WOW. As a rep who is currently pursuing a pharmD, I have to pipe in. Here's the foodchain kid (not ranked by income but by general perception in the medical community)
Physician (MD, DO)
Physician Assistant or NP
Pharmacist
Nurse/EMT
Chiropractor/Physical therapist
MA
Technicians
Billing
Receptionist that shoves your catered lunch down her pie-hole
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.Grocery Bagger
.
.Insurance Sales
.
.
.
.Used Car Dealer
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Pharma rep
Got it little Johnny? Because here's your scenario - 4 years at a mediocre college getting a monkey degree (communications/business admin, maybe you forked over another 40K for an MBA - very impressive and worthless in this industry). 3 weeks at big pharma memorizing medical terminology and suddenly you've become a self ordained expert in 'multiple disease states'. Your mom think's you're very important too so you go out and...how did you put it...."tell those "stupid" doctors that they are making a mistake in my opinion when they write the wrong drug." Sound familiar? Unfortunately for you, the company kool-aid never wore off and you still think you're bringing "value" to an office by catering troughs of food, sample dropping, sending fake success stories, playing pretend-doctor when trying to find new patient types for your me-too product, wasting endless hours at starbucks with your twenty irritating pod partners attempting to strategize how to "sell" against factor's you have ZERO control over, spending 90% of your working day sitting in a lobby reading magazines and playing solitaire on your PDA.
Every industry has its own set of shit to put up with but none can compete with the pharma industry. At least the problems (and monotony - and don't tell me that being a pharma rep isn't monotonous) that a pharmacist faces are REAL problems, whether it's from a patient or a physician. Problems that can actually be solved. Reps are at the mercy of managed care wins/losses, bonus restructuring, territory alignments, top prescriber leaves a territory and moves to another, shitty marketing, shittier products to promote, bad management direction and actually thinking a physician takes us seriously. All issues a pharmacist doesnt' have to deal with. Don't worry son, you're still the one being laughed at at the end of the day.
