Pharmacy manager fails to follow up on a help ticket for a faulty drive-through medicine drawer despite their employee's efforts to get their attention, ends up costing the company $25k in repairs: ‘Listen to the workers and you'll save money’

Author image for Lana DeGaetano
Lana DeGaetano • "Show me to me please."
Dec 13, 2025 12:00 PM EST

What is a toxic manager's hardest pill to swallow? They never want to admit that their direction might be the reason why everything is hitting the fan. A leader who cannot admit to their own faults cannot be classified as a leader; true leaders can internalize criticism for the best interest of their employees and themselves.

Looking inward is challenging for most of us, and that's because it's easier to think that we're perfect instead of analyzing what we do and theorizing how we can make those things better. When someone is in a position of power, though, that excuse can only work so much until they cost their company some big bills, all because they couldn't be bothered with what their employees needed them for.

The pharmacy employee in the next story explains that their pharmacy's drive-through medicine drawer wasn't opening properly, so they submitted a help ticket to ensure that it was fixed promptly. The repair never came, so they reached out to their direct manager, who told them to keep submitting tickets. Well, the drawer was now completely useless because it couldn't open at all, and these repairs ended up costing the company much more than the hourly wage of the direct manager. Scroll to read.

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  • 01
    male pharmacist standing inside a pharmacy holding a medication
    via Getty Images For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 02

    "You just want me to submit tickets, no exceptions? Okay."

    Hey all, been a minute since we had something happen in the pharmacy, but had something come full circle after a few weeks, just had to get time to type it all up.
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  • 03
    So back in October, we noticed our drive thru drawer was slowing down and the last time this happened it basically meant it needed to be cleaned/lubed up again since we use it a lot.
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  • 04
    What we usually have to do to get any traction and action is submit a ticket online so it can be logged, and hopefully worked on.
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  • 05
    Now I say hopefully because, well... the system is dogshit. You can submit tickets for anything for software issues, slowness with internet, physical issues that have to be fixed, etc, but getting some action for 80% of anything you submit requires some luck and hopefully getting someone who wants to help you out on the other end.
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  • 06
    To counter this and make things go smoother, we'd typically get in touch with management and they'd check in on the tickets as well so it would hopefully get taken care of sooner and not get higher on the severity list, which then may lead to an emergency and extra billing.
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  • 07
    We did have a great assistant manager that I could talk with and work together on this and we had great rapport, but he left early November because the new-ish store manager of a year basically drove out a lot of the old staff with severe micromanaging and c blocking them on promotions, and she was a stickler on costs on the store.
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  • 08
    We asked to get two keyboards replaced and that was a headache as is. So since he was gone and it's just the store manager, I tried to talk to her about it and give her a heads up and was met with "Just submit the tickets and resubmit it if nothing happens." So just to make sure all was good, I copied the ticket numbers, sent an email and copied my pharmacy manager on it.
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  • 09
    I made sure to resubmit the tickets and also ask "So you don't want me to tell you verbally or on email from here on about any ticket issues, pharmacy problems or delays, correct?" She replied back yes, and so I didn't.
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  • 10
    So back to the drive thru. We had someone come out and check on the drawer, they said it would have to get looked at for replacement, so I made a ticket, put in all the info in that was needed and submitted it.
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  • 11
    Didn't say anything, just let the people do their job they were supposed to do. Resubmitted every 48 hours as the systems allows you to "bump" it if nothing has been looked at and did that for about 10 days with no action on replacement.
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  • 12
    Well, day 12 comes around and I opened that morning, and as I was taking care of someone, the shelf doesn't move.
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  • 13
    Had to have them come inside to get finished up and we had to shut down the lane.
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  • 14
    a woman sitting in a car with a drive in sign in front of her
    via Kübra Arslaner For Unsplash+

    Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

  • 15
    So by this point, since it's down and we really need some movement on this, we submit a ticket for an emergency to get this on the record and addressed.
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  • 16
    When a claim is done as emergency, we're basically guaranteed to get someone in there in about 2-4 hours, however it comes with all the charges that would make a frugal manager flip out about, with fees, premium time costs for service, etc, and then ordering the parts was done automatically, instead of needing the manager approval because the need was there.
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  • 17
    So you best believe when the manager got the heads up that an emergency claim was put in, she nearly ran over to the pharmacy to ask why we didn't tell her something was happening, and I gently reminded her the she said herself in an email to not bother her with issues and submit tickets accordingly, and since it had been almost two weeks and we now cannot operate efficiently, we now had to take this route.
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  • 18
    I think when we do emergency options our district manager also gets an email, but I'm not sure.
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  • 19
    I didn't hear anything from him though. The fallout was a huge bill for the store, since the system we had to get replaced was from a company that initially put the system in when the store opened in the early 2000's.
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  • 20
    So, they had to custom make this drive thru replacement cause it wasn't the current model they produce, have multiple visits to prep for the install, and as a cherry on top, the store got to hear a lot of complaints about drive thru being shut down for so long, and if the scores don't look good there, bonuses get lowered too.
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  • 21
    I saw an invoice of some of the work and the guy who was working on things was chill, but I think he quoted the drive thru production around 25k cause they had to put a rush on it, and that's not adding in the service fees and more.
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  • 22
    So a fix that could have casually be started at the first ticket and followed up on and finished sooner and for less cost, ended up costing maybe 3-4x the amount just due to the fees.
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  • 23
    Needless to say, the store manager has now conveniently asked me a few times here and there if there's any tickets in the system that need to be looked at.
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  • 24
    She's not my boss anyway, but that email chain is definitely saved in case it needs to be sent to our district manager if she thinks she can blame me for something in the future.
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  • 25
    Anyway, moral of the story is - take care of your sh early and listen to the workers and you'll save money.
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toxic-manager drive thru employees justice served workplace pharmacy
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