i swear to speak only the truth, yea right.

Human lies for many reasons, while some have a noble motive behind it; others are just trying to get away with something. When someone walks through the door and come to me, they could claim a lot of things and I have no means of verifying that. Sometimes, they are bad at lying but that is none of my business. I might be suspicious but no confrontation would be needed.

For instance, customers could claim that they worked in a pharmacy despite not knowing the difference between phenylephrine and pseudoephedrine. Customer could claim that they are a qualified pharmacist so that I would not have to try to elicit history from them and subsequently recommend the most suitable treatment. They could claim that their child is older than 2 years old so I am to supply some medication to relieve their child’s cold. They could claim the product is taken under the recommendation of the doctor but the truth says otherwise.

Customers get the benefit of doubt most of the time. I did get one pharmacist came in and starts throwing all the azoles drug names at me, the ketoconazole, miconazole, bifonazole, clotrimazole and the terbinafine. He is trying to treat the athlete’s foot he had and I was still quite new to the field, and only familiar with brand names. After the request of clotrimazole topical cream, I summoned the pharmacist to assist. (The incongruent about the encounter is that the pharmacist isn't aware of the azoles available over the counter)

I do get customers who claim they knew everything there is about the medication; take it with food, two to start with, maximum of six. This phenomenon is more common especially if the customer is working as a naturopath practitioner or nurses, anything that could be associated with healthcare. No matter how comfortable I am in any particular drug or group, I always stick with; I do know quite a fair bit about - head lice treatments, NSAIDs, travel sickness but never, the word everything.

A doctor did prescribe himself with metformin and glipizide last week, and he presents me with the handwritten script. Handwritten scripts are definitely a pain compared to those computer generated scripts. He was first time getting his script filled at our pharmacy and thus I asked the customer to write their name and address in a readable form without adding that I could not read the doctor’s handwriting, and in this case, he is the doctor, his handwriting that I could not read. Glad that I for once, did not try to be chatty.

A customer on Thursday night asking us to quote a price on hepatitis B vaccine but upon enquiring with the pharmacist, he refused to quote a price but instead requested the customer to make an appointment with the doctor. The pharmacist on duty claimed that there are too many vaccines on the market to quote the customer every vaccine. A self-claimed doctor then showed up on Saturday asking for a quote on hepatitis B vaccine and I was regurgitating the Thursday night information before being forced (customer: I am a doctor myself) to approach the pharmacist on duty, and this another pharmacist quoted 24 dollars without any hassle.

Me: He claims that he is a doctor, you know. Hehe.

Pharmacist: Oh yeah, he is Dr. XYZ right?

Me: *shocked.* So he a real doctor?

Pharmacist: Yeah, we always get his scripts at the other pharmacy. 

Lesson number one - speak less and use the same time to accomplish more work, not everything is your business, at least not the part of unearthing the truth. Despite some of the words are less than convincing, they are still the truth nonetheless.