relief missions, one in a small indie, the other in a small-town hospital.

In the first instance, more than 20 years ago, I was doing a favor for a friend. This was a classic Rexall on the town green. I thought I would enjoy it; after all, I started my career in a small town, but the difference was that my first boss was a Mr. Chips.  This fellow turned out to be a stinking-to-high-heaven tyrant.  This was the start of the computer age, and the fellow's computer "system" was out of a Tandy kit.  It's been along time, but I remember my tapping away on the keyboard with him prompting me, "No! No!NO!" (he was there getting me ready to take over during vacations; he'd never get it). Then, he had me fill out his universal claim forms in his own way, and when I put in a number wrong, i.e., not his way, he'd bellow at me.  I hadn't had enough sleep, and had just been through my own first computer learnin' a month before. I didn't need this job. At 11:00 that morning, just two hours into the shift, I told him I had had enough, that he probably needed to get someone else. To my shock, he answered, "Sure. I understand."  He knew he was being a bastard, but I was in no mood to take it. (Maybe you could, but I couldn't. At least I admitted it after only two hours.) He reached into the cash register and paid me some money.  Never in my life was I so delighted to leave a building than I was when I left that one and drove home a free man from this tin-horned dictator to whom I had almost committed a pastime. I had a friend at the time who was a precious metals dealer, and went right to his office, put down my money from Hitler's pharmacy, and bought three troy ounces of silver. Later that day, I locked those three coins away. I still have them! I would no more part with them than part with my own scalp. I had to show something for that dumb torment I put myself through. Well, look at the price of silver today.  Turned out also that that mo-fo would be cited later for unprofessional conduct, to whit, sexual harassment.

The hospital of the second "job from hell" was a 30-bed rural institution I was supposed to cover on Christmas week.  It was only a two-day assignment,  also almost 20 years ago, and I had already been there that summer on behalf of my agency, but that turned out not paying off at all in terms of experience.  As soon as I arrived, the computer system went down!  I had to call in the health information coordinator, and it turned out that she had to stay with me four hours each of those two days to get the system up and down and up and down.  It was a crude system that you had to launch from a DOS prompt and enter several arcane DOS commands to do so.  I don't recall having a graceful moment, fielding phone calls for half-entered or un-posted orders and struggling to get the carts filled (there was no technician).  At one point, I just bellowed at the H.I.S. coordinator, acting, myself,much like the jerk in the first story. My accommodations were on a hard patient bed in a room reserved for such agency people as myself.  I wish I had bought platinum, not silver, with my salary from this gig!

In both instances, I remembered these jobs as being nightmares come true. The sense of hopelessness, frustration, and even violence reminded me of bad pharmacy dreams I had had in years past and survived by waking up from them. Each assignment gave me the sense that they were not worth the earnings.  For these jobs especially, I "shoulda stood in bed."  I'm sure that, over the years, there were other moments I took it on the chin when I shouldn't have.  Gluttons for punishment and indignity, we pharmacists are.