WE ARE LOSING TOUCH! Not too bright a move!
Disrespect!
This is a popular concept these days. The hip hop generation has turned a noun into a verb. Not officially in any dictionary yet, but it will probably make it with the next editions. You have heard it, “You disrespecting me, man?” Like a testosterone charged teenage boy, “You lookin’ at me?”
I surprised myself when I used the word as a verb in a very short telephone conversation on Friday. I am not a teenager and I pay very little attention to hip hoppers. Still the word disrespecting rolled off my tongue.
I got this phone call in the middle of the day. A very pleasant voice, with a soft cadence introduced herself as a representative of a mid major pharmaceutical company. She started to tell me about a new product.
This was telemarketing. Apparently a way to get information to us using an inexpensive media, the telephone. The telemarketer probably could not answer questions that I might have about the product. She started in on her rap (another modern word. I’m hopeless) and I brought her up quick.
“I am offended,” I said. “If pharmacists are not important enough to send a representative into the pharmacy to educate me about your drug, you have no chance with me. Your company is disrespecting me and you are disrespecting the profession of pharmacy.”
A very, very long silence.
I went on, “I want you to pass this on to someone who can do something about it. Okay?”
“What?” The pleasant voice was a little tighter.
“Tell your bosses what I said. I will always listen to any company who trains someone to give me face time. I will never give time to a telemarketer. Ever!”
That brings me to the detail person, you guys and the blatant disrespecting that goes on
every day. These people come in to the store and you kick their asses out. They come in
and you ignore them. You refuse to look at them. They stand and wait for fifteen minutes and you take the handfuls of pens and sticky pads and give them thirty seconds.
Come on, you guys, with that kind of disrespect I’d quit spending money sending the detail people to pharmacies too.
This is not a good thing. Pharmacy needs to be kept in the loop. We need to be educated about the drugs we dispense. What better way than the detail person?
This is what they get when I am on duty. First, I take the pens and sticky pads. Then I tell the detail person this, “I don’t have a lot of time, but I do want to know about your product. Just answer these three questions. 1. What does it do? 2. Why is it better than the other guy’s product? 3. What are the dangers?”
That’s it. That is all I want to know. I thank them for coming in. I take the literature.
I shake hands and go back to work.
It is not a waste of time. Reports I get from detail people at my Email address tell me that the chains are the most disrespecting of us all. Does Walgreens actually order their pharmacists not to talk with detail people? Who the hell do they think they are? Pharmacists can make their own choices about this for. Everyone mentions Walgreens.
Again, taking us out of the loops is a bad thing. Very bad. We have bitches about PBMs,
Part D and other serious payment issues. Do you think we are going to get support from people we disrespect? Do you actually believe that we can thrive on an island? It’s a ridiculous concept. We need to stay engaged. We need to stay in the loop. Walgreens! I really mean it. Who the hell do they think they are? We are not lackeys. So what if the store manager gives us a hard time for stepping away from the case. We are not the company’s puppets.
Last week, a pleasant young woman wanted to talk with me about Aciphex. She came in with her pads and pens and a big PIZZA loaded. The techs and I had a great lunch and she got the time she needed to answer my three questions. A taste of the old days when a lunch treat from a detail person was a common occurrence.
You get my point? If we want to be in the ring of medical professionals, we must engage. Learning about the products we dispense from a human being is a good thing, you guys. You are a pharmacist first. An employee second. If you know everything already, you at least get a break
