I walked into the pharmacy at 2pm. The wait time was already more than an hour. (We’re not that busy a store, but I had a new pharmacist and two new techs working without a cashier.) By an hour in, this was up to 90 minutes.

Then, all horsehockey started breaking loose. We had some kind of crash (I’m still not sure whether it was a power outage or what) in the server room. This means:

1. The IVR system went down, so no “press 1 for this.” It also means no faxes coming in, since our IVR system handles those as well.
2. Our central database connection (with other stores) went down, so we couldn’t update patient profiles.
3. And finally, we lost the ability to print labels, so we were essentially dead in the water.

It didn’t help that I still had to do the order (we had about 20 prescriptions on order for yesterday. When I started opening the totes, I almost started to cry. I knew that my employer had decided to force ordering of larger quantities on Top 200 drugs, but they were supposed to use a 1:1 ratio (i.e.order 5 100-ct. bottles, get 1 500-ct. bottles). Instead, I got 5 500-ct bottles, along several 1000-ct. bottles of other drugs. I got 3 1000-ct. bottles of KCl 20mEq, which, if you’ve never seen them, are bigger than footballs, and weigh about 15 pounds each.

I was at wits end at this point, and I said a word that I almost never say: “F@%K” (I can’t actually bring myself to type the word on a blog post; that’s how little I curse).

Between the computer troubles and what felt like an insurmountable goal of finishing the order (about half of it will be sent back), I couldn’t see any way we would survive the day. But, I took a deep breath, called a time out, and we started coming up with a game plan. I put one tech on the register, one tech filling the prescriptions that we DID have labels for, and I focused on checking in the order.

Once the order was finally put up, I called helpdesk to get an update on the server issues, and they finally got my printers working. So I kept one tech on the register, one filling, and I started typing the 50 or so prescriptions that we had received since the printers went down. This was about 5:00, so we were still telling people to come back the next day. Of course that made a few people angry, but they tend to give you a little bit of leeway when you mention the phrase “fatal system crash.”

Finally, by about 7:00, that pile of 50 was being finished off.

So, when 8:00 finally came around, I was able to start giving 20 minute wait times, instead of tomorrow. I never thought that would happen. I figured we’d be there an hour past closing (9pm) finishing up.

I guess the point of all this is that, yes, things will go wrong in the pharmacy, sometimes terribly wrong. But if you face it with a game plan, stay organized, and remain optimistic, you will get through it.