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Anyone working in a customer-facing role will be able to tell you just how wild some people are. Like, if you’ve spent your whole life around generally nice and well-meaning folk, you might never realise how other people live, and how they behave even in public. Until, that is, you work as a server or a shop assistant, a bartender or within a hotel. Because not only are some people less than polite to each other as well as the workers who are there to help them, their behaviour can leave a lot to be desired too.

For the pharmacy worker in this story, every day can be a rollercoaster. From genuinely lovely and extremely sick people who are nothing but kind and patient (when, let’s be honest, life isn’t fair and they have every reason not to be happy with the world) to rude and entitled customers who state their demands like they think the staff can magic their pills out of nowhere, no day is ever the same. But let’s be clear, it takes thick skin to work there.

Read on to find out why.

Things to do if you REALLY want to **** off the staff at your friendly neighbourhood pharmacy

I work as a certified technician at a big retail chain pharmacy near a large college.

I would say that we get only about a handful of people a day that really go out of their way to behave kindly and respectfully to our staff. Most are neutral (which is fine by me), and the rest… are some of the most rude/idiotic/condescending people.

They tend to treat us as if we are working at a fast food restaurant – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, except that we are dealing with people’s oftentimes life-saving medications. We screw up, it really is as dramatic as saying “people will die”.

Mistakes happen in the industry every year and will continue to happen, and yelling at us that filling a 360-pill prescription in fifteen minutes when there are four people waiting ahead of you is too long easily contributes to these mistakes.

Yikes! But some of this woman’s other experiences show that there’s never a need to behave horribly.

Now I know people have bad days. We all do. And I see truly ill people every day. Recently I saw one of my favorite patients for the first time in a while and she had lost 20 lbs, her hair, and had aged about twenty years in a matter of a couple months.

Last week, a 20-year-old girl came in with a prescription for HIV medication, and I had to stop myself from crying at work.

Some of the most physically or mentally ill patients at our pharmacy (even just basing their health off of their medications) are some of the kindest and most understanding. My absolute favorite patient is on anti-schizophrenia medications, and back in January right after my boyfriend’s father had died and a baby I was taking unofficial medical guardianship died from post-surgical complications, I was a mess.

He could tell something was off when no one else could, and a simple “Are you alright?” from him brought me to tears. By the way, I never cry at work (or anywhere, really) – just those two times, I swear…

But the horrible behaviour from other customers? It seems never-ending.

Now, on to the list of things that many people do that will not get you onto your pharmacy staff’s Christmahanukwanzaa list.

If you have held onto a prescription from months ago and it’s covered in food and beat to hell, do not act like we’re stupid for asking when you want to come back for the medication instead of just assuming you want to wait around for it.

“Umm, I want it now. Idiot. I need my cholesterol medication filled in the next fifteen minutes. Why would I want to come back for it?! It’s not like it’s a medication that requires long-term use to work – its totally taken as-needed, and I want to go to McDonald’s after this!”

On a related note, when we say it may take ten to fifteen minutes to fill a prescription, do not say “THAT LONG?!” Yes, that long. We have to not only input it into the system, bill the insurance, handle any insurance issues that almost always come up, count the pills like a bat out of hell, check for any drug interactions, and sometimes call the doctor when they prescribe things abysmally or incorrectly.

So yes, it will take a WHOLE fifteen minutes sometimes. Now go sit the **** down.

And people’s behaviour, wildly, gets even worse than that.

If you happen to be sexist, get the **** out. I can’t tell you how many people speak down to me and not my male colleagues, despite proving myself to be one of the most accurate, effective, intelligent, and kind (believe it or not) members of our team.

It took a while for me to pick up on it, but now it’s pretty blatant. I’m sorry, but I have boobies AND a brain. Get over it.

Bring your most recent goddamn insurance card with you every ******* time you go to the pharmacy. It will save everyone time. And no, I cannot tell you what your copay is until I bill your insurance company… which I can’t do without your information!

Seriously, people are stunned when I tell them I can’t guess their insurance information. Previously mentioned boobies are magical, but not in that way.

And there were more things that got on their nerves too.

Pay attention to your plan – do you have a deductible? That might be why your insurance is now charging $237.41 this month instead of your usual $10 copay.

And I would LOVE to call the company for you to find out, but there are five people behind you in line and, um, it’s actually not my job to know your plan. Call your own company.

What was meant to be a courtesy we provide is now expected: calling doctors for you for more refills. You are their patients: you pay the doctors’ salaries. They respond super slowly to us – if you call, it might take an hour.

Call your own damn doctor. And if we do call them for you and they’re not getting back to us, it could be that they need to hear from you because they haven’t seen you for OVER TWO YEARS.

Do not tell me you are surprised if your insurance plan now requires mail order. I have an insurance company that many of my patients have (it’s the largest PBM in the nation). They send about three rounds of mail before they change your plan on you. Read your ******* mail.

Wow. Sure it’s a big retail store near a college, but the sheer amount of terrible customers this woman has to serve is crazy.

It’s a real shame that some people don’t seem to care about being kind to the people who are literally giving them their medication – and treat them like this instead.

As for the good people. They’re clearly like precious gems here.

Let’s see what the Reddit community had to say about this.

This person could not believe how some people choose to behave.

While others had similar experiences.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a craft store customer who refuses to take no for an answer when it comes to wrapping his purchases for gifts.

Meanwhile, this Redditor showed exactly what the benefits of having a good relationship with your pharmacy are.

Honestly, some people must really think that they are the centre of the universe. Sure, we all live busy lives, but having to wait ten or fifteen minutes for a prescription to be fulfilled is nothing. There is plenty that you can do with that time – or maybe even just have a tranquil few moments while you wait, if your life really is so hectic that you get annoyed at the prospect of having to wait for a prescription. Like, these people are acting like the pharmacy staff have nothing else to do, and are sitting with their feet up for ten of those fifteen minutes.

Some people really need to learn a little patience and some common courtesy. Because these folk might be working for the pharmacy, but that doesn’t mean that they’re robots there to be at your beck and call at just a second’s notice. There are lots of important things going on behind the scenes, and all those things take time. The sheer entitlement of some people is disgusting.