Why I Was Too Busy at Work that I Accidentally Stole Something

By a show of hands, who here has all experienced a time when you rushed to get something finished and your brain was so frazzled by the end of the task, you made a mistake or did something without realizing it?

Yeah, I thought so. Even though I couldn’t see your hands raise, I know without a doubt that everyone has. I can’t tell you how many times I have, because these sort of blunders are almost as routine as washing my hands. But there is this one moment where I can thank my lucky stars it didn’t have a negative outcome. Or thank God. Or both!

Many moons ago in my pharmacy career back when I lived in the quaint small City of Westfield, Indiana, I was constantly rushing at the end of the night. There were more prescriptions needing filled in the queue each day than technician hours. And in corporate America, the new normal seems to be “increase productivity by reducing labor hours” which we all know does not work that way. This one particular night, I found myself scrambling around to fill the remaining thirty scripts in the queue within the last hour. My efforts to appease my cohorts opening the next morning seemed more important than a reasonable pace. You truly don’t understand this concept until you’re “unspoken-ly” reigned ‘the workplace whipping post.’

That night, we had a floater pharmacist closing with me and as you might already imagine it was just her and myself for the last five hours of the day. Unfortunately the politics of the pharmacy industry have worsened considerably since then in 2011. The fills remaining on the screen were only the automatic refills due for the following day. But there’s no worse feeling than starting out a shift with two pages of drugs to fill hours before the sun even rises. Somehow, I did it. The surprise was only due to the fact of working with a floater pharmacist who God bless her soul started her career in the days of apothecaries. Portia, if you are up in God’s kingdom by now, I say that with love and respect.

But my brain was so very tired. Not only did that mean filling the scripts, labeling them, and waiting for Portia to verify them–it also meant filing them away in the waiting bin. Also factor in putting away the stock bottles back to their respective shelves and the minor housekeeping of closing duties, and you had a very fretted Chuck/Carl by the time I was walking out to my van. In fact, I was only rushed out of the pharmacy because the the closing front-end supervisor was in a big hurry to leave (as per usual). So here I am using my key to unlock my driver’s side door.

The frigid negative twelve degrees on an icy December night in Indiana usually renders automated locks useless.

I climb into the seat so I could begin the wait for my windshield to defrost enough as I glance into my other hand. There I sat clattering my teeth in a freezing frenzy while noticing I was still holding onto my counting spatula. The pharmacy’s counting spatula. Let me tell you that theft of any reason is a bad thing, let alone from an environment which loss prevention and security are top priorities. I was mortified. I’d been running ragged the entire night and somehow my brain didn’t think to let go of it. To you, it was just a spatula. Thank goodness it wasn’t a stock bottle of medicine or something way worse, right? But theft is theft and I didn’t even intend to take it. My hand just never let it go.

I went into work the rest of the week wondering if someone had noticed, because it was the most favored counting spatula. You develop these sorts of preferences when you rely on something as simple as a spatula to help keep up a fast momentum. Obviously it was the most brought up subject behind the counter that following day and nobody let up on the subject the whole rest of the week until one of our favorite patients passed away and that became the new hot topic. Did I turn it back in? No, I didn’t.

I was too scared of the backlash it would have caused because I was already the resident whipping boy.

Neurodiverse adults tend to don some inscription on their forehead making them vulnerable to workplace bullying. And I was also not wanting to be watched like a hawk because I took something from the pharmacy. Since it wasn’t a drug bottle, and I would never have ever taken a drug bottle in my right mind, I didn’t want to unnecessarily add some target to my back. I’m just thankful it was something relatively innocent such as a spatula.

The moral of the story is, we too often are in a hurry and we make little mistakes. Steps are skipped and usually we become absentminded in what we’re doing. As we bring this week to a close, let this be a good reminder that God is in control of our lives and our feet, and we need not rush to the approval of others. While there is certainly something to be said for helping lighten the loads of our fellow man, we have to make sure that our ability to do so isn’t going to compromise the quality of our intentions. Sometimes, just sometimes, the morning techs will have to start out their shifts with a few extra things to complete.