Warm uP

My boss asked me 2 days b4 I left the pharmacy shop.
“What had u learnt during this 2 months?”
I told her that mainly some counseling skills and brand of drugs and supplements. Now that when I think back, that was only part of what I gained.

It was a new experience for me working there. I faced real patient everyday. They are not simulated patient found in clinical skill unit in IMU. No scripts were given to these people and no lecturer there to give marks. Besides, there will not be any feed back telling what had been done wrong.

Many people thought it is easy to be a community pharmacist. Some customers thought we are just special sales person who sell drugs…
(Auntie!!!, it is not so easy le!!!)
People who do not know English says English is nothing more than 26 alphabets. Very simple ma!!!. So is it true that English is as easy as ABC???

2 months there make me realize that it is not an easy task to be a pharmacist. Besides, although my boss is good, she is quite strict. So it is sometime very stressful. Anyway, I was excited to have chance to see theory in class come real life. Managing a shop, staffs, ordering stocks, serving customer, counseling skills, hitting sales target, answer phone calls, listening to ‘stories’ from yr staff….haha…

Moreover, I know the importance of punctuality, responsible to mistake that had been done, ways to cooperate with different people (especially staffs), how to face difficult customers and exposed to some skills in running business in a competitive world. I was aware that what we had learned in school was not sufficient to face the society. But when I work, the working culture still shocked me. There are so many invisible rules in the society…

I think I had gained a lot in this 2 months. (Of course not money wise la) But then, now I will not feel so uneasy to tell others that the pay is low and do not feel frustrated that people are enjoying their life going vacation when I was sweeping the floor & tagging the price of the stocks, telling people the difference of Zyrtec and Atarax. This will be the most important warm up activity before I step into my real work life next month.