Moving...

Not me, but the place where I work. Sort of. Being employed by the largest pharmaceutical company ever to exist, we understandably have a few research labs. Just in St. Louis, we have labs spread throughout the area. The past couple of weeks, and for a few weeks yet to come, we are consolidating into the main research site in Chesterfield courtesy of our recently-completed new building.Moving is fine, fine, just fine. We have staff for the vast majority of stuff. But, sadly, some of the more complicated lab equipment requires a little more care, if that equipment is ever to function again. Complex, convoluted, fragile, and heavy lab equipment. That's where me and my coworkers come in. I can spend a full day just disconnecting the myriad cables, doodads, and whatnot from any one of these vast behemoths of scientific progress. They are not, in general, meant to be moved. And yet, we move them.

Sure, I'm saving the Pharmaceutical Juggernaut piles of cash per robot move. Will that matter come raise time? No. Will it matter when it comes time for the next round of inevitable layoffs? No. And they wonder why employee "engagement" is so low. Huh, go figure. You watch your friends and colleagues - loyal, intelligent, hardworking, dedicated employees - get the boot and know your time is coming. It does not exactly get one fired up with pro-company enthusiasm.

And yet, I toil on. Not for the company, not for myself, but for the robots, the scientists who use them, and ultimately - I hope - for that patient whose life is saved or made better through our medicines. Maybe my niece and her friends can live in a world a little less ravaged by cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, MS, high blood pressure, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, malaria...the list is endless. So kindly Stuff It, vast Pharmaceutical Juggernaut, and get out of my way. I've got work to do.