So I just got a job as a pharmacy tech at a grocery store, and I was thrown right into the mix of things. It seems pharmacy isn't what I thought it was--I feel like I'm the human equivalent of a machine. Stand there, fill a prescription, move it down the counter. Repeat. When a customer comes up, help them by taking their prescription or getting their medicine and ringing them up. This happens so fast you don't even get a chance to think! I didn't even get a break the other night 🙁 (7 hour shift). It seems even worse for the pharmacist, because they have to talk on the phone while checking/verifiying 'scripts. No break either. Is this the way pharmacy is? I think I'm switching back to engineering if things don't get any better. 🙁
A few thoughts I had - I think all of us (or at least most of us) were overwhelmed in the beginning. Until you know the computer system well, how the pharmacy does things, you've worked with the same pharmacists awhile, etc. you tend to fill like you are just on an assembly line. In a few months, you will probably feel more able to do other things.
Can you get involved at all with inventory, ordering of supplies or OTCs, organization of the pharmacy, scheduling of the techs, etc. - I found that all of those were necessary tasks that I could do as a tech and that were a break from just always filling Rxs.
I've tried to get good at remembering where items are in the store, so if people come up and need a specific OTC, then I can show it to them - nice little break from filling. Sometimes then I'll have to walk them back to the pharmacy if they have a specific questions that the pharmacist needs to answer, but that's just another chance to hear/learn about something different.
Also, since you are thinking that you want to be a pharmacist, how much do you really know about what you are putting in those bottles? You don't have to wait until you go to pharmacy school to learn. Get some sort of basic drug book, and every time you do a new drug that you don't know anything about, look it up. Learn brand/generic names, what the drug is typically indicated for, what sort of dosage is typical, etc. Once you've learned that for a lot of the most common drugs, you will be a much more effective tech. I have caught dosage mistakes, and been able to figure out some drug names when my pharmacist couldn't, because I'm always thinking about if what I'm typing and reading makes sense based on the patient.
It may look like to you that the pharmacist is doing the same thing over and over again (and in some ways they do) but a good pharmacist will be putting a lot of thought behind it.
And, as the other posters have noted - the pharmacy world is not all retail, and not all retail is the same.
