u/Defensive_Kage1979

I'm not looking for solutions or advice today. I just need to put this somewhere where people who actually “get it”.
There's a specific kind of pain that lives in the chest of anyone working retail pharmacy that I don't think anyone outside the four walls understands. It's not just the "rude customer" fatigue that every service job deals with. It's heavier.
It's the feeling of being the human buffer between a desperate person in pain and a broken insurance algorithm. It's the guilt of having to tell someone they can't have their medication because of a prior authorization, while they're crying in front of you. It's the cognitive dissonance of trying to be empathetic and patient while your brain is screaming about the 40 prescriptions waiting in the queue and the fact that you haven't taken a bathroom break in six hours.
But here's what really gets to me. What sits deep in my chest long after I've gone home: the anger. Not mine. Theirs. The way people look me dead in the face and unleash fury over things I have absolutely zero control over. Insurance denied it? My fault. The doctor didn't send the script? My fault. The copay went up? My fault. The medication is on backorder? Somehow still my fault.
And what's worse — what really messes me up — is that it feels like society has decided it's okay to treat us like garbage. Like because we stand behind a counter, because we wear a name tag, because we're the visible face of an invisible system. We are just part of the transaction. We're not people deserving of basic decency. We're the punching bag that comes free with every pharmacy visit.
But the thing that kills me the most? I still perform. I still give everything I have. Because you never know what metric they're going to judge you on next. And that fear! The one that's always sitting in the back of my mind. It is that one day, some random person is going to file a complaint, and it's going to become this epic origin story of victimhood about how I wronged them, all because I didn't do exactly what they wanted. Never mind that what they wanted wasn't possible, or legal, or safe. The complaint doesn't care about context. It just becomes a weapon, and I'm the one who has to answer for it.
So I hold my breath. I smile. I eat it. I perform at a high level because the alternative is risking everything over one person's bad day. And that fear. They low, constant hum of "don't mess up, don't give them a reason". It never goes away. Even after I clock out.
Does anyone else feel this? That specific, heavy silence of knowing you're doing the best you can in a system that makes it impossible to do enough and getting punished for it anyway? I just wanted to say that if you're reading this and feeling it too, you aren't crazy, and you aren't alone.