Current Events > Some Walgreens pharmacies planning walkout next week

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/business/walgreens-pharmacists-walkouts-protest-working-conditions/index.html

Let's fucking goooooo! Also, some info about the recent CVS walkout in KC and just how fucked retail pharmacy continues to be. This is what the people in charge of these companies think about you and your health. Don't believe their corporate speak and false promises.

good fucking luck trying that at walmart.

Questionmarktarius posted...

good fucking luck trying that at walmart.

I don't think anyone really gives a fuck about the consequences anymore. I know of plenty of pharmacy stories that don't make the news. These places can chase off technicians like me and hope a skeleton crew and a pharmacist can hold down the fort, but when you cross the pharmacists themselves? Good luck running a pharmacy when one goes home and you legally cannot operate.

fuck pharmacists. entitled idiots.

hockeybub89 posted...

I don't think anyone really gives a fuck about the consequences anymore. I know of plenty of pharmacy stories that don't make the news. These places can chase off technicians like me and hope a skeleton crew and a pharmacist can hold down the fort, but when you cross the pharmacists themselves? Good luck running a pharmacy when one goes home and you legally cannot operate.

i hope they replace pharmacists with AI and automation.

BlackHorse6969 posted...

i hope they replace pharmacists with AI and automation.

Isn't Amazon doing that?

Questionmarktarius posted...

Isn't Amazon doing that?

yeah but pharmacies like walgreen should have their own system.

What a crap set up anyway, middlemen drug dealers that dont even doctor

When I started at CVS in 2016, you'd have 5 technicians during the busiest parts of the day and 3 hours of overlap between the opening and closing pharmacists.

By the end of 2019, those 5 technicians became 3 and the overlap no longer existed.

By the end of 2021, 3 technicians was an uncharacteristically good day. Tasks beyond filling prescriptions and giving shots basically didn't get done until days to weeks late. Stores in the area could barely keep up with the quitting.

And prescription and vaccine volume increased significantly over that time period.

So now pharmacies are shortening their hours and more and more are just randomly not opening some days because they cannot find a pharmacist for the day. Why would anyone want to show up? Some stores are to the point where many are trying to have a pharmacist run them solo 2/3rds of the week.

It's not just annoying anymore. It's literally dangerous.

BlackHorse6969 posted...

fuck pharmacists. entitled idiots.

R1masher posted...

What a crap set up anyway, middlemen drug dealers that dont even doctor

Pharmacy is an extremely important field. Maybe companies should show some goddamn respect and treat their workers with dignity. Without the pharmacies and the doctors that run them, the prescribing doctors would be fucked. Pharmacies save their asses a lot.

But I guess the corporations are fine with hurting or even killing patients because they'd rather abuse their employees.

I'm always pro-labor, I hope the workers get what they want.

The overall shopping experience at Walgreens seems to have declined significantly the last 5 years or so. The one near me is almost starting to look like a Dollar Tree with stacks of shit in the aisle and one checker working the whole store.

Plus, a very shitty policy on mifepristone.

A few months ago the pharmacist at CVS gave me only half of the pills that were supposed to be in the bottle.

It was so obvious that just by holding the bag I could tell some thing was wrong. When I said something she got defensive and started some legalese about their inventory control tracking.

I told her to track it. She gave me the pills.

Never acknowledged the mistake.

CVS understaffs and overworks their pharmacies. While its unfortunate something like that happened, I think CVS as a company deserves the blame for creating these unsafe environments.

brestugo posted...

I'm always pro-labor, I hope the workers get what they want.

The overall shopping experience at Walgreens seems to have declined significantly the last 5 years or so. The one near me is almost starting to look like a Dollar Tree with stacks of shit in the aisle and one checker working the whole store.

Plus, a very shitty policy on mifepristone.

Yep, as a long time employee with Walgreens it has been getting grimmer and grimmer with time.

Less hours, more work, no time to train new hires, people just walking off the job, etc.

Only reason I'm still here is a have a cushy schedule and will likely not get one as good unless I get a bank job or something.

BroodRyu posted...

CVS understaffs and overworks their pharmacies. While its unfortunate something like that happened, I think CVS as a company deserves the blame for creating these unsafe environments.

Thats fair. She was a dick about it though.

I work at Walgreens. It pisses me off to no end how many complaints the pharmacy has gotten the last month due to wait times, when they are unbelievably busy open to close due to shot season ontop of the prescription filling. They are working their asses off, but people are just shitty and completely void of empathy.

hockeybub89 posted...

Pharmacy is an extremely important field. Maybe companies should show some goddamn respect and treat their workers with dignity. Without the pharmacies and the doctors that run them, the prescribing doctors would be fucked. Pharmacies save their asses a lot.

But I guess the corporations are fine with hurting or even killing patients because they'd rather abuse their employees.

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

Revelation34 posted...

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

lol

Revelation34 posted...

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

Lot of bizarre level ignorance in this topic.

Revelation34 posted...

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

And if filling that prescription harms the patient? Guess who theyre going to point the finger at.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Trolling.

BlackHorse6969 posted...

fuck pharmacists. entitled idiots.

Entitled to a safe workplace that pays well? Fuck yes they are

My local pharmacy is awesome and they always have like 5 people on duty. And this pharmacy is actually inside my local Midwest grocery store chain. Its in a smaller town of like 11,000 people in Bumfuck Iowa and they are always staffed well, super friendly, know everyones name the second they see them.

The staff always seem busy but non stressed, helpful, friendly, and happy. I have zero complaints about my local pharmacy. And it must be a good place to work because Ive been using it since 1999 and 2 of the people have been there the entire time and other employees that work there have been there 10+ years. They dont have a lot of people quitting and leaving.

Revelation34 posted...

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

You'd think one day you'd stop making dumbass posts like this.

archizzy posted...

My local pharmacy is awesome and they always have like 5 people on duty. And this pharmacy is actually inside my local Midwest grocery store chain. Its in a smaller town of like 11,000 people in Bumfuck Iowa and they are always staffed well, super friendly, know everyones name the second they see them.

The staff always seem busy but non stressed, helpful, friendly, and happy. I have zero complaints about my local pharmacy.

That just shows another problem with healthcare. Insurance companies and PBMs are so large and have so much power that they can drive well staffed independent pharmacies out of business by paying them garbage rates and pushing people to fill at CVS/Walgreens/mail order.

BroodRyu posted...

And if filling that prescription harms the patient? Guess who theyre going to point the finger at.

Trolling.

Birth control harms patients?

Revelation34 posted...

Birth control harms patients?

You never specified a scenario. I agree that religion should not get in the way of filling a legitimate prescription, but to lay down a blanket statement of refusing to fill a prescription should result in firing is ridiculous.

Revelation34 posted...

Birth control harms patients?

You do realize there's one or two other drugs pharmacists fill, right?

Revelation34 posted...

Birth control harms patients?

You need a prescription for plan B?

i worked at a cvs for five years as a tech. i get that bureaucratic bullshit is annoying but pharmacists find so many problems with what doctors prescribed. interactions, wrong directions, over or under dosing, and so forth. and we maybe fucked up on what was dispensed, at least what i saw, maybe three times. which for filling 400+ scripts per day is a pretty good batting average. mistakes happen. oh well. no one died or even took anything that was incorrectly dispensed since they caught it and brought it to our attention.

anyway we had full time crew the entire time i was there and not long after i quit, so did everyone else to go work at a specialty or hospital pharmacy that is union and pays ton more while having more hours for staffing to make sure things aren't stressful. if those places can do it, so can cvs or walgreens. i even kept up with some customers who i had become friendly with and they told me the new people/hours weren't cutting it so they had to switch pharmacies lol

Sexypwnstar posted...

You need a prescription for plan B?

No you do not. And I think OTC birth control is closer to becoming a thing. I know theres a push for it.

also the only thing i remember pharmacists flat out refusing to fill for people was plaquenil for covid lol

Pharmacists that refuse to fill a prescription from a doctor? I think that is messed up and should be dealt with.

mystic_belmont posted...

Pharmacists that refuse to fill a prescription from a doctor? I think that is messed up and should be dealt with.

And if theres a legitimate issue with the prescription that could harm the patient?

mystic_belmont posted...

Pharmacists that refuse to fill a prescription from a doctor? I think that is messed up and should be dealt with.

Again. Bizarre level of ignorance.

Revelation34 posted...

Any pharmacist that refuses to fill a prescription deserves to be fired.

Congrats. You have successfully shut down every pharmacy in the country.

Is this like the teacher thing? Where laypeople want educated people to stop doing their jobs and just shut up and dance to whatever tune they play?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Hell yeah. Just not at a chain.

hockeybub89 posted...

Congrats. You have successfully shut down every pharmacy in the country.

Is this like the teacher thing? Where laypeople want educated people to stop doing their jobs and just shut up and dance to whatever tune they play?

And then when something goes wrong they blame the pharmacist. Dont refuse prescriptions under any circumstances but this med messed me up so its your fault!

They think they know more about medicine than pharmacists do which is why they can say evil shit like any pharmacist that doesnt give me what I want needs to be fired

hockeybub89 posted...

Congrats. You have successfully shut down every pharmacy in the country.

Is this like the teacher thing? Where laypeople want educated people to stop doing their jobs and just shut up and dance to whatever tune they play?

So you're saying you hate women?

Well and most cases the pharmacist isnt outright refusing to fill the script. Theyre usually attempting to clarify or fix a script. But with how busy they are and how difficult it is to get a hold of some providers makes it challenging.

I think most straight up refusals are dumb COVID prescriptions and sketchy/forged controlled substance scripts.

Revelation34 posted...

So you're saying you hate women?

Again, no reasonable pharmacist or technician agrees with refusing birth control. No one here is arguing against that. Were talking about actually dangerous prescriptions that can actually harm a patient.

So this user Revelation34 can just ignore posts and keep trolling and pushing a narrative

So are mods going to do anything about it?

Sexypwnstar posted...

So this user Revelation34 can just ignore posts and keep trolling and pushing a narrative

So are mods going to do anything about it?

You learn to tune it out.

divot1338 posted...

You learn to tune it out.

This. Report and move on.

hockeybub89 posted...

Pharmacy is an extremely important field. Maybe companies should show some goddamn respect and treat their workers with dignity. Without the pharmacies and the doctors that run them, the prescribing doctors would be fucked. Pharmacies save their asses a lot.

But I guess the corporations are fine with hurting or even killing patients because they'd rather abuse their employees.

Sounds like corporate culture rearing its ugly head again. Thank goodness the pharmacy I typically use isnt under the Walgreens umbrella.

also another thing, cvs is built on these dumb customer service survey metrics. a 1-5 scale and anything not a 5 is changed to a 1. so we had to beg people to vote all 5s. since your hours are determined by this. we had the #1 score in new york city and we still kept losing hours. on top of that we started closing one hour earlier too. just ridiculous. they even got rid of a pharmacy district manager and merged the position into front store/pharmacy district manager. our DM was some dude who had worked at toys r us and didnt know a single thing about how pharmacies work, leading to my manager to be the de facto pharmacy district manager, leading conference calls and stuff while juggling other duties.

of course we got all of our work done on time anyway. but we did it without two 15 minute breaks (which we never took since our boss just let us dick around on the phone during our shift if it was slow - decent tradeoff). and eventually as i said earlier, everyone just got tired of it and quit.

Revelation34 posted...

So you're saying you hate women?

Pharmacists shouldn't be allowed to refuse scripts for non-pharmacy related reasons. Refuse a specific birth control because the directions are confusing or there's an interaction, not because your religion tells you sex is bad.