Your Unemployed Daughter

Having a prescription refilled, you would think, would be an easy task. I mean, it’s not brain surgery—it’s just the medicine you take after your brain surgery.

The hard part should be snagging an appointment with the doctor of your choice, or the interminable wait in one of those cold rooms wearing a very last-season paper gown and trying not to get caught as you rifle through the cabinets, or maybe convincing the doctor that you need whatever it is in whatever dosage and then trotting that scrawl-covered snip of paper over to your local pharmacy.

Once you’ve done that, you’re golden … Right?

No, in fact. In a recent dramatic shift of all that is right, that is precisely where everything went wrong.

I am not kidding when I tell you that getting my Retin-A Micro refill (which I’ve used for years; if you saw my baby-smooth, luminous visage, you would too) took 6 separate visits to my local DR, and approximately 7.5 phone calls, including those to both my doctor and the pharmacy.

By the third visit, things had gotten comedic. By the sixth, it had become a test of wills, a Sisyphean challenge doled out from on high because I must have done something bad in a previous life. Did I offend the prescription gods? I know not.

This Duane Reade, strategically positioned near my apartment in the EV, used to be good. I remember the days I would saunter up to the counter, plunk down my script, and be cozied up on the couch with my codeine within 15 minutes.

Alas, something has changed. I can’t figure out if it’s due to unfortunate staffing, or perhaps layoffs, but the 5 or 6 people now working behind the counter can’t seem to do much of anything in just 15 minutes.

For the first 4 visits, my prescription refill was simply not there, despite calling ahead. Then it was there, and it was wrong. And finally, my wait behind 9 unsmiling people (it only takes one of us to crack, guys) in need of pharmaceuticals paid off.

I had the refill in my hot little hand—oops, and it was wrong again! It took but a relatively speedy 10 minutes to fix that, so I guess there are improvements at work.

I just don’t understand, however, how something so simple could be so hard. Are pharmacists like airline employees, typing and typing on computers in some special language for ages only to tell you, no, sorry, this flight’s booked? What, pray tell, are they doooooing?

This isn’t even about healthcare—though I do think that when people change jobs an average of 3 or 4 times per lifetime, it doesn’t make a whit of sense to get your health insurance through employers.

But beyond that, if you’re so woefully inadequate in your profession that it takes 6 times to get something right…maybe a new job is in order? We’d all be happier, I think.

Then again, maybe the people at the Duane Reade pharmacy counter are highly conscientious and good at their jobs, it’s just that their jobs are really, really hard, and no one knows it but them.

Maybe? I’d give them the benefit of the doubt, but COBRA doesn’t cover that.