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 "!"
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