The Temple Wall

I'm sitting in my car in the temple parking lot waiting for Ben's meeting with the Rabbi to end.  He's there to choose a mitzvah project, that all important finale of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah where each kid turns to the congregation and shares their good samaritan project. The Rabbi has cancelled our two previous appointments but finally last week we all sit down for our first meeting.  Right away she recommends Ben's hanging yahrzeit plaques--the plaques of deceased temple members--on the temple wall.

"They're all in boxes," she says cheerfully.  "It would be such a help to the temple. Such a mitzvah."

I keep thinking it sounds rather custodial not to mention the nice cheap kind and I can't help from wanting to strangle her.  Ben is mostly quiet.  She moves on to a mitzvah of Ben helping her on the computer.  "That would be so great, I could really use the computer help." Later on in the car, Ben is less than enthused.  "Why would I want to put plaques on a wall?  Or tutor her on the computer." I don't say much, trying to subdue my seething.

Today's appointment is to further explore mitzvah projects and for her to hear Ben read his Haftorah.   "From now on," as she explained last week, "these meetings are to be between just Ben and myself."  So, I'm reading the newspaper in the car waiting for the meeting to end, when my cell phone rings with Ben telling me the Rabbi is in another meeting with a boy and his father and that he's tired of waiting.

"I've been sitting here for over fifteen minutes,"he says in exasperation.

 "Ben, you need to knock on her door and tell her you're waiting."

"I'm just sitting here out in the hall.  She's already seen me.  I'm leaving.  This is bullshit."

"Ben, give her another five ..."

And he's back in the car.  I'm fuming.  I try and tell myself this is not so different from a doctor's appointment where you sometimes just have to wait, but it was only yesterday that the Rabbi's secretary had e-mailed me to confirm our 5:30 appointment.  Not to mention that the rabbi was clear that these appointments would only last a half-hour. Give me a break, this isn't a doctor's appointment, this is a twelve-year-old for his once-in-a-lifetime Bar Mitzvah.  For Christ's sake, the rabbi should show up.  I send off an e-mail to her new secretary.

"Hi Rosemary, today Ben went to his scheduled appointment with the Rabbi which you confirmed with me yesterday.  He just sat there waiting while she met with another family.  Finally he left in frustration.  This is just not working for us, she's already cancelled twice and now this.  If she wants to meet with Ben, from now on, the meeting will be in our house."

I find myself wondering, does the Rabbi really have to be at Ben's Bar Mitzvah?  I call over to Niki. She tells me that a few of the kids whose families have defected from the temple are finding other venues, and that having a rabbi isn't actually a requirement.  "Just having Ben read his haftorah after he turns 13 is sufficient," she says confidently.  "We'd love to have him at our minyan." I picture Ben's Bar Mitzvah above the Town Hall Deli, standing room only, insufficient parking for over 150 guests, and realize sending that e-mail to the Rabbi probably wasn't the best idea.  Let's face it, I'm stuck with her. And now I can just picture on Ben's big day, in front of all our friends and family, she won't be able to look us in the eye.

A lawsuit brewing

I worked two days in the pharmacy and as it turns out, Joey the sheister is even worse than I thought, truly without a moral compass. He and his mother work side by side as pharmacist and pharmacy tech with not a professional license between them. Both Russian born jews with thick accents, they speak in their native tongue leaving me and Claudia, the Spanish cashier, to wonder what the hell they're saying, mostly about us. The Madoffs of the pharmacy profession, these two. I'm just being used for my license to sign onto the computer.  For all he cares, I could just sit there all day and he'd pay me.  By Friday, at the end of my second day, it was pretty slow, so that's exactly what I did was just sit there.  That's when I googled something or other, a few words on Dictionary.com, some real estate site, and a virus infected both computers.  He was actually pretty calm in a why does all this shit always happen to me sort of way, though his mother kept glaring at me from the corner of the store. I assume that was my last day.

He's actually quite good at what he does, filling scripts at a lightening fast clip, but already I've caught a few mistakes.  Nothing deadly, more like too high a dose of Singulair, or one bottle short of amoxicillin suspension.  A few times I had Claudia running down the street after a patient.  On the way home it hit me, my initials are on everything he does, each direction he types, each drug he grabs off the shelf and his mother counts, it's my license on the line.  I'm an idiot.  But it's over, assuming the check doesn't bounce, this will be my first paycheck with meat on it in a very long time.  And so I'm back to looking, only now it's May, and another crop of pharmacy grads are out there competing for the piddly jobs there are in this state.  I'm depressed.

And angry. Recently I went to my alma mater, Rutgers Pharmacy school, for a speed career dating event.  The Dean stood up on stage infusing pride in this career choice, how wonderful his personal trajectory has been from working in retail pharmacy to industry to academia.  But not a word of the desperate job market facing us all, not just now, but in the last five years.  I actually knew the dean, quite well, from when we were both at the pharmacy school.  He was three years ahead of me and on a rather regular basis we would get high in my concrete-walled dorm room and have sex.  It was one of those animal attractions that was firmly in the moment, a complete understanding that there would be no future together, not even to meet for dinner somewhere later that night in town.  In that way it was one of the most honest relationships I had in college.  Looking back, I think we were actually in love but I was stuck in the dutiful meet-a-Jewish-guy mindset, quite possibly at the medical school next store.  He was mostly a diversion, which was why college sucked so much; I just never spent enough time on the diversions.

In the last few months I'd written to him asking his advice on finding a job in New Jersey. He was rather elusive, often responding after a two week delay.  Finally I mention I'm a writer interested in exposing the sad state of pharmacy, how more and more pharmacy schools are opening (next month Fairleigh Dickenson), and that he and the academic community at large owe it to these incoming classes to inform them of such dire job prospects. This time he responds right away sending me links to articles written by the American Pharmacy Association warning of these run amok pharmacy schools.  Basically covering his ass.  Well I've seen his ass.

It's a few days later and I never do hear from the sheister.  I decide to send him a test message saying I'll see him Friday and Saturday as planned.  He writes back saying he already hired an Rx.  I want to write back saying you mean an RPh, but instead I write "no surprise there,"  to which he responds "?"  I get the final punctuation in, sending him a "!"