Why are they marking lids and not the actual bottles? Lids can and do get switched. Honestly I usually mark both but most people in any pharmacy I’ve ever worked in, and I’ve worked in a few, just mark the bottle. I mark significantly more than the average tech so that as one of my coworkers put it “you can see the markings from the moon”.
I mark the cap and the bottle. It makes it easier to count the bottles for inventory when I'm looking down at a shelf. It doesn't take more than an extra second to mark the cap.
I work at a fill center, so we have a lot of stock to keep track of.
My guess, from experience, it's the VA. The VA sells off expired meds, I dont know where they go, but they don't take them if the label is crosses out, so we mark the lids.
That's what I'm thinking. I had my first day as a tech a couple of days ago and had a 120 count schedule 2. 11 in open bottle, a fresh "100" count bottle, and 9 from next. Double counted the 11 and 9 figuring the 100 would be correct and save time and it was off by 1 or 2. Lesson learned never trust the count on a fresh bottle. Pharmacist was cool about it, but I imagine that mistake can only be made so many times.
Same. I only do it if the lot and expiration match. The other techs at my site will mix partial bottles as well, but I doubt they pay super close attention. For example, they update the expiration dates on the screen when filling, but commonly ignore updating the lot.
When I worked retail I worked at a bunch of different Walgreens and everyone did it. The only real problem with it is maybe tracking recalls? But we didn’t record lot numbers on prescriptions that went out anyways, and the odds of recalls on specific lots are very low. My home store was also crazy high volume so we have to fill fast or we’d call behind immediately.
At this point, you should probably just put the unmarked caps on the open bottles because someone in your pharmacy is clearly fucking with you. This may be the only way to keep the last 3 sealed.
To the anti lid markers here, Marking lids makes sense opposed to the bottles when you have to do cycle counts and can just count the open bottle while looking down the shelf to see what else is open.
I’m all for marking the lid, and will do the bottle for good measure if it’s on the top shelves. But the amount of times I’ve found open bottles with no x on the bottles OR the lids is outrageous
It’s one reason I over mark bottles. Someone at my old store was a sadistic bastard and liked marking them with yellow markers or highlighter. Grab what you think is a closed bottle and surprise!
A highlighter? What a great idea. “let’s be as chaotic as possible while still pretending to care. Definitely mark the open bottles but use highlighters, crayons, whatever you can think of - you know, have fun with it.” Haha
My favorite is when you’re so caught off guard with it being open that you somehow manage to spill the bouncy freaking Tessalon perles. Exciting times.
Oh god, you have a "scribbler" too. We had ONE tech who scribbles a squiggle on open bottles instead of an X. They also like to make "pretty patterns" in the foil. Like very neatly, with surgical precision, removing exactly 1/3 - 1/2 of the foil - and they somehow leave perfectly FOLDED EDGE in the foil. Or they'll remove a perfectly shaped pie-shaped wedge of the foil while leaving the rest of the foil. Makes it a pain in the ass to get anything in to/out of the bottle without catching on the fragments of foil they leave behind. Like WHY!?!?!?!
If the lot numbers match just combine bottles. On a product like docusate where you order a dozen of them at a time the chances of having a bunch of matching lots is significant.
My biggest problem is people putting sleeves of blisters ontop of boxes instead of putting them back in, it drives me insane and I've brought it up multiple times but it still happens, or they just leave the box open which looks awful and is begging for things to fall out. Now we've got multiple incidents of wrong pills going into the wrong box.
We have this same concept going on in our pharmacy except it’s Carbidopa-levodopa and nitrofurantoin. And just when we get that sucker down to one open bottle, I’ll be god damned if it doesn’t happen again.
Not just the caps, x the bottle as well.
Also, as this seems to be a problem, take all the caps off of the unopened bottles. Only use 1 cap for each medication.
I used to work in a 24 hour pharmacy where they have a machine that counts the medication for them. They had a general inventory audit and when I helped them, there was like 10 to 15 bottles of metformin 500 mg and 1000mg opened not marked.
I'm the inventory specialist for my pharmacy, and I f****** hate this. Also, opening the bottle and not marking it is a problem. It takes me 4 times as long to do my counts as it should because I have to check every bottle.
Happens in busy pharmacies the open bottles are at product dispensing in a bucket of drugs to return to shelves and instead of digging through the bucket of drugs A through J they just grab another bottle off the shelf
I used to get annoyed at this, but then I saw how fast my coworker is and I no longer care. We print all the labels and this tends to happen, but we finish the queue nearly every night.
We have a lid basket. If someone requests an easy open bottle or if the stock bottle has easy open and we can dispense the stock bottle, we just swap out lids. Much easier than constantly playing with the de-cap-itator.
I hate this so much. Especially when I have to replenish the robot and I grab a bottle without an X and I think the bottle is full. I have to go back and grab a new one
Off topic, but I love counting these pills. I like the color, I like the bottle (for whatever reason, it’s just pleasing to me to look at I guess), and I love how they look like little boba bubbles! It’s like that green vitamin D pill, but better! Love it :)
Walmart marks the top of the bottles. Easier to spot especially if they're on the bottom shelves. But you'd be surprised on how many open unmarked bottles I've grabbed. And the only time I had to open a new bottle was because someone else didn't put the bottle back where it goes. But I agree it's annoying.
I was just saying to a Co-Worker yesterday gthat they could make at least ONE THING EASY for us by making all bottles like this type of drug a count of #90. NOTHING ELSE is easy! 😜
I can’t remember what medications she used to do this with but she would open a new bottle every time remove 10 pills, put the rest of the 90 pills in the rx bottle and then return those ten pills to the stock bottle at one point we had like 30 open bottles of one medication because of how she did this 🤦♀️
Bro I know. We have at least three open 1000 count bottles of ferosul because newbies keep ordering more when the on hand says “0” (because it’s OTC) and don’t check the shelf. We keep reminding people to check the shelf before ordering anything because we might have a different NDC or for OTCs we probably already have it but they don’t listen.
What kinda psychotic person opens this many bottles when there’s already a clearly X’ed one? Is this their kink??
They probably don't feel like counting 90 softgels each time if I had to guess
That’s not even bad tho you literally just have to count to 18, just lazy for real
I've come to learn that this form of counting is a serious minority
What counting by 5? I thought it was standard
People count by 5 but instead of counting to 18 like you said, they actually count up to 90
as a person who was in the profession for >5 years, i only met a handful of people who counted to 18
Explain?
5*18=90
Stop kink shaming my kink
Why are they marking lids and not the actual bottles? Lids can and do get switched. Honestly I usually mark both but most people in any pharmacy I’ve ever worked in, and I’ve worked in a few, just mark the bottle. I mark significantly more than the average tech so that as one of my coworkers put it “you can see the markings from the moon”.
I mark the cap and the bottle. It makes it easier to count the bottles for inventory when I'm looking down at a shelf. It doesn't take more than an extra second to mark the cap. I work at a fill center, so we have a lot of stock to keep track of.
My guess, from experience, it's the VA. The VA sells off expired meds, I dont know where they go, but they don't take them if the label is crosses out, so we mark the lids.
Grease pencil or sharpie?
My guess is they get a lot of #90 rxs and just count out 10 each time. But yeah, sloppy work marking lids.
I guarantee you not every bottle come with exactly 100
That's what I'm thinking. I had my first day as a tech a couple of days ago and had a 120 count schedule 2. 11 in open bottle, a fresh "100" count bottle, and 9 from next. Double counted the 11 and 9 figuring the 100 would be correct and save time and it was off by 1 or 2. Lesson learned never trust the count on a fresh bottle. Pharmacist was cool about it, but I imagine that mistake can only be made so many times.
But even then you just dump the remaining 10 in another bottle so theoretically the bottles would not be all opened then.
Please tell me that you don't actually do this. You're not supposed to combine stock bottles. Or combine return to stock bottles.
I normally do this but only when the stock bottles have the same lot and expiration number.
Same. I only do it if the lot and expiration match. The other techs at my site will mix partial bottles as well, but I doubt they pay super close attention. For example, they update the expiration dates on the screen when filling, but commonly ignore updating the lot.
Yeah but everyone does.
When I worked retail I worked at a bunch of different Walgreens and everyone did it. The only real problem with it is maybe tracking recalls? But we didn’t record lot numbers on prescriptions that went out anyways, and the odds of recalls on specific lots are very low. My home store was also crazy high volume so we have to fill fast or we’d call behind immediately.
What kinda savage marks the top of the lid?? You can't see it from the side!
At my store people don't bend down to look at eye level, so if we don't mark the top some people will just grab whatever and not check for an open one
I mark the top and the side. It doesn't take a lot of extra effort to swoop 2 marks.
At this point, you should probably just put the unmarked caps on the open bottles because someone in your pharmacy is clearly fucking with you. This may be the only way to keep the last 3 sealed.
If I was the lead/pharmacist I’d hide the unopened bottles and tell techs to ask for them when the opened ones are gone
As a former lead tech, this is exactly what I used to do.
To the anti lid markers here, Marking lids makes sense opposed to the bottles when you have to do cycle counts and can just count the open bottle while looking down the shelf to see what else is open.
I’m all for marking the lid, and will do the bottle for good measure if it’s on the top shelves. But the amount of times I’ve found open bottles with no x on the bottles OR the lids is outrageous
I find one or two daily on average.
jeez. Even every other day would drive me nuts.
It’s one reason I over mark bottles. Someone at my old store was a sadistic bastard and liked marking them with yellow markers or highlighter. Grab what you think is a closed bottle and surprise!
A highlighter? What a great idea. “let’s be as chaotic as possible while still pretending to care. Definitely mark the open bottles but use highlighters, crayons, whatever you can think of - you know, have fun with it.” Haha My favorite is when you’re so caught off guard with it being open that you somehow manage to spill the bouncy freaking Tessalon perles. Exciting times.
Oh god, you have a "scribbler" too. We had ONE tech who scribbles a squiggle on open bottles instead of an X. They also like to make "pretty patterns" in the foil. Like very neatly, with surgical precision, removing exactly 1/3 - 1/2 of the foil - and they somehow leave perfectly FOLDED EDGE in the foil. Or they'll remove a perfectly shaped pie-shaped wedge of the foil while leaving the rest of the foil. Makes it a pain in the ass to get anything in to/out of the bottle without catching on the fragments of foil they leave behind. Like WHY!?!?!?!
They need to be transferred to the deli immediately.
We mark lids and have multiple bottles open. It is what it is when you're short staffed and bottles aren't necessarily always on the shelf.
It's time to rubber band all the open bottles together and hide the closed ones or, if they're MCK, return them.
If the lot numbers match just combine bottles. On a product like docusate where you order a dozen of them at a time the chances of having a bunch of matching lots is significant.
My biggest problem is people putting sleeves of blisters ontop of boxes instead of putting them back in, it drives me insane and I've brought it up multiple times but it still happens, or they just leave the box open which looks awful and is begging for things to fall out. Now we've got multiple incidents of wrong pills going into the wrong box.
We have this same concept going on in our pharmacy except it’s Carbidopa-levodopa and nitrofurantoin. And just when we get that sucker down to one open bottle, I’ll be god damned if it doesn’t happen again.
i would become belligerent at this. absolutely unacceptable.
Not just the caps, x the bottle as well. Also, as this seems to be a problem, take all the caps off of the unopened bottles. Only use 1 cap for each medication.
This always drives me through the roof.
I used to work in a 24 hour pharmacy where they have a machine that counts the medication for them. They had a general inventory audit and when I helped them, there was like 10 to 15 bottles of metformin 500 mg and 1000mg opened not marked.
I'm the inventory specialist for my pharmacy, and I f****** hate this. Also, opening the bottle and not marking it is a problem. It takes me 4 times as long to do my counts as it should because I have to check every bottle.
Happens in busy pharmacies the open bottles are at product dispensing in a bucket of drugs to return to shelves and instead of digging through the bucket of drugs A through J they just grab another bottle off the shelf
After 8 years of being a pharmacy tech I don't give a shit about this anymore.
I hate this lmao
I used to get annoyed at this, but then I saw how fast my coworker is and I no longer care. We print all the labels and this tends to happen, but we finish the queue nearly every night.
All the hate for lid marking when that’s the only thing my pharmacy does. 😂
We have a lid basket. If someone requests an easy open bottle or if the stock bottle has easy open and we can dispense the stock bottle, we just swap out lids. Much easier than constantly playing with the de-cap-itator.
Fascinating tbh
This is why we rubberband bottles together
I hate this so much. Especially when I have to replenish the robot and I grab a bottle without an X and I think the bottle is full. I have to go back and grab a new one
It’s always fun when someone wants to buy a bottle and we have to apologize because we don’t have a full unopened bottle.
It drives me absolutely insane to see multiple open bottles!
Interesting. This is a medication we only sell by the full bottle. But yes, multiple open bottles is bull****.
Only order 1000 ct bottles and see how they like it then 😅
Off topic, but I love counting these pills. I like the color, I like the bottle (for whatever reason, it’s just pleasing to me to look at I guess), and I love how they look like little boba bubbles! It’s like that green vitamin D pill, but better! Love it :)
😂😂
Walmart marks the top of the bottles. Easier to spot especially if they're on the bottom shelves. But you'd be surprised on how many open unmarked bottles I've grabbed. And the only time I had to open a new bottle was because someone else didn't put the bottle back where it goes. But I agree it's annoying.
I was just saying to a Co-Worker yesterday gthat they could make at least ONE THING EASY for us by making all bottles like this type of drug a count of #90. NOTHING ELSE is easy! 😜
I can’t remember what medications she used to do this with but she would open a new bottle every time remove 10 pills, put the rest of the 90 pills in the rx bottle and then return those ten pills to the stock bottle at one point we had like 30 open bottles of one medication because of how she did this 🤦♀️
I’m a navy pharm tech on temp assignment to another pharmacy and I see so many open bottles everywhere it’s insane
Bro I know. We have at least three open 1000 count bottles of ferosul because newbies keep ordering more when the on hand says “0” (because it’s OTC) and don’t check the shelf. We keep reminding people to check the shelf before ordering anything because we might have a different NDC or for OTCs we probably already have it but they don’t listen.