Rise and Fall, RAGE and Grace
Well, hello world. How the hell are you? When we last parted ways, the site was infected with some sort of virus that was spiraling out of control, and I had taken it offline to try and remedy the situation. I expected a 72-hour turn around. Yet, here we are -- more than 3 months later. Where'd I go?
I dug in to do some work and found that this festering virus had scrambled and garbled a signficant portion of my older posts. It wasn't anything that was unfixable. It would just require man hours proofing and editing as opposed to the semi-automated way I was going to cure this silliness by exporting my posts as a (as far as I know) uninfectable source file, and reinstall wordpress and plugins from scratch.
The download was done. The new database was created. While comments were going to be lost, I was confident I could get it rebuilt quickly. Locally (meaning, in the website's Parent Folder on my computer), I was all ready to go. All the was left was to delete the garbled mess and re-insert my original words if I could remember those final words. I began reading, analyzing, considering, and re-considering the words I had written...some as much as three years prior as a much younger, immature, unmarried, and overall unrefined young man.
My path to correct a technical error led me on an intrinsic exploration of how I felt then compared to how I feel now -- and how my beliefs and perceptions of the world around me had changed in the previous year based on the events of my life (the triumphant, the tragic, and even the traumatic). Those of you that read more than five of my posts know that I am opinionated, unapologetic, brash, and often crossed the line in how I treated those that disagreed with me -- especially if that person expressed their dissent in an unprofessional manner (a standard that I did *not* hold myself to -- which was hilariously frustrating when I posted a slanted viewpoint to get a rise out of a specific population of people).
I'm a few years older, a few years wiser, so what? I agree. One way to show true naivety would be to speak of deep personal growth in three short years. I'm certainly not saying that by any stretch of the imagination. Have my stars changed so much in that time that, perhaps, my thoughts, opinions, or views have shifted dramatically? Not really. What opened my eyes was the stark contrast in my voice from February 2007 to February 2010. While I had the occasional bright spot where I showed a glimpse of maturity, like the very popular post "The Worker's Plea," it was negated when followed by a post where I disassembled a commenter's opinions for disagreeing with me and handled it by posting his picture, real name, email, home address, and home phone number. It was funny to me then. Hell, it's funny to me now, but these days, I at least have the common decency to realize it's wrong and gains nothing for the site.
So, what's the point here? Well, I have a few goals here. As you can probably tell, this is not wordpress. I am using this now as a vessel to teach myself ASP.NET -- I have plans to implement several functions on this site to flex those dotNet muscles. I also aim to use it to catch up the world on what all their favorite pharmacist accomplished in the last three months. To sum up: A move, a new house, a huge mortgage, a new job, another new job, an additional state license, and much, much more.
As far as the archives go, consider the majority of it as lost (even though it's not). Much like the Worker's Plea above, I have the backup of the posts. While not convenient to access and pull from, I do plan on pulling out my best, most popular pieces of writing and sharing those....as I expand in my programming skills.
I don't have a public email address as of yet. After being pestered by 30 people on AIM in the past two hours, I've recreated "webmaster[@at@]theangriestpharmacist.com" for emails. I'm not sure I want to add that level of access again as it often became so bogged down that I was weeks behind in replies. No telling on response time to emails. Therefore, if you would like, try and catch me on AOL Instant Messanger. TheAngriestPharm seems like a good place to start. No promises on availability. Just loose promises for fresh, relevant content on this site which is sure to be down a lot, buggy as hell, and have the potential to kick my tail for trying to expand beyond html.
Merry Christmas plus a GREAT POST and my thoughts…
Pharmacy Mike has made, quite possibly, the best pharmacy rant post I've ever seen in my life. It is eloquent, well-written, and just angry enough to make me smile. I'm envious of how well written it is, but I am not envious of the situation he and many of our colleagues are in throughout the country.
In the post, he references an older CLASSIC post of mine which was recently updated.
Just a few comments about our situations. Screw Pharmacy Mike's management. I have been in that situation. I've told those management to butt-the-fuck-out on many circumstances. I've pulled out my Pharmacy Practice Act statues and highlighted passages which gave me the right to tell them to butt-the-fuck-out. I make every effort to be nice and help every single person that comes in my pharmacy. Here's how I want to be viewed: I want everyone to see my pharmacy as a bad ass American Bulldog. I'm loving. I'm caring. I'm a great animal and perfect best friend. I love those around me. But, I'm protective of my own -- and especially protective of myself. I want dickheads to see me and realize that if they fuck with me, they might get the TEETH. You don't want the TEETH. To function adequately as a pharmacy/pharmacist, you have to have patients that respect you because of the TEETH. I'm not talking about fear (even though some pussies out there have irrational fear of dogs and/or pharmacies). I'm talking about a humble, head-nodding respect that goes both ways. Don't cross the dog and you won't get the TEETH...you'll only get superior pharmaceutical care.
Long, pointless metaphor -- but you get the point...I hope anyway.
Secondly, fuck Pharmacy Mike's State Board of Pharmacy. What a bunch of fucking hypocritic pricks. He's completely right -- he gives out that drug without a valid script on file and the patient dies, he loses his license and the pharmacy goes on probation. If that patient RESPECTED the pharmacy, he would have had the foresight to realize he was out of refills and called in his LIFE-PRESERVING prescription in a few days early. We're not talking about a statin here -- where he can miss several doses with no repurcussions. We're talking about insulin. A bad diabetic, if going uncontrolled over the weekend, could wind up in the unit by Monday...
Let me also clarify my situation. I don't own my pharmacy. I don't have dictator-esque control of my pharmacy either. However, I do have my staff and my customer-base convinced that my pharmacy is a dictatorship. Acknowledgment of that fact is recognition of my TEETH if you will. My power over my place of business is largely based on growth and success. If I'm running my pharmacy with minimal problems, showing positive growth, and having no problems -- I can do pretty much as I please with no intervention. This is compounded with the fact that my yearly wages are based on several factors. Pharmacists in my area could command as much as $60 dollars an hour. I, on the other hand, make only $50 per hour. In exchange for that, I receive a massive incentive-based bonus in December of each year. I'm not trying to measure dicks or anything here, but my bonus this year was around $38,000. So, the salaries are, in the end, very comparable. The difference is, I feel like I actually have an active role in earning my salary. Therefore, my corporate counterparts allow me massive leeway in making managerial decisions in the management of my pharmacy. They may make suggestions -- I can implement them or I can tell them why I'm not going to implement them (and why my way is or will be better).
My bonus is based on a ton of things: generic substitution rate, percentage of growth, number of competitors and their projected growth, number of fills (new are worth more than refills), payroll for other store personnel (negative dollars if above goal), coupons used (less used is more money), success of the store as a whole (even our beer sales make me a little bit of money), and a few other things that escape me right now (complaints and my review count somehow as well).
Because of these facts, I take it upon myself to toss out (or somehow get rid of creatively -- like 'not having their medicine in stock' -- unethical? Yes, I know.) the trouble makers that don't recognize the TEETH. I go ahead and show them the teeth. As Druggist2 said, 90% of your problems come from 10% of your customer base. Let's get rid of those pricks and treat the other 90% of our customer base that much better. That will increase our efficiency and growth in the long run. The small amount we lose in lost sales from the pricks is minimal when you take into account the man hours spent dealing with them and the stress we get from them.
MERRY CHRISTMAS from
The*Angriest*Pharmacist and Brian Peppers!!
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