Pages

Friday, January 16, 2015

It's for a good cause

I suppose my husband isn't too thrilled about the calendar I purchased for charity.

But with hot pictures like this in it, how could I say no?
Actually one of good friends at Tulane - he's a great doc and one of the funniest people I know. And he doesn't mind wearing a skirt for laughs. 

(The funniest part about this calendar is that one of the doctors - who's a little full of himself - totally missed the point of the self-deprecating humor of the poses, and in his picture he's totally into it: riding horseback with his shirt unbuttoned! I died laughing).

Work has been - kind of a roller coaster, I guess? After my visit with the vice presidents the week of my surgery, things calmed down for the holidays. Unfortunately, right around that time, I learned some news about contracting that will negatively affect my business. Part of that meant referrals were down, especially for the high-dollar drugs I've based my business model on. So I did some projections, and I decided to cut payroll hours at my store. It was a tough decision - I do need the help, but I can''t really pay a second full-time pharmacist and still turn the kind of profits I want. I reduced her hours to two days a week in anticipation of decreased volume/profits. I felt terrible doing it - I hired her, she's new, and she's good, but at least she'll still get full-time hours at a combination of stores. Meanwhile, I didn't reduce my hours budget, so I can add her back in if business picks up.


And of course, as soon as I talked to her about the hours reduction, I got three referrals for a pricey hepatitis C drug. The price of these three prescriptions would pay salaries for my entire store for over three months!
And then the company revealed that some errors had been made on the November profit and loss sheets released to stores. So all my decision-making had been based partially on erroneous data (prescription volume and expenses). My projections were off because I thought I saw a trend, but it didn't actually exist. At this point, I'm probably going to just play February by ear, and see how things go. I just hate the upheaval when it might have been for no reason.
And since I get boss-guilt, I guess I will buy them a king cake next week!

4 comments:

  1. Being boss would be so much easier if you had a crystal ball and could predict the future. Anyone who takes on that role is pretty brave in my books.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That calendar is amazing; you need to post the pictures from it every month. It's for a good cause after all...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Reading your blog makes me realize that I have absolutely no actual idea what pharmacists do or how pharmacies work! It sounds so much more complicated (especially from a business perspective) than I ever realized.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well - my position is a little different than many; I am actually a store manager who is also a pharmacist so I do more on the business side than most pharmacists (unless they are part-owner)

      Delete