The pandemic has been a bizzare time for everybody involved, whether you’re a stay at home parent or a doctor. Yet despite the uncertainty of it all, 20 year old pharmacy worker Abby Davidson, saw a rewarding side of the experience.
Abby has been working in a pharmacy in Lisburn, outside Belfast for over 3 years, alongside her university studies. She described going into the first lockdown as a terrifying experience for her and her team.
“At first, we were all completely terrified because it was so unknown and the whole week everywhere went into a really sudden lockdown, so everything was closed, literally the only places open were supermarkets and us, even the doctors no one could even get into see them.”
Precautions had to quickly be put in place such as limiting numbers of customers and even having to close the shop for an hour every day.
“We’re not a massive pharmacy, we could let 4 people in who had to stand on different X’s on the ground, we had to keep the doors open permanently and we closed for an hour of the day every day to do a clean so that was really different, people hated that and complained about it constantly.”
With confusion and anxiety levels rising, combined with very limited access to medical services, meant that people started coming into the pharmacy who really should have been at A and E.
“It was such a nightmare because people were coming into see us with first aid things, one woman turned up and she’d sliced her thumb off, like this is not what people should be coming to pharmacies for.”
Abby shared that there were many other difficult interactions from customers.
“The general public definitely had mixed responses, some people were getting really angry with us because they couldn’t really understand what was going on, everyone was obviously really scared so we’d constantly be selling out of paracetamol and toilet roll.”
She also felt that often the high emotions and stress were taken out on her and other staff members.
“It was very stressful because everyone panicked and brought out their tension on us, so we definitely had some customers be a lot more angry and anxious about stuff than they would normally be.”
Despite this, Abby has still found her job incredibly rewarding throughout these difficult times and was able to see the postives of the situation.
“It’s such a rewarding job, I learnt so much from even trying to deal with people in awkward situations, a lot of people who’s relatives are ill, or they’re ill themselves, vulnerable people.”
Thankfully, there were many other customers who throughout the pandemic were supportive, who bought some joy in the some even knitting the staff masks.
“Obviously there was a massive shortage of gloves and masks so some of our customers made us little ones, like sewed them for us.”
Abby, like most key workers across the country, has been through an absolute whirlwind of emotions throughout the past 2 years, and she says it’s an experience that she will never forget.
“I will literally never forget working in a pharmacy the first few weeks of Covid, it was just insane.”
