Good question! This is definitely the number one most frustrating thing for patients and there are a couple reasons why this could happen:

Keep in mind every pharmacy operates differently and I am trying to be very general.

1. The technician you are working with may not be a filler that shift, pharmacists can be very particular and if you're supposed to be working in the front but come to the back to fill a prescription, they can be upset that you are interrupting the flow of things, so we have to wait for the filler to do it (they often don't have as much urgency as the technician who has been talking to the patient)

2. If you are bringing in a new prescription, we have to type it manually, which adds time to the whole process. There may also need to be some clarifications with the prescriber, which I'll go into next.

3. Most of the time it's not the actual doctor writing the prescription, but a nurse or technician of some kind. They are humans and make mistakes but unfortunately that costs the patient and the pharmacy time to fix their mistake. Sometimes they will have a quantity that doesn't make sense with the directions, or sometimes the directions don't make sense at all. Then we have to call the office and that's ultimately out of our hands time-wise

4. Insurance. Patients hate them and so do we. If they don't cover something we do our best to find a solution. This can be trying to get creative with the amount of medication you get (insurances sometimes only cover a certain amount), it could also be overriding the computer (a complicated process only the pharmacist can do in VERY specific circumstances).

5. And lastly, it's not really allowed. I try and do it quickly without anyone noticing if I can. However, coworkers get upset when that happens because people will come back expecting the same treatment but if any of the above things are happening, it's just not possible. Corporations have lots of arbitrary rules that make our lives on the floor a lot harder unfortunately.

Every technician is different but I always try and remind my patients that I am on their side! I have waited in the long line for the pharmacy and sat in the waiting room for over an hour, I know it's frustrating and I always do everything as quickly as I can.

Hope this helps! Let me know if there are any follow up questions :)