How to Alienate a Pharmacy Technician

Any pharmacist knows that a good pharmacy technician can make or break your day and a bad one will assuredly break it. The worst thing a floater can do is get on the bad side of the pharmacy technicians. Creating hostility between you and them is a guaranteed way to screw up your shift upon the first encounter and forever in the future.

How do you get on a pharmacy technician's bad side?  One surefire way is to go in and try to pull rank. This especially holds true for the lead pharmacy technician. Some in that position feel that they are in charge when their regular pharmacist is away.  They believe it's their job to keep the pharmacy together and prevent the lowly and incompetent floater from destroying what they and their pharmacist worked so hard to build.

Failure to allow the pharmacy technician to do what he or she pleases (i.e, ignore customers and the phone; take longer and numerous breaks; text) results in hostility as well as the floater being labeled "mean" or "difficult to work with". God forbid, you try to direct their activities for the day. Please don't ask them to answer the phone or go to the register.  That's your job. Remember, they are in charge for the day. You are just a substitute sent to assist them. 

Hostility may also arise if you actually do treat them mean, disrespectfully, or if you are in fact, difficult to work with. In such cases, you reap what you sow.  Nobody wants to be mistreated.

Some pharmacy technicians become hostile because you insist on doing things differently than what they are accustomed to.  Perhaps you like your bottles labeled a particular way or maybe you are not as comfortable as the regular pharmacist allowing the technician to take call-in scrips from the physician's office. That's your prerogative. It shouldn't cause animosity. But unfortunately, in some cases, it does

Laziness on the part of the floater also breeds hostility. No one wants to work their butts off while the floater sits on a stool and plays with her cell phone or reads magazines.  I always say that we are a team and we need to work as such. Give a helping hand at the register or the drive thru when needed. Do whatever you can to help the team. In retail pharmacy, no job should be beneath the pharmacist.  I promise your license won't be revoked if you touch register keys and the technicians will appreciate you.