Pharmacy Chick has a post up about tools of the trade – mostly special pharmacy spatulas (some of which look a whole lot like cake decorating spatulas) and counting trays. In the comments section, two different pharmacists commented on how much they love their staplers.
Love staplers? Me – I hate it when the pharmacy uses a chunk of bent metal to attach my med info to the bag.
- I can’t read the med info when it’s stapled shut. Since pharmacists have been known to complain on their blogs that people don’t read those med inserts, maybe they should quit stapling the things closed, making it impossible to read them!
- That receipt that’s stapled to the bag is part of my tax records. I have to detach said receipt without ripping, shredding, or otherwise mutilating it because my accountant is funny about those receipts being legible.
- When the tech has to do anything other than hand me the bag, she rips that tax deduction receipt – and then re-attaches the pieces with another staple and acts like it’s completely unimportant that I will be obligated to attempt a repair job. Argh!
I’m sure it’s faster to staple something to the bag instead of handwrite a name, but it would be nice if that staple was through the empty end of the paper instead of smack in the middle of my receipt. I hate knowing that a wrestling match with a staple-remover will follow every trip to the pharmacy.
Even better would be if the pharmacy printer were to spit out one label for the bag (one per patient) at the same time it prints everything else related to a prescription (bottle label, receipt, drug info…). Surely it would be simple to slap that label on a bag of meds – even easier than locating a stapler and keeping it filled.
I do not love my pharmacy’s stapler!
∞ itis 
I’m with you; if your hands hurt, those staples can be hard to get out. Buy a staple remover at the office supply store I guess and move on. 😉
Yep. This is an example of what would normally be a little thing; with prednisone, it drives me nuts to watch them staple eight receipts to the outside of my bag when they could more easily just shove them into the bag or hand them to me.
Really, the pharmacy staff are all terrific. They go above and beyond to get me my meds for the best price. I just have to take a deep breath and tell myself that they’re not purposely making my life difficult. It’ll be okay. I won’t be on prednisone forever 😉