Survivor, Goofmart Style

Recently one of our regional pharmacy managers (RPMs) resigned from Goofmart Pharmacy, so there became an opening for the empty RPM position.

In a normal company, the position would be "opened up" for anyone wishing to apply. Candidates within the company (or outside the company) would interview for the position and a choice would be made based on the candidate's education, experience, and "right fit" for the position.

But not at Goofmart Pharmacy.

Our Pharmacy Director has instituted a "Survivor" type system. He chooses three candidates from his own list of "emerging leaders" and has each candidate shadow one of the current RPMs in the region for a few weeks. These candidates battle it out with each other to see who will survive and impress the director by working extra long hours and utilizing a plethora of varied brown-nosing techniques.

Unfortunately, unknown to two of the candidates, the director had a choice in mind well before the Survivor program. (The last time he did this, the surviving candidate just happened to also be a former co-worker from another company both he and the director worked at together.) And here's the real kicker... the other two candidates are led along from the very start, told that they are a shoe-in the position and that it is all just a formality. They never really had a chance for the position, and to me that's just criminal.

How do I know this? Oh, because the world of pharmacy is smaller than you think and someone can be a friend of a friend and before you know it you're talking directly with one of the losing candidates that can show you texts and emails backing up what I'm saying here.

Note for new recruits: So how do you survive Goofmart Pharmacy? You outwit, outplay, and outlast the director and other Authorities. You don't play their corporate Game of Thrones. You focus on the patients you're taking care of. If you want to be a corporate yes-man, there's plenty of fodder at Goofmart Pharmacy for you to get into. Just remember that it's not really a game if the choice was made from the beginning. If you can accept that, have fun playing the director's survivor game. But if you're like me and most of the pharmacists caught in this corporate Game of Thrones, you find ways to put your patients number one and forget all about the number nonsense.