Jamie Come Back

I received a shocking email on July 11th, one whose unexpectedness could only be surpassed by a message from Penelope Cruz accepting my offer to be her first non-celebrity boyfriend.

In my Yahoo account, which allows me to unsuccessfully troll Yahoo Personals, I got a message from Yahoo Jobs. That was no big deal, as they send me one per week. When I read the subject line touting career opportunities at Eli Lilly & Company, however, I nearly choked on my Prozac. Here it is:

Date: 11 Jul 2006 11:23:06 -0700
From: "Yahoo! HotJobs" Add Mobile Alert
To: jareidy2002@yahoo.com
Subject: Career Opportunities With Eli Lilly and Company

Please do not reply to this message. If you have questions or wish to unsubscribe from this commercial email, see the instructions at the bottom of this message.


HotFacts
The Pharmaceutical Industry Keeps Growing
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the pharmaceutical and medicine manufacturing industry is expected to increase by about 26% from 2004-2014, while all other industries combined are only projected to grow by 14%. Check out this diverse and growing industry for your next career move. Companies Can't Find Sales Reps
In a survey by Manpower, Inc, employers identified sales representatives as the position for which it is the most difficult to find qualified candidates. Talented sales reps should take advantage of this hiring environment and pursue the many opportunities available.




Yahoo! HotJobs Featured Employer: Eli Lilly

Lilly is about breakthrough medicines and treatments to confront many of the world's most challenging diseases. While employing more than 41,000 employees worldwide and marketing our medicines in 158 countries, Lilly continues to earn consistent recognition for creating an exceptional work environment. The following are just some of the awards Lilly has received:


FORTUNE® magazine "100 Best Companies to Work For"
Money magazine "America's Best Company Benefits"
Working Mother magazine "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers"

Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives (Nationwide)
Our goal is to become the premier sales force in the pharmaceutical industry. We are looking for diverse and dynamic professionals who want to be a part of a winning team and make a difference in people's lives. Ideal candidates will have a bachelor's degree.

Today and in the future, Lilly will provide answers that matter.

Discover the advantages of partnering with a leading employer of choice by visiting Yahoo! HotJobs, click on Sales Opportunities to view and apply for current openings.



Eli Lilly and Company is an equal opportunity employer.








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Until late March 2005, I was a part of that winning team and made a difference in people’s lives. After three years as a sales rep in Lilly’s oncology division, I was serving as a sales trainer, responsible for improving the sales techniques and results of 80 reps. But then I published “HARD SELL: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman,” my lighthearted and self-deprecating memoir of my five years at Pfizer. Suddenly, I was no longer a no-brainer candidate for promotion, but a knee jerk casualty of termination.

Eli Lilly spokesman Phil Belt wasn’t very complimentary in his statement after my firing. "In our opinion the book does advocate acts that we find inappropriate and in violation of company policy. And we consider this unacceptable particularly in a person charged by us with training our sales reps." As I said on CNN’s In the Money with Jack Cafferty, “I hope Lilly’s next drug is a sense of humor pill, because they need one.”

Yet, here those mirthless mercenaries are, singing (with apologies to 70s rockers Player):

Jamie Come Back!
Any kind of fool could see,
there was something
in everything about you.
Jamie come back!
You can blame it all on Lilly,
we were wrong,
and we just can’t sell without you.


Admittedly, I had a uniquely successful sales career; very few drug reps have finished sales years ranked #1 at two different companies. But that’s not why the members of Lilly’s HR department tucked their tails between their legs and invited me to return. Pharmaceutical companies suffer from a predictable, yet difficult to manage side effect after I depart: stock price sedation.

In May of 2000, I left Pfizer amicably. The day I cashed out my stock options, the share price was $42. Pfizer stockowners would kill to see $32 again, let alone the heady days of 40, as PFE hovers in the mid-twenties. Sadly, my departure had less of an impact at Lilly. When “We Lie Lilly,” as many of its sales reps sarcastically refer to their employer, fired me on March 28th, 2005, the stock traded at $52. 16 months later, LLY is at $56. Coincidence? I would have thought so. But then I got that email asking me to consider a return to pharmaceutical sales with Eli Lilly & Company…

Now, if only Penelope would email.

JC - Our Savior

The world narrowly missed the long anticipated yet unscheduled arrival of the second coming of Christ late last month. The Pope probably doesn’t realize it, but He would have appeared in the unlikely form of an 18-year old with floppy blond surfer hair.

Is it just a coincidence that two of the greatest things ever to happen to Irish fans – Jimmy Clausen and Reggie Bush’s Housegate – both occurred within 48 hours of each other? Maybe.

But what if the timing had been just a bit earlier – and one week out of the 104,312 that have passed since Christ’s birth certainly qualifies as “a bit” – and both bombs had dropped on Pete Carroll’s house over Easter? That, my fellow believers, would have been an undeniable miracle, the first of many en route to the canonization of Saint James (Clausen).

But JC could still be The Savior. Need proof? As with all things of significance, let us simply look to film and television for the answers.

Check out the initials. J.C. That’s right; since birth, Jimmy has been a Christ figure, preparing for his inevitable Messianic rise. But he is far from the only hero to be named with Our Lady’s Son in mind.

In THE TERMINATOR, Ahnold’s indestructible bad guy is sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor. Why? So she will never give birth to the son who will lead the humans to victory over the Trojans, er, machines. That son’s name? John Connor. JC. All he did was save the freaking world. Irish fans will expect no less from our new dashing leading man. And Irish coeds will likely be more than willing to audition on a beer stained casting couch for the role of his leading lady.

Ah, so our hero will need a strong moral compass to steer him past the Kimberly Dunbars toward the salad bars. Who better than Jiminy Cricket? JC. Our gunslinger would do well to emulate the song and dance skills of Pinocchio’s consigliere, especially when trying to lead unsigned recruits past aptly named godless dregs like Death Valley, The Big House, and The Swamp toward the white lights of Notre Dame Stadium.

Yes, recruiting fellow superstars will be vital. Unfortunately, we hear so often about kids from the South wanting to stay close to home, afraid to branch out into such a drastically new environment. So let us turn for inspiration to one southern man who wasn’t afraid to pull up stakes and head out to a world wildly different from his own: Jed Clampett. JC. Let’s hope that Jimmy will soon be basking in an oil rush of his own, just like another Jimmy – Dean – experienced in GIANT, when he stood laughing deliriously in a gusher. May that be national championship confetti raining down – four times? – upon our lucky #7.

Perhaps not everyone involved in the Irish program feels so fortunate thanks to Clausen’s pending arrival. Has anybody stopped to think what Zach Frazer is thinking today? I’m not worried about Demetrius Jones, because his tremendous athletic ability will allow him to easily move to receiver and end up catching touchdown passes on Sundays. Frazer, however, doesn’t have that luxury. Barring an injury – Blasphemy! – to JC, I foresee only one scenario in which the athlete-formerly-known-as-our-stud-QB-recruit completes his college career under the Golden Dome: The Savior goes pro after two years, meaning Zach will still have two seasons of eligibility left, thanks to a possible redshirt in 2006. I truly appreciated how hard Frazer worked last year in recruiting his future teammates. He’s a natural leader and it would have been rewarding to see him win with the guys he helped lure to balmy South Bend. Even worse, now we’ll never know which of his receivers would have been called “Screech.”

Can you hear it? That’s the shrieking of the faithful finally rewarded for their years of penance and self-flagellation. To paraphrase Reggie Hammond: There’s a new Savior in town, and his name’s Jimmy Clausen. Somebody get the Vatican on the horn.

Mission Accomplished

It was supposed to be easy. A walk in the park. Get in and get out. No muss and no fuss. But it quickly turned into a quagmire from which a painless extraction would prove elusive.

I am not referring to President Bush’s sashay into Iraq. Rather, I’m describing the horror of a recent trip to America’s favorite retail store.

I used to joke that I hated to go to Target because I could never get out of there for less than $50. Oh, how I long for those good ol’ days.

If you’ve yet to visit one of the newly remodeled Targets, remember to bring your Holy Water; it's Satan’s Store. I discovered this last weekend during a smash-n-grab, high speed-low drag mission whose sole goal was the acquisition of toilet paper and a “wet” Swiffer (which I have been calling Swifter for two years). Hit and run. Wham bam. I wouldn’t even need one of those hand baskets.

90 minutes and $172 dollars later, I staggered from the objective, beaten and disoriented. As I pushed my overflowing cart across the parking lot, I tried to make sense of the carnage that had taken place. I looked down at the “shopping list” in my hand: TP and Swifter. How had things gone so awry?

For starters, everything your standard Tar-jez offered before is still there, it’s just been moved to a different section of the store, according to the red-shirted temptress who “helped” me. This relocation necessitates at least one recon lap to familiarize oneself with the, uh, target. Said re-lo also provides a glimpse of the evil genius lurking behind the Target phenomenon.

Every time I go to Vegas, I look at the new construction and I laugh to myself. How can they afford to keep building casinos? Then I drunkenly call the bank at 2am and ask for an increase to my daily ATM withdrawal limit. Of course, I never remember having done that till I’m en route to the airport – passing all the construction – and rummaging through my pockets for receipts to help assess the weekend’s financial damage. Target is like that; you think you’re running in for just one thing and then two days later you wonder how you got seven of those perfect-for-a-garbage-bag Target bags under the sink.

Unlike Iraq, Operation Red Dot went poorly from the get go. Using old intel, I invaded the wrong side of the store. Where the toilet paper and cleaning supplies used to be stationed – left of the left entrance – DVDs, electronics, and books (alas, not my own, adding to the agony) now reside. As a veteran soldier, I should have simply gotten my bearings and plotted a new course to my objective. Instead, I immediately veered to the CD section where I grabbed the new OAR album, simply because a female friend recently told me she digs their live concert CD. Despite the fact that this new record does not have any of the songs she likes on it, I tossed it into the cart. When did I get a cart?

Walking blindly like the “Time to make the donuts, the donuts, the donuts” guy, I found myself in the physical fitness aisle. Target offers, conservatively speaking, 47 different celebrity-sponsored abdominal workout systems. I’ve never been a big believer in these thingamajigs; if Herschel Walker and Usher don’t need any expensive contraptions to get ripped abs, neither do I. On Saturday, though, I inexplicably found myself pricing those inflatable exercise balls that every woman I’ve ever dated owns. The fact that I don’t know any guy that has one of these cumbersome items doesn’t mean anything in and of itself, I guess. But it does mean that some of my friends will be making gay jokes in the near future. The bright yellow color certainly won’t help my defense.

The next aisle contained basketballs and footballs. Fresh off the “chick ball” purchase, the timing couldn’t have been more conducive to an impulse buy. Or two. Men, men, men, men.

I don’t know how many Cherokee T-shirts I own. But I probably needed a couple more.

Did you know that the remodeled Targets now have a “food” section? This is a seminal moment in the history of bachelorhood: one stop shopping for life. And I don’t mean “forever”. I mean, for Life, as in, everything a guy needs to live. Instantly, like a crow in a jewelry store, I became delirious and started grabbing chicken broth and Rice-A-Roni and whatever else caught my eye.

I looked at the Express Checkout girl with sincere confusion when she pointed to my cart and told me I needed to move to a normal line. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to finish the whole “Us Weekly” article, but it seems Mr. Holmes, as in, Katie’s dad, is worried about his daughter. Thankfully, now I can read the rest of it this week at home.

Standing outside my car, I looked down and saw a full trunk. I had no recollection of packing it. A wet Swiffer and a 12-pack of 2-ply stood out amongst the white bags with red print. I nodded with relief.

Mission accomplished.

But was it? A successful mission would have been the purchase of Charmin, a Swiffer and…nothing else. Yes, I’d acquired those two items, but I also wracked up considerable collateral damage in the process. Taken in that light, perhaps “mission accomplished” is appropriate.

Can we even use that term seriously anymore, or did G-Dub taint it forever with his little flyboy stunt in May of 03? “Mission accomplished” was once a perfect phrase. No one ever said, “You totally lost me,” in response. I get it. You had a mission. And then you accomplished it. Roger that. But, now…it’s a punch line. Or worse. In addition to all his other bungles and gross miscalculations, could the President actually have managed to eradicate a phrase from our vernacular? Nobody names her son Adolf anymore, you know.

And nobody gets out of Target for less than $150 anymore, either.

Shattered Faith

I’ve had enough. I cannot stomach another second of the lies and deceptions. No, I’m not referring to the current administration. They’ll be gone in two years, whereas the insidious forces to which I refer have no expiration date. WMD are the least of our concerns when marketing terrorists live and breathe amongst us.

This is not a new fight for me. I first fell victim to their manipulations in the spring of 1993 when serving as an Army officer in Japan. Have they no shame, praying upon the defenders of the very freedoms they abuse? I spent 14 minutes in a PX aisle, agonizing over my first pots-n-pans purchase. One set cost three-dollars more than the other, yet, to my virgin eye, there was absolutely no difference between the two. I cracked under the pressure and, thinking that price reflected quality, bought the more expensive set, thereby falling victim to what was probably the grand plan of the pots-n-pans executives in the first place. Bastards.

I was reminded of that personal violation last week while standing in the bread aisle at Ralph’s, my local proctology chain. My weekly mission to acquire wheat bread took more time than usual, thanks to a recent invasion of thousands of other brown breads, which camouflaged the wheat brands. These “grains” must be the hot new thing in the bread world because they are getting all the primo shelf space. Like the pots and pans incident, I could see no difference between these breads. The kind marketers had already thought of that, though, and had given the items names that highlight their unique offerings. For example, they have “7-Grain” bread and, for the grainally challenged, “12-Grain” bread. I looked at the loaf of wheat in my hand and then back to the Super G’s. I picked up the 7G and searched for a listing of its contents, but found none. I did the same with the 12G and had a similar result. I stood there in a panic trying to figure out if seven grains are inferior. Maybe I don’t even need seven, let alone a dozen. How the hell am I supposed to be an informed shopper if the bread makers don’t inform me??? I stuck with wheat. Freaking bastards.

Immediately after Graingate, I headed to the rice aisle to confirm a suspicion I have long held: Minute Rice takes five minutes to cook. What the fuck! How is that possibly legal? I do not know why I was surprised. Try dropping your clothes off at the one-hour dry cleaners. Just don’t expect them to be ready in 60 minutes. Don’t even get me lubed up about the 15-minute oil change.

My spirit broken, I staggered to the “cleaning” aisle (detergents, Lysols, Swiffers, etc) for one final purchase. Draino Max Gel’s slogan reads, “Gets out the hardest clogs better!” Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I remember in high school explaining to my parents that I didn’t get 700 in math on the SAT because, “I just have trouble with the first five or six questions in each section, okay? But then I breeze through the last ones!” If our cleaning products are dirty, people, I shudder to think where that leaves us.

Next thing you know, somebody’s going to tell me that eating three times as many “1/3 the fat” Pringles doesn’t equate to the same amount of fat as before. Bastards.

Jack Bauer for Supreme Being!

I don't think I'm alone in my devotion to JackFuckingBauer, 24's modern day renaissance man. (What, you don't think being a computer savvy weapons expert who can torture a bad guy in several languages qualifies someone as a renaissance man these days?) But, like every hero, Kiefer Sutherland's character is flawed. I'm not referring to his occasional bending of the law, disobeying of orders or heartbreaking of women. Rather, Jack routinely makes terrible decisions involving his cell phone.

Dude, they invented the "vibrate" mode for a reason! How many freaking times have we seen Jack creeping along right outside the villain's lair only to have some dweeb at CTU call him to find out if he wants to kick in $5 for a baby shower gift? I realize that the TV show's "writers" - if you believe it isn't real, that is - might be forced to let Jack's cell phone ring so that viewers will be alerted to the fact that he has an incoming call, but something tells me America will put two and two together if Jack stops what he's doing, unclips the phone (btw, not even JFB can look cool with the cell phone holster), makes the "This really isn’t a good time!" face and says, "This is Jack." I think people will then realize, "Oh, he got a call. Must have it on vibrate." Or, perhaps Jack is the only one who can hear it. Maybe the computer genius fat guy who played the FBI agent that busted Big Pussy on The Sopranos designed a ring tone that only German Shepherds and federal agents of German descent can hear! Of course, my nitpicking probably has more to do with jealousy. I mean, Jack clearly doesn't have Nextel as his cellular carrier. I wish I could call him and find out who he's got. My signal gets interrupted if I walk past a transistor radio sitting on a beach blanket, yet Jack gets perfect reception deep inside CTU, despite its hundreds gadgets, systems, etc.

Come to think of it, EVERYBODY gets perfect reception inside CTU! This is important, though, when you want to provide continuous communication capabilities for all of your moles. I'm no security expert, but here's an idea: Ban cell phone conversations in CTU! That way, you can trace all calls coming in and out, which just might cut down on fatal leaks. "Uh, sir. It seems Nina just made a call to a…Bin Laden, Osama. Would you like me to follow up?" And while I'm at it, here's another suggestion for the guy in charge of CTU: Get a new HR director! I don't know who is making these hiring decisions, but she has greenlighted an incredibly high number of traitors. I mean, is there even a questionnaire that candidates have to fill out? Who is doing the background checks, Roscoe P. Coltrane?

I just want to keep Jack safe, that's all, because when Jack is safe, America is safe.

Must've been a slooooow news day in Hollywood

This actually made page one of Variety on Thursday, Feb 2.

Pair Catch Viagra Pitch

By Michael Fleming

Rising to the occasion, producers Scott Stuber and Mary Parent have made a preemptive acquisition of the Jamie Reidy memoir "Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman."
The book will form the basis for a fictionalized film about the pharmaceutical supply biz to be scripted by Charles Randolph.
The Universal-based producers used their discretionary fund to pay high-six figures to take the book and Randolph's pitch off the table. They will develop the project at the studio.
Stuber and Parent will produce with Randolph.
Reidy's book is a somewhat humorous expose of the highly competitive and cutthroat world of pharmaceuticals, where salesmen schmooze doctors, nurses and hospitals to get them to use their brand of drugs.
While Reidy formerly hawked Viagra and other pills for Pfizer, the film will be set at a fictionalized company.
"It's a world I haven't seen in film before. Charles came up with a pitch for a great character piece," he said. "There is also a good love story in the middle."
Margaret Riley will exec produce.
Project marks the first significant book deal Stuber and Parent have made since leaving the U exec suites last summer to become producers. They just wrapped "You, Me and Dupree" and are in pre-production on the Peter Berg-directed "The Kingdom." They are producing that film with Michael Mann.
Randolph scripted "The Interpreter" and "The Life of David Gale" for U during Stuber and Parent's tenure at the studio. Scribe also worked on the script of the Steven Spielberg-directed "Munich."

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

A quick “good search” (check out http://www.goodsearch.com/ for a yahoo powered search engine that donates money to the charity of your choice every time you search for something; it’s a great deal) reveals that some experts view the kitchen as the most dangerous room in the house. People, these “kitchenites” must be stopped! Beware the bathroom, for it possesses a preponderance of perils.

It’s hard to cut yourself in the shower, especially in a razor-free one like mine. Ah, but that didn’t stop me from nearly severing the tip of my left big toe while bathing before an all-day drinking decathlon on Saturday. Sometime toward the end of my shower I decided to engage in an impromptu yoga session. This was rather odd, considering I haven’t done yoga in over a year and even when I did yoga regularly it was in a public place under the guidance of a yogi, not by myself in my shower. Regardless, I decided, for reasons still unknown, to swing my left foot upwards…jamming my big toe directly into the bathtub spigot. I remember many times in yoga class when a particular stretch caused me some minor discomfort, but I don’t recall ever screaming, “Fuck!” Ditto for gushing blood.

Fortunately, ten healthy toes are not a pre-req for spending all day in a dive bar. Of course, seeing as how it’s playoff time, I would have, er, sucked it up for the team, anyway. Oh, how I love to drink draft beer from a frosty glass in the daytime! As I learned years ago, though, this activity should come with a message from C. Everett Koop. “Surgeon General’s Warning: Although she may claim to be able to handle consuming alcohol several hours earlier than usual, day drinking greatly increases the likelihood that your girlfriend will have a very public, irrational meltdown over something incredibly inconsequential, i.e. your telling the waitress she looks like your prom date.” One effective way I’ve found to avoid this situation is to avoid having a girlfriend. Alas, last weekend proved some of us need further guidance. “Surgeon General’s Warning: If you day drink prior to attending a birthday party for a guy from Kentucky who adds bourbon to his chicken soup when fighting a cold, and whose friends all guzzle bourbon and will make you - a celebrated lightweight who even on Spring Break took much-needed naps after day drinking - drink bourbon…you deserve whatever befalls you.”

From what I could see, it was a great party. I tried to conduct myself in a manner my parents would have been proud of, and nearly succeeded; I only insulted half a dozen people and my bookie has generously offered me a payment plan to settle the little wager I called in at 1:42 am. Who knew the Panthers wouldn’t win by “a million”?

Aware that perhaps I did not, to quote Tiger Woods, have my “A-game,” I sent myself to bed. Safe and sound, snug as a bug in a rug. Things went south ten minutes later when I got kicked out of said bed in the guestroom, so the guest could go to sleep. I thought there was plenty of room for two, but apparently she’s lesbian.

Tossed back on the street – or into the living room where the party was still raging – I did what any homeless guy would do: had another drink. Hmm. Historians – and my insurance company – may look back and question that decision.

It began like any other trip to the bathroom, though probably a lot more zigzagged. Approaching the toilet, I spied one of those bath-mats-for-the-toilet thingies. It looked soft and fuzzy, like a stuffed animal, a friend. As if.

My left foot hit the mat…and kept going. Suddenly, I was airborne like Yosemite Sam slipping on a banana peel, Charlie Brown flying into the air after Lucy pulls the ball away, and Joe Pesci stepping onto the skateboard in HOME ALONE – all rolled into one. 180 pounds of drunk went flying up and came crashing down.

Perhaps if I had chosen a better class of friends, sheiks or something, the edge of the bathtub would have been lined with lots of soft pillows and such, and my fall would have been cushioned. Alas, I roll with paupers, practically, who line their tubs with nary a rubber ducky. Bathtubs are solid; I thought I had learned that lesson sufficiently in LETHAL WEAPON when Mel Gibson survived a bomb explosion inside of one. Apparently, I needed a refresher course. Funny, none of my New Year’s resolutions mentioned, “End up sprawled on the bathroom floor with the wind knocked out of me.”

Ribs are like toes, it turns out, in that there is no treatment for them when broken. That’s the kind of news a patient in pain likes to hear.

Well, I’m off to order a product endorsed by the aforementioned former Surgeon General. It’s targeted at people over 65, but I’m thinking I might get a head start. “Thanks to LIFE ALERT®, you can live alone without ever being alone. And that’s why I wear one.”

I’m drunken and I can’t get up.

Outed

Kansas City -

Publisher Andrews McMeel issued a statement today regarding accusations that some details in "HARD SELL: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman" are exaggerated or completely untrue.

"After a vigorous investigation, we are saddened to admit that the author, Jamie Reidy, did, in fact, exaggerate some of his claims regarding his work habits as a pharmaceutical salesman. Despite his assertions that he regularly worked '15 to 20 hour weeks', our private investigators could find no evidence that Reidy ever worked 20 hours in one week. Though he did reach 19 hours once, we find his explanation - 'I rounded up. I'm just bad at math' - to be unacceptable. We apologize for the inaccuracies and hope that Universal Studios will take this erroneousness into account as they develop the movie version of the book, which will be reissued in a fact-checked paperback with a handsome movie star on the cover to coincide with the film premiere."