After not working for a year and a half, due to various illnesses and the like, I have found myself once more employed. I’m working in a pharmacy which was once owned by my uncle. It feels weird, but good, to be working again, and in an industry I know fairly well from seven and a half years in a pharmacy my parents owned. The industry has changed in the years I’ve worked in pharmacy, and while government legislatiure in recent months has caused no end of grief for this part of the retail sector, I still derive great pleasure and joy from being in a pharmacy. The thing I derive the greatest pleasure in while working is being able to help people pick the right product for their symptoms, and being able to help people in general. It is this aspect of the job that I enjoy so much, and throw myself wholly into helping a customer get the best product they need.

Though that is not to say that working in pharmacy is all sunshine and roses: there are enormous challenges associated with working in a pharmacy, and the rapidly-changing nature of government legislature and other legal issues surrounding the industry make certain aspects of work tricky. This is what I think my post will be about: a semi-rant dredged up from my stepdad’s ranting and raving (he was a pharmacist for his entire working life), and observations I have made about the industry in general. I’m not naming names and shaming people, because in theory, this could be quite the incendiary post, but I’ll try not to be too scathing about the whole thing.

In the seven and a half years I’ve worked in pharmacy, I have gone from working with a fantastic boss who is just a delight to work for, to working for one arsehole boss who my family eventually sold the business to. While arsehole isn’t exactly the best descriptor, the second boss I worked for had, to quote the awesome Hermione Granger of Harry Potter: “the emotional range of a teaspoon”.  It was partially due to acquired brain injuries sustained after a horrific car accident, but whether he was always so emotionally-stunted is up for debate. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t continue to enjoy working in the pharmacy with my second boss, but my loyalty was not to him by then: it was to my fantastic stepfather who was my first and best boss. He instilled in me the extremely strong work-ethic that I carry into my job in this particular place of employment– I start early and I work extremely hard when I get there– provided I’ve had a coffee and a morning of Bob Dylan on my iPhone heading into work. These things are vital to my morning routine: without Bob and coffee, I’m totally and utterly hopeless when it comes to functioning in the workplace.

But on the whole, I enjoy my job. It’s one of those jobs where I do the work, I interact with customers, and am able to give excellent advice on certain aspects of the many illnesses that come through the shop. The real downside, however, is the shifting nature of pharmacy, and the encroachment of supermarkets winnowing in on the profit margins retail pharmacy was once so assured of. For instance, one can buy ibuprofen at a supermarket, but nobody there will tell the average consumer that ibuprofen is dangerous for people with impaired renal function– and that is one of the reasons I get angry when I hear people say that the more things pharmacy should let go of the better. I’m sorry, but who the fuck are you to decree that supermarkets are the place where drugs that can do more harm than good can be sold with little knowledge of the dangers that can be caused with incorrect usage. There can be far more harm in selling ibuprofen in a supermarket than in selling paracetamol in a supermarket.

I am reminded of a story of a family friend who died because of the arrogance of a doctor and the idiocy of the pharmacist who should not have dispensed the drug he dispensed. She died needlessly, and had this doctor been less arrogant and less definite in what he had prescribed, this girl would still be alive– living, breathing, loving, and her family and this family who I also consider family, would not have gone through the agony of a funeral for one who died too young.

But that’s all I’ve got to say– I’m getting tired and the Rekorderlig Pear Cider I’ve drunk is slowly getting to me. Plus, The Sims 2 is making a siren call…

I’ve been playing a lot of  games lately, (well, okay, just two from Bioware to be specific), and it has occurred to me that the reason I keep going back to them is because of the story. I know I sometimes consider myself a writer, and indeed, it is one of my ultimate dreams to become a published author, but the power of storytelling is what makes these games so… real and special to me. It’s not the first time a game has gripped me so– one other game I keep going back to time and time again is Final Fantasy IX– the characters within that story make it special and inspired– and even the story itself, though some would argue it was weak, is what gripped me tightly.

My grandfather is one of those who fostered an early love of stories in me. As a little girl, there was nothing better than climbing up onto my dad’s recliner and sitting on my grandfather’s lap with his roly-poly belly full of porridge as he would tell me a story. Some of those stories were of a people I once tried to recapture as a young adult– the Bindaboos, fictitious creatures we were never sure where they originated. I remember as a child that if we drove anywhere at night coming along a particularly country-like road, my mother would tell me we were in Bindaboo country.  My grandfather always has a yarn to tell, though by now, I’ve heard most of them, and have my favourites.

There is a certain power in telling stories– the stories that always mattered are the ones that stay with you. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers talks about this in a rather touching speech given by Samwise Gamgee as they trudge towards the Black Gates. He muses aloud about whether they’ll ever be put into stories or tales, and that the stories that mattered were the ones where people did their best against insurmountable odds, and emerged triumphant. He then goes on to say that Frodo was brave, and Frodo points out that the story is missing one of it’s most important characters. Sam himself. It’s that sort of thing that makes me think about the transformative power of stories, and how they can bring a new perspective to a tale.

Final Fantasy IX is another one with a story about followers. There is a moment in the game where the protagonist is asked why he went with the love interest– and he tells a story about a guy who went with his friend to the end, only because he wanted to. It’s that sort of thing that makes the game worth playing again and again– for that wonderful moment where the heroine asks her hero why he went with her, and his response is: “Because I wanted to.” It’s that sort of thing that always makes me tear up when I think about the incredible amount of sacrifice that goes on in video game story telling. People who don’t play RPG’s (role-playing games, not Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers) miss out on the wonderful world of stories within stories that’re present in games.

I was going to write a post about the live animal export industry when I first got up.

That soon changed when, after talking to a bloke at my local pub, he dropped a bombshell. One of the harmless drunks in O’Connor is dead. He died six weeks ago, alone and in his sleep. It was a sad story to hear, because this man was all alone– his two children wanted absolutely nothing to do with him, and he was largely forgotten by the world. But in the time I knew him, Val was always a nice and friendly man, and my creep meter never went off around him. He was the type of man to always have a stubby of Victoria Bitter in his hand, and a cigarette– thinly rolled without much tobacco in it– and wear a flannelette shirt that had seen far better days. His smile was warm and welcoming, though somewhat toothless, for his front teeth had rotted down into little stumps of decay. His grey hair and leathery face gave one the impression that he was older than fifty seven– which is far too young to go– and an accent that was distinctly Australian when he spoke.

I first met him in 2006, in a random sort of way, when he was vocally declaring his support to the bus drivers during an industrial dispute between the government and the union. At first, I thought  he was one of them, but it turned out he wasn’t.  Since that first meeting in 2006, I would bump into him at the O’Connor shops, here and there.  He would always invite me to have a cup of tea with him, and I used to decline politely, but one day, I did have a cup of tea with him, and I learned about his sad life’s story.

The son of migrants to Australia, Val’s family was from somewhere in Europe– the exact location escapes me– and his full name was Valdemar. No wonder he went by Val! He had been married at some point, and had children, but he lost both his wife and his children in what seems to have been a very acrimonious divorce. The children wanted nothing to do with their father, and I am not certain as to why.

There were times when I would go weeks without seeing him, and then times where I’d bump into him on a regular basis. One of those times where I went weeks without seeing him, he was in hospital and they’d given him the last rites before he woke up. They sincerely thought he wouldn’t make it– a pacemaker was installed, and my first thought when the bloke at the pub told me he was dead was that his pacemaker had failed. Val told me that his pacemaker was faulty and that he was waiting to get it fixed up. It never happened.

I  will miss him, even if I didn’t know him well. Rest in peace, Val. Rest in peace. I hope the afterlife is kinder than life was for you.