When I first started working here, this place had the look and feel of a pharmacy.
At that time the pot laws were very restrictive in this state.
In order to have legal access to medical cannabis, a person first had to get a written recommendation from their primary care physician. Once that was acquired it had to be taken to a government office for approval. There was a long, difficult vetting process that took several weeks, which meant that only the oldest and sickest people ever qualified for medical cannabis. There were some days that my cannabis shop would only have two or three customers in a day. Times sure have changed! Now recreational cannabis use is legal, which means anyone over the age of 21 with a state issued ID can come to the store and buy weed. In the old days most of my job was filing paperwork, and logging the medical cannabis Rx permits the state issued to customers. Currently the store has dozens of customers a day, and sometimes there is a long line of customers waiting in front of the cannabis dispensary when we open! Although I stay busy all day long, I prefer it that way. I get to meet so many interesting people and spend the entire shift discussing the pros and cons of different cannabis strains. The cannabis dispensary no longer feels like a pharmacy, it seems like a cool place to hang out. I enjoy my job as a budtender more than ever, and have even started pondering the idea of opening my own cannabis dispensary one day.