Automated Audacity (originally posted 7/14/09)

My proposal for a new, automated message and routing service when you call the pharmacy:

"Thank you for calling your friendly, 24-hour pharmacy, where we guarantee to quickly and professionally handle you prescription needs...barring any complications such as your insurance not paying pending the resolution of: prior authorizations, refills to soon, monthly limit met, a non-formulary drug, patient not covered, diagnosis code missing, invalid birthdate, invalid gender, invalid person code, invalid group, bill to primary, or any various other creative and blatant excuses for not paying...

Other complications could include but are not limited to: drug not in stock, drug not available/discontinued drug/recalled drug, missing or ambiguous drug name/quantity/strength/dispensing instructions/date of prescription/DEA number/controlled drug serial number/Prescriber's name, etc.

Please note that if you are dropping off, submitting refills online, submitting refills or on-hold prescriptions by phone, or otherwise trying to get your medications after 10PM, due to the "doctors" on staff at those hours you stand a better chance on getting your medicine in one of those machines that rolls out cheap stickers, rings, and other crap when you put a quarter in it. If you do encounter a "doctor", it is imperative you allow them to continue sleeping (they need lots of rest in order to keep up their do-nothing-at-all work ethic).

Anyways...hmmm...oh yeah, please listen carefully as our options have changed. In order to better serve you, please listen to all options before making a selection. We will then connect you to the chosen line and torture you with a continuous musical loop of cheezy, elevator music, followed by an upbeat-yet-suicidal-thought-inducing, unrecognizable classical piece, followed by a song by Aaron Neville.

To skip all processing and get a handful of Vicodin at the window in the next 3 minutes, please press 1.

To complain that the overnight people yelled at you/didn't help you/made you pray/kicked your shins/tried to eat your child/turned colors, burst into flames, and tried an aerial attack on you and your loved ones while speaking ancient Latin in a Satanic-voice/etc., please press 2.

To set up an appointment to bother the unfortunate soul at drive-through, bang on the window with the world's smallest and therefore most useless umbrella, complain that you will urinate on yourself, and peel of like a drunken frat-boy, please press 3.

To transfer your prescription in or out to take advantage of the coupon/gift card system, please press 4.

To ask one of the pharmacy staff why your doctor keeps prescribing anti-psychotics, please press 5.

To ask why your bag is too big and find out if it is, indeed, your prostate, please press 6.

To have us order the most vain medication in the world, the eyelash grower Latisse, please press 7.

If you are an airhead nurse from a doctors office, and wish to call in a prescription where you either talk too fast, refuse to spell out weird patient names, completely mess up the prescription, or otherwise solidify yourself as a disgrace to the other competent and knowledgeable people of your profession, please press 8.

If you would like us to flavor eye/ear drops, suppositories, creams/lotions/gels, tablets/capsules/caplets, or IUD's, please press 9.

If you look like a hooker/crackhead/drug dealer/psycho and would like us to fill promethazine with codeine or any other controlled substance, please hang up or go to Walgreen's.

To repeat the options, please press the star key (*)."

What do you think?