And then after having to wait and wait at the doctors office, you take the prescription he (or she) has just given you and head to your pharmacy. That's where I (Barry the Pharmacist) comes into the picture. You hand in your prescription at the drop off window and the tech tells you it will be a 30 minute wait. Inside, you are probably wondering why it would take 30 minutes to count 30 pills and put them in a bottle. It really only takes a few minutes to fill your prescription. The problem is that there are 200 prescriptions in front of yours. So, on behalf of all pharmacists everywhere I apologize! We know you don't feel well. We know that you have probably spent much longer in the doctors office then you had planned to. We know that you probably have a bunch of things that still need to get done that day and now you are way behind schedule. But the very large corporations that we work for just let us have the minimum amount of labor to do the job and no more. If someone calls in sick, or there is an unexpected rush, your wait time can easily be 2 hours in some busy stores. My Dad, who was also a pharmacist, would be spinning in his grave if he heard this. But the amount of prescriptions getting filled each day has grown tremendously over the last 10 years. If it was up to us pharmacists, you would all get your prescriptions filled promptly and we would have the time to discuss them with you in detail if you'd like.
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