4am Pharma Duties

"When the levee breaks, mama you got to move."
     -- Led Zeppelin

The “white tea and ginger” hotel lobby scent did not extend up to the 8th floor.

There in room 849, a desk light shines. The heavenly bed and heavenly shower are not enjoyed. She thinks, a heavenly WiFi would come in handy right now.

The hour pressurizes the need for speed. It’s too late to enjoy grilled meat at the oddity Weber Grill-themed restaurant down the street. It’s far too late to have any sense at all right now. It’s 25 or 6 to 4, and she’s trying to do some more.

She picks through a website, while the creeping WiFi boils her blood.

Did a word change on this page of the website?, she struggles to remember. Oh yes, let’s flag that in the document.

On to the next page. She thinks, This page didn’t change. But given how they busted my balls the last time I missed something, I’m still going to include it in the doc to be sure.

And so the inane task continues, here at 4 am, under a small pool of desk lamp light. She proceeds to take screenshots of every page of the website. EVERY. PAGE. Every message. Every pop up. Every frame of every animation. Every step of every form. Twenty pages become forty. One hundred becomes two.

Loading each page took minutes she did not have. Eyes turning to sand, her throat tightens into a silent scream at the tedious circumstance. There is no escape to sleep, because she’s going before the pharmaceutical company’s Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review Board in a few hours with this doc in-hand.

Once the “Consumer” site is done, on to the “Health Care Professional” site she goes. Three hundred pages become four hundred.

A 485-page PDF later, she is confident that this drug’s marketing website can now continue to push pills into consumer’s lives.

But what did the Medical, Legal & Regulatory Review matter anyway? This particular drug caused cardiovascular problems. As such, they changed their marketing every day to game society into keeping it on the market as long as possible.

It’s too much to think about as exhaustion takes over. The mind grows numb and bleary at the implications.

From a full day of work at the office, followed by a plane that landed at 9pm local time, to 20 mins left to sleep before heading into the review board room… she knew.

Her soul smells it in the air — this is her last trip to Indy. This mama had to move… but where? Maturing back-pocket plans remain concealed.

In this nightmare before Christmas, the season’s the first flurries start to fall outside. Her bones creak from their hunched position at the desk, and she rises.

Please “like” if you did on social media (@DigitalDeliria), share, and post your comments.

Don’t want to miss a future story?  Be sure to sign up for our mailing list.

• Category: Latter-day Web, On The Job