Dear colleagues, friends and readers of this site, the new year unfortunately began with sad news that has hit our already battered sector. On 11 January last, some colleagues on their way to a company meeting were involved in a fatal and terrible car accident on the Autostrada del Sole near Frosinone. From the news acquired on the internet through sector sites, we learned the fatal dynamic which tore 2 colleagues from the affections of their loved ones and which left two other members of the group present in that car between life and death.
This clearly strikes us for many obvious reasons, each of us knows what it means every day to face the danger of the roads and traffic to carry out our business, how strong the concern is to be present on time for various work commitments, how easy it is have a small or large distraction or be struck by fatality.
It is clearly the umpteenth White Death that strikes us and that affects the pharmaceutical sector, and which, as always, is treated by the media with small if not insignificant hints, as if the life of the drug sales representative is less important than that of many other people. It is even misunderstood that it was an accident at work, and it is all treated almost as a sad fatality and not as a possible and unfortunately too often underestimated problem of those who carry out a profession like ours.
Such an absurd death would have provoked deep indignation and a strong reaction in the workers if it had happened within a company, but it left us almost indifferent because it happened to scientific informants who were on their way to a company meeting in Naples for work.
It is certainly a sign of the times, of the low weight with which our category and our professional figure is considered, everything goes on as if nothing had happened. “The show must go on”. This is the sad reality, nothing matters except false values and false respectability, the rest is just hot air.
However, all this should push us to serious reflections and many questions.
– Why "cram" 4 people (colleagues) in a single car?
– Wouldn't it be better to use public transport to reach the meeting destinations?
– Wouldn't it be equally possible to use the current IT means now available instead of organizing meetings and trips one-on-one?
My last thoughts go to the families of these unfortunate colleagues and I realize more and more how much arrogance and how much contempt surrounds us.
Umberto Alderisi
13.01.2010
