I am handing a customer her prescription. It’s standard practise (and a legal requirement) that all customers have to sign for their prescription medication.

Me: “I just need a scribble on here, please.”

Customer: “How dare you?!”

Me: “I’m sorry?”

Customer: “Ladies do not scribble!”

Me: “Oh. I’m sorry. Can I have a squiggle, then?”

Customer: *Laughs* “Yes, I can do a squiggle!”

She signed happily and went on her way. Whew! I think I dodged a bullet there!

With the ongoing health crisis, doctors in my state are doing consultations by phone and having their receptionists fax or email the prescriptions to the patient’s preferred pharmacy.

One particular doctor’s surgery seemed to be having trouble with their fax machine. I received about ten copies of the cover page but none of the prescriptions that were meant to be faxed with it.

I called the practise and suggested they tried email, instead. Soon after, I received an email with an attached photograph of a pile of prescriptions.

Yes, instead of scanning or photographing them individually, the receptionist put the prescriptions in a nice, neat stack so that only the top one was readable.

At least they tried, I suppose? A day later we’re still trying to get those same prescriptions. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get lucky?

Related:
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist, Part 3
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist, Part 2
A Most Unreceptive Receptionist

It’s a busy morning and we have multiple customers waiting for prescriptions.

Once one of them is ready, I call out the surname on it. Three women simultaneously step forward to claim it, and immediately, all three look confused. I then call out the first name and one of the women steps back. I now have two confused women laying claim to the prescription, which is marginally better than three.

After a few moments of conversation, we work out what is happening. 

Of the three women, two shared a surname but not a first name, and two shared a first name but not the surname. Additionally, the third lady’s surname was similar enough to the other two that it was easily mistaken if you weren’t paying close enough attention, e.g. if two of the women were named Smith, the third was named Smits.

As if this wasn’t enough of a coincidence, the two women who shared a surname (who had never met) realised that they were distantly related by marriage and quickly struck up a new friendship, agreeing to meet later on for coffee.

In well over a decade of working in the industry, I’ve never had such a coincidence!

And yes, all three ladies eventually got their own correct prescription and they all went on their merry ways.

This story is part of our Feel Good roundup for September 2020!

Read the next Feel Good roundup story!

Read the Feel Good roundup for September 2020!

A friend who works at an Australian chain store that sells cheap clothing, books, toys, homewares, etc., told me this story.

Their particular store is in a rougher area of town and stays open late and thus is subject to frequent shoplifting. One night, a man comes in wearing a dirty, older pair of boots and walks out again wearing a shiny, new pair.

Spotting the ol’ switcheroo scam, my friend and the security guard confront the man and walk him back to the shelves to make him change back into his old boots.

They open the shoebox where he’d hidden them, only to find the security tag still on the old pair of boots because he’d stolen them, too!

I’m led to believe that the man had a discussion with police later on that night!

(I work in a pharmacy. We have to install an updated digital certificate into our dispensing software so that we can connect with the government’s healthcare software. My boss has provided me with a manilla folder with a set of instructions, the PIC — Personal Identification Code — code, and other related documents, and left me to it. The back end of our dispensing software is rather fiddly and complicated, so we’ve organised for our dispensing software’s tech support to call us and install the certificate remotely. This entire conversation takes place by phone.)

Tech: “Okay, you’ll need the PIC and the CD.”

Me: “What do you mean, CD?”

Tech: “As in the physical CD.”

Me: “I wasn’t told about a CD. Wouldn’t it be [file] that [Boss] downloaded and told me about?”

Tech: “No, it’s a physical CD. They should have sent you a CD with the letter with your PIC.”

(I shuffle through the manilla folder of documents that [Boss] gave me and pull out a CD labelled with the name of the government’s software.)

Me: “Okay, let’s try this.”

Tech: “Does it say [ACRONYM] on it?”

Me: “Yep.”

Tech: “That should be it, then.”

(I put the CD in and give the tech the PIC code.)

Tech: “It didn’t work. Are you sure it’s the right code?”

Me: *after double checking* “Well, that’s the code I was given.”

(Nevertheless, I hunt through the file and find two more CDs and two more codes, and we try them all, but none of them work. During all this, I notice that the tech is trying to open a file on the discs with the same unusual extension as the file my boss had downloaded.)

Me: “Are you sure it’s not [file] we’re supposed to be using rather than the CD?”

Tech: “No, there should be a CD.”

Me: “Why don’t we try it anyway, just in case?”

(We tried it, and, lo and behold, it worked! Cue my epic facepalm and fervent wish that I could get back the twenty minutes we’d wasted!)