Sign Your Life Away!

By the way, kimtojin has got a new PhotoBlog! :)

Now back to the business side, talking about complaining, incidentally, I do have something to write about today. Last week at work, I received a much unanticipated phone call from the Department of Immigration regarding a statutory declaration which I have witnessed about a year ago. The person at the other end was identified as an investigator who works for the department. He refused to clarify the nature of the investigation over the phone and instead, wanted to discuss the issue with me personally. With much anxiety and confusion, I waited for him on Monday at work. He finally showed up in the morning, when we were flat out with customers and I was inundated with prescriptions. "He couldn't have picked a better time" I said to myself. I went to the semi-secluded backroom with the two investigators, I was interrogated like I have done something seriously "dodgy" and of course, the whole conversation was recorded as well.

The problem was I might have witnessed an alleged false declaration and the signature on the paper was suspected not to be that of the declarant! I must say, I did witness every declarant signs off their declaration in front of me and I thought I was doing the right thing. He pulled out a copy of the declaration in question and placed in front of me and said, "Do you still remember who the person was?" Yea...like I remember what I signed off yesterday!

He pulled out another two pieces of paper stating my responsibilities as a witness and gave them to me. In a nutshell, apparently each time, I suppose to check what their are declaring and double check with them to make sure they understand what they are declaring?? ....and demand a photo ID with their usual signature to make sure that the declarant is not putting false signature on or something. It's also prudent for a witness to check that the statutory declaration does not contain any blanks and all information is completed! Of course, this doesn't prevent them from adding extras at home after it has been witnessed right??

What a lot of rubbish and a totally bonkers if you ask me! ...and all these trouble for performing a free service to the public? Next time I am going to start charging at least $5/signature!

We are now dumber thanks to our brilliant privacy laws

While we all care about our privacy and right, but if a person commit a serious crime or crimes, logically I would think that he or she has decided to relinquish all the rights to live as a normal person. But no!! Don't worry criminals, in Australia, we take good care of you and we punish those victimised by you!

This morning I woke up to the news that a convicted pedophile and child rapist has apparently escaped from a high security prison in Victoria. However due to privacy law, the authority is banned from using a electronic GPS device installed on him to track down his whereabouts. Now that dangerous low-life could be anywhere as we speak, I think we are all made dumber by our ridiculously outdated laws!!

LINK

Big car, small on comfort

You would think a big car will be more comfortable on a long journey, well, our rental car during our stay in Eastern States was quite the contrary. I know I know, before you say anything, a big fat Ford Falcon station wagon was indeed an overkill for only 2 of us with a couple of luggage and not truely an environmental friendly to travel I might add. But here is the fact, this big ass car is not the most comfortable way for a long journey and a total shocker around city traffic! The driver's seat lumbar support is way too high for my back and I don't consider myself to be a short person the last time I check. Every time I put my foot on the accelerator, it constantly reminded me that I was driving a fat car because it is just too sluggish given that it has a 4 litre V6 in the bonnet. Last but not least, the gear stick is a tad too far for my liking, luckily it is an automatic. However, I did find one rather pleasant surprise though, despite the engine size, it is actually quite economical to drive....or may be the fuel over there was cheaper at the time :)

New Ikea Super Store!

Really, before I begin, this is not about any IKEA promotion so please don't worry LOL! A good buddy of mine, Waynus mentioned once in his blog that one of his friend is afraid of mimes and apparently there was one in the new IKEA store. So we decided to check it out yesterday morning, which was indeed a beautiful morning until we got there at the store.

Getting there was a breeze from the Mitchell Freeway, you won't miss the imposing sign of IKEA on the Cedric Street exit. This gargantuan superstore don't get the title as the biggest store in the southern hemisphere for nothing, it is huge indeed...but again...to get that sort of title in the southern hemisphere is not entirely that hard anyway :)

To find a parking spot in a sea of cars was a daunting experience, so I decided to park on the giant uncovered parking field next to the store, which was covered with soft yellow sands. Even then, the makeshift parking was pretty much full! So, as you have probably guessed, my poor Toyota was bogged down before we even started our "adventure". After I tried digging the front wheels out with my four paws to no avail, we decided to beg for help from the ever so helpful IKEA staffs.

After running up and down, one of the IKEA staff said to us: "that parking area is NOT an IKEA's property, so it is not our responsibility that your car is bogged down there". Inside of me, I was fuming but I managed to ignore what he said because, after all, I was the one buried in deep shit and in need of help at the time. What are we? I thought we are loyal IKEA's customers and they are supposed to look after their patrons? After all, nearly 15-20% of our bits and pieces at home sport the IKEA tags!

Luckily one of the more helpful staff agreed to sacrifice a few minutes of his time and give us a hand. However, after a few trials, the nose of my car was officially resting on the dirt as the front wheels frantically scratched for traction (traction control I heard?) I phoned RAC (Royal Automobile Club) of which I was a member for the past 15 years I was driving but they doubted their mechanics were going get me out of this sticky situation, so they suggested I call a tow truck. Luckily, while we were their, another guy rocked up in his great Holden Ute and his rear shinny allow wheels were seriously bogged behind us as well. Tell you what?! It's nice to have a "mate" in the same sticky situation LOL!

As our hope and patience were running thin, he flagged down a guy in his Toyota landcruiser who, thanks heaven, was able to give us a much needed pulling hand! I should have asked for your name but if you ever come across my blog, you have my sincere thank you and I will forever remember you as our saviour!! ....and long live Toyota landcruiser!!

To IKEA!! Your reputation is merely saved by one of your more helpful staff! Perhaps you should erect a sign near the entrance of that parking area "for 4WD only or enter at your own peril"! Perhaps you should build the biggest proper carpark in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps you should train their staffs to be more reasonable and helpful.

Perhaps...we should have gone to FREEDOM instead! One thing for sure, we won't be going back to the store in a hurry!

Is incompetence a "norm" in pharmacy service nowadays?

Sorry for the lack of updates to my blog recently. I have been spending literally too much time on Flickr and I think I might take a break from it soon =P It is kind of addictive, I mean in a good way because I have learnt so much by surfing through hundreds of photos everyday and I have met some brilliant photographers and great friends.

I feel compelled to complain something today to get it off my chest! We just updated our Point of Sale (POS) system in the pharmacy in hope that it will provide us with better inventory control and sales reports. And what did we get? A system that totally stuffed up our inventory during the conversion process, stocks level is out by miles and most of our sales figures are totally out of whack! According to our system, we have actually sold 350 boxes of Panadeine tablets (48) last month...what are we? A Chemist Warehouse? When we run into problems, the software company generally takes 2 - 3 days to response, and most of our queries/problems are tagged urgent response needed! I am not going to name and shame here just in case they get angry at us, then we might get no service at all in the future :)

Another thing that upsets me is the level of service offered by one of our pharmaceutical wholesaler, Sigma. They have appalling customer service and is getting worse by the day! On a typical phone call to their customer service, the average waiting time will be around 5-10 minutes and that's on a good day! "Your phone calls are important to us, please hold and our next available...." do I need to continue? :) Now they want us to pay $12 per month for the Pharmax ordering service that we don't use at all! We made numerous phone calls to query about the charge and to cancel it, we were directed back and forth at least 4 times between Perth and Melbourne customer services and no one seems to know what's going on. Then one of them said to us, that $12 is not the charge for the ordering service, it's the standard charge for using their customer service!! Pay while you wait for service...that's something new you don't hear everyday :) No wonder they are going broke, for your info, their share prices have plummeted more than 50% in the last 6 months! I wonder why.

Self-Annihilation: Pharmacy vs Woolworth and Coles? NO LONGER!

Came home from work earlier today and not feeling very well thanks for all the coughs and sneezes customers brought in from work. But that's ok, after all, they are the ones who pay my bills and mortgage and put food on my table at the end of the day. I reluctantly picked up an AJP, a monthly pharmacy magazine which I apparently subscribed to but never get around to read them. I got a pile of them stashed in a giant basket in my kitchen still in their plastic wrappers.

It was the April 07 issue and as I flicked through the first few pages, the headline on page 4 cought my eyes: "The enemy within: aggressive pharmacy competition reaches new depths". Pharmacy industry was faced with a grievious challenge couple years back when retail giants, Woolworth and Coles Myers were trying to get a slice of this multimillion-dollars pie. Every pharmacists (well, almost everyone) were united in their voice to fend off these Walmart-inspired, profit-driven greedy giants. At the meanwhile, a "cancer" is growing within the industry which has slipped under the radar of most of us: big discount pharmacies aka "warehouse pharmacies"!

"NEVER BEATEN ON PRICES!! If you find a cheaper price elsewhere, we will match it and give you 10% off the difference" Heard that before, seen it before, now the cancer is spreading even faster in Perth and is coming to a place near you! FEAR THEM!! Yes, if you are a owner-pharmacist, you should be very worried and so do all of us hard working pharmacists, who are trying to make a living out of serving our community with our knowledge.

Here I quote from the article: "A new player within the Liverpool market, Chemist Warehouse, has gone on the front foot in its competitive campaign to attact customers away from its more established rivals..offering discounts well below cost. These reportedly include Panamax 100tab pack selling 69c and 89c, free gifts with prescriptions and volume discounts on a host of analgesics." As unbelievable as it sounds, the Chemist Warehouse was also reportedly sending their girls to dish out their discount catalogues within and outside of rival pharmacies! Other examples include dispensing three and four packs at once and telling customers that they would only receive their OTC discounts if they had their prescriptions dispensed with them.

How bad can it be? Have you seen people from Big W distributing their catalogues in Kmart? How unprofessional and unethical can those warehouse pharmacy owners be? Can you trust your health with those unscrupulous greedy minority "pharmacists" who want nothing but their aim to close other stores? What is the price you put on your health? I feel sorry for those new pharmacy graduates who are trying to make a living out of this endangered profession...believe me, I feel sorry for myself too!

p/s sorry about the language tone I used in this blog, that's just because I AM ANGRY!!