Confessions of a Pharmacy Technician

I am a Certified Pharmacy Technician.  I have my state license and PTCB certification.  I need both of those to work in Oregon.   I got all those fancy letters and words halfway through my life when I did that 'retraining' thing a few years back.

Before that I worked in technical support, administrative support, and data entry.  I'm a speed typer and I can most probably type 'you' before most of you can hit the 'u' button for the Internet-speak shortcut.  But unfortunately, most jobs in those areas have gone so...

I've also worked in stores, mainly Walmart, but a few years ago, I had a chance to take a year long course to qualify to work as a pharmacy technician.  I attended a place called Anthem College, which I heartily recommend.  Really!  No, really, when I first started there, suspicious me (I'm always suspicious) thought it was probably going to turn out to be some scam or some con.  I was really wrong!  Anthem College, at least here in Beaverton, took their job seriously.  And I mean seriously! 

My pharmacy instructor was not only a most wonderful person but had a masters degree and over 13 years experience working in the field.  She was also a monstrous task master who demanded that her students really learned their stuff and didn't give out top marks to anyone.  

But that's not what I really wanted to talk about right now, as cool as it was. 

I remember sitting in early training, hearing stories of working as an Allied Health Professional.  They told these tear jerking stories about patients, both ones that made it and those that didn't.  Stories about really making a difference and mattering in other people's lives.  Of course, being the cynical person I usually am, I rolled my eyes with a few other equally cynical classmates, chaulking it all up to health professional glurge....

Until I started working.

My first assignment, infact my hands on training assignment, was in an oncology clinic.  That's cancer, for the uninitiated and untrained.  One of my main jobs there, because I was relatively young and the newbie, was to run the chemotherapy to the nurses stations out on the floor.   The clinic sort of was in a big circle with the pharmacy at one point and all the nurses stations around this circle on the inside.

I'm sort of a hyper guy and would walk as fast as my thin little legs can carry me.  I'd keep going around and around and after awhile certain patients started taking notice.  Many were amused.  Others laughed.  One was this one older patient.  One fine day, I was sitting outside on break, I think I was drinking something.  This patient in a wheelchair was pushed by me and an arm came out toward me.  It was that one older patient who had so amused watched me running around and around, and the arm was stretched out as if to high-five me.  I returned it.   Even retelling the story is making my eyes fill with... its sweat! I'm not crying!

Then a while later, I was actually working at the other place where I did such a good job but some bad apples decided to get rid of me for various political and cultural reasons.  I used to make lots of deliveries to the oncology wing there as well.  One day, I was eating my lunch when this patient sitting up in a booth called out to me.  The patient asked me if I was that guy who brings the drugs.  I said that I was.  Turns out that this patient had been in oncology for a long long time and that this was one of the first times they'd been able to leave.  For them, being able to go down to the cafeteria was like being born again.  The patient thanked me for my hard work, for being the one that brought the medicines up to oncology that allowed them to get that far.   It was one of those moments where you feel like you could fly up and tag superman so hard he'd say 'ow!'

See, this is where I really get pissed off.  I was doing that job.  I was doing it well.  But some stupid people, like that bucktoothed white nationalist who hated me, got rid of me.  Keeping their area latino free (there were none) and white and bright... And do you know who's suffering for it?  The patients! The patients who are paying this company big money to get care.   I'm not there now to run that chemo, I'm not there to take care of those patients, and the people that are left are only concerned with going back to Ozzy and Harriot times! 

Yeah, sure, I'd love to get my teeth fixed and buy a jeep with the $20+/hr base pay the job gave, but I am, at heart, a softie.  I cared about what I was doing.  I wanted to be there doing it.  Now I can't and probably never will again.

Angry Fuzzies

Long time ago I was watching a show that every time the heroine saw something good or that made her feel nice, she'd say "Warm fuzzies!"  Well, once again, my mind drifts to the white nationalists at That Place I Won't Mention that I talked about in my first post. 

BTW, I need to mention that I have an eidetic memory.  Its not photographic or anything like that but it is very good.  I can remember conversations and sights years later as if they just happened.  This means that when something really pisses me off or makes me mad, it can keep coming back months and years later, like an LSD trip!

So here I sit, my mind replaying all the unfairness and racist attitudes at that last workplace.  Making a long story short for those new to my story, four temp-to-hires in a union shop that I won't mention, no Latinos working in the area.  Six months later at the end of "probation", the three whites are hired and I am gotten rid of.  Because certain white nationalists there didn't want another "mexican" around.

And one part that really cheeses me off is that I was let go in early December right before the Christmas break.  So I had no money for presents or food or pretty much anything else.  This really sets off my 'French Revolution' attitude because while I was eating top ramen, that manager who didn't want a mexican around and the white nationalists there who encouraged them were living it up in jobs paying $30/hr, union employees who are impervious to any sort of censure, in their SUVs and lily white world, eating fine food and big houses while I am cold and starving. 

Okay, I know, I'm being over dramatic and I need to get over it.  Its not the first time I've been discriminated against for being Latino.  Of course, in those days when I was young, we were just "Mexicans", there was no term "Latino" or even "Hispanic."  The majority white area I grew up in just knew all brown people as "Mexicans." 

And again I don't name the company that shelters white nationalists who discriminate and want to keep things white and bright as possible, although I probably should.  You'd all recognize it.  Its a union shop, health care company, and I'm sure just saying that, those in the industry know who it is.  What can I say, they preach that they are all multicultural nowadays and kumbahyah, but not long ago, like Walmart, this company had a very bad reputation for whites only.  

Oh the company does hire Latinos, to wash toilets and work in the kitchens, but anything else?  Well, bad apple 20+ year union veterans wont stand for that and the management is spineless to stand up to them.  

Crying me a river

Hi Internet,

I'm one of those people who never let things go.  I get angry about something, sad about something, I just sit and stew and stew and stew.  I know, that's unhealthy and everyone in my life lectures me about it on end.  I do my best not to but...

Anyway, I have heard that a therapeutic thing to do is to start a blog and basically primal scream things out into cyberspace!  Well, in ancient days, they said to keep a diary, but this is the 21st century, so I will blog.

Seven months ago, I lost an awesome job.  It was well playing, in excess of $20/hr, and a union job.  I was let go nominally because, well no reason really.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I do know the reason and it didn't have to do with work performance.  I will not mention this place nor what I was doing there so lots of this entry is going to be "this place, that place, those people" but I really don't want to name names because the company I was working for is well known and the job I was doing is a "small world" and its easy to get blackballed.  I'm pretty sure after seven months of trying to find employment in the field that I have been blackballed already but I will take the moral high ground and not speak their names.

First off, the immediate area I was working in had no latinos working in it.  None.  I am latino, and I am middle aged.  There was one African American man who, truth be told, kept trying to warn me to keep my head down and keep my mouth shut.  I was hired with three white people in a "temp to hire" situation where we were basically promised to be taken on permanently as long as we didn't do anything really stupid or screw up or just be jerks.  All of the people I was hired with, myself included, more than met these requirements.

Now, before I go further, let me say, I am not Anti-Union.  Nor am I Anti-ThisCompany.  But, what occured to me there is, for me, one of the downsides to unions.  When you get very senior union people in a workplace who are 'bad eggs' and nothing can be done about them.  They cannot be fired, they can't even be disciplined.  A couple of these employees decided that they did not want another "mexican" working in their area, or indeed any at all.  So, when 10+ 20+ year union veterans complain to management, they have to listen, no matter what.

Long story short, at the end of the six month probationary period, I was let go and the three white people were kept.  At least one was hired permanent and made a union employee, the others probably have by now as well.  And I know it was racially motivated... any nonwhite who's been in similar circumstances will understand what I mean by that.  The sneers, the down-the-nose stares and the contempt for my last name and skin color... you can tell.

I am sure that it was racially motivated.  Could it be proved in a court of law?  I bet it could.  Could I have gone to the EEOC?  I probably should have.  On the other hand, nothing could have really been done.  Even if I could prove in court beyond a shadow of a doubt that a few racists (one bloated and grotesque one keeps coming to mind) kept me from that job, they would be protected by their union.  The worse that could happen would that they would be "fired", pension intact, and be relocated to a job equal in pay and rank to the one they just lost. 

So that's what's been eating me for over six months.  Eating and eating away at me, making me feel anger and rage whenever I dwell on it.  I figure, if I type it out here, I won't dwell on it as much.  

Rotten apples are really bad, especially when you can't do anything about them. 

And I wouldn't cry so much but it was something that I really enjoyed doing, it paid well, and it was in the health care industry so I felt I was really helping people.  Well, thanks to those white nationalists who didn't want me there, I'm not there to help those people anymore.

Whew, enough ranting for now.  I'll start the revolution later, I gotta go, things to do, people to see...