19 Pharmacist Memes to Appreciate Who Decipher Doctors’ Awful Handwriting

María Cetra • Writer

Oct 25, 2026 4:30 PM EDT

Pharmacists are an undervalued part of society. They deserve a lot more respect!

Going to the pharmacy must be one of the most embarrassing activities you could possibly do. If you are a normal person, you may be thinking that is not true, but if you are like me, someone who gets nervous interacting with other people, you will totally understand what I'm referring to. When you go to the pharmacy to buy medicine, and they have to say it over the speakers for another employee to go look for it, it is one of the worst experiences. You feel your whole face get red and sweat coming down your back. You start to cover yourself to avoid having to interact anymore or having an encounter with someone you know. It's crazy how going to the pharmacy to get a cream that you need can turn into the worst moment, one that will be engraved in your mind forever. The pharmacy is where those moments that you think about before falling asleep happen; you know that moment where you think, "I hope no one remembers this", and, unfortunately, sometimes people do remember.

Something that is not valued enough about pharmacists is the way they can decipher the illegible doctor's calligraphy and understand what they are prescribing for the person who came in. I sometimes think that doctors write horribly on purpose. It could be to test out how good a pharmacist is at their job; whether they understand or not is the way to measure their strength as a medical field worker. Or maybe it is a way to make themselves more important; they aren't normal people like everyone else. They are better just because they are doctors. So if they write like a normal person, it will make them less special, and they can never accept that. In true honesty, the most probable reason as to why they write so awfully is due to the number of years they spent taking notes in medical school, which made their writing skills better for writing fast but did not provide better calligraphy. Maybe with all the people taking notes on their computers now, their writing will not be so horrible anymore, and pharmacists can stop trying to understand the most horribly looking prescriptions.

I sometimes wonder if pharmacists have a class where they learn to decipher those prescriptions. I'm joking, of course. But maybe they do have some kind of activity where they learn or practice how to recognize the medication that is being prescribed, even if the doctor seems to be writing with their foot instead of their hand. Or maybe it's simple practice; they have been at the job for so long and have seen so much horrible handwriting that now they are experts at understanding. They are like teachers, having to understand the most insane calligraphy that doesn't even make sense, but they still have the superpower to do so. It must be some gift that comes with the job, I guess.