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I was painfully shy as a child, therefore I became a daily target for the school bullies. I tried to defend myself, but my efforts only made things worse and as a result I became even more introverted. I was mentally and physically abused by my peers until the day I graduated from high school, but my mom always encouraged me to keep making good grades since I am intelligent. She told me the best revenge in life is success and that I would become successful while my classmates went on to mediocrity. I did graduate high school with honors and I was accepted into a school of pharmacy. I was excited to have a fresh start in life with people who did not know me, so I made a very concerted effort to know all of my college classmates. There was no outright abuse or name calling, but many of my new peers let it quickly be known that I was an unwelcome intrusion. I did end up with acquaintances who more or less just wanted to compare notes while everyone else seemed to find their niche. My only defense mechanism was the one that help me to survive high school - study hard and become successful. I also graduated pharmacy school with honors and after passing my boards, headed out into the world as a career woman. I did find a job and was excited to start earning the big bucks and to have all that hard work start to pay off. I was working at a pharmacy established inside of a chain grocery store and yet again I found myself shunned. I was polite and always said hi to everyone in the various grocery departments, yet there was hardly any recognition of my existence. I continued to work hard and developed wonderful relationships with my customers, but the pharmacy manager ultimately drove them away. He was slow and rude to the customers, yet he told funny stories to all the employees and was very well liked. He was even voted employee of the month by the other workers despite numerous customer complaints. He became such a problem that the customers would call the customer service desk to ask if I was working so they could come get their prescriptions. The store manager finally decided to call corporate when the complaints became too great to ignore any longer and I ended up getting transferred to another location. The corporate managers were going to fire the manager and close the pharmacy, but they wanted to keep me as an employee. I did not protest since I wanted to keep my job, but corporate ended up only demoting the manager and bought out a competitor and hired their pharmacist to be the new manager. I went to the new store and again I had an icy reception from the other workers. I was very unhappy and requested a transfer back to my original store when I heard rumors about the demoted pharmacist finally being fired. I kept the request on the QT, but the information somehow found it's way back to my new store. My new pharmacy manager interpreted the request as an insult and threw me under the bus. She had the corporate pharmacy managers make a special unannounced visit to talk to me about my conduct. It was one of the worst experiences of my adult life. During the 8 years that I worked for the company, I never took a sick day, I never had a customer complaint, and I only misfilled one prescription (the national average is one a month per pharmacist). Despite my outstanding performance, I was not viewed as a team player and was told to improve my attitude. To this day I still shy away from confrontation, so I went along with the intervention and told them I would improve myself. I was put on probation, but I manifested severe physical problems as a result of the microscope I was now living under. I made great efforts to say hi everyday, even to the people who would not reciprocate, lest they should run to management and further inflame the issue. I did find another job with a nation-wide pharmacy chain, and guess what- the cycle continues. The moral of the story is that it does not matter how hard you work or how few mistakes you make filling prescriptions, it all comes down to personality, networking, politics, and butt-kissing. I still feel like the little child who was physically and emotionally pushed around and somewhere out there I imagine my old classmates are still laughing at me. Life truly is a four letter word and is perhaps the most offensive.

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