"We strive to improve the quality of human life"

That is the Vision of CVS Caremark, the colossal mega corporation of pharmacies and prescription benefits management (http://www.cvscaremark.com/our-company/our-culture/vision-mission-values ).

Apparently they feel the best way to improve the quality of my life, as well as nearly 200 of my colleagues, is to eliminate our jobs.

You may remember when I announced that my company's parent company (Long's Drugs) was bought out last August by CVS Caremark and the uneasy feeling it gave me. I have to tell you, for a while there I was actually quite impressed with CVS Caremark. For a while I truly believed that Salt Lake City would be a great addition to their existing cluster of call centers specked across the United States.

Utah is not a stranger to call centers, and there's a reason. Utah does not have tornadoes, devastating earthquakes, hurricanes, and of course, volcanoes. We do have snow, but as long as we can still tell where the roads are, we go to work. So it goes without saying that Utah is an ideal location for call centers since 99.9% of uptime is a must for that industry.

The point I'm getting at is that a call center in Utah could have been a great asset for CVS Caremark and they certainly could have stayed a very profitable business without needing to put 200 or so people out of jobs. Sadly, that small percentage increase of profit margin is worth more than the lives of 200 people. I imagine that the increase is small because CVS Carmark literally has hundreds of thousands of employees, and laying off 200 is taking a drop out of the bucket. For that, I have lost all respect for CVS Caremark. Shame on them for making me believe for one second that they cared more about improving quality of life than making a buck. Maybe I'm alone in this thought, but if I ran a business that was already making millions of dollars a year in profit I would seek out the best solution that wouldn't require anyone to lose their jobs in this situation.

So that's it. I have until the end of October. Wish me luck.