Closing Saturday night

I was originally supposed to close Sunday, a much gentler night than Saturday. However, nobody was scheduled and the manager was left hanging so I offered to flip my Sunday for the Saturday to buy him some time to find someone. Things were reasonable for the most part and were steady until the store started getting close to closing, then a few things became obvious. Mainly that I can't rely on this set of pharmacy technicians to manage themselves. The times given out were not sufficient... I'd be mad too if it took over an hour and I was told 20 minutes. The dispensing machine going down didn't help, however the people doing the actual filling didn't help the case much either; it was slow, and by the time baskets reached me people were already showing up to pick up. On top of that there was no logical order to the baskets after peoples' prescriptions were filled, they just kept piling them on top of each other so that there was no rational way to know what needed to be checked next. Someone started instigating out by cash and then a few other people joined in as they often do when they smell blood. It was more of a mess than I'd care to admit.

There were not enough people there, there should have been more techs at a minimum. Also, I'm going to have to force them to give out strips of paper for pick up times along with writing times down for promised time of pickup. I'm also going to have to adopt the practice of calling out wait times just so I can manage expectations better.

Anyways, we got everyone out with a 1/2 hour overtime on my part - more from others. I'm probably going to be hearing about it after I get back from holidays :( but according to the other staff members these end rushes happen often enough on Saturdays that I shouldn't be too concerned about it. Hopefully I can just chalk it up to experience and get on with things.

Also, my engine's light came on during my drive home. Thankfully it wasn't anything other than a lack of coolant, it just needs to hold together for another couple months.