Cafepharma calls itself the website for pharmaceutical and medical professions. Those associated with such professions choose to politely call it just plain evil. Cafepharma unfortunately is something that has become almost inseparable when you talk about the pharmaceutical or medical world. It's a word that nobody ever utters in public. It's as if it's some dark secret that was established by pharmaceutical monks, in a Da Vinci Code kind of way. However, Cafepharma's message boards prove otherwise. Their statistics show an astonishing 245,209 threads and 2, 588, 281 posts through October 3, 2011. For people who solemnly swear not to speak of this site in public there sure seems to be a high number of individuals who secretly post their thoughts and why not, it's all anonymous. Anything that is discussed is off limits and I mean anything. But the real question is who's reading it and could Cafepharma actually help the pharmaceutical industry?
For the most part Cafepharma is nothing short of so-called professional adults acting like children arguing over who called who what on the playground. Of course there are people who seem to be mad at the world and seem to thrive on creating nasty rumors or asking pointless questions. This is very apparent by the immature question of who the hottest rep is at their company. As sad as that question is, it's even sadder that so many people put their vote in and I'm assuming even some put their own name on that ridiculous list. But in the pharmaceutical message board section alone there are over two hundred companies listed, so you're bound to have some people sounding off and creating these pointless threads and some with such language attached to it that it would make Andrew Dice Clay blush. Then there are posts that take aim at one specific person in such a mean spirited way that it makes you cringe even if you don't that person. Now let me play devils advocate here, if you have one hundred posts about one individual is it something a company should look into? Maybe, but the problem is you have to scan through ten immature posts first before deciphering the one post that makes you say hmm, this may sound real. It's no secret that this is an industry that has laid off more employees then any other within the last five years, so unpleasant thoughts are most certainly going to come up. Most if not all will say this message board holds absolutely no merit even though someone's reading it religiously, so it must hold some truth, right? The hope is to think any educated individual can weed through the fictional and non-fictional rants, but with no name attached or any source to back up such facts the truth part becomes even trickier. The being anonymous part assures that these individuals feel safe in expressing their dissatisfaction about their own company. Is it fair to call these employees' cowards? Yes and no, but what if Cafepharma changed the way people post. Obviously requiring someone to provide their real name would change its entirety, but who's dumb enough to do that?
Should pharmaceutical companies be alarmed by this site? Of course! But there's that thin line between right and wrong and if you have employees posting threads that say for example a manager being unethical and that's followed by two hundred replies you would think that would raise an immediate red flag for some concern. Two hundred people just don't hate one individual just for the sake of it, do they? But here's a crazy idea, what if the people at Cafepharma actually monitored what was being said on their site? What if they actually created even something bigger for this industry? Get rid of the slander and profanity and require a log in of sorts that holds employees accountable on some level for what they write. The truth be told is that they have all the ability in the world to be something bigger, to be something better. They need to look outside the box and realize that they indeed are not the foe. They are just the soil that breeds frustration and hatred in an industry that right now is unstable. I can't give you all my secrets but to quote the movie Field of Dreams, Cafepharma if you build it, they will come.
