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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Sometimes the doctor will write something in latin abbreviations so you have to translate that and write it out in plain text but you typically want to make sure the entire directions can fit on a single label. If you just say “see attached directions” then you may not get paid for the prescription if their insurance audits it they will take back any payment they gave to the pharmacy because you dispensed incorrectly. They may also just write something unhelpful like, “as directed in discharge paperwork” or “to be dosed by pharmacy” or something really long that can’t easily fit.

    That said it’s been several years since i have been there so there may have been more enhancements.


  • I’ll add an experience I had in the inverse.

    Friend of mine who works in film and has a great appreciation for interesting movies recommended me the movie Barbarian. He was talking about the major plot points but only got about 20% of the way through before saying there was a twist and I stopped him because it sounded interesting. I downloaded it on my tablet and promptly forgot about it.

    About a year later I was on a flight and decided to give it a shot. At exactly 21% of the way through the movie the plot shifts and becomes exactly the type of movie you should not be watching on a flight surrounded by coworkers. I was too engrossed to register that, watched the whole thing, then had the pleasure of explaining to my pearl clutching coworkers what it was.

    Great movie by the way.


  • I have worked in a CVS so I can answer this first hand. The main reason is every CVS is critically understaffed to the point of danger to patients.

    Beyond that systemic problem that adds delay, actually dispensing the prescription is not the rate limiting step. When you get a prescription there’s a whole list of things you need to do before it can be dispensed. In no particular order:

    1. Select the right drug which seems easy but the prescriber may have used an old brand name, or misspelled it, or put in something that doesn’t exist.
    2. Calculate days supply (easy for pills, not so much for insulin, creams, eye drops, etc.)
    3. Find the correct doctor in the system
    4. Find the right patient’s profile and see if they really fill at your store
    5. Transcribe the directions in a way that makes sense in less than ~200 characters to fit on the bottle.
    6. Check to see if the patient already has another prescription on file they are in the middle of the refills for so you don’t have two active prescriptions.
    7. Check to see the prescription has all the required information on it to be filled based on state requirements
    8. Send the finalized prescription to the patient’s insurance which inevitably is rejected because of some minor issue with any of the above, or it is expired, or requires prior authorization, or they changed their name, or it is too soon, or it’s not the proper moon phase.
    9. Actually fill the prescription which requires finding it on the shelf which is a mess because you fill ~500 prescriptions a day
    10. Scan the bottle to make sure it’s the same as what you billed the insurance, but if you picked the wrong generic brand on the first step you get to start over.
    11. Clean the counting tray
    12. Count the pills
    13. Get the right vial and label everything with the stickers, and if you need more you need to print more out but someone else has a 50 page print job ahead of you and it’s out of labels
    14. Answer the phone
    15. Answer the drive through
    16. Answer the patient at consultation
    17. Answer the patient at the cash register
    18. Send it to the pharmacist for review which is a huge process on it’s own which requires looking for interactions, appropriate dosage, correct drug for the disease indication, and simply reviewing you got everything transcribed correctly which if it isn’t you get to start all over. Plus there are 50-100 prescriptions already waiting for review.
    19. Process a vaccination patient
    20. Add water to a reconstitutable (powder) medication
    21. If Poseidon wills it, the prescription is approved and then you get to bag it, then put it in the right spot in the bins so it can be found.

    If it’s a controlled substance you need the pharmacist to do about 50% of the steps above and access the safe which is a whole process. In the meantime they are on the phone with a doctor or some insurance trying to get something clarified or approved. Or compounding someone’s diaper cream. Or doing vaccinations. Or counseling someone on their antibiotic. Some drugs have mandatory monitoring programs you have to enter information from the doctor before they can be dispensed. Some drugs require a dosage syringe, or intramuscular syringes, or needle tips.

    Suffice it to to say it is an involved process.






  • On my 8th birthday my dad took a couple friends and I out to dinner and we stopped to buy a video game. My friends and I were arguing about what to get and my dad came by a couple times to get us to hurry up. Finally he said we had to make a decision and ushered us up to the cashier.

    As soon as the cashier started to talk a truck off the highway that was above the store crashed through the side wall of the shop with enough speed to hit through every aisle and collapse all the shelving to the back as well as ripping down the ceiling. The guy was covered in blood and slumped over the wheel. No one was hurt in the store luckily, but we all would have been killed if we argued any longer in that aisle. My dad just got us into the car and we drove home. Afterward my dad would just downplay it whenever I would bring it up.








  • Looking for things on the ground or the side of the road. Some notable items I have found:

    1. Unmarked envelope with ~$400 in it.
    2. Change purse filled with random international coins
    3. Pair of knipex channel lock pliers that have dog bite marks on the handles
    4. Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket i727
    5. Ticket for a festival which I then attended
    6. Many sunglasses
    7. Many cool rocks and sticks

    I take the time to find the original owner whenever I find something but it’s pretty rare. These are only the things that I have kept because the original owner couldn’t be found.





  • When I was in secondary school I had to fill out a form over the summer to be allowed to leave early for some school activities. The form required a coach or teacher’s signature. Since it was the summer, I had no contact with any faculty so I had my parents call the coach who told me to sign the form for him, which I did and I turned it in. Unfortunately, that coach left before the beginning of the year so when school started I was called to the principal’s office and accused of forging his signature. I told the principal the coach told me to, so it wasn’t a forgery, I was signing on his behalf, and I even put that on the form. He ended up calling the coach and he even confirmed but at that point he didn’t want to back down and still denied the request.

    After I left the two older ladies that ran the office found me and told me they just approved it after he left for the day and he would never know. They were super nice and told me they were proud of me for sticking up for myself. As a barely out of primary school kid it was really intimidating to be yelled at by an adult but I felt so vindicated when they recognized the inequity of the situation and helped me.

    That principal ended up only lasting a year too.


  • Highly recommend Cassette Beasts. It’s a monster battler but you can freely swap and collect moves and the level of your monsters are based on your character level and not the level you obtained it. Plus all the moves have affixes like in Diablo that significantly change their use or potency.

    The sum of all that means you are always trying out new monsters and move sets, some of which are entirely broken. Great game.