| Upstairs, downstairs — a pharmacy
time trial
For a period when I was a young man I managed a small
pharmacy in Derbyshire. My employer was a pharmacist-optician who had
practices in several towns in the area, and used to spend a couple of
days a week at the branch that I managed. In those days retail pharmacy,
as it was known, was a more leisurely occupation than it is today, and
there were occasions when all our work was finished and time hung heavily
on our hands. Rather than waste time improving our minds, reading or
knitting we instituted a trial of physical ability.
One of my assistants was a pretty, but statuesque,
blonde while I was five feet two inches tall and weighed less than eight
stone. One day when the boss was elsewhere she offered to give me a piggy-back
up the stairs that ran along one wall of the shop and led to a first
floor storeroom. She accomplished this without any great effort, and
from this simple beginning it developed into a trial against the clock.
She had to carry me on her back up the stairs from the shop, round the
storeroom, through the boss's office, across the landing, up the attic
stairs, round the two attics and down the stairs back to the shop while
one of the other girls timed us. Few customers arrived when the trials
were being run, and those who did just accepted it as one of my eccentricities.
One day a record time looked possible but, unfortunately,
our boss had decided to pick up some papers from his office and arrived
without warning at the bottom of the shop stairs just as we started our
descent from the storeroom. To say that he was startled is an understatement,
and he did not seem to be very pleased. He calmed down when he learnt
that we had not actually opened a book, and he could not have obtained
a bet on the result even if he had arrived before we started.
After this the trials were abandoned, to the disappointment
of some of our younger customers, and, although we thought deeply about
the matter, we never found a suitable substitute for it.
The financial rewards for a career in pharmacy are
much greater nowadays, but I sometimes wonder whether it is as much fun
as it used to be.
W. A. Jackson
Manchester
An unforgettable Christmas party
During my early years in pharmacy I worked for a large
multiple. Much of the stock was supplied in bulk and had to be transferred
into black-painted tin drawers, a job allocated to the porters, who also
weighed out the stock at the request of shop floor staff at the time
of sale.
We sold flake boracic, which was used as a ballroom
floor polish, and flake naphthalene for use as a moth deterrent.
Yes. You've guessed it. The wrong item was sold one
day.
The error came to light after a report from an unforgettable
Christmas party describing the dancers' eyes and noses streaming all
evening from the effects of naphthalene fumes.
J. M. Pickwick
Cheadle, Cheshire
The case of the disappearing Santa Clauses
Some
years ago, I was working for Boots in one of its south coast branches.
As the Christmas season approached, the show material started to arrive.
That year the company had really pushed the boat out, and the quality
of material was far superior to that in previous years. It included a
number of rather cute, life size (presumably!), cardboard cut out Santa
Clauses. Within minutes, all of them had been "claimed" by various members
of staff.
Come closing time on Christmas Eve, all the lucky
ones traipsed out of the store with their Santas tucked under their arms.
It was some sight, although I had great difficulty persuading the bus
driver that charging me a half fare for my Santa was not really in the
spirit of Christmas.
Returning to work on 27 December, we opened the post
from head office. The first envelope contained a memo — "Take down Santas
and store carefully. They will be required for next year."
David Moore
Isle of Wight
You say "tomaito", I say "tomahto"!
When
I was a newly qualified pharmacist I worked for a time in a rather smart
pharmacy in the St James's area of London. Such was the pharmacy's location
that it was often used by tourists and other visitors to the West End.
One day, a large American woman approached me at
the counter and asked, I thought, if we had a Dutch cap. I retrieved
one from the dispensary and, trying to be discreet, I proffered it to
her. "Good grief," she exclaimed, loudly. "I shall never get that on
my head!"
Only then did I realise she wanted a shower hat — or
a douche cap in American parlance!
Graeme Smith
London SE8
Useful after all
We
have always given what we thought was a comprehensive service from my
pharmacy for many years. This included opening sometime every day as
there was no other pharmacy close and in this area not every household
had even one car. We worked these duties into our lifestyle and our families
accepted it.
We were always busy up to Christmas Day with extra
prescriptions because people behave over bank holidays as if they do
not expect the doctor's surgery ever to open again. Even though there
were notices up we were often asked when we would be open over the holiday
period.
One year the sparse trade on Christmas Day was as
usual: batteries missing from toys and desperate gifts to keep someone
happy. As several members of local families had asked me in the lead
up to the big day about my opening hours, I expected at least one customer.
But when one came in and bought bicarb to cook the cabbage I felt that
my time was really being wasted.
As I was closing, a doctor from an adjacent practice
telephoned: "Did I have an oxygen set available." "Yes." "Sorry it is
outside your patch but could you make a delivery now?" I did and set
it up. Then I went home for my Christmas dinner thinking that perhaps
pharmacists have a use after all.
Peter Jenkins
Cardiff
My worst pharmacy day
The day started well enough — nice weather
and an early start. Usual journey up the A1, join the A414, to the M10,
then M1, to
the A5.
Over the mind-boggling double roundabout at Dunstable
and up through Hockliffe passing some beautiful old buildings and finally
into Wretchley. Working for the Barclays group.
Parked the car outside the pub, which seemed to be
one of the few places not vandalised on this rather run down estate,
probably because it was owned by an ex-wrestler who, despite new hips,
was still able to flatten any opposition!
Entered the precinct (Black Adder Court), avoiding
the freshly laid, and not so fresh, doggy parcels, to be surrounded by
armed police with helicopter buzzing overhead.
"Been a murder here Guv. We're carrying out our enquiries."
Oh dear.
Anyway, busy day as usual. The senior (18 years old)
was having a well earned day off so no help for me and controlled panic
in the shop. Tried not to worry about about the absence of any hot water
(the electrician seemed to think the water heater would work without
any electrical connection!) or the black fungus creeping up the wall
due to resident upstairs liking his bath to be
particularly full.
Lots of kids from the local school coming in all
day and deciding which and how much stock to transfer to their greasy
hands. After a day of this, started to become a little tetchy and commenced
throwing out procedure (a big mistake).
One delightful young lady cracked me around the head
and threw a load of lipsticks at me as she left the shop only to return
later with a gang of friends, hangers on, minders and assorted heavies.
So I phoned the Bill.
"Sorry Guv. We've got a murder inquiry here, can't
spare anybody, too busy. They'll probably go away". Thank goodness, they
did.
Finally closed up and made it safely back to the
car. Never been so pleased to hear the old Volvo start first time but
was surprised at the fog which seemed to follow me down the A5. While
at the lights in Hockliffe I noticed that the fog was only enveloping
my car so I opened the door, only to see the "fog" rising up from underneath
the car.
Pulled into an abandoned garage opened the bonnet
to see oil and smoke everywhere.
Fortunately, son was available for a long tow home,
arriving around 10.30.
Wife opened door: "You're late!"
It's a funny old world.
Malcolm Stein
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
What am I? A pharmacist — or a heating engineer?
Leicester General Hospital, where I was
chief pharmacist from 1970 to 1989, was built at the turn of the 20th
century and developed
considerably after 1974 as the medical school was established. Towards
the end of the 1970s I was offered the old maternity ward as a pharmacy
store following the building of a new maternity unit. Although it was
on the first floor and a long way from the pharmacy, it was much better
than the damp basement and dilapidated wooden hut that currently stored
medicines. The old labour ward was fitted out with metal shelves and
became the "tablet" store, while the empty ward space held substantial
volumes of sterile fluids.
Labour wards have to be kept constantly warm and
so I asked for the heating to be turned off to provide a more suitable
environment for medicines. The orthopaedic theatre beneath us on the
ground floor was unaffected by this change.
All went well until I got a call in the early hours
of the coldest night of the year to come to the hospital urgently. I
arrived to find that a water pipe in the roof space had burst and water
was pouring through the ceiling on to the medicines. It felt strange
to be examining the scene in a waterproof jacket and beneath an umbrella.
We commandeered theatre boots and cleaners' machines and, disregarding
the dangers of mixing electricity and water, spent the next couple of
hours sucking up water.
Fortunately, few drugs were lost. The metal shelving
had protected packs from a direct soaking. This was still in the days
when tablets were delivered in bulk and, although the cardboard outers
were wet, the plastic or glass bottles protected the contents. The intravenous
fluid cartons were all soaked, but the bags within them were useable.
The news from the ground floor was not so good: artificial
hip joints valued at £35,000 were to be written off.
The cause had been my request to turn off the labour
ward heating. A constant supply of convected warmth had kept the unlagged
water pipes in the roof space from freezing. Shutting off the heat, coupled
with the extreme conditions, had allowed the water to freeze and expand,
thereby springing the joints. A thaw, combined with substantial water
pressure, had resulted in the flood.
It would seem that chief pharmacists need also to
be heating engineers and think about the hidden dangers in Victorian
buildings.
Ian Bell
Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland
Never volunteer!
In
1943 I was a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps and working in the
medical stores at the Cambridge Hospital in Aldershot.
One day a request came from the dispensary for a
supply of gentian violet pills, not a standard medication. Filled with
zeal I said that I was prepared to make them. A little research showed
that these would have to be enteric coated. No problem for a newly qualified
pharmacist who remembered that the method was to coat the pills in a
gelatin solution and then immerse them in formaldehyde solution for 10
minutes.
And so to work. A pill mass was made, rolled out
on a pill machine, causing some violet stained fingers on the way. They
were rounded, impaled on pins and dipped in a gelatine solution and laid
out on a wire gauze to dry. Then the last step — to take them off the
pins and immerse them in the formaldehyde solution. But what is happening?
The solution is turning violet, and a crestfallen pharmacist realises
that he has forgotten to put a dab of gelatine solution where the pin
had stuck in the pill.
A second batch was prepared satisfactorily. Whether
or not they were effective I never found out, but I learnt a useful lesson
in preparing enteric coated pills — and also never to volunteer for anything.
Alan Kendall
Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland
|
