When BossRPh left, she didn’t tell anyone she was leaving. There were no goodbyes to patients she liked, she just up and disappeared.
Patients are just starting to really notice she’s not there anymore, and ask questions. They’ve suddenly realized it’s not just a weird fluke and they’ve come in on her day off for the last 8 months.
Me, on the other hand, I want the goodbyes. I want to be able to say goodbye to people I’ve seen regularly – in some cases weekly – for the last 15 years. I’ve seen patients lose loved ones, and I’ve seen them find love again. I’ve seen kids grow up and have kids of their own. We had a patient whose father once asked us what the lethal dose of a medication was because he was worried about his daughter; I have a patient now who will proudly tell me how many days sober he’s been every single time he talks me.
There’s been good, and bad, but mostly good, and I want to say goodbye to the good ones.
When I first decided I was going to put in my notice when the house went up, I joked that I would going to make a countdown calendar on the wall behind the register. We expanded the idea to a sort of Advent calendar, with nips of booze in behind the squares. Since that wouldn’t be appropriate for a professional setting, the idea was squashed. Instead, I’ve been running a countdown on my name badge at work: CRYSTAL HAS _____ SHIFTS LEFT. The reactions from people have been wonderful. What’s funny, is they all ask the same thing.
“What does that mean?”
The difference is how they ask. Some of them, those who will probably, eventually get an entire FUCK YOU post of their own at some point, are just fucking idiots and can’t comprehend plain English. However, for the most part, everyone seems genuinely saddened by the news.
It’s nice to hear that people on the other side of the counter might actually miss me. We’re so accustomed to people bitching at us in the pharmacy. Copays are too high, doctors don’t call in scripts in a timely manner, things get sent to the wrong pharmacy. Nothing is our doing, but everything is our fault. Maybe one or two will thank us, or we might get some candy at Christmas. For the most part, unfortunately, we’re just a target for frustrations. It’s a pretty thankless job.
A regular who is always super nice to us came in tonight before we closed and asked what I was going to do. Most of the time, I just tell people I’m going to Canada by way of Florida. The plan is to reunite with my husband in Canada when the border opens. Until then, I’ll go to Florida for a few months.
“I’m going on an adventure”, I told her. While saddened to hear I was leaving, she was happy to it was going to be something so interesting.
“If I don’t see you before you leave”, she said, “then I wish you the safest of journeys, and the brightest of blessings.”
Wish I’d have thought of something like this on a job before. That’s such a nice idea.
Makes the whole thing of leaving more real.
This even happens on social media all the time. You read someone for years only to eventually discover after months that an account is gone or dead in the water leaving you wonder what happened.
Love the sentiment of the last paragraph. It is nice to be missed.