Down on the Pharm

The waiting room at my doctor's office is painted green, and there are several large windows through which filters sunlight coming through the trees outside. To my left, there's a kid-sized wooden table with kid-sized wooden chairs for kids, along with some generic toys. Today, there are no kids playing with the toys (huzzah! the children are healthy!). All told, it's one of the more pleasant and non-sterile waiting rooms I've been in.

Except, there's this incessant clicking. And the low buzz of two people chatting their heads off. They're well dressed (click!) and impeccably groomed (click! click!), and they have nametags displaying their names (Courtney click! and Kevin click!). Kevin, by the way, is a deft handler of his laptop, minus learning to operate the volume feature that is currently set to HIGH as he clicks through his PowerPoint presentation with Courtney (godfuckingdammitIhatePowerPointevenmorenow. click!).

Cheery, spunky pharmaceutical reps, forced to wait here with the plebes—and not just the normal plebes, no, the sick and weak and otherwise-worried-about-their-health ones. Poor Courtney and Kevin. Would there were a special waiting room for them, with a real live string quartet and none of these mouth breathers.

Alas, there is no such room. So, I look to my left and ponder the little wooden chair. I wonder how heavy it is, and how spectacular it would look crashing through the sunlit glass just to the left of Courtney and Kevin, the opening salvo of my soliloquy on the evils of pharmaceutical marketing and US healthcare in general. And yeah, have some fucking respect, you assholes. These people are sick and miserable, and all you have to offer them is evil and cheerful banter and motherfucking clicks. Motherfuckers.

"Stanley," calls a nurse from the newly opened doorway. And Kevin and Courtney are spared. For now.