I hope it's not this bad but wouldn't surprise me in the least if Pfizer put a hit out on him.
The Baofengs really are great starter radios. Like the other anon said learn to program them with Chirp. It's free and easy to use program.
www.radioreference.com
See what local frequencies you can listen in on and program them into the radio. If you catch the radio bug and get licensed as a ham you can graduate to a Kenwood, Yaesu, Icom, or Xiegu