Pharmacy is under a lot of the same pressure as the rest of the medical profession, which is to say that they're understaffed, underpaid, overworked, and burnt out. It doesn't surprise me that they're starting to fail to meet basic standards. That's not to say it's acceptable that you can't get your medication, just that you're probably not the only one, and it's likely not limited to that pharmacy.

A friend of mine worked at CVS briefly and had some horror stories. Being encouraged to illegally put people on automatic refills without their consent was his biggest problem with the job. Weird quotas for dubious practices, constant intentional staffing shortages, making it so the most trained pharmacologists had to spend their time answering the phone instead of doing pharmacological things, etc. They even delayed his onboarding and first paycheck by two months because his state had a single HR person in charge of staffing, and they'd been on vacation. This article contains a bunch of his other grievances:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/31/health/pharmacists-medication-errors.html

(Archive)

Edit - spelling

The only pharmacist I know spent college self medicating with cocaine and research chemicals from the internet.

In his defense, he was always willing to share.

Try not giving Walgreen's any business if there are any locally owned pharmacies in your area.

Sir this is an opioid mill

None taken.

Sorry you had to deal with this, and that your local indie shop is fucked too. Don't know if it would help at all but next time consider asking if your provider would notate on the prescription "BRAND NAME MEDICALLY NECESSARY," or since this is likely an electronic Rx, check the field for NO SUBSTITUTIONS to hedge against Walgreen's system autosubbing for the generic. Depending on your state law (assuming you're in US) there may be a different phrase or method for forcing the pharmacy to fill brand name.

Second, I didn't come here to defend these guys or tell you not to trust your lying eyes. I'm just gonna paste what I wrote in the White House Pharmacy thread the other day. this was in response to someone asking how retail pharmacists aren't just glorified pez dispensers:

more serious note though, the extent to which people unironically say this about pharmacy is a key example of how for-profit healthcare and capitalism in general has corrupted the profession IMO. medicine, just like all health care should be free for all and healthcare workers should treat people with dignity and respect and should themselves be able to work their profession with dignity... if it looks like the pharmacist is a useless gatekeeper just counting pills all day that's because that's the extent to which the profession has been degraded. there's still important work being done behind the scenes but the amount of corporate BS far outweighs it. trust me most of them hate it too, even if they lack the awareness to see where the problem truly is. there are some scumbags but most of them know they should be making sure that people get the medicine they need safely, and not answering to CVS or Walgreens' bottom lines.

ooo look at me i know how to make little potions im soooooooo fucking smart pay me $100k/year

I'm sure theres a lot of technical medical stuff you get to learn as a pharmacist(unless the US just has that as a complete non-licensed position or some wack shit) but it feels like for the user-end there ought to be a pretty big focus on just basic administrative competence and efficiency.

They do tend to be overly dense, like they're doing it on purpose, always chalked it down to corporate training

I don't think intelligence comes into it very much. From what I've seen, the norm is, especially in metropolitan areas, pharmacists are overworked, underpaid, understaffed, don't get enough sleep, are constantly treated like shit by customers (who, to be fair sometimes have a valid reason to be upset, since it's medicine and not just some random treats).

Around me there seems to be a criminal shortage of pharmacists and pharmacist techs. They all look absolutely dead inside and the signs "now hiring pharmacy tech" has been up for months.

I switch between pharmacies to get my meds and both have stopped calling. My wife needed a prescription and they had it on stock, told her "it will take several hours to fill this" and made her wait a day for no reason.

dealing with vyvanse (and adderall and other such listed meds) is a fucking nightmare. they stick you on this stuff to help you deal with ADHD and design the entire process to specifically fuck over anyone with ADHD (and everyone else too)

death to the so-called healthcare system of amerikkka

there should just be big colorful bins of generic pharmaceuticals.

take what you need.

I don't know if pharmacists are dumb, but they are certainly often fucking assholes and deliberately neglectful to certain patients. Yeah most people have good experiences with pharmacists for most things, but if you need a controlled substance they instantly transform into cops and start treating you like a criminal. They're not quite as bad about this as doctors, but wow can they be real pieces of shit.

You've ever been on the r/pharmacy subreddit? Maybe this is just the intersection of and pharmacists, but they often actively delight in "sticking it to the junkies". They love pretending to just be your run of the mill abused retail employee when patients get upset that they're about to have their ability to live a functional life totally obliterated, often on top of torturous withdrawals.

I had to go to my pharmacist four times because they said I didn't have a receipt .
Turns out they did, I had just mixed up the brand name with the medicine name. My mistake, except not really because the first time I came in I said I was there to pick up a receipt, they asked which, I told them the one that was IN THEIR FUCKING SYSTEM ORDERED BY MY PSYCHIATRIST, they asked me to be more specific, so I told them "the medicine for my ADHD" and they asked me to be more specific so I told them [brand name] and he told me they didn't have a receipt for that drug in my name. Weird. I go to my doctor, I ask my doctor "hey the receipt isn't out, would you send it out?" Doctor checks, the receipt is out. I go to pharmacy, we repeat the process, they say there isn't a receipt for me for that drug (and again I start out by saying there's a receipt for some ADHD medication, not [name brand drug]).

Now I wanna make this clear: I live in a country where this system is digital. Doctor writes into a computer "yes this person should get this medicine". You show up, you say you're there to pick up medicine, you show id, you pay for medicine, you leave. That's it. All you as an individual has to know is that there's a receipt for you.
This colossal dickhead suddenly decided he had to make his own weird little routine where I had to be able to name THE SPECIFIC CHEMICAL STRUCTURE/MEDICINE NAME. You don't even have to know what you're taking your medicine for, but he decided you did, so I went a fucking month without my medication.

I went thru this thing two more times, until on the fourth visit, the educated individual behind the counter thought to ask if I was okay with any brand, since the DOCTORS RECEIPT TO WHICH I HAD ORIGINALLY REFERRED THEM TO didn't specify a brand.
He then chose to chide me for mixing up brand and medicine.
I hope he spends some time in a warm place where nasty people poke him with prods until he can recite the medicinal name of every drug he had in his inventory.

Now I'm not a pharmacist, but I am an expert in another field. When I interact with people that aren't experts in that field, I assume they won't know anything beyond what is immediately apparent to them and anything beyond that is a pleasant surprise to me. Apparently pharmacists are taught to assume everyone knows what they know.

Shut the fuck up and give me my goddamned drugs you reptile.

They're working on like 1hr of sleep too, especially in shitty retail chains had a roomie that was a pharmtech studying to be an actual pharmacist and his sleep was more caffeine and maybe adderall. Also the words paperwork blackhole, records get shittily put in, no one's updated anything regarding contact information since 1982, insurance is a pita to deal with and records, orders etc get lost.

Just had to call the pharmacy because they "couldn't" refill my Adderall prescription due to some unexplained to me issue but when I called they just said they'd get started on filling it. And now it says it'll be ready later today. It's frustrating but every time I go to pick up it's clear they're incredibly understaffed.

This seems to line up with my experience picking up refills for my girlfriend.

Pharmacy is half an hour away, we've gotten to the point of having to call the pharmacy, ask the name of the specific person who answered the phone, and then ask them to go and make sure that the prescription is actually filled.

Even after doing this I've gotten to thenoharmacy and they tell me it's actually not ready. It doesn't actually solve the problem but at least I can specifically request to speak to the pharmacist by name so I can tell them they're a massive fucking dumbass who has wasted a bunch of my time AGAIN.

I've gotten straight up harassed by pharmacists twice for being trans - like shouting "you're a man" to the entire CVS after seeing my license. I kind of just roll with the ADHD med mixups now to get in and out ASAP. like I got my ID fixed to say F immediately after those incidents but I still brace to run when handing my ID over to pharmacies.

will say, I'm very lucky to have found a small local pharmacy that's got few enough customers that they call within an hour of receiving the prescription, and can immediately order ADHD meds the day they get the prescription and have it in the next day, despite the shortage, because they haven't hit their quota yet. plus they're queer friendly and can even deliver meds straight to you within a day or two. if they took my insurance, I'd go to them for everything, but the consistency with my ADHD meds is critical for my job so it's the only thing I can justify paying for out-of-pocket.

my job also provides a mail-order pharmacy service as a benefit - it's out-of-state so no good for controlled substances and it takes a week to arrive but that's fine for everything else cause I can order in bulk + work covers the copay. might be worth it to look for one of those, even if you don't get the copay covered, especially if they're in a state your doctor is licensed in, cause they seem to have an easier time getting ADHD meds, as they're usually in more rural areas where they're less likely to have exceeded their quota.

Sorry you had to deal with that :(

I hate hate hate dealing with medical bureaucracy, everything takes so long and working with it is made even more difficult than usual if you have ADHD

It's not my revolution unless we have over-the-counter amphetamines

Imagine if medicine was organised and manufactured centrally, instead of the terrible hodge-podge that is Amerikkkan health care.

Also, my brother is an assistant pharmacist or something. Wow, just wow. How dare you.

My parent got their bag stolen once like 20 years ago now and the thing they always say was the worst part was getting their prescriptions refilled. Not replacing the credit cards or the ids, not the hundred or so in cash that they were out…

I don’t even know if there is such a thing as trafficking blood pressure and diabetes medication.

But who else can read the chicken scrawl that is every doctor's handwriting? I've always been amazed at how they can decipher those squiggly lines with ease.

Sorry to hear about your troubles comrade. I hope you're doing well with your medication now.

To give the pharmacist the benefit of the doubt, maybe their main failing was not being able to articulate some sort of byzantine corporate policy. Having worked retail, I always assume that any completely irrational fuck up came from corporate than the worker standing in front of me.

That being said, the only pharmacist I know personally lost his license and went to jail for defrauding the government with fake prescriptions, so idk maybe the profession is just rotten.

You don't have to do any qualifiers for these people. They're almost like cops in that regard. If I want to get some Benzos or Percs then you shouldn't be able to stop me.

"Oh I make sure the doctor doesn't kill you and I don't make the laws"

I get it but first off, you could make sure the prescription is right without refusing me access to other drugs. On the second point, that's just cop apologia. You weren't forced at gunpoint to become a pharmacist. The fact that you base your entire career around DENYING me the things I need is entirely on you. Pharmacists aren't cops but they're like 2 degrees away.

Abolish the police, abolish capitalism, and most importantly abolish the pharmacist.