Walkout at Acme

Another Monday horror show at Acme Drugs. The usual, not enough help, phones ringing till my head explodes, constant aching feet that sends me ducking in the closet to switch back and forth from Danskos to running sneakers. By mid afternoon, I no longer look people in the eye when I take their scripts. Just hold out my hand and ask for date of birth and pick up time. A blur of faces. Couldn't eat lunch, not a chance, just too busy. At 3PM turned to comandante and tried to get her to see things from the socialist viewpoint of the working class- but she remained the hard and fast techno-robot. Simply looked at me in astonishment that I would ever suggest such a renegade perspective as management caring not one twit for us.

"Why don't they hire more help?" is my usual line when I am ready to scream. Such blasphemy. The staff looks at me as though I just turned off the soundtrack, or raised the temperature to a habitable 71 degrees. Hey, here's a thought, a walkout for the 1600 plus Acme Stores at one designated time. A unified message of hiring more help, lunch at a suitable time, and heck, while we're at it, cleaner bathrooms with toilet paper in the ladies stalls. Pissed off, fed up customers are welcome to join us.

I could see it now, splashed across the six o'clock news, us with placards, marching in circles at faceless mini-malls across America. They'll broadcast salaries of the CEO's and upper management, made on the backs of the swollen-footed, bladder-retentive pharmacists and techs.

Was a sunny day

It's 80 degrees, a beautiful summer morning with a gentle warm breeze. In a few hours I will be working in the windowless deep-freeze of the Acme chain pharmacy, filling upwards of 400 prescriptions at breakneck speed or is it reckless speed. You will approach the counter impatient as all get-go, with a crazed glint in your eye, and demand attending to. When informed your insurance won't pay for Cialis or Viagra, you will rant and spew forth invectives as your suburban neighbors look on, then I will politely point you in the direction of the baby aisle where you may purchase a pacifier. Later the techs and pharmacy staff check out your profile and bingo... tricyclic antidepressants. Knew it!

But mostly it's not the customers who stress me out, it's the pharmacy manager (better known as my boss) for this 1000 hour internship. Sally, a tall West African woman with a quick smile and hearty laugh, gets all glum when I walk in. It's understandable, saddled with this menopausal intern who after 30 years of side-stepping the profession is now in dire need of her tutelage.

So she won't play in the sandbox with me. A thirty year hiatus in pharmacy amounts to resurrecting the dead. The last time I donned the white jacket, the major drugs of choice were Digoxin and Inderal, and Talwin, the addicts drug of choice. Now I need to learn over 1500 drugs with sound-a-like names in look-a-like white oval shapes. When I walk in her smile fades, her posture straightens and often she points me to the register. How in God's name can I learn how not to kill you dear reader, when I'm mostly learning how to give change? "I'm a pharmacy intern, not a cashier." I say to her. The techs look away from there pills and revel in our tension.

I send off an e-mail to upper management: Is this the best use of your money, training a pharmacy intern on the register? I get no response. Send it off again. I call the district manager. He skirts, he slides, he's a slippery devil. It's to no avail, I get it...stop complaining.