Soapbox

Real-Life Scenario

    I was taking some sort of chemistry class. Every day I was supposed to check in and read the days assignments, do homework or take a quiz. I had thought that now, being older and wiser, I would be able to figure chemistry out. But almost from the first assignment I started getting confused, and after a while stopped doing the work.
    Then one day the teacher came to see me, and I thought Here it comes. But instead of chastising  or failing me, we sat down and she backed me up, started asking me some beginning questions until she found the missing pieces of my basic understanding. 
She helped me fit them in, then went forward and I began to see how all the other things I had struggled with came from these few missing foundational blocks. I got excited and began to think that I could really do this…
…and then I woke up and lay blinking at the ceiling, convinced that the head pharmacist has decided that I will never really 'get' this job, and isn't really going to try to train me for my big typing test. She's just going to let me run the drive-thru and put away bags until I fail and get sent to work in the cheese shop.
   
   If this was something I could study for: if there was a book to read or flashcards to run or simulations to do- I could get this. I know I'm not actually stupid, but every single day, at some point in the work day I think ..but I may as well be, because I just don't get this.
    I'm supposed to just pick things up, puzzle things out and remember from something someone showed me one time 6 weeks ago. And obviously there are people who learn that way- the pharmacy is full of them! And there are things that I could learn that way- but they don't involve computers.
    If this were a musical ensemble jam session and someone stuck an instrument in my hands and said "Here- just watch and join in" I could actually do that. Not saying that I would magically have any skill on the instrument, but I would get what was going on and see the chord changes and repeats and bridges and it would all make sense. I wouldn't stand there in frustration saying "But why are we starting in D this time when before we did this part in C?" 

   But this is complex computer work, and it's all done in real-life. When the pharmacy is humming like a beehive on crack and people are showing up for their kids antibiotics or their anti-anxiety meds, you can't say "Sorry. I know we said they'd be ready in a half-hour, but we put the trainee on the typing station and the second script she got had a weird insurance problem and she slowed the whole line down".
   So I just don't get assigned to do typing. The few times when I have, there's no time for me to poke about trying this and that to see what works. When I get hung up, someone nudges me out of the way and just does it for me, and when the pharmacist sees me looking over their shoulder, trying to understand and remember what they're doing, chances are she'll say "Tracy- what are you doing just standing there? There's someone at the drive-thru".

   I think that will be the epitaph on this job in the pharmacy, But hey- she ran the Drive-thru like a pro.