"Don't Worry, Be Happy"

As middle management, there are days when you feel like a fire hydrant in the middle of a dog run.

Every organization operates at three levels. First there's top management, which makes key policy decisions, such as New Coke or fruit-flavored potato chips in the '80s, or selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920.

At the bottom, you have labor, on the order of the Dublin Airport security guards who placed an immobilization device on an ambulance. (And yes, the ambulance was parked in an area reserved for emergency vehicles.)

Somewhere between upper management and labor is middle management. This is where they put the people who don't have the endurance to be labor, or the ferocity to be upper management. Middle management is a candle burning at both ends. Whether the problem comes from the top or the bottom, it's middle management that has a job description that includes fear, anxiety, nervousness, apprehension, and a general feeling of foreboding.

Except me. Everything was fine. I knew that because Henry told me so. Every day.

"Is there anything I should know about?"

"No."

"Are there any problems?"

"No."

"Any late deliveries, stock shortages, personality conflicts, clerical errors, improperly placed decimal points, scuff marks on the floor tile, or water spots on the glassware?"

"Oh no, everything is fine."

That would be on the day that the entire drug information staff called in sick, one of the pharmacists dispensed open-label supplies to 18 patients in a double-blind study, and one of the staff had forgotten to put the telephone on hold before offering a candid opinion of the ER nursing supervisor. Not that it mattered, on a bad day things would be the same.

It's not that Henry didn't know what was going on. He knew everything. If he had turned his remarkable talents to something useful, instead of hospital pharmacy, he could have been Editor in Chief of People magazine. If somebody on the midnight shift on Thanksgiving weekend dispensed an investigational drug and didn't enter the lot number in the ledger, Henry knew it before lunch the next day. If somebody used a 19-gauge needle when the compounding card called for a 17-gauge, Henry knew. The problem was, he just couldn't think of anything that was worthy of my attention. If an asteroid were headed towards the Earth and all life would be destroyed in the next 24 hours, that might have been worthy of me, but little things, like dispensing Zantac for Zyrtec didn't count.

Give me credit, I tried. Following the guidelines in Advanced Interrogation Techniques, I initiated the practice of joint coffee breaks, with me buying. (Unfortunately, Henry never ordered anything less than a frappuccino grande latte.)

"Is there anything I should know about?"

"Well, my car broke down – the Toyota. Of course, I had already put on over 200,000 miles with the trips to see my wife's family in Montreal."

"Are there any problems?"

"I really don't see how they can expect me to get by on my salary. You know, with the commuting, I could get a staff job in New Jersey and take home about $50 a week more than I'm making here. Just the other day I got a call …"

"Any late deliveries, stock shortages, personality conflicts, clerical errors, improperly placed decimal points, scuff marks on the floor tile, or water spots on the glassware?"

"Have you noticed that Marsha is spending a lot of time with that Kenny in the outpatient lab? I have no idea what she sees in him."

Eventually, I left. A lot of us did – all at the same time. (Until that time, the department had had a remarkably low turnover, and we all had our little pins with the diamond chips, and the wristwatches from Tiffany.) With vacancies at or near the top, Henry rose quickly, from supervisor to assistant director, and from assistant to associate. Recently, the director left and, according to reports, Henry is on the very short list for the department head position.

They should promote him. With him in charge, they'll never have anything to worry about.

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