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  • Donna Fassina talks to a customer on the phone at The Pharmacy in Mt. Olive.

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  • Donna Fassina counts pills for a prescription at The Pharmacy in Mt. Olive. Ben Montgomery/The North Jefferson News

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June 28, 2010

Customers are best part of job for technician

By Ben Montgomery CNHI

MT. OLIVE — Donna Fassina is a pharmacy technician at The Pharmacy in Mt. Olive. Filling prescriptions, contacting insurance companies and running a cash register are all part of her job, but none of them are her favorite task.

“I like to help customers,” said Fassina. “A lot of people just stop in to say ‘hey’.” She said she tries to get to know her customers by name, and to find out a little about them.

“I’m Facebook friends with a lot of them,” she said. She even dressed up as one of her favorite customers for Halloween last year.

Fassina also visits customers when they are hospitalized. If she can’t make it, she sends a card.

“When I make deliveries to the nursing home, I’ll sit there and talk to them a while,” said Fassina.

“Donna takes a real interest in the customers,” said Steve Mullinex, owner of The Pharmacy and Fassina’s brother-in-law.

Fassina also works with her sister and Mullinex’s wife, Sherry Mullinex. She said working with her family makes her feel comfortable. Fassina has worked at the pharmacy since Sherry and Steve opened it five years ago.

“Steve’s fun to work with. He taught me everything he knows,” she said.

“I work with my sister and brother-in-law. How much better could it be?”

Fassina said one of the most challenging things about her job is filling prescriptions. She has to be perfectly accurate, and she takes several precautionary measures to ensure every prescription is right.

“We double count pills, and we ask patients’ birthdays to make sure we’ve got the right person,” she said. “When in doubt, we ask Steve.” She also uses software that shows her what the pills in the prescription she’s filling are supposed to look like.

The Pharmacy in Mt. Olive is located at 2660 Mt. Olive Road.

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