One of the fun things about after Halloween is that masks are discounted to just a couple dollars. Last time I was at the pharmacy I told Nefarious she could pick one out… I had recommended one but she insisted it wasn't scary enough so she chose this one (her “real” outfit was a flying unicorn; this is just for fun).
Last time I got my prescription filled (sleep medication), the pharmacy messed up and gave me a drug with a similar name but with a totally different purpose — some thyroid medication — and with the strength changed by an order of ten. So a fairly serious mistake I think. Mistakes like this if I remember right kill 50,000+ people a year.
I noticed of course that evening, and I had about two weeks left over from the previous batch anyway, so I wasn't particularly stressed… But at the same time, I easily could have taken it if I didn't pay closer attention. So I decided to use this opportunity to try and send a message. About two weeks later I went in and showed them the misprescription and asked them if it was a generic for my regular prescription, and that I'd looked it up on the internet and it didn't seem right.
Well, at this point I started to feel really bad because the pharmacist looked extremely shaken — I guess because she knows how dangerous these events are. She apologized profusely, and I emphasized that it wasn't her fault, because it was the owner that had filled my prescription, not her.
By law, this has been reported. The pharmacist told me she was extremely upset because she's been warning the owner for some time that this is a problem at their pharmacy… I guess the owner doesn't want to hire enough staff, so he rushes through filling the prescriptions at the end of the day, and makes mistakes in the process. I do feel like a bit of an asshole because all of this made some decent people upset over something they didn't do, but I think it's important to send a strong message to the owner that if he doesn't hire the help he needs, eventually someone will die.
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