[RF] On Paracetamol Shortages, Headaches, and Global Crises
“Trust and wait.”
“The Antichrist,” F. Nietzsche, 1888
I'm somewhat like space rockets… I keep losing things as time goes by.
Some are insignificant, like cheap pencils or my sleep mask, due to factors related to my poor personal organization, on a small or large scale.
Other times these losses are directly due to my clumsiness, like when I broke a bottle of Jack Daniels or the number of times I ended up talking about Kafka and Geopolitics on a first date.
Today the stock market is plummeting, and I have a headache. My three cell phones are ringing nonstop, and the monitor screens are filled with audible and visual alarms that scream panic like a dying submarine.
I rummaged through my drawer for the last two paracetamol tablets I'd bought from a junior employee who worked the night shift and was dating a medical representative from Sanitas Laboratories. My right hand frantically searched through smudged papers, crumpled napkins, and electrical outlets with frayed, broken wires, only to find nothing. No paracetamol. The bottle of omeprazole was gone too.
"We gave them to López before the ambulance took him," one of the guys from the legal department told me.
That’s how I noticed that López—a reckless, chain-smoking man with five stents—had started speaking in tongues when the price of oil surpassed $118 a barrel. In the chaos, someone thought he might be having a stroke and called an ambulance. Meanwhile, another bright spark decided to dose him with my last reserves of painkillers and Proton Pump Inhibitors, devoid of any theoretical basis, of course.
Since no one objected, it's now 11:30 and my frontal lobes are still a tasteless mush, like the food the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar eat in The Matrix.
I lose a gram of paracetamol and the world burns.
I watch as the ambulance pulls away, taking López along with the remains of my pathetic first-aid kit. I sigh deeply and suddenly remember that life is a succession of small and large tragedies.
I shrug as I start screaming and running around my desk with my hands on my head, just like everyone else left in the office.
I'm sure HR will call us when all this is over.
Another month as Employee of the Month.















