Tell Me Again How Invaluable My Time Is

Disclaimer: This rant is the opinion of this blogger, and in no way reflects the opinion of the owner of this site, its affiliates, the military or anyone actually in the military. This was my experience this morning, and I'm a little pissed.

We had to make another trip to a local MTF this morning. I have two boys on the autistic spectrum, and we visit this MTF very, very frequently. In fact, we visit them so frequently the lab personnel know one of my children by name - without him checking in. I love those lab techs, by the way. About 12 vials of blood yesterday in one stick on a very twitchy, head throwing, body jerking autistic 5 year old. Those folks ROCK!

This blog is NOT about them.

This blog is about the pharmacy at this MTF which shall not be named. But, YOU know. Oh, I'm SURE you know.

We went to the pharmacy today. We had a wait. Not super long, but annoyingly long enough. Especially when I had two special needs kids in tow. Especially when I heard the following conversation while waiting for the pharmacist to check my script.

There was a gaggle of pharm tech at the window I was at. They were talking, chatting it up, speaking about their personal lives, what they did the night before, hunger pains, and whatnot. The pharmacist comes up and says to one of the chatters something to the effect of, "Hey, I need you to stop talking and open another window. We need to get going here."

The chatter says, no. The wait isn't that bad. 

She goes to the computer, along with the tech filling our script, and proceeds to look for the wait time in order to prove that it really wasn't that busy. "See, it's only 16 minutes. That's not bad. Who cares? And it's like 9 o'clock." (rough quote - not verbatim)

Now, this completely chaps my ass. I have been to this pharmacy and waited close to two hours for a freaking prescription. The meds my son is on are only prescribed by a child psychiatrist, and she will only file them at the pharmacy there, or other local MTFs. She won't do civilian pharmacies because "this way, you don't have the copay." Instead I lose hours of my life.

In fact, the hours and hours of my life that have been wasted sitting, waiting for a script to be filled could likely be measured in full days lost. Hell, probably weeks lost now. It's something expected. It's something that irritates the holy hell out of me. Even when you have discharge orders from the ER, you still have waits of sometimes 45 minutes to get the scripts. This being after you lost a whole day waiting to be seen in the ER, of course.

But to know that there are people behind the windows who have such little regard or appreciation for my time? That hurts. That sucks. 

So while all this was going on right in front of me - right in front of a customer - I just stood there, staring. Not only did they have this whole ugly discussion in front of me, they interrupted my transaction to "prove" that the wait time was so insignificant that the pharm tech didn't feel the need to actually open a window and, oh, I don't know, do her job...Galling. Disappointing. Wrong.

My time has value to me. God knows I have precious little of it that isn't spent in that MTF or at other appointments for my children. If our healthcare benefit is to be touted as a "value" and "benefit" to those in the military and their families, shouldn't those whose job it is to provide that "value" and "benefit" ACTUALLY provide VALUE and BENEFIT? Personally, I'd rather pay the $27 copay, or whatever it is now, and have my script filled while I shop at Target.

Customer service, in general, is on the endangered list. It's flat out extinct in that pharmacy.