It was on the tv, it must be true!

[AFpheonix]

So... awhile back Dateline ran a little "expose" on pharmacies and errors. It was a standard fluff piece, all scare and propaganda and short on actual facts and whatnot. One of the biggest things the bit focused on was technicians filling scripts, not pharmacists, but it failed to mention that every thing we do is double checked by a pharmacist to ensure accuracy.
I had a few people here and there make mention of it, but all of them told me that they trusted the staff here, and were more than happy with the job we did.

Except for one hag that came through yesterday.
Now, I've had a run in or two with this woman in the past, the worst one being that she didn't believe me when I told her that I'd given her debit card back to her through the drive thru, and she was insisting that it couldn't have slipped between her center console and her seat. It sure as hell wasn't in the pharmacy, and I even ran outside to look on the ground by the window to make sure she hadn't dropped it. Anyways, I disgress.
This time, she got puckered because one of the other techs told her that her script wasn't quite ready, but he'd go fill it for her right away, if she didn't mind pulling around so we could assist the people behind her. She got up to me with a CBF of epic proportions, and went off that HE shouldn't be filling her scripts, HE wasn't a pharmacist, and she'd seen on the NEWS that some tech somewhere had filled some lady's prescription and she had DIED.
I told her I had seen that very same bit, and that she didn't need to fear, that all of us had passed a national exam and certified nationally and with the state pharmacy board, and of course that all of our work was checked by a pharmacist.
She grumped a little more, and I then told her that it was very common across the industry to have techs filling in the pharmacy among other duties, but if she could find a pharmacy around here that didn't have any techs, she was more than welcome to transfer her scripts if that made her feel safer. With that, I grabbed her stuff, told her her total, and wished her a good day.

I've also had my mom be a complete idiot after hearing some story about how evil waiters copied credit card numbers and would steal them. I let her know she was being a complete moron.

So...have any of you had to deal with the fallout from bad news stories that totally slam your profession?

[JustADude]

Not exactly... though when I wore an Ankh I had to deal with bible-thumper idiots hounding me every time some sermon or news article made it out to be a sign of the devil, and an EXTRAORDINARY amount of Vegans hitting my cafe job yelling about the latest 'discovery' proving that soy is so much better than real milk.

Do those count?

[ThePhoneGoddess]

What I get all the time is people calling us with unexplained credit card charges, and their first and number one assumption is that some employee from here that they placed an order with used their credit card.

First of all, the recharge employees aren't even allowed to have writing utensils on the call center floor. I doubt any of them sit around and memorize numbers for the hell of it.

Second of all, there are so many other ways people can get your credit card info...why they assume it must be someone here who did it confuses me.

Usually these people state it as an accusation, and will not listen to any other possible explanation. It just HAS to be one of us, since we're all such bottom feeders. Grrr.

[blas]

There was a tidbit on the evening news last Wednesday about retailers losing money over returns and getting paranoid over customers who constantly return stuff.


You can bet now, someone returns something and the cashier asks why, the customer will rant "I saw that special on the news! You think I'm trying to make you lose money! You can go to hell!"

[draggar]

I guess pharmacy techs don't know how to count pills? Sheesh.

I get people in threatening to sue us for giving them brain cancer in several years (in the future).

There's also the whole lot who think we're going to steal their identity and get credit cards in their names.

Uh-huh, you and your 400 becon is so muchb a better choice than the stars who use our service or the huge corporations (Walmart is one of our clients) who have accounts with us.

[Gurndigarn]

How about how awful video games are and how they corrupt our youth. Especially gun games. Which leads to fun as the places I go to change their policies in both directions as people at their corporate offices switch between "let's make money" and "oh, the horrors of a child actually seeing a toy gun". Never mind that it's right next to the giant standee for Grindhouse.

Or the politicians showing commercials of how kid-friendly they are by passing a bill outlawing these games. Which will immediatly go to the supreme court, and get thrown out just like the last six, doing nothing but costing the state money.

[Shironu-Akaineko]

God forbid, I aced at duck Hunt as a kid. Gimme five more minutes at my job and I'll go postal with a NES Zapper.

"Tonight on the evening news, a young girl goes postal with a Zapper gun. Is nintendo 1985 to blame? Here are some images."

*Me running around the store trying to shoot customer with a bright orange gun with a string dangling behind me* "PA-chink! PA-chink! PA-chink PA-chink!"

"Horrible. Now a testimonial from Jack Thomspon."

"VIDEO GAMES ARE THE DEVIL!"

"Thank you Jack. Go back to your cage now."

[draggar]

God forbid, I aced at duck Hunt as a kid. Gimme five more minutes at my job and I'll go postal with a NES Zapper.

"Tonight on the evening news, a young girl goes postal with a Zapper gun. Is nintendo 1985 to blame? Here are some images."

*Me running around the store trying to shoot customer with a bright orange gun with a string dangling behind me* "PA-chink! PA-chink! PA-chink PA-chink!"

Don't make me go Atari 2600 on your ass!!!! I'll make Pac-Man wocka-wocka on your ass! (Um, wait, some people may actually enjoy something like that...)

I always wondered about Monopoly, you all know, the "family friendly game".

Doesn't anyone ever realize the point of the game is to force all the other players into bankruptcy and make them homeless??? Yeah, that's a nice lesson to teach!! Jack up all the rent so no one can afford to live there!

[Broomjockey]

I can't find it at the moment, but there's a Penny Arcade comic where Pac Man is being accused of leading kids into depravity and evil, and Pac-Man says "Look, that kid was f***ed up when I met him."

On topic: yeah, mistakes happen. How many prescriptions are filled every single day? A couple errors are going to happen eventually. It might even be the doctor's fault, not the tech or the pharmacist. Where's the exposé on the people killed by choking on food, or something like that? "Oh noes! People are dying by eating! When will these evil companies stop making food in such large portions! Everything must be bite sized!"

[Bloodsoul]

If anyone makes my burger bitesize, I'll eat them. Except those little buddy burger things that Burger King had about 16 years ago that was stuck together? Those were cool...

[Sofar]

This reminds me of one woman whom came into my restaurant a little while ago. Our walls are orange. Combined with our spiffy stainless steel wainscotting and our stainless steel tabletops and counters, it makes our little burger joint pretty jazzy. One day, a woman comes in, walks up to the counter and demands to know why our walls are orange. I don't appreaciate being accosted in this manner at my place of employment, but I was stunned by the strange question. I said, "Wol, it makes the place look pretty jazzy, don't you think? Plus, the color orange makes people hungry. That goes over well for us."

Adding that last bit was the wrong thing to do, because she then said, "I KNEW it! I saw on T.V. that fast food restaurants* paint their walls yellow and orange so people will eat more! How dare you! You're trying to make us FAT!" She walked out at that point, yelling at my customers.

*Spoken with a particular flourish of distaste usually reserved for words like "Hitler."

[Dreamstalker]

One of the first things we learned in lighting class was the effects of various colors. That's no secret...I somehow doubt any of the scare pieces would have enough intelligence to cover the color angle.

There was a fluff-scare piece a few weeks ago about how Vitamin Water has few vitamins (I have a feeling the commentator was expecting it to be some superfood) and no actual juice...um, that's not news. It even says on the bottle "contains less than 1% juice".

[HawaiianShirts]

Sometime last year, there was a story on the local news about one of our stores. Some lady bought a washer and dryer pair there along with the extended service contract.

Now, just to be clear, when it comes to computers and various mp3 players, customers who have that extended service contract can usually have the repair done in any of our stores in the country in a matter of hours to a few days. For TVs and appliances, we usually use outside contractors. This is clearly stated in the customer's service contract documentation. Items that can be repaired in-store are to be brought to the store. Items that cannot be repaired in-store have details about the phone numbers to call and people to contact to schedule in-home repairs.

This lady called the store for help. Then she came into the store for help. No one could help her in the store, so they didn't. Now, in her defense, no one took the effort to remind her (clearly enough for her to remember, at least) that she needed to call a specific number for help. They were rather dismissive, especially the manager involved (who was a real jerk--I know because he transferred to the store in question from mine).

But the news story blew it all out of proportion. We're an evil company who likes to torment customers. We sell service contracts but never do anything to honor them. We deliberately make life difficult for our innocent customers. Everyone wearing a company uniform is just out to get more money and should not be trusted.

So of course, for about two weeks, every time I mentioned the service contracts to a computer customer, they'd decline without a second thought and mention this news story. So I'd have to explain the whole situation to them from our side. Yes, the manager handled it poorly, but he's not a manager at this store. No, the woman didn't get shafted; she didn't go through the right channels to get her problem fixed.

But it was only about two weeks I had to deal with this. Not long after, one of our competitors did something stupid that got them on the news, and, all of a sudden, our customers were saying how nice it was to buy from a respectable company with decent employees and trustworthy managers instead of that spawn-of-evil store down the street.

[Emmeileia]

Not exactly... though when I wore an Ankh I had to deal with bible-thumper idiots hounding me every time some sermon or news article made it out to be a sign of the devil

What the news never seems to mention is that the Ankh is a symbol of Coptic Christianity too...That always shuts up the Bible thumpers. Ususally cause they have no clue what 'Coptic' is...

[BookstoreEscapee]

This is why you're supposed to take some responsibility and check your prescriptions! What a concept. I always open the bottle before I leave the pharmacy area to make sure it looks the same as the last, oh, 48 times I got it. Though I realize that if it's a new prescription you can't exactly do that. My pharmacy I go to now has a great thing on the information sheet - they give you a description of what the medicine looks like - type of pill (capsule, tablet, etc.), color of the pill, any writing that should be on it and even what color the "ink" is.