Uncle Roger's Notebooks of Daily Life
My life is, to me, ripe with frequent challenges, occasional successes, spontaneous laughter, adequate tears, and enough *life* to last me a lifetime. To you, however, it surely seems most pedestrian. And therefore, I recycle the name I used previously and call this my Notebooks of Daily Life. Daily, because it's everyday in nature, ordinary. These conglomeration of events that are my life are of interest to me because I live it, perhaps mildly so to those who are touched by it, and could only be of perverse, morbid curiosity to anyone else. Yet, I offer them here nonetheless. Make of them what you will, and perhaps you can learn from my mistakes.
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Monday, August 31, 2009
I stopped in at Long's Drugs store number 84 in the Bayhill shopping center. I was there to pick up refills of my and Rachel's prescriptions, just as I had a gazillion times before. This time, however, was different. The store was different. No longer was it the familiar, familial Long's Drugs, but a cold, harsh, uncaring CVS Pharmacy.
As I often do, I chatted with the pharmacy technician who collected and rang up my prescriptions. Curious, I asked if they were still using the Long's pharmacy application (originally called PPS, then changed to PPX during the unix conversion -- I have no idea what the letters stood for). She said that no, it was gone, replaced by a far more user-friendly application. She said it had only taken her a week to learn the new system whereas the old system took a month to get used to.
Sadly, that application represented 12 or more years of my life. A dozen years' work on my -- and others' -- part, gone in a sudden poof! of corporate contracts. Things I was proud of -- the interface with the ScriptPro pharmacy robots, the label layouts, -- tossed away like a used cocktail napkin. It served its purpose and no longer matters to anyone -- anyone that matters in the corporate world, anyway.
Now, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn't matter to me. I was paid to do a job and what they do with it is not my problem. And yet, I walked out of the pharmacy a little sadder, a little less memorable. That system and the work I put into it represented a quarter of my life thus far and now it's gone. I have nothing to show for it. Not even the company is there to serve as a reminder. I'm not sure the CIA could have done a better job of erasing my past.
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