What is the easiest job in pharmacy????

[CuriousPharmD]

Retail - you have to stand the whole time (at least 8 hours), deal with doctors offices, deal with TP issues, and deal with customers...HATE IT!!!!
Only reason to do it is for the money..

Hospital - you get to sit at least.....but its a 24-hr, 7-day/wk operation...so the hours and schedule suck....you have to deal with everybody talkin sh..t about each other...and you have to deal with arrogant doctors and nurses...HATE IT!!!

At this point it looks like the only options for me for my happiness is either mail order or working a 7-on, 7-off shift at a 24-hr. retail store.
Is there any other retail stores besides WAGS, CVS, and Osco that have 24-hr stores?????...that seems to be my only options for retail overnight....also, how difficult is it to get a store at that shift....i have heard that it is easy since no one wants that shift, but i also have heard that it's hard since a lot of new grads want to work that shift...ANY INPUT HERE IS WELCOME!!! THANKS!!!

Also anyone working at a mail order pharmacy...like caremark.....i would appreciate any insight on what a mail order pharmacist actually does....

THANKS!!!!!!

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[penguins429]

Retail - you have to stand the whole time (at least 8 hours), deal with doctors offices, deal with TP issues, and deal with customers...HATE IT!!!!
Only reason to do it is for the money..

Hospital - you get to sit at least.....but its a 24-hr, 7-day/wk operation...so the hours and schedule suck....you have to deal with everybody talkin sh..t about each other...and you have to deal with arrogant doctors and nurses...HATE IT!!!

At this point it looks like the only options for me for my happiness is either mail order or working a 7-on, 7-off shift at a 24-hr. retail store.
Is there any other retail stores besides WAGS, CVS, and Osco that have 24-hr stores?????...that seems to be my only options for retail overnight....also, how difficult is it to get a store at that shift....i have heard that it is easy since no one wants that shift, but i also have heard that it's hard since a lot of new grads want to work that shift...ANY INPUT HERE IS WELCOME!!! THANKS!!!

Also anyone working at a mail order pharmacy...like caremark.....i would appreciate any insight on what a mail order pharmacist actually does....

THANKS!!!!!!

I've been working in a mail order specialty pharmacy for a little over a year now ...
The pharmacists there spend about 2-3 hours a day listening to patient's complaining about why their medications haven't been delivered yet or why it was delivered to the wrong address ... they also spend about 3-4 hours every day trying to contact doctors to fax in refills/new prescriptions (and of course explaining to the patient why we cannot just ship out their medications without a prescription), verifying insurance benefits and working on getting prior auths, etc ... about 1-2 hours explaining to patients why they must pay the $600 balance on their account before shipping out another $300 worth of medications ... and a couple hours are spent verifying that the 1500-2000 prescriptions filled daily have the right pills in the bottles before 5pm when the deliveries go out ...

Its got all the glamor of retail, except that you get to do it all over the phone while sitting in a tiny cubicle barely large enough to stretch your arms out 👎 ...

 

[PharmDstudent]

At this point it looks like the only options for me for my happiness is either mail order or working a 7-on, 7-off shift at a 24-hr. retail store.
Is there any other retail stores besides WAGS, CVS, and Osco that have 24-hr stores?????...that seems to be my only options for retail overnight....also, how difficult is it to get a store at that shift....i have heard that it is easy since no one wants that shift, but i also have heard that it's hard since a lot of new grads want to work that shift...ANY INPUT HERE IS WELCOME!!! THANKS!!!

You may never be happy 😕. The previous post about mail order looks grim. Working the night shift in retail can be bad too. There were two robberies during the late shift a few months ago at different 24hr CVS stores. For whatever reason, CVS did not have adequate security at those stores. One pharmacist was verbally assaulted and pushed around which left bruises. The other pharmacist was hit repeatedly over the head with the back of a gun by a robber, because he couldn't open the safe fast enough. He kept messing up the combination because he was nervous. Supposedly he had to tell the other robbers, "hey, will you get this guy off me so I can open the safe?".

 

[KARM12]

Retail - you have to stand the whole time (at least 8 hours), deal with doctors offices, deal with TP issues, and deal with customers...HATE IT!!!!
Only reason to do it is for the money..

Hospital - you get to sit at least.....but its a 24-hr, 7-day/wk operation...so the hours and schedule suck....you have to deal with everybody talkin sh..t about each other...and you have to deal with arrogant doctors and nurses...HATE IT!!!

At this point it looks like the only options for me for my happiness is either mail order or working a 7-on, 7-off shift at a 24-hr. retail store.
Is there any other retail stores besides WAGS, CVS, and Osco that have 24-hr stores?????...that seems to be my only options for retail overnight....also, how difficult is it to get a store at that shift....i have heard that it is easy since no one wants that shift, but i also have heard that it's hard since a lot of new grads want to work that shift...ANY INPUT HERE IS WELCOME!!! THANKS!!!

Also anyone working at a mail order pharmacy...like caremark.....i would appreciate any insight on what a mail order pharmacist actually does....

THANKS!!!!!!

If you don't like dealing with people, you are in the wrong profession. I would think going to MWU you would have learned there are other options besides retail or hospital. I am assuming you are an AGO PS3 and havent been exposed to any clinical or elective rotations. Do you like compounding? You could sit in a room somewhere and make progesterone supp all day.

If you don't like dealing with patients or other healthcare professionals I'm not sure what you are going to do. Even in industry you deal with other professionals and coworkers.

Did you work before starting rotations? Did you know what you were getting into?

 

[Caverject]

Retail - you have to stand the whole time (at least 8 hours), deal with doctors offices, deal with TP issues, and deal with customers...HATE IT!!!!
Only reason to do it is for the money..

Hospital - you get to sit at least.....but its a 24-hr, 7-day/wk operation...so the hours and schedule suck....you have to deal with everybody talkin sh..t about each other...and you have to deal with arrogant doctors and nurses...HATE IT!!!

At this point it looks like the only options for me for my happiness is either mail order or working a 7-on, 7-off shift at a 24-hr. retail store.
Is there any other retail stores besides WAGS, CVS, and Osco that have 24-hr stores?????...that seems to be my only options for retail overnight....also, how difficult is it to get a store at that shift....i have heard that it is easy since no one wants that shift, but i also have heard that it's hard since a lot of new grads want to work that shift...ANY INPUT HERE IS WELCOME!!! THANKS!!!

Also anyone working at a mail order pharmacy...like caremark.....i would appreciate any insight on what a mail order pharmacist actually does....

THANKS!!!!!!

Rite-Aid has 24 hour pharmacies...

 

[july]

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[Jbuprepharm]

Retail - you have to stand the whole time (at least 8 hours), deal with doctors offices, deal with TP issues, and deal with customers...HATE IT!!!!
Only reason to do it is for the money..

I've worked retail for a couple years now, and I have a few comments to agree/counter yours.

The money: yes it pays the best, but I also think it can be the most stressful, so it's dollars for sanity. However, working in healthcare, in any capacity, is going to be stressful, so don't kid yourself thinking there's going to be some miracle job without any stress.

Doctors/Customers: Yes, there are many many bitchy, complainy, ungrateful people in both groups. But you don't do it for them, you do it for the grateful people, the ones who will gush about how wonderful you were to them and how helpful you've been. Some people are just angry or disgruntled, and no matter that profession you work in, they're going to treat you like poop, so screw em. Fill their script and get em out. It's the appreciative people, the elderly, the parents of sick infants/children, the husbands/wives of the jerk spouse, who know that they can turn to you for anything and trust you with their lives... those are the people that make putting up with the a-holes worth it.


So anyway, yeah I hate my job sometimes, but I love it at other times. But I also work at a unique store with a great staff. I work at a year old CVS that was a brand new build with no prior customers, so we're still building our customer base and we're not too busy (anywhere from 110-200 a day), but we all like working with each other, and we've been able to get to know most of our customers from the beginning (for better or worse). I can honestly say I would not want to work at any other CVS or Walgreens in town (except maybe the one down the road because they have cool pharmacists) because they're madhouses (as people usually perceive them).

However, as long as I'm rambling, this means I have no idea where I want to work after school, because I'm not sticking around here (Amarillo), and I don't want to work at some really busy, understaffed store (cough CVS cough), but I want to stick with retail (well, at least that's what I think now), oh well, I've got 3 years to figure it out

oh, and we get to sit from time to time, so it's not too bad