nightmares

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killingbill

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Does anyone else get nightmares from being a retail pharmacist? I sometimes have nightmares of customers complaining. This job has made me just hate the general public. I think this job is getting to me and I'm starting to crack.
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Honestly...no. I've never had one.

I DO however, still have the occasional nightmare where I'm still in school. I had his weird ass nightmare where this dorky professor at WVU was beating me with a pool stick a few months back.
 
I hated my retail rotation so much I started to get nightmares from it after the 2nd week. The upside I guess is that it's making me work really, REALLY extra hard in Therapeutics so I hopefully never have to do retail ever again ((>.<))
 
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For a while I would suddenly get cold anytime I heard "ONE PHARMACY CALL" even if I was at CVS just picking up random things.
 
I do. Maybe it's PTSD. Or burnout. Or whatever. The more you try to fight it, the worse it gets :(
 
I regularly did before I got out of retail. Not exactly nightmares, but I would have dreams about the rude idiots I dealt with that day.
 
I too developed a deep disdain for the general public. Now I'm super nice to waitresses, drive through fast food workers, customer service people and such. I fill out surveys wherever I go and give people wicked good scores.
 
This thread scares me since my offers so far are only retail. Should I be very scared? I think so. :(
 
slimcutt said:
I too developed a deep disdain for the general public. Now I'm super nice to waitresses, drive through fast food workers, customer service people and such. I fill out surveys wherever I go and give people wicked good scores.
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I always waaaaaay over tip waitresses since I have been one before. I hate cheapos that tips me under 20%! :mad:
 
I agree with this thread... in a high stress job like pharmacy, I can see how you'd have nightmares at night. I have dreams about taking care of a patient that just does not turn around... sick as ever and I can't fix it. I usually am glad when I wake up because it's like someone tapping me out of a terrible wrestling match.

SHC1984 said:
I always waaaaaay over tip waitresses since I have been one before. I hate cheapos that tips me under 20%! :mad:
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Well then you'd hate me, no tips over 20% from me. And I was a waiter. 15-18% tops. 20% if you're awesome... but I've had poor servers who still got 15% from me because I felt bad.
 
lol that's when you know you need to get out...
 
pinipig523 said:
I agree with this thread... in a high stress job like pharmacy, I can see how you'd have nightmares at night. I have dreams about taking care of a patient that just does not turn around... sick as ever and I can't fix it. I usually am glad when I wake up because it's like someone tapping me out of a terrible wrestling match.



Well then you'd hate me, no tips over 20% from me. And I was a waiter. 15-18% tops. 20% if you're awesome... but I've had poor servers who still got 15% from me because I felt bad.
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I start at 20% and begin deducting for inadequate service. Everytime I have to wait a long time for a refill, track the waiter down, get attitude, etc tip goes down. There were times when service was so bad I left no tip. If a tip drops below 10%, I write on the receipt why they got a ****ty tip. If someone is awesome, I'll tip higher than 20% and write on the receipt why they were awesome.

I figure good habits should be rewarded.
If you are going to be a ****ty waiter thinking you're getting a good tip, think again. It's your job. Do it well.

I am lenient with n00bs. I can usually tell. It's easier when they tell me they are learning though.

Bonus points for memorizing long orders and not having to write it down. I think it's impressive when a waiter can memorize 10 orders.
 
You don't want to tip low... especially if you go to the restaurant regularly. My sister and her BF used to waitress. She ranked highest tipper to be White > Asian > Indian in that order. She hated a lot of Indian guys that came to her store who never left tips.

So occasionally, a rude ass no tipper came in and people in the kitchen mistreated his food. One time, she said a loaf of bread to make a sandwich for a no tipper fell, instead of picking it up and tossing it in the garbage, they kicked the loaf to the other side of the counter picked it up and pretended nothing happen and served that to you :smuggrin:
 
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Momus said:
You don't want to tip low... especially if you go to the restaurant regularly. My sister and her BF used to waitress. She ranked highest tipper to be White > Asian > Indian in that order. She hated a lot of Indian guys that came to her store who never left tips.

So occasionally, a rude ass no tipper came in and people in the kitchen mistreated his food. One time, she said a loaf of bread to make a sandwich for a no tipper fell, instead of picking it up and tossing it in the garbage, they kicked the loaf to the other side of the counter picked it up and pretended nothing happen and served that to you :smuggrin:
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+1 or get their drinks spit in. :smuggrin:

I don't do that though since it's my family's restaurant and they are technically all my customers. However, most other people will.
 
pinipig523 said:
Well then you'd hate me, no tips over 20% from me. And I was a waiter. 15-18% tops. 20% if you're awesome... but I've had poor servers who still got 15% from me because I felt bad.
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It depends on the restaurant that you go to. In normal restaurants 15% to 20% is acceptable. However, I worked in a very upscale restaurant (good fewer trashy people!) so I expect higher tips and I usually get it b/c I get a different group of customers coming in.
 
Momus said:
You don't want to tip low... especially if you go to the restaurant regularly. My sister and her BF used to waitress. She ranked highest tipper to be White > Asian > Indian in that order. She hated a lot of Indian guys that came to her store who never left tips.

So occasionally, a rude ass no tipper came in and people in the kitchen mistreated his food. One time, she said a loaf of bread to make a sandwich for a no tipper fell, instead of picking it up and tossing it in the garbage, they kicked the loaf to the other side of the counter picked it up and pretended nothing happen and served that to you :smuggrin:
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the restaurants I visit with regularity are not of the denny's variety. Plus in a town like mine, you can get to the owners/managers. I know the owners at most of my favorite local restaurants. I don't usually get bad service from them. I don't usually go back to places where I got bad service anyway.
 
You people are stupid and you have it all backwards. Who bases where they go off of service? I tip based on the food. If I like it, I tip high. If not, I just give 20%.

Why do I do this?

Wait staff can be trained to be better. Chefs can't (well, not by my money, anyway.) If I like the food, I want to come back. If you give a waitress $10 on a $30 check, they will start to remember you. And then they will start giving you the most impeccable service ever. This works for me at my usual spots. The old lady at the Greek diner down the road knows me and my wife on sight. They jump up and fight over taking care of us. Our diet sodas never go below 1/4 full. The servers at the Thai joint I love know me by name (They actually called me Dr. Frazier once...yes, I laughed...). I walzed into my Thai joint on a Saturday night with my family when they were visiting over Xmas. They are telling everyone it will be a 30-45 minute wait. They see me. I got a seat in 5 minutes. And they got tipped 35%. I get free appetizers, the best drink refill service, etc, etc.

Pay it forward fools. Establish a relationship with the wait staff and you will see greatness.
 
Momus said:
You don't want to tip low... especially if you go to the restaurant regularly. My sister and her BF used to waitress. She ranked highest tipper to be White > Asian > Indian in that order. She hated a lot of Indian guys that came to her store who never left tips.
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Apparently Canadians don't tip. Being just across the border, a few of my friends who are waiters all say how they hate Canadian customers for that reason. Hockey season can get especially bad when they migrate over for the games.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
You people are stupid and you have it all backwards. Who bases where they go off of service? I tip based on the food. If I like it, I tip high. If not, I just give 20%.

Why do I do this?

Wait staff can be trained to be better. Chefs can't (well, not by my money, anyway.) If I like the food, I want to come back. If you give a waitress $10 on a $30 check, they will start to remember you. And then they will start giving you the most impeccable service ever. This works for me at my usual spots. The old lady at the Greek diner down the road knows me and my wife on sight. They jump up and fight over taking care of us. Our diet sodas never go below 1/4 full. The servers at the Thai joint I love know me by name (They actually called me Dr. Frazier once...yes, I laughed...). I walzed into my Thai joint on a Saturday night with my family when they were visiting over Xmas. They are telling everyone it will be a 30-45 minute wait. They see me. I got a seat in 5 minutes. And they got tipped 35%. I get free appetizers, the best drink refill service, etc, etc.

Pay it forward fools. Establish a relationship with the wait staff and you will see greatness.
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The food has to be worth it. I do try your approach at those places. The indian place I go to always has a wait for people without a reservation. The owner always gets us in and I tip very high.

At the average restaurant that employs college students, the turnover is so high anyway it doesn't matter. I support local businesses mostly though so the waiters/cooks are family members of the owner or stay a long time.
 
I get nightmares all the time. I have had a fellow employee walk me out to my car when there have been extremely crazy customers. And I've had nuts threaten me with physical violence when we were waiting to hear back from the insurance company about their
C2's. Customers have already called headquarters about me to whine, and I had only been working a week or two. I'm also never in a good mood at work, because I work 14 hour shifts with no breaks and no time to eat.

As pharmacists,we are bearing the brunt of people's frustrations. Because the stores at the company I work for are so understaffed, we can rarely if ever finish anything on time, which makes people even angrier. We were telling people who were handing in prescriptions that they wouldn't be ready until tomorrow, because we were still on yesterdays. People decide to take their anger out on us.
 
When I used to work retail, I would sometimes have nightmares of me at work and being severely short staffed and getting yelled at by patients and phones ringing off the hook, etc... I'm so glad I'm no longer doing retail full time, I only do it prn when I feel like picking up a shift.
 
Yes! I've been a floater ever since a started. One particular nightmare was about being called in to work at 630am for an 8am shift to some place I've never been to before. No matter what I couldn't find the place and kept getting lost and I was so scared about getting fired for being late. :laugh:

Sometimes after a string of particularly bad days I will be in bed trying to sleep but find that I can't completely unwind because I'm still in the mode of thinking about how many rx's are in the queue and how I need to keep up. Ugh. As time goes by though I've gotten better at brushing off/forgetting bad customer experiences, which is nice.

Someone should do a study on retail pharmacy PTSD. Judging by this thread it's pretty common.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
You people are stupid and you have it all backwards. Who bases where they go off of service? I tip based on the food. If I like it, I tip high. If not, I just give 20%.

Why do I do this?

Wait staff can be trained to be better. Chefs can't (well, not by my money, anyway.) If I like the food, I want to come back. If you give a waitress $10 on a $30 check, they will start to remember you. And then they will start giving you the most impeccable service ever. This works for me at my usual spots. The old lady at the Greek diner down the road knows me and my wife on sight. They jump up and fight over taking care of us. Our diet sodas never go below 1/4 full. The servers at the Thai joint I love know me by name (They actually called me Dr. Frazier once...yes, I laughed...). I walzed into my Thai joint on a Saturday night with my family when they were visiting over Xmas. They are telling everyone it will be a 30-45 minute wait. They see me. I got a seat in 5 minutes. And they got tipped 35%. I get free appetizers, the best drink refill service, etc, etc.

Pay it forward fools. Establish a relationship with the wait staff and you will see greatness.
Click to expand...

Mikey is right on the money. This does not work everywhere. It only works if you are a regular. I have a vacation house in the Poconos and we go to a diner for breakfast all the time. I tip about 30%. My wife and I walk in and there is one tea and one coffee brought to the table.....
 
i still have nightmares about school

being late for an exam, not finding the correct building for an exam, not studying for an exam and taking it, stuck on a question during an exam and time running out.....:scared:

:sleep:
 
I keep on having this recurring dream that I forgot to do a term paper because I have not been attending classes.
 
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The generalization about Indians tipping poorly is pretty true. I'm like the only exception. Personally, I give 10% for ****ty service, 20% for good/average service, and 30% for awesome service. One time my family and I went out to a restaurant, awesome food, awesome service. Bill came out to $300. My parents gave the guy the credit card, and when the waiter came back they were outside or something so I signed for them and put down a tip of $90.

When they found out I tipped $90, they flipped the **** out, expecting me to tip no more than $30.
 
Sparda29 said:
The generalization about Indians tipping poorly is pretty true. I'm like the only exception. Personally, I give 10% for ****ty service, 20% for good/average service, and 30% for awesome service. One time my family and I went out to a restaurant, awesome food, awesome service. Bill came out to $300. My parents gave the guy the credit card, and when the waiter came back they were outside or something so I signed for them and put down a tip of $90.

When they found out I tipped $90, they flipped the **** out, expecting me to tip no more than $30.
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Yah I've heard of my friends having to do this with parents and stuff who still think 10% is an acceptable tip.

I'm personally on this scale:

15% for poor service but i'd complain to a manager
20% for excellent service
25-30% for exceptional service (above and beyond), usually this means knowledgable staff (as in I can have a conversation with you about different types of scotch and/or the origins of my steak).

I usually do this because a) many places tip-share, b) I'm trying to help balance out all the cheap asses out there and most importantly c) I'm usually building a relationship with that restaurant/place of business.

Then again I try to engage the staff, managers, and sometimes the owner or chef at many places. You'd be surprised what I've been invited to privately.
 
Sparda29 said:
The generalization about Indians tipping poorly is pretty true. I'm like the only exception. Personally, I give 10% for ****ty service, 20% for good/average service, and 30% for awesome service. One time my family and I went out to a restaurant, awesome food, awesome service. Bill came out to $300. My parents gave the guy the credit card, and when the waiter came back they were outside or something so I signed for them and put down a tip of $90.

When they found out I tipped $90, they flipped the **** out, expecting me to tip no more than $30.
Click to expand...

Indians from India tip poorly, but there are a lot of Indians that were born here in the USA and raise here and they tip very well.
 
Lesson here is...if you are a cheapsake and don't want to tip me well...then get take out instead!
 
Sparda29 said:
The generalization about Indians tipping poorly is pretty true. I'm like the only exception. Personally, I give 10% for ****ty service, 20% for good/average service, and 30% for awesome service. One time my family and I went out to a restaurant, awesome food, awesome service. Bill came out to $300. My parents gave the guy the credit card, and when the waiter came back they were outside or something so I signed for them and put down a tip of $90.

When they found out I tipped $90, they flipped the **** out, expecting me to tip no more than $30.
Click to expand...

Interesting thought about Indians and tips.

I will share a story I have when I worked for Best Buy. We never worked on commission at the PC/computer section... but everyone avoided Indian customers. No one wanted to deal with Indian customers because they would always try to haggle with the salespeople when we had no power to bring the price down given that Best Buy is a corporate giant.

So, when an Indian customer came by - everyone would fan out... I thought it was mean at first then I found out first hand that it was sorta true.

LOL...

Not to worry, I had so many Indian friends in high school, some of my best friends were Indians and they all agreed - their parents were cheap as all get out.
 
pinipig523 said:
Interesting thought about Indians and tips.

I will share a story I have when I worked for Best Buy. We never worked on commission at the PC/computer section... but everyone avoided Indian customers. No one wanted to deal with Indian customers because they would always try to haggle with the salespeople when we had no power to bring the price down given that Best Buy is a corporate giant.

So, when an Indian customer came by - everyone would fan out... I thought it was mean at first then I found out first hand that it was sorta true.

LOL...

Not to worry, I had so many Indian friends in high school, some of my best friends were Indians and they all agreed - their parents were cheap as all get out.
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Yup, that's another thing. We Indians love haggling at the stores, since its done all the time back at the markets in India.

"I'll sell you this crate for 3000 rupees."
"I'll buy it for 3000 rupees if you throw in another crate of this other stuff"
'Deal."
 
All I can think of is Russell Peters.

$34.50!
 
The other night I had a guy yell at me because he was tired of waiting for his prescriptions. He was in the drive through, and the doctor had called at the same time. What did he think, the medication would fall from the sky? So he came inside the store, charging, and I told him we had tons of prescriptions still left to do, and had 10 people in our waiting area.

Some of my favorite quotes, one night we were behind as always because we never have enough help, and a pharmacy technician said "Tonight our white coats are going to be straightjackets."
A pharmacist at Walgreed accused me of having a pharmacy technician pose as a pharmacist and do a transfer. It almost was funny how angry he was. I had no idea what was even going on because I was filling in at the store.
 
I have a recurring dream where I'm filling prescriptions as fast as I can, but more and more leaflets keep printing out. No matter what I do, I can't keep up. It's not that bad of a dream, though.
 
Sparda29 said:
Personally, I give 10% for ****ty service, 20% for good/average service, and 30% for awesome service. .
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Why would you tip at all for for ****ty service?

I've heard of people leaving a penny if they don't like the service to show their dissatisfaction. Personally, if I receive poor service at an eatery, I would first determine if it is the general customer service culture at that place or if it is due to a particular waiter. If the place in general does not know how to serve customers, I will simply not return to that place. If a particular waiter is the bad apple of the team, I will file a complaint to the owner or manager of the eatery. In any case, I wouldn't tip at all if my dining experience has been ****ty.
 
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