For several days now, I haven’t written any long, thoughtful, opinion pieces on politics, corporations and similar stuff.
Instead I’ve been posting videos with misleading headlines on my Dr. Peter Rost blog; funny little clips that illustrate some of the turmoil within Pfizer after they cancelled a big drug and restructured their sales force.
And I have to admit I did this because I just couldn’t help myself. After all, I’m not a very serious guy: I really just want to have some fun. I used to have that fun when I was running a business, but since I’ve been fired from my Vice President job at Pfizer, I’m no longer allowed to do that, and I have to limit myself to having fun on my blog.
But of course I shouldn’t do this; I promised a few weeks ago that I would become a more serious person. And I managed to do just that for several weeks. But then, the primal caveman urge to simply have some fun took over. The fact that ratings literally exploded also had something to do with this. Those ratings, they’re like crack; pretty addictive. You see the masses coming, and you can’t help but post yet another video.
But my mother sometimes tells me I shouldn’t look at ratings. After all, she says, it is not the quantity of the visitors but the quality. And when I get lots of visitors to my blog using topics-or pictures-she doesn’t approve of, then, she doesn’t feel I should be happy about those visitors.
I guess the problem for me is that I’m really an extrovert person. So not working with a lot of people makes me reach out through this blog. It becomes a virtual reality having those visitors coming by.
My real-life joy, however, is when I get to attend a legal deposition with Pfizer. I just had another one yesterday, when my lawyer questioned one of Pfizer’s employees.
You might think it’s a bit sick to enjoy a deposition, but it just tells you how much I enjoy interaction with others, even if they are Pfizer’s defense lawyers. It doesn’t make matters worse that Pfizer’s in-house lawyer coming to these depositions has that special something, carries herself well and has exquisitely manicured hands. I won’t go into any more details because there is no reason to identify her. But she’s probably that one lawyer all the male lawyers at Epstein, Becker & Green love to work with.
I know; she’s probably there just to turn my brain into mush, but she’s actually pretty cool. I mean, some defense lawyers have this thing that they are going to pretend that they are really adversarial to you, when in fact, it’s just a job. Not her. She observes me when she thinks I don’t see her, and, she’s friendly. Of course, that means she’s really dangerous, but that doesn’t make her less attractive. And she has humor. Life could be worse. Pfizer could’ve sent a boring, old fat guy.
Peter Rost, M.D., is a former Vice President of Pfizer. He became well known in 2004 when he emerged as the first drug company executive to speak out in favor of reimportation of drugs. He is the author of “The Whistleblower, Confessions of a Healthcare Hitman.” See: http://the-whistleblower-by-peter-rost.blogspot.com/