No, this is not a bad post about a gesture some people do to show annoyance, anger, and defiance. It is rather a good feel story and in fact a beneficial story for which 240,000 Americans would be out of work if not for Charles Walgreen’s middle finger. As a teenager in Dixon, Illinois, in the 1890s, Walgreen worked in a shoe factory. One day his hand got caught in a stitching machine, severing the top joint of his middle finger, thereby ending his hoped-for career in sports. The doctor treating young Charles proposed an alternative path: Why not try pharmacy? Walgreen’s first job as a pharmacist’s apprentice paid $4 a week and ended with his getting fired because he forgot to shovel the snow in front of the store. He opened his own pharmacy in 1901 and by 1929, he was operating 397 stores all over the USA. Today, Walgreens is the second-largest US pharmacy chain after CVS and fills more than 1.1 billion prescriptions a year.
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