Retail, Burnout, Silent Struggles

“I fucking spent how many years in school to be treated like this?!?!”

— Me, circa 2004

People cope with stress in different ways. Some people drink, some people go to therapy, some people lean on friends and family.

I scream into the void that is the internet, and maybe someone reads my brain diarrhea and gets a little comfort that they aren’t alone. Or they make fun of me.

Past few days have been really rough. Actually the past few weeks have been rough. Edge-case mistakes at work + being busy + general stresses in retail have pushed me into what everyone experiences in any job, burnout and depression.

This is far from a cry for help. Trust me, I’ll be okay. I get like this every 7-8 years, power through it, and life goes on. However I really don’t think people understand how brutal modern retail can be, and why pharmacists throw up their hands and tap out after 5-10 years. You have to be psychotic, mentally tough, or have a special touch of brain injury to survive retail today for as long as I have. Look at me, I’m not normal. I’m hilarious, but far from normal.

Time for a good old-fashioned TAP rant, filled with profanities, sexual humor, and behavior unbecoming to a pharmacist. Hello? Is this Moral Turpitude? Have I got something to tell you!

Mistakes #

The fucking bane of our existence. The elephant in the room. We all have made them, some worse than others, but shit happens. If you do 500 Rx’s a day, and get one mistake a month, although (in my opinion, and everyone elses too) that’s an unacceptable rate, look at the error-rate %age. What other career has the expectation of that low of error rate? Medicine isn’t that low. Nursing isn’t that low, but pharmacy is expected to be that low.

What gets me are the super edge-case just shit-luck errors. You know, like patients with the exact same name and the exact same birth-date getting their bags swapped. The patient obviously approaches the counter and its like pulling teeth to get them to confirm their name and birth-date. They don’t know what address they live on, nor do they know their own phone number. Nobody carries a fucking ID anymore and when you ask for anything with their name on it they give you the fucking cow eyes of derp. They just repeat their name and their birth-date. Okay. I mean you see something ready for a patient with that name/bday combo so it has to be them right? There are 4 people behind him who are huffing and puffing like their time is so fucking valuable.

Its nothing but sheer shit-luck that they walked in just to CHECK to see if they have anything, only to be handed another patients medication that has their name and birth-date on it. They smile and nod during the consultation as their brain is trying to keep up breathing, and they walk out. Then you have the “oh shit” feeling when the real patient comes in and you see their Rx’s have been signed out.

You scramble to find out what happened only to realize that by sheer curse of the pharmacy gods, you have a literal paradox of two completely different patients with the same name and the same birth-date. Fuck me, fuck life, and fuck pharmacy.

Another issue that plagues us is when people have one name on their insurance card, one name in the computer, and the MD has a completely different name because heaven forbid you use one combination of fucking names. Meds get put under a different profile (because the birthday paradox always fucking hits pharmacy), they get called, they derp on over and pick them up KNOWING there is no reason why they should be getting medications, and off fires off a bout of anxiety-induced diarrhea when you realize you fucked up.

No system is perfect. Nobody is perfect. Sometimes you just fuck up because you’ve been checking off meds for 9 hours and everything looks the fucking same at that point. Your brain goes into cruise-control as you’re trying to overhear what the patient is bitching about to your staff and you put the wrong bottle in the wrong bag. It gets past everyone and the patient gets the wrong med.

We’ve all been here, we’ve all done it, and every single time it happens it absolutely sucks.

Entitlement and Impatience #

I’ve ranted about this before. Patients are entitled, bitchy, and can just be horrible to deal with. Since COVID however, it seems like the entitlement and just assholeness has been cranked up to 11. Everyone is in a fucking hurry, want their meds done yesterday, and when you rush you get mistakes. They stand in the waiting area with a face that looks like they are smelling cat-shit as they fuck-start your forehead with their eyeballs. The huffing and sighing as if it takes us 30 seconds to fill the 20 medications their MD sent over like we’re doing this on purpose. Half the eRxs are shit they already should have at home, and half make no fucking sense because the MD/Nurse/Random Homeless Person sending them over seem like they drank a glass of stupid this morning. Are there changes? Are they the same? Well the sig has 2 sets of different instructions on it so I guess its both! The duality of pharmacy, where the eRx says you can take 1 tablet once daily three times daily with a quantity that gives you no fucking hint. You call for clarification and the idiot at the doctors office just reads you exactly whats on the eRx, as if you forgot how to fucking read. The patient at this point is pacing and about to stroke out as the mental giant at the MD’s office says “The doctor will call you back”, only to get no fucking phone call back for about 2 weeks. What then? Well fuck us if we guess and get it wrong, but I suppose everyone in medicine thinks that’s a pharmacy problem, not their own fucking incompetence.

No support, from anyone, at all! #

Retail has 0 support from anyone else. Fucking zero.

• The Board of Pharmacy are just waiting for us to fuck up so they can ding us, or worse take our license away. They give 0 helpful clarification about pharmacy law, but will absolutely make their own decision when it comes to writing you up. They are somewhat caring now about staffing but I’m not seeing CVS being shut down for inadequate help.
• The DEA is like the Board of Pharmacy only they wield the ‘corresponding responsibility’ hatchet as their panties are moistened watching every C2 you fill hit the PDMP. They expect you to use the absolutely shit-written DEA Number Verification Site to confirm EVERY FUCKING PRESCRIBER has a valid DEA license. No really, they want you to verify EVERY FUCKING DEA number you get. You ask them for clarification and its just a shrug and a copy-pasted law excerpt (yes DEA/BoP, I can fucking read). Its like in Indiana Jones where he has to pick the right cup or he melts into a puddle of jizz (like that german fuck). Thats how these regulatory agencies are. Oops you interpreted the law wrong. We’re not lawyers but we’re going to ding you and you’re gonna have to fight it in court!
• Our national association, CVS Heal-..I mean APhA……. bwahahahahahahh give a fuck about retail?!? They are too busy making barbie memes and having a magician at their yearly conference. Im hoping for clowns next year because obviously APhA’s yearly shin-dig is about as serious as a 2 year old’s birthday party. Oooh barbies and a magician! Maybe next year we can ride a pony and have a petting zoo! I remember when we were respected. Most of you do too. Maybe if APhA got CVS Health’s cock out of their mouth they would actually know whats going on. Its pretty bad optics when the 2 fucking entities that are destroying retail (CVS - staffing/working conditions and Caremark - undercost reimbursements/patient steering/bogus audits/fraud/everything) are a huge supporter of APhA (says so on their corporate supporter page). You know that cuck chair in hotel rooms? Thats the APhA chair as CVS Health is reaming retail in the ass.
  • I hope you are reading this APhA. You’re a fucking failure to pharmacy. Nobody gives 2 fucks about PrEP or Provider Status when retail is burning to the fucking ground. You’ve whored yourselves out to the PBMs and Wholesalers so much you have zero fucking clue what pharmacy is like now. Grow a pair of fucking balls and stand up for retail.
  • Provider status will absolutely fucking fail. Just like immunizations and MTM we will get reimbursed fucking nothing so your bull CVS Health can charge insurance companies a fucking fortune. We are more than cut-rate ghetto NP/PA’s doing their fucking shit work.
  • “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, APhA President and CVS Health cuck to pharmacy school students during the yearly meet at SkyZone 2026. (Ed: okay i cracked myself up writing this)
• Corporate only cares about 2 things. Money and public image. You are replaceable. Enough said.
• Pharmacy schools view retail as the ghetto step-child of pharmacy. In their eyes (and students tuition checks) you should do a residency. When you dont match (because you know, there are obviously 5 hochillion clinical openings a year) then I guess you’re stuck doing graveyard at WAG or CVS. Oh well, glad that student loan check cashed. As long as the tuition money keeps on rolling in they will sell you whatever fucking dream you want to hear.
  • Do they ever stop and think that maybe retail burnout is so fucking high because they dont teach the students skills needed to survive retail? Nah, you’re gonna be a resident! You’re gonna do clinical shit! White coat! Round with doctors and be part of the care team! Yeah! Oh, you’re at retail? Oh well!
• Doctors really don’t care about retail. We are nothing but pill counters to them. When was the last time you called an MD’s office about something urgent (not to beg for permission to switch Proair to Ventolin like some chain idiots like to do) like a drug interaction or narcotics and never gotten a call back? Oh, every fucking day? What about getting any response to a refill request or a change request? Oh 2 weeks?
  • In their defense, them getting through to a pharmacist at CVS is just as fucking bad, but don’t shit on us indy’s just because our corporate brothers are fuckheads.

Bad knees and backs #

Standing for 10 hours a day sucks. Nurses are with me on this one, but at least they can sit at the nursing station gossiping about what medical resident they are sleeping with or what stupid tiktok video they are going to all film on the company time. If you’ve been on the internet long enough you’ve seen enough nurses in the staff bathroom mirror taking pictures of uh…yeah you know. Our knees hurt, our back hurt. No matter how much you spend on fancy Hoka shoes or squishy mats or compression stocking (that makes you legs feel like your asshole after you uncover a mistake) you will get permanent knee/back problems if you’ve been in retail long enough. “Oh just sit” non-retail pharmacists/public say. Yeah, us in retail just roll our eyes when we hear that.

Just fucking life #

Everyone has shit going on in their life. Marriage problems, kids are being needy, bills are due, life seems like nothing more than trainwreck after trainwreck with different cars. This isn’t a problem specific to retail pharmacy, but holy shit does it make work 1000x more horrible.

The cure, according to TAP #

There is no cure, everyone is different. I feel a ton better writing all of this (mostly the APhA birthday party section because its so fucking true its sad) but thats just how my brain is wired and how I cope with this. Most of us can’t leave our jobs due to lack of a better job in the area, the place falling apart if you leave (and you care about your coworkers), money, or you do in fact like the patients who don’t make your life a living hell. A lot of us feel trapped during work only to repeat the same thing day in and day out. One year turns into 20 years and you have built yourself a legacy and reputation in the community as someone your patients can trust. Retail is hard and I’m the first to admit that I’ve sobbed like a little bitch in the bathroom, almost walked out, and pretty much every single thing you can think of. Am I perfect? Fuck no. Do I give a shit about my staff, my patients, and my community? Fuck yes. I focus on the big picture, the patients who I help, but eventually the small cracks in the pillar of pharmacyship behind this screen grow larger and larger and here we are.

I do see the lack of any support from anyone but each other to be a huge problem in pharmacy. When it comes down to it, a huge issue with retail is we feel so alone in a storm of pointless laws, making ends meet, and dealing with the public with no help in sight. Maybe i’ll go take that APhA workplace happiness study that TOTALLY means something. I’ll also then try to filter piss out of the ocean or talk to the sky.

Take care out there, we literally just have each other to prevent us from going insane.