Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Disturbed and Disheartened

Been away from the blog 'post' for a few weeks -- visitors, a little traveling (more on that later) and just general 'time getting away from me.' Anyways, back now --- and I know there have been several posts about the Long Island pharmacy murders on Father's Day, where a pharmacist, clerk and two customers were shot execution style by a guy who then made off with a backpack full of narcotics. They put up no resistance but were killed anyway. Like everyone else, I am totally sickened by this. I hate the fact that we are swimming in controlled drugs half the time and shoveling them out by the bucketful. I hate arguing with people about early refills, then calling the doctor and seeing them give in over and over again. I hate the fact that we are forced to keep way more stock than we should. I hate the fact that our pharmacy 'fishbowls', which are supposed to provide "accessibility" to our patients, also scream "c'mon in and rob me." I hate the fact that only one pharmacy I currently work in even has a 'panic button' to call for help. This was probably a wake-up call for a lot of us, and I intend to make some noise with my employer about it.

I hope that this guy who has been charged with these murders (and his accomplice wife) have themselves a good ol' drug problem--- because now I hope they are going to sit in prison lookin' at some major COLD TURKEY withdrawal -- and hopefully that's only the beginning. Never see the light of day again.

2 comments:

thatsit said...

Withdraws do suck but they are nothing compared to murder. They both deserve long prison sentences. I'm so sad for those families and all the pharmacists who don't feel safe doing their jobs.

PA Honeybee said...

While I was in retail, I never had a situation that serious to deal with, but I was in some situations where I wish we had a panic button at the time. I called our pharmacy the shoebox because it was in the back corner of a grocery store, it was small, the smallest pharmacy department I've ever seen, and we had some patient threats occured away from the major line of sight from the back aisle.
Just hearing about local hold-ups let alone hold-ups in other states makes me glad I no longer work retial, yet sad for my friends and anyone really who still does and may one day face a scenario like the ones I've heard about.

I think panic buttons in various places in the pharmacy would be best. In my situation, I could not reach the phone 10 feet away and could not move as the relief pharmacist and I were literally pinned in a corner against the locked pharmacy door while an angry patient screamed at us about his son's damned acne medication Rx we couldn't get transferred on Christmas Eve from Caremark mail order. People are flippin' crazy!

I wish you and all others who work retail safety from these threats of violence in any form.