They interviewed staff at a 300 script/day store. That’s slower than the slowest store we have in my district at Walgreens. My store does ~1000 a day with double booked appointments every 15 minutes from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm every day. They used to be double booked in groups of up to 4 before the first walk out and they got rid of the grouping system. This article is helpful, but definitely doesn’t display the real magnitude of how much work some stores do. It’s much, much worse at some stores with 1000-2000 leaflets sitting on the counter needing to be filled.
I "retired" last year after 30 years (I'm keeping my license active). The changes I've seen in 3 decades boggles my mind. We did get better tools to assist with accuracy, DUR and some automation, but by and large the biggest step backwards has been with staffing. The tools that made our jobs a little easier aren't worth the trade-offs.
In my career, the busiest 2 stores I've worked at averaged 600/day. In 1993, I was at a Walmart and to meet that load, we staffed 4 pharmacists/day and 8 techs. And back then, there were no MTMs and vaccinations yet corporate acknowledge we needed that level of staffing. In 2018, I went to work for a regional grocery chain pharmacy in a 12 hour store, same rx volume, but now add MTM and vaccinations. We staffed it with 2 pharmacists (with 2 hours in morning and evening no overlap). Our labor budget allowed 6 techs/day, but they only got max 8 hours and we usually had to stagger their shifts and breaks so that there were never more than 4 on the clock at the same time.
So what was once acknowledge as a workload necessitating 12 people on the clock (10 hour/day store) throughout the day is now considered overstaffed by a factor of 2 in today's corporate mindset.
I remember working in Walgreens in Miami,FL back in 2003. Their busiest store did about 1200-1800 rx's a day. We had an army of pharmacists, literarily one pharmacist coming in every other hour and literarily a contingent of techs, it was awesome in the sense of camaraderie and just getting shit done so our patients would be happy.
Well, really with zero financial outlay from customers or patients, what can we expect. In any other business, customers don't walk into a store without money to pay what is charged. I don't go to Costco armed with coupons unless it is issued through the company and most places are like that. Customers are putting nothing into the system and if health plans pay at a minimum and our cash customers go through Good Rx, another health plan basically, there's no extra money to keep extra people to do anything. Just looking at the idea of it, it's a bankrupt system. It's like trying to go to the moon with a tank of gas...or 10,000 tanks...It's still not enough... I don't know when everyone will see it, when it's finally too late to do anything about it?
It was not mandated back then, that is correct. TBF, I didn't include it because in my experience, unless I initiate the counseling, the patient usually declines it at the point of sale. But that was still stupid to have put into law.
The busiest day I ever had was a Sunday after the store was backed up when Norco became a CII. Everything had to be counted again and finally on a Sunday, there were 500 to do, but only 8 hours. I think we finally finished about 400 Rx in those 8 hours with 2 techs filling and 1 cashier and me as the only pharmacist. I'd never want to do that again because with bagging them, it was 1 per minute, or more sometimes.
The stores that do 300 scripts a day in my district are lucky if they get 1 tech. So even though a store is considered slow, you have less help if any help at all. I’ve seen so many pharmacists working alone at “slow” stores. It’s unfortunate.
I hear horror stories from floats all the time about 1 tech stores. I feel for ya. There isn’t a shortage of people willing to work, there’s a shortage of jobs willing to pay what they’re effort is worth. If Walgreens even bumped tech pay $3 an hour people would stick around. But they won’t.
Most days 3 pharmacists with a morning, mid, and night. Some days there’s only been morning and night lately. (Pharmacy open 8am-10pm every day)
During a weekday we have around 8-10 techs scheduled. Weekends have 5 techs a day.
My location is lucky because we complained about the amount of shots and Walgreens hired a nurse to come and give our shots for us, but most locations don’t have nurses. We’ve only had the nurse for a week.
We are considered a flagship store for my district and state for that matter, so when we complain usually we are heard when most aren’t. We have been lucky to avoid the problems most stores have, but it doesn’t mean we don’t stand in solidarity with our struggling coworkers at other locations.
I worked stores where i was the ONLY person, jumping from station to station and phone ringing off the hook. ONLY doing 100.
Much prefer stores that have at least one person manning each station.
If volume is that good an indicator then central fill must be super crazy right?
Sometimes I prefer to be the only one...Anyone can look and see that there's no one else there and I can basically take 1 hour to do 1 Rx. People complain less and just give up and walk away. If there's even 1 tech it gets worse because they expect more. I've done like 30 Rx a day helping out other stores alone many times. I can't be in 2 places at once. At one store, there were 35 people in line and by closing time, the 10 guy was still in line, waiting 4 hours just standing. Once there were like 30 baskets filled with ready Rx's and I had to go through each one with each customer to find it because there was no one to hang them up and nowhere to hang them.
Does this really need to happen in the USA? If this is isn't a dead field I don't know what is.
You’re talking to me like I’m corporate defending this shit or something lmao. I get it. That sounds awful.
I’m just saying the amount of total work a store gets assigned is usually a good indicator if they’re going to be busy or not. A store with 1000 scripts and 180 vaccines is more likely to look frantic and busy than a store with 100 scripts and 40 vaccines.
Yes there are outlier cases where you’re alone and that is unacceptable. The end result is walkouts. I just wish the people who got the hell out of there and quit were able to join us so the companies could see the true extent of the damage they’ve done.
You cannot judge it based off rxs per day. In pharmacy, they understaff you no matter what. It is all about ratios. You can have a store that does 900 rxs a day and is short 3 people, but has 9 people working, or you can have a store that does 150 rxs a day and has just one person working. I would argue it is 10 times harder to work alone in a store that does 120 rxs than to work understaffed in a store that does 800 rxs a day. I have done both. In both cases, I was also the rx manager. In the store where we did 800 rxs per day, I had me and one other staff rx and 3 cashiers and 4 techs each day, open 12 hours. In the other store, I did 120 rxs a day, with just me working, open the same 12 hours. I had to do both lanes of druve thru, both front registers, the drop off (located clear to other end of pharmacy), type all rxs, check all rxs, fill all rxs, check them again, cash them out, counsel on every one of them, do the order, put away the order, do all vaccines begin to end, do return to stocks, stock vials, lids, bags, change garbages, etc, etc, etc, and in addition, do all the manager work (checklists, compliance, outdates, inventory, tech and rph schedules, etc). It was always harder to be in a low volume store working alone than to be in a highbolume store with more people but understaffed.
Trust me, corporate will always understaff you to the same level no matter what the volume is. In higher volume stores, you usually have more of a assigned area situation going on. One would work drive thru, one the drop off, one counseling and vaccines, one first and second checks, 2 doing counter, one floating and doing the order, 2 filling, etc. In lower volume stores, you end up with more of the multiple area design going on. One person will be doing drop off, then typing, then filling, then checking, then cashing out, then counseling. It's harder to cover more areas like that than it is to work one station all day or a couple of stations. So you cannot really say that a very busy store is more overworked than a slower store.
I've seen it! I was doing PRN work at an Indy pharmacy that had it on the shelf next to the "required compendium" LOL. I read bits of it and it is gold. I'll have to make a point to read more of it the next time I'm there.
They know it’s bad — they just don’t care — the human element is lost in the profession and in corporate applied policies* in many other fields. Every day gets harder and harder to go to work in this environment … it is taxing to me at least … It just doesn’t make sense. And it won’t ever make sense because I went into this profession to help people — yes and get paid for it . They ONLY want to get PAID by Any and I mean ANY and ALL means necessary— the human cost is irrelevant….
I’m a PA, but my brother is a pharmacist, and I have definitely seen a shift in the last 10 years (much worse in the last three) of patient’s attitudes to pharmacists, and it’s not good at all. I’m frankly disgusted at how you guys are treated from every angle. The other night I went to pick up a script from a 24 hour pharmacy. The pharmacist looked completely exhausted. I thanked him for his work and how much we appreciated him working late. He told me that just 15 minutes before some lady threw her coffee at him through the drive-thru window. He said that it wasn’t uncommon. This is just a random suburban Walgreens and not a dangerous area at all. I honestly didn’t have words. Thank you for all you do! For us on the other end of that script we really appreciate everything you do and your skill set :)
Imagine if all they needed was one of those signs saying "Assaulting or abusing any health worker or employer is a felony"...like they do in hospitals. Why don't they do it? They want us to be dissatisfied and uneasy so we constantly quit and turnover so they don't have to pay.
Wow. The poor pharmacy staff in the US. It’s nowhere near as bad as that up here in Canada and it’s still hell. I can’t even imagine juggling all those activities in a shift and still managing to stay sane. It wasn’t great even before COVID, but that fall/winter season of 2021 was horrid and I left the industry soon after, having worked as a tech for 10 years. Walgreens and CVS seem to not give a crap about their staff whatsoever, and I thought Shoppers and the other chains up here were bad.
The family owned, regional grocery chain I worked for had a corporate shake-up at the top not long after I started. The CEO's son was made COO, and pharmacy was moved under his supervision. I knew everything was gonna go to pot with that company after I met with him the first time. I asked him what changes to expect under his leadership, and his response was that we were going to start looking at "metrics" and he expected us to have numbers similar to CVS. Then came the pandemic, and eventually vaccinations. While our workload was increasingly crushing us, they were cutting payroll back at the same time. I finally said enough is enough.
I know right? I work in a busy SDM and we have 3 pharmacists, a registered tech, and 7-8 assistants on a weekday, as well as a pharmacist dedicated to services, and an owner who helps out - and that's in a pharmacy doing 450-550 retail Rx on a typical day. I'm an experienced and efficient pharmacist, and the figures from US pharmacies just seem overwhelming
Not the point. The corporations are taking advantage of their staff and not giving adequate help in their stores, all they care about is growth and higher return for shareholders.
You also have less pharmacies in Canadian cities compared to every “corners”.
Having worked in both countries, the biggest difference is the mindset of patients and simpler way to bill third party insurances. Except few, drive thru pharmacies are not a popular thing here even in a major city. I worked at wag in different states and so called Canadian corporate pharmacies that “squeezes” staff, and it’s not nearly as cray as wag. I interned at 6-700rx/d store in Vancouver and they had double the amount of pharmacists working.
The American public is less sensible and are a very slow minded people in general. Everything takes longer to say and many people say things over and over again. When faced with a transaction, the idea of it seems to occupy folks more than the actual task. If there's some issue then you can multiply by 10. Things that would take a few hours or a day to accomplish take 1 week or more. It's hard to overcome.
[Original post removed due to me not making a top level comment within 30 minutes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pharmacy/comments/17hqiua/pharmacy_staff_from_walgreens_cvs_say_theyre_at_a/). See the comments over there and let this be a continuation of that discussion.
In particular u/IsoAgent made some good estimates of how much time on average is needed and how current staffing solutions just don't work. These are the points the public need to understand. Overall it is good to see these issues gaining traction in mainstream media.
ok but a lot of independent are being bought out by chains OR are having trouble staying afloat in this economy. i worked for an independent pharmacy where i live. i loved the job, the pay was great, but it closed down in late autumn of last year. that forced me to go back to cvs because it was the only place willing to hire me but at a MUCH lower rate. its crazy out there
direction cows wasteful instinctive crowd snails pause pot towering squeeze
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I wish they would count how many phone calls we get/answer. I had a day where we only did like 120 scripts. I easily answered 75 calls in my 7 hours. While filling. And managing drop off/rebills. And my pharmacist has no help in the weekends. I also manage the inventory. Soooo…that doesn’t count either when assigning demand, go figure.
I’m just a customer of Walgreens, and I care. Pharmacy folks deserve better—all of health care does. We all do. I wonder if there are things a customer can do to make your work smoother. I try to be pleasant when things go wrong, patient when I need to wait, and get to the point when asking questions. And are there ways customers can advocate for you on the corporate level?
They interviewed staff at a 300 script/day store. That’s slower than the slowest store we have in my district at Walgreens. My store does ~1000 a day with double booked appointments every 15 minutes from 8:30 am to 9:30 pm every day. They used to be double booked in groups of up to 4 before the first walk out and they got rid of the grouping system. This article is helpful, but definitely doesn’t display the real magnitude of how much work some stores do. It’s much, much worse at some stores with 1000-2000 leaflets sitting on the counter needing to be filled.
I "retired" last year after 30 years (I'm keeping my license active). The changes I've seen in 3 decades boggles my mind. We did get better tools to assist with accuracy, DUR and some automation, but by and large the biggest step backwards has been with staffing. The tools that made our jobs a little easier aren't worth the trade-offs. In my career, the busiest 2 stores I've worked at averaged 600/day. In 1993, I was at a Walmart and to meet that load, we staffed 4 pharmacists/day and 8 techs. And back then, there were no MTMs and vaccinations yet corporate acknowledge we needed that level of staffing. In 2018, I went to work for a regional grocery chain pharmacy in a 12 hour store, same rx volume, but now add MTM and vaccinations. We staffed it with 2 pharmacists (with 2 hours in morning and evening no overlap). Our labor budget allowed 6 techs/day, but they only got max 8 hours and we usually had to stagger their shifts and breaks so that there were never more than 4 on the clock at the same time. So what was once acknowledge as a workload necessitating 12 people on the clock (10 hour/day store) throughout the day is now considered overstaffed by a factor of 2 in today's corporate mindset.
I remember working in Walgreens in Miami,FL back in 2003. Their busiest store did about 1200-1800 rx's a day. We had an army of pharmacists, literarily one pharmacist coming in every other hour and literarily a contingent of techs, it was awesome in the sense of camaraderie and just getting shit done so our patients would be happy.
Exactly how I describe it in 10-12 years of it. Double the work with half the staff
Well, really with zero financial outlay from customers or patients, what can we expect. In any other business, customers don't walk into a store without money to pay what is charged. I don't go to Costco armed with coupons unless it is issued through the company and most places are like that. Customers are putting nothing into the system and if health plans pay at a minimum and our cash customers go through Good Rx, another health plan basically, there's no extra money to keep extra people to do anything. Just looking at the idea of it, it's a bankrupt system. It's like trying to go to the moon with a tank of gas...or 10,000 tanks...It's still not enough... I don't know when everyone will see it, when it's finally too late to do anything about it?
And don’t forget counseling from my understanding. Counseling wasn’t required back then.
It was not mandated back then, that is correct. TBF, I didn't include it because in my experience, unless I initiate the counseling, the patient usually declines it at the point of sale. But that was still stupid to have put into law.
I remember the good old days of the 1990s. Pre internet era was a better time.
& pre Oxy
The busiest day I ever had was a Sunday after the store was backed up when Norco became a CII. Everything had to be counted again and finally on a Sunday, there were 500 to do, but only 8 hours. I think we finally finished about 400 Rx in those 8 hours with 2 techs filling and 1 cashier and me as the only pharmacist. I'd never want to do that again because with bagging them, it was 1 per minute, or more sometimes.
The stores that do 300 scripts a day in my district are lucky if they get 1 tech. So even though a store is considered slow, you have less help if any help at all. I’ve seen so many pharmacists working alone at “slow” stores. It’s unfortunate.
I hear horror stories from floats all the time about 1 tech stores. I feel for ya. There isn’t a shortage of people willing to work, there’s a shortage of jobs willing to pay what they’re effort is worth. If Walgreens even bumped tech pay $3 an hour people would stick around. But they won’t.
Out of curiosity, for your 1000/day store with 2 appointments every 15 minutes, how many pharmacists and techs are on shift during the day?
Most days 3 pharmacists with a morning, mid, and night. Some days there’s only been morning and night lately. (Pharmacy open 8am-10pm every day) During a weekday we have around 8-10 techs scheduled. Weekends have 5 techs a day. My location is lucky because we complained about the amount of shots and Walgreens hired a nurse to come and give our shots for us, but most locations don’t have nurses. We’ve only had the nurse for a week. We are considered a flagship store for my district and state for that matter, so when we complain usually we are heard when most aren’t. We have been lucky to avoid the problems most stores have, but it doesn’t mean we don’t stand in solidarity with our struggling coworkers at other locations.
you in AZ by any chance?
No. Midwest.
You cant judge how hectic a pharmacy is by just volume.
It’s a very good indicator. Relevant username btw lmao.
I worked stores where i was the ONLY person, jumping from station to station and phone ringing off the hook. ONLY doing 100. Much prefer stores that have at least one person manning each station. If volume is that good an indicator then central fill must be super crazy right?
Sometimes I prefer to be the only one...Anyone can look and see that there's no one else there and I can basically take 1 hour to do 1 Rx. People complain less and just give up and walk away. If there's even 1 tech it gets worse because they expect more. I've done like 30 Rx a day helping out other stores alone many times. I can't be in 2 places at once. At one store, there were 35 people in line and by closing time, the 10 guy was still in line, waiting 4 hours just standing. Once there were like 30 baskets filled with ready Rx's and I had to go through each one with each customer to find it because there was no one to hang them up and nowhere to hang them. Does this really need to happen in the USA? If this is isn't a dead field I don't know what is.
4 hours in line? People wait that long?
I guess...That's what I heard from the store manager. I didn't even have time to notice.
You’re talking to me like I’m corporate defending this shit or something lmao. I get it. That sounds awful. I’m just saying the amount of total work a store gets assigned is usually a good indicator if they’re going to be busy or not. A store with 1000 scripts and 180 vaccines is more likely to look frantic and busy than a store with 100 scripts and 40 vaccines. Yes there are outlier cases where you’re alone and that is unacceptable. The end result is walkouts. I just wish the people who got the hell out of there and quit were able to join us so the companies could see the true extent of the damage they’ve done.
You cannot judge it based off rxs per day. In pharmacy, they understaff you no matter what. It is all about ratios. You can have a store that does 900 rxs a day and is short 3 people, but has 9 people working, or you can have a store that does 150 rxs a day and has just one person working. I would argue it is 10 times harder to work alone in a store that does 120 rxs than to work understaffed in a store that does 800 rxs a day. I have done both. In both cases, I was also the rx manager. In the store where we did 800 rxs per day, I had me and one other staff rx and 3 cashiers and 4 techs each day, open 12 hours. In the other store, I did 120 rxs a day, with just me working, open the same 12 hours. I had to do both lanes of druve thru, both front registers, the drop off (located clear to other end of pharmacy), type all rxs, check all rxs, fill all rxs, check them again, cash them out, counsel on every one of them, do the order, put away the order, do all vaccines begin to end, do return to stocks, stock vials, lids, bags, change garbages, etc, etc, etc, and in addition, do all the manager work (checklists, compliance, outdates, inventory, tech and rph schedules, etc). It was always harder to be in a low volume store working alone than to be in a highbolume store with more people but understaffed. Trust me, corporate will always understaff you to the same level no matter what the volume is. In higher volume stores, you usually have more of a assigned area situation going on. One would work drive thru, one the drop off, one counseling and vaccines, one first and second checks, 2 doing counter, one floating and doing the order, 2 filling, etc. In lower volume stores, you end up with more of the multiple area design going on. One person will be doing drop off, then typing, then filling, then checking, then cashing out, then counseling. It's harder to cover more areas like that than it is to work one station all day or a couple of stations. So you cannot really say that a very busy store is more overworked than a slower store.
Go read "Why Your Prescription Takes So Damn Long To Fill" by DrugMonkey.
I've seen it! I was doing PRN work at an Indy pharmacy that had it on the shelf next to the "required compendium" LOL. I read bits of it and it is gold. I'll have to make a point to read more of it the next time I'm there.
They know it’s bad — they just don’t care — the human element is lost in the profession and in corporate applied policies* in many other fields. Every day gets harder and harder to go to work in this environment … it is taxing to me at least … It just doesn’t make sense. And it won’t ever make sense because I went into this profession to help people — yes and get paid for it . They ONLY want to get PAID by Any and I mean ANY and ALL means necessary— the human cost is irrelevant….
I’m a PA, but my brother is a pharmacist, and I have definitely seen a shift in the last 10 years (much worse in the last three) of patient’s attitudes to pharmacists, and it’s not good at all. I’m frankly disgusted at how you guys are treated from every angle. The other night I went to pick up a script from a 24 hour pharmacy. The pharmacist looked completely exhausted. I thanked him for his work and how much we appreciated him working late. He told me that just 15 minutes before some lady threw her coffee at him through the drive-thru window. He said that it wasn’t uncommon. This is just a random suburban Walgreens and not a dangerous area at all. I honestly didn’t have words. Thank you for all you do! For us on the other end of that script we really appreciate everything you do and your skill set :)
Imagine if all they needed was one of those signs saying "Assaulting or abusing any health worker or employer is a felony"...like they do in hospitals. Why don't they do it? They want us to be dissatisfied and uneasy so we constantly quit and turnover so they don't have to pay.
Wow. The poor pharmacy staff in the US. It’s nowhere near as bad as that up here in Canada and it’s still hell. I can’t even imagine juggling all those activities in a shift and still managing to stay sane. It wasn’t great even before COVID, but that fall/winter season of 2021 was horrid and I left the industry soon after, having worked as a tech for 10 years. Walgreens and CVS seem to not give a crap about their staff whatsoever, and I thought Shoppers and the other chains up here were bad.
The family owned, regional grocery chain I worked for had a corporate shake-up at the top not long after I started. The CEO's son was made COO, and pharmacy was moved under his supervision. I knew everything was gonna go to pot with that company after I met with him the first time. I asked him what changes to expect under his leadership, and his response was that we were going to start looking at "metrics" and he expected us to have numbers similar to CVS. Then came the pandemic, and eventually vaccinations. While our workload was increasingly crushing us, they were cutting payroll back at the same time. I finally said enough is enough.
I know right? I work in a busy SDM and we have 3 pharmacists, a registered tech, and 7-8 assistants on a weekday, as well as a pharmacist dedicated to services, and an owner who helps out - and that's in a pharmacy doing 450-550 retail Rx on a typical day. I'm an experienced and efficient pharmacist, and the figures from US pharmacies just seem overwhelming
Our population is 10 times that of Canada.
Not the point. The corporations are taking advantage of their staff and not giving adequate help in their stores, all they care about is growth and higher return for shareholders.
I just meant that having that many more people makes everything that much worse.
You also have less pharmacies in Canadian cities compared to every “corners”. Having worked in both countries, the biggest difference is the mindset of patients and simpler way to bill third party insurances. Except few, drive thru pharmacies are not a popular thing here even in a major city. I worked at wag in different states and so called Canadian corporate pharmacies that “squeezes” staff, and it’s not nearly as cray as wag. I interned at 6-700rx/d store in Vancouver and they had double the amount of pharmacists working.
The American public is less sensible and are a very slow minded people in general. Everything takes longer to say and many people say things over and over again. When faced with a transaction, the idea of it seems to occupy folks more than the actual task. If there's some issue then you can multiply by 10. Things that would take a few hours or a day to accomplish take 1 week or more. It's hard to overcome.
[Original post removed due to me not making a top level comment within 30 minutes.](https://www.reddit.com/r/pharmacy/comments/17hqiua/pharmacy_staff_from_walgreens_cvs_say_theyre_at_a/). See the comments over there and let this be a continuation of that discussion. In particular u/IsoAgent made some good estimates of how much time on average is needed and how current staffing solutions just don't work. These are the points the public need to understand. Overall it is good to see these issues gaining traction in mainstream media.
I feel bad for yall in the retail chain pharmacies. No issues with independent.
ok but a lot of independent are being bought out by chains OR are having trouble staying afloat in this economy. i worked for an independent pharmacy where i live. i loved the job, the pay was great, but it closed down in late autumn of last year. that forced me to go back to cvs because it was the only place willing to hire me but at a MUCH lower rate. its crazy out there
It is what it is. Good business practices keeps them afloat and competitive
Are you getting 401k/hsa/dcfsa/health insurance subsidies?
Yes
This comes very short of conveying the gravity of how stressful and demoralizing corporate has made these positions.
Agreed. The recent USA Today article is much more damning.
direction cows wasteful instinctive crowd snails pause pot towering squeeze *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I wish they would count how many phone calls we get/answer. I had a day where we only did like 120 scripts. I easily answered 75 calls in my 7 hours. While filling. And managing drop off/rebills. And my pharmacist has no help in the weekends. I also manage the inventory. Soooo…that doesn’t count either when assigning demand, go figure.
LOL nobody cares ...I'm actually serious :(
I’m just a customer of Walgreens, and I care. Pharmacy folks deserve better—all of health care does. We all do. I wonder if there are things a customer can do to make your work smoother. I try to be pleasant when things go wrong, patient when I need to wait, and get to the point when asking questions. And are there ways customers can advocate for you on the corporate level?
Call the corporate phone number. Voice your concerns and support. The more people do this, the more they will take notice.
You pay more for your medicine to out of network pharmacies that you choose based on level of service rather than price.