The Real World. Young man, just wait until you are in The Real World.
From elementary school right through college graduation,
wise elders loved to use the term The
Real World . It was as if everything one experiences while growing up is a
field of flowers, overflowing with butterflies and eternal sunshine. And
cookies, let’s not forget cookies. And cake. And pizza and beer!
Growing up can be stressful, no matter what race, religion,
or financial status one has. To discount everything is a slap in the face to
every youth there is. Heck, I know folks with several decades of The Real World experience that have yet
to deal with “grown up” issues. There is always someone, somewhere, that has
had it worse: that shouldn’t discount what any person has gone through, no
matter their age.
As I entered The Real
World in my blue 1970 Chevy step-side pickup, I dove in with the pedal to
the metal. A college buddy of mine joined me as we used our last two weeks of
The Fake World for the cross-country trip. Later, it was odd to drop him off at
the Jetport, once our time was up. Reality struck me that night like a blow to
the head, which would actually occur years later, as I lay awake pondering what
life would be like in The Real World.
Free of exams and the stress of college, life seemed like it
should only become more rewarding and glorious. God, I’m an idiot.
While I had held jobs since I was knee high to a
grasshopper, I was starting a career then. No more multiple part time jobs
washing UPS trucks, feeding rats, or working on oil rigs. My first job was as a
pharmacist technician, as I was still waiting to take the two-day exam to
become certified as a pharmacist. The pay was slightly above minimum wage, and
the work was intense.
The State of Maine Board of Pharmacy had antiquated laws on
becoming registered in the state, and the examiner had misled me on the
procedure. Welcome to state government. Even before I had take the exam, I had
successfully had the law changed so Maine would recognize the results of the
national exam; still leaving the state law exam to pass, much like every other
state. Put a damper on the little ditty Maine like to use; As Maine goes, so
goes the nation. To me, the Maine Board of Pharmacy has always been two steps
behind the nation, and has allowed the personal feelings of board members to
dictate laws to this day.
The exam was a two-day event with the first day being eight
hours and the second day six hours. In order to take the exam and not wait
another six months, I went back to Wyoming, as Maine wouldn’t let me take the
test until the following spring. No computers back then, so everything was long
hand. It was held in a cramped classroom without air conditioning, and it was
over 90 degrees, but it was a dry heat.
Weeks later, having dinner with my folks, the corded black
phone gave out its shrill call. The lady at the Wyoming Board of Pharmacy was
very kind, and she knew I was anxiously awaiting the results. Mail typically
took 3-4 days to arrive, with email being another decade away. She told me I
had passed and would be sending off my Wyoming pharmacist license the following
day. Now I just had to complete my internship and pass the Maine pharmacy law
exam, which was a breeze.
The day I passed, corporate had me working alone in a busy
store. It really wasn’t that much of a change, as Pete, the pharmacist/front
store manager, I had been working under, typically left me alone while he
attended to planograms and other front store duties.
Pete was a chain smoker, though he was careful not to have
the ashes land on the counting tray. We would carpool together, and through
work and late evening pizza and beer outings, we became friends. He lived life
at full throttle, and had a wicked dry sense of humor. One day he decided to
stop smoking, and I never saw him pick up another cigarette. Then he took up
jogging, and the positive change in him was evident. Not long after, he was
with his kids, playing in a pool. As he stepped out, he fell to the concrete
patio and was dead before he hit. The
Real World.
With Pete’s death, corporate sent me up the coast to the
next city. My work partner there was a tall skinny man, married to a rather plump
short woman, who had a very active sex life; to which I was invited on multiple
occasions to join his wife, friends and him for a festive evening. I declined.
Multiple times.
Things were looking up at the new store, heck we even got
rid of the cheap electric typewriter and splurged for an IBM Selectric. It was
amazing to watch the little ball with all the letters on it spin around and
type out your words. The down side with the new store is that we also rented
out steam-vacs, and who else should handle the transaction other than the
pharmacist? Then there was the New York Times. Again, the duty of putting
together and distributing the NY Times was on the pharmacist, only made sense.
It was an eye opener on the retail environment when dealing with the Times.
Should the paper be late, or both parts had not arrived, people acted as if it
were their moral obligation to sling abuse at me for not having their precious
paper ready: few words were spared. We were also one of the first pharmacies to
have an electronic teller in the store. What a joy. On weekends, not only did
the pharmacist do the deposits and paperwork for the whole store, but also
maintained the electronic teller, later to be named the ATM.
Still remember one particular Sunday morning when the Times
hadn’t arrived, the church crowd was in, and the electronic teller malfunction.
A burly gentleman at the end of the line screamed at me that “the cash machine
ain’t work’n”, and he was in a hurry so I should drop everything and help him.
With half a dozen patients awaiting their prescriptions, not to mention the
phone calls for the Times, I looked up and screamed back, “the sign on the
outside says Wellby Pharmacy, not Wellby Bank, so as soon as I take care of the
people ahead of you, I’ll take a look at it”. He threw some cursive words at
me, rather interesting take on the English language really, and told me he’d have
me fired Monday morning The pharmacy patients thanked me and volunteered to
write letters of support. I never knew just what I was doing with the damned
electronic teller, but I always managed to get it running again.
The new store was in a town with a corrosive drug problem.
Things were out of hand to the point where the hardware store would call me to
let me know Joe Sniffer was out again and to hide the glue. If a technician
weren’t available, I’d run out and grab all the glue and hide them behind the
pharmacy counter. Being a new pharmacist I tried to not to judge a book by its
cover: after all, homeless people get the cold, too. So when a scraggly looking
man with long greasy hair asked to buy a bottle of Robitussin AC (the one with
codeine), I asked for a license, recorded the sale, and gave advice on how to
use the product. He drank the four ounces all in one swig, slammed the bottle
on the counter, burped, and left the store.
On the following day, Mr. Greasy Hair was back. He came up
to me and asked for another bottle of Robitussin AC. After I informed him that
not only was it illegal for me to sell him another bottle so quickly, I
wouldn’t be selling him any from that point forward. More cursing, fist
slamming and bulging veins. Later that night he came back and asked again.
Again I told him no, at which point he slowly leaned over the counter, dropped
his voice, and said “for a thousand dollars I can have you taken care of”, and
left the store. Now I wasn’t so naïve to think that “taken care of” meant a
massage and a nice meal, but what was I too do?
That night, when I got out of work, I was a bit nervous walking
to my butch Chevy Luv that was parked under the bright parking lot light. The
ride home was uneventful at first, but toward the end of the 45-mile drive
something in the steering didn’t feel quite right. The next day I was taking my
sister, Monica, out to see some Morgan horses, when again, the steering felt
odd. After pulling the little truck over on the dirt road, I went to put on the
parking brake, but it wouldn’t engage. Grabbing the front driver side tire, I
pulled back and forth and was surprised that I could move the wheel. As I
checked the Luv out, I found all 24 lug nuts were on the last threads, and the
emergency cable had been rigged so it wouldn’t move. Where did he get a
thousand dollars?
Back in the town where the store was located, where just a
week earlier my Mom had gone home shopping with me, I went to the police to
report what had happened. The officer wouldn’t even file a report. He said
something about that is the type of town it is, and to let him know if it
happened again. Applications to other stores went out that evening. The Real World.
