JS
Jon Shaulis
Feb 15, 2026
A shrine to delay beneath fluorescent haze,
where minutes decay into bureaucratic days,
where numbers blink red on a lifeless screen
and hope dissolves in a pharmacy machine.
You shuffle behind counters stacked with blame,
each hollow apology always the same:
“We’re short on staff,” “The system’s down,”
while patience is stripped to a threadbare gown.
A line snakes long through the antiseptic air,
seniors leaning on walkers, children tugging in despair,
prescriptions trapped in a corporate maze
that measures success in quarterly praise.
Phones ring endless, unanswered cries,
while managers rehearse their scripted lies.
Insurance rejected, refills misplaced,
hours of life deliberately erased.
This is not medicine; it’s managed neglect,
a lesson in how to profoundly disrespect
the sick, the weary, the working poor,
who stand exhausted by your sliding door.
How hard is it to count what heals,
to show a shred of care that feels
like something more than retail spin,
like human hands beneath the din?
Instead we watch your weary crew
drown in tasks they cannot do,
their eyes ringed dark with sleepless dread,
their empathy rationed, barely fed.
You grind them down for metrics met,
for wait-time charts and profit set,
for bonuses earned in offices high
while burnout blooms and spirits die.
Corporate towers of polished glass
will never feel the backlash
of mothers told to “come back soon”
as fevers climb beneath the moon.
Never will they hear the sigh
of someone choosing which to buy—
groceries or the pills prescribed—
because your co-pays multiplied.
You’ve turned care into a queue,
compassion into revenue.
A public trust reduced to stock,
a human need to time-clock.
Your shelves are full, your hearts are bare,
a clinic stripped of genuine care.
The public served? No, misled instead,
by posters bright and slogans fed.
What once was sacred, sworn to mend,
has become a shift that cannot end.
Scripts are printed, names misread,
errors brushed aside, “We’ll fix it,” said.
But trust erodes with every wait,
with every shrug that seals our fate,
with every patient left to roam
while “processing” becomes a tomb.
You are not victims of bad luck.
This rot is chosen, structural muck.
A design that favors cost-cut schemes
over staff who fracture at the seams.
Your pharmacists, once proud and trained,
now overworked, under-sustained,
forced to smile through mounting strain
while systems glitch again, again.
Shame on executives counting gain
from every weary, overlong chain.
Shame on policies dressed as care
that leave both worker and patient bare.
Healthcare is not a clearance sale.
It should not crumble, crack, and fail
because a boardroom deemed it wise
to trim the hands that save our lives.
You are a service meant to heal,
not a warehouse built to conceal
how little regard you truly show
for those who need your help to grow.
The public deserves a place that sees
beyond efficiency and fees,
that honors time and fragile breath
instead of inching toward neglect.
Fix the lines. Staff the floor.
Stop treating illness as a chore.
Listen to those you overdrive
just to keep your brand alive.
Until you change, this will stand:
a testament in plain demand
that medicine without respect
is harm no slogan can deflect.
You are slow not by mistake
but by the cuts you chose to make.
Inept not from lack of skill
but from a profit-driven will.
And every day this circus runs
another thread of trust unspuns.
The public waits; your numbers rise.
We see the truth behind the lies.
Do better. Staff better. Care more.
Or step aside and close the door.
Because a pharmacy that cannot care
is just a counter going nowhere.