Horse's Ass
Chapter Seventeen
Rico worked on flyers for a show he was playing Saturday night, when his phone rang. As he was about to answer, Nels darkened his doorway. Rico held his hand above the ringing phone waiting for Nels to speak. From his disheveled look, Rico assumed Nels wasn’t there to ask for another day off to test an invention, or to offer Rico in on the ground floor of his latest business opportunity. His instinct told him that Nels appearance and the ringing phone were comingled, and he’d be well served to hear Nels out before he answered.
“Don’t answer that. It’s Hippie Helen,” Nels spoke between huge gasps of air. Rico’s hand remained in limbo inches above the ringing phone. “She is on the warpath.” Nels stood, bent at the waist, with his hands resting on his knees and still not in full control of his breathing. Nels had run the distance of the floor at great personal peril, given the office supplies stacked at precarious heights in the hallways. True to Mike’s warning, twice a day Cuddy had the office supply company delivering to the fourth floor, as Cuddy sought to drive output with a push based model. Nels labored to catch his breath.
Rico knew all about Helen. Cuddy had scheduled an ongoing half hour daily call to review her latest blogs, and had assigned a couple of employees to refute her statements and assassinate her character. “The war path? You kidding me? Nels, what the hell happened?”
“Nothing. I mean I didn’t do it, but we sent her the wrong meds again. I did everything you told me to do,” Nels pleaded, as the phone continued to ring.
“Nels, I told you to personally check her order before you shipped again. C’mon man.” Rico had played a late show the prior night and had only been able to grab a couple hours of sleep.
Somehow, in the very recent past, Nels became the recipient of two black eyes, and Rico figured getting bitched out at work on top of whatever event had darkened his eyes wasn’t going to fix the problem at hand. “Sorry, the show started late last night and I’m burnt. I’m not blaming you,” Rico offered, in a conciliatory attempt to retract his harsh words.
“I checked the meds, but the pharmacist shipped what the system said to ship.”
“What system? We don’t have a computer system anymore.”
“That’s the problem. The pharmacy found an old server in a boiler room and plugged it in. There is an old version of the computer program on it,” Nels explained.
Rico shook his head in dismay when he considered how out of date the software and its resident data must be. The phone rang on. Helen wasn’t going anywhere until she spoke to Rico. Rico voiced his frustration, “You know that system is wrong. Why didn’t the pharmacist call her and ask what she is supposed to be shipped? Or, call the doctor?” Rico was anxious to pick up the phone, its incessant ringing doing his hangover no favors.
“Exactly what I told him. He said he didn’t have time to call patients and make his production quota. Since Doug outsourced the quality control, Cuddy’s doubled their production quotas.”
Rico dismissed Nels with a wave of his hand and nodded it would be okay as he picked up the receiver. “Hey, Helen.” Since her first shipment had arrived, frozen and unusable, Rico and Helen had been on the phone almost daily. Initially the calls dealt with resolving the paperwork and financial mess Helen inherited when G.O.D. shipped hundreds of patients the wrong medication. More recently though the calls dealt less with the business of providing Helen her drugs than the opportunity for Helen and Rico to connect and talk about arts and entertainment. They’d quickly developed a distant friendship over common ground. For as much time as they’d spent on the phone, Helen never disclosed, nor had Rico asked, the details on her illness. They’d joked about getting together for coffee, or a beer, a couple of times but had yet to make that happen.
“Hi Rico, it’s me, Helen. You shipped me the wrong medication, again.” Rico expected a torrent of curse words and anger, but Helen’s tone was more resigned. “I’ve the refill for a little girl who I just learned died of leukemia. This has happened before, and you can imagine how thrilled the family is to have me calling and asking them if they can hustle about and see if maybe they have my drugs. Oh, and if so, could they please go to the post office and mail them to me. I don’t have it in me to call them and fix the problem. I want you to ship me the correct meds and not bill my credit card for the wrong meds.”
“I just learned about this from Nels, the rep you were talking to. Can you tell me what you’re supposed to receive? I’ll fill the box myself and ship it to you.”
Helen mispronounced the drug’s names, but offered the spelling and the dosing she’d been prescribed. She also gave Rico the name of the prescribing doctor in case he needed it. Pleading, she added, “Rico, the doctor says it’s really important I follow the regimen. I need to take them today.”
“I’m not sure if we can ship them for same day delivery this late in the afternoon.”
“If I can find a way up there is it possible for me to pick them up? I’m not allowed to drive since my diagnosis, so I’ll need to call around to find a ride.”
“You’re only a half hour or so from here. How about if I drop them off around six, on my way downtown? I’ll pick up the wrong meds when I’m there.”
“That would be great. You have my address?”
“Yeah, let me make sure I can get a map to your house. Hold on one second.” Rico reduced the flyer he was working on for Saturday’s show and navigated to Google Maps. Shap had done Rico a favor and worked out a means to keep his computer working. It was one of the few computers in the building that was still functional. Typing in Helen’s address the screen quickly gave the route to reach her house. “Yeah I’m good. Oh, and take my mobile number down so you can reach me if something comes up. Ready?”
“Hold on, you need to go slow. I have a little trouble writing, and my short term memory isn’t so great.” Rico read his number to her. It took a few times, but he was pretty sure by the end of the call she had it. She read it back to confirm.
“Rico, I’m not mad at you, or at Nels, I just need my medicine.”
“It’s our screw up, I’ll make it right. I’ll see you around six.”
Rico was now burdened with getting the correct medications from the pharmacy that sat on the first floor. He had no authority over the pharmacy, and no direct access to the drugs, but knew almost everyone that worked in that part of the business. He headed to the elevator to ride down the three floors to the pharmacy. In the hallway, he ducked under, stepped over, and contorted himself to navigate the growing stacks of office supplies. Cuddy’s productivity plan was in full swing. After a short elevator ride, he walked to a door that required a special security card. Rico’s card wouldn’t open the door, so he waited until someone came out and slipped past. Once inside, he walked over to the counter at which the pharmacist in charge was working. The face was familiar, but Rico couldn’t place a name.
Rico extended his hand, “I’m Rico. I’m a manager up in Operations. We’ve got a recurring problem with a patient. Twice we’ve shipped the wrong meds, and she needs what she’s been prescribed by day’s end.” Rico pulled out the note card upon which he wrote the details of the meds she needed and the doctor’s number. The sheet also contained details on what she’d been shipped.
The pharmacist didn’t reach out to shake hands, but took the piece of paper from Rico’s hands. As he looked at the paper, he slowly typed the information into the computer and hit, “Enter”. The computer reeked of the mid-1980s. Its cathode monitor covered the better part of the desk, and on its DOS based screen the cursor blinked as it waited the next set of typed instructions.
The computer didn’t seem to have the information he sought, and the pharmacist walked over to a wall of old wooden file cabinets. He spent a few minutes walking back and forth until he finally settled on a cabinet, groaned loudly, bent down, and opened the bottom drawer. Flipping through the chaotic mess wit
hin, the pharmacist eventually pulled out a thin manila folder from which papers spilled. He groaned a second time as he stood. His appearance was that of a man who spent most of his day muttering under his breath.
“The meds we shipped are what the system says to ship.”
“I understand that, but it’s not the medication she needs. I just talked to her.”
“System says it is.”
“You, and I, both know the system is worthless. Be a good Nazi, and ship the meds she was prescribed.”
“You mean kill the Jews?”
“No you dumb ass, I mean be a human being.”
“Oh, you mean be a good German and a bad Nazi.”
“Exactly.”
“No can do. I have to ship what the system says.”
“Even when I stand here and tell you that I just talked to the patient and it is the wrong medication? What does the folder show?” Rico looked up to see most of the technicians in the pharmacy watching what was quickly becoming a heated argument. With Rico’s history with waterfowl, he would have thought the pharmacist likely to be more respectful. “You have the doctor’s number, call him and ask him what he wrote.”
A young pharmacy tech nearest the argument looked at Rico and rolled her eyes. She mouthed the word, “Asshole,” in reference to the pharmacist. Rico nodded in agreement.
“I ship what the system tells me to ship, doesn’t matter what the folder shows or doctor says. My job is to make sure what I ship matches what the system says to ship. That is my job. My job is not to figure out what the doctor wrote. We’ve outsourced that function to the patient.” The pharmacist crumpled and tossed the piece of paper into the recycle bin at the far end of the counter. The paper went in without hitting the sides, and the pharmacist raised his hands over his head, “Goal!”
It was then Rico remembered this buffoon. He was one of Cuddy’s henchmen when Cuddy was first promoted from janitor. Cuddy had cast him off and left him behind in his ascent, but at the time they worked together they were friends. This clown, Cuddy, and a couple of other losers, used to sit on the same side of the lunch table, nudging each other as they watched the women walk by. They scored the girls asses one to ten. In an effort to build allies, Mary had implemented a program that loaned large windbreakers for the girls to tie around their waists. After a while most of the girls gave up and ate in their cars.
Rico walked away. He had loosely considered coming across the counter and beating the pharmacist within an inch of his life, but didn’t have the time or energy for more court ordered anger management sessions. Also, his weapon of choice, the Big Bertha, was in the van. As he walked away he worried how he would explain this to Helen. Things didn’t look good.
A couple hours later, as Rico sat in his office and tried to figure out the best way to call Helen and give her the bad news, he looked up to see his doorway darkened the second time that day. It was the technician from the pharmacy with a paper bag in her hand. She looked nervous as she checked the hall behind her to make sure she hadn’t been followed. Before he could ask her what was going on, she threw the paper bag to him and ran off.
Inside the bag were the meds Helen needed, and a bill for $12,000. Half the problem was fixed as Rico now had the meds, but it was going to cost Helen. She’d have thirty days before the dunning cycle kicked in, and they began to harass her for the monies outstanding. Rico still hadn’t made it completely right, but at least she’d get her meds today. He had no idea what he’d do if she was still alive in ninety days when her refill came due. He took the bill from the bag and put it in the top drawer of his desk.
Rico didn’t want to risk losing the drugs now that they were in his possession, and thought the best option would be to hide them in his coat. As he walked across his small office, and placed the bag in his coat pocket, he noticed the hallways were now almost fully blocked with office supplies. Boxes were stacked without rhyme or reason and in many places they reached the ceiling. There must have been three hundred boxes. As he looked out his doorway, he watched a couple of the employees crawl underneath the supplies that blocked the narrowest parts in the hall. The employees patiently waited their turn. No one wanted the Tube of Trust redux.
When they first started stacking office supplies in the hall, Rico thought it was funny. Now it wasn’t possible to navigate the floor. Rico stood a long time looking at the hall and realized how to make things right. He quickly returned to his desk and dialed the phone, “Nels, can you come down to my office? I have a sure fire, one hundred percent, guaranteed, money making, business proposition for you.”