Curated: Who Leaves the Trolley? What a Viral Meme Teaches Pharma R&D About Quality, Culture, and Ethics
by: Paul DavidsonPublished on: 23/08/2025A viral video once claimed you can judge character by whether someone returns a shopping trolley. It struck me as a perfect metaphor for pharma: quality is what you do when nobody is looking. Compliance sets the legal baseline; quality is the choice to do things right, first time, because patients rely on us. Yet industry habits often resemble the “job creation” logic of the trolley video - leave errors for QC or QA to tidy up later. That mindset doesn’t create value; it shifts cost to the most expensive form of quality work: rework, delay, and failure. Culture magnifies this. Even talented hires can slide into “good enough” when local norms drift. The trolley becomes a test of everyday ethics: complete records honestly, follow protocols, report inconvenient truths. So the real question is: in your organisation, who’s returning the trolley - and what are you doing to make it the easy, obvious choice?
