Current Events > CVS Pharmacy employees staging walkouts due to poor working conditions

(+) Yeah! (+)

Mainly in Missouri, sounds like another walkout is planned for tomorrow.

https://tinyurl.com/3fxn48ke

I can believe it.

I worked for CVS as a pharmacy tech a few years back to pick up a second job. Quit after about 2 or 3 months.

Breaks and lunch breaks are a joke, and you're shamed for actually wanting to take it if you're able to go in the first place. Although admittedly the main reason I quit was I didn't have the patience to deal with a coworker that I was about ready to hit with a brick after working 9+ hours at my main job.

A lot of CVSes try to close from 1:30-2:00 now, but I think that kind of gets ruined because people always show up right at 1:30 and get mad when you tell them to come back.

Yeah CVS is a horrible company. I can easily see the workers at my local one doing something like this.

I was interviewed once at their headquarters and was glad I didn't get the job.

Fun Fact: CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores

BroodRyu posted...

A lot of CVSes try to close from 1:30-2:00 now, but I think that kind of gets ruined because people always show up right at 1:30 and get mad when you tell them to come back.

CVS once had me wait an HOUR for my flu shot and then told me they were too busy and to come back another day

My insurance was only covering at CVS so I refused to leave. I got my shot shortly.

This was mid-late afternoon not lunch though.

Given the horror stories I've read about CVS pharmacies by the workers, I believe it.

Was CVS the one where the lead pharmacist on duty was also responsible for running the rest of the store, on top of doing the drug things? Like taking customer complaints, running a cash register if there wasn't a cashier, all that crap.

I worked there for 6 years. I was fortunate that I worked with some cool people the whole time I was there. We were one of the busiest stores in the state so we were pretty well staffed but I know some of the other stores weren't so lucky.

CVS basically dictates how many hours a store will have allocated to employees in a week. So the Store Managers would have to balance it out the best they could but I always heard it wasn't enough and that they would be short handed which only left sometimes only 2 people working the front store. Employees would get pissed because of the lack of help end up leaving.

I am not surprised the CVS in my town has a breathtaking amount of turnover...almost always a new face each week.

Some, jumped ship and went to a CVS in a neighboring city and like it much better there.

Pharmacists and pharmacy techs are treated pretty horribly, so this tracks.

Fuck CVS

So those shitbag other pharmacists didn't stand the line and went to the walkout locations?

Not surprised at all. All of the 24 hour pharmacy CVS in my area had their hours cut because of a lack of pharmacists/a lot of quitting because of the poor treatment. (It was at the point where a prescription could take up to 8 hours to get filled....I used to call my stuff in (controlled 2s you have to actually call to get the fill started) not too long after they open and would be picking it up at like 7 pm because they would be so slammed.

I pick up monthly prescriptions so I started going back to the local walmart pharmacy......which doesn't seem to be all that better, but hey at least the same scripts is getting filled in like 10 minutes.

XxKrazyChaosxX posted...

I worked there for 6 years. I was fortunate that I worked with some cool people the whole time I was there. We were one of the busiest stores in the state so we were pretty well staffed but I know some of the other stores weren't so lucky.

CVS basically dictates how many hours a store will have allocated to employees in a week. So the Store Managers would have to balance it out the best they could but I always heard it wasn't enough and that they would be short handed which only left sometimes only 2 people working the front store. Employees would get pissed because of the lack of help end up leaving.

That's the thing with companies. They can have a reputation for treating their employees terribly or having bad working conditions, but most people's experience will likely be at the ground level. If they have cool colleagues and manager, they probably wouldn't notice or care if their billionaire overlord is in trouble.

There's an Amazon sorting center opening in my city soon (in Australia). To hell with Jeff Bezos, but I'd be surprised if the average employee there has a hard time. Mainly because worker protection laws are better here.

My last job too. There was a scandal involving the CEO misusing funds, but... that didn't affect me. What affected me was my immediate working environment, which was full of awesome people (management included). That's the ground level reality for most of us.

Good.

I worked there for longer than I care to admit. Apparently, my location wasn't the worst of them. But they absolutely understaff and underpay. And they set their employees up to be corporate meat-shields.

Sometimes, customers are just assholes. There's no pinning that on the company. But they exacerbate the problem by letting the workload become overwhelming. A person shows up at the window after having their foot amputated and they're justifiably pissed that their pain medication isn't ready. (Yes, that happened.)

It's unethical to let things fall behind when you're dealing with pain management or life-saving medications. Corporate doesn't give a fuck. They can't be sued because the employees didn't work fast enough.

Dark_Arbron posted...

That's the thing with companies. They can have a reputation for treating their employees terribly or having bad working conditions, but most people's experience will likely be at the ground level. If they have cool colleagues and manager, they probably wouldn't notice or care if their billionaire overlord is in trouble.

There's an Amazon sorting center opening in my city soon (in Australia). To hell with Jeff Bezos, but I'd be surprised if the average employee there has a hard time. Mainly because worker protection laws are better here.

My last job too. There was a scandal involving the CEO misusing funds, but... that didn't affect me. What affected me was my immediate working environment, which was full of awesome people (management included). That's the ground level reality for most of us.

When you strip away the worker protection laws you mention, working conditions suffer. When working conditions suffer, turnover increases and the number of awesome people willing to work at these places plummets. Even the awesome people who do work there are overworked, underpaid, and stressed out.

darkace77450 posted...

When you strip away the worker protection laws you mention, working conditions suffer. When working conditions suffer, turnover increases and the number of awesome people willing to work at these places plummets. Even the awesome people who do work there are overworked, underpaid, and stressed out.

Fair. I can only speak from my own experience, having never lived or worked in the US.
(Australia isn't perfect either, I'm under no illusion otherwise.)

Yeah this sounds actually bad, I can believe this over just some Gamestop workers being upset at their job. Try doing what I had to do for way too many years :( and I don't want to go off on anymore of a tangent.

Something else to consider is how insurance companies/PBMs use Medicare loopholes and plenty of other methods to claw back money from most pharmacies that arent their preferred pharmacies (the ones they own). Independents can get surprise bills 6 months after a script is filled.

Someone who work there for over two years and had a really shitty boss, I am not surprised.

Solidarity

Good

Better pharmacist working conditions = faster and safer prescriptions. Everyone should be supporting the pharmacy workers on this one.

I worked for them. Im not surprised. They are a garbage company

My brother managed a CVS for years until he finally just had enough and quit. They were the worst. Corporate was pure trash.

BroodRyu posted...

Better pharmacist working conditions = faster and safer prescriptions. Everyone should be supporting the pharmacy workers on this one.

Insurance companies want people to use online pharmacies because the tech is there for AI to check your pills. The accuracy is very high as well for the one I have seen.

XxKrazyChaosxX posted...

CVS basically dictates how many hours a store will have allocated to employees in a week. So the Store Managers would have to balance it out the best they could but I always heard it wasn't enough and that they would be short handed which only left sometimes only 2 people working the front store. Employees would get pissed because of the lack of help end up leaving.

King_Rial posted...

My brother managed a CVS for years until he finally just had enough and quit. They were the worst. Corporate was pure trash.

This just seems like Radio Shack all over again.
https://www.sbnation.com/2014/11/26/7281129/radioshack-eulogy-stories

WrkHrdPlayHrdr posted...

Fun Fact: CVS stands for Consumer Value Stores

This fact wasn't fun. I would like a refund

CVS is quite possibly the worst job I've ever had, which is amazing since i held some pretty shitty jobs to get by.

My sister worked at CVS. I think she enjoyed it.

More worried about rite aid at the moment. They're about to close hundreds of stores and declare bankruptcy. They're not doing covid vaccines until end of October while Walgreens and CVS have already started.

Cuticrusader09 posted...

Insurance companies want people to use online pharmacies because the tech is there for AI to check your pills. The accuracy is very high as well for the one I have seen.

Lol

I remember going to a CVS to pick up my medication during 2021, and the drive-thru was closed. I go inside and there's a big ass line at the pharmacy window, which also happens to be closed.

The problem? The lead pharmacist got into a car accident and because apparently this stupid fucking company doesn't have a backup system in place for things like this, you just had this small group of regular employees (and pharmacy employees) just standing there doing fucking nothing and telling us that they had to wait for another lead pharmacist from another store to get over there and unlock the goddamn pharmacy window.

There were other people in line also getting pissed because there wasn't any easy way of filing a complaint against CVS.

My friend worked there as a pharmacy tech and they offered her the top pay to not quit after only a few weeks of being there.

BroodRyu posted...

Something else to consider is how insurance companies/PBMs use Medicare loopholes and plenty of other methods to claw back money from most pharmacies that arent their preferred pharmacies (the ones they own). Independents can get surprise bills 6 months after a script is filled.

Yeah, another thing to consider is that CVS is one of those PBMs.

Totally not a corrupt system at all

Bump. Should be happening today.

Anyone else really like onions?

I make a pretty good onion jam

I dont get the onion reference, but oh well another bump.

XxKrazyChaosxX posted...

CVS basically dictates how many hours a store will have allocated to employees in a week. So the Store Managers would have to balance it out the best they could but I always heard it wasn't enough and that they would be short handed which only left sometimes only 2 people working the front store. Employees would get pissed because of the lack of help end up leaving.

That's basically any retail store with a corporate structure these days.

That said I wish CVS hadn't bought Aetna. They've taken away a lot of our perks. We used to get really good tuition reimbursement, and PTO was allowed to be given as an incentive/reward. One year when we blew our goals out of the water they gave us the last two weeks of December as PTO. CVS won't even let us expense food as a reward.

All of Healthcare is on fire right now. Private equity is squeezing it dry

Well they are closing 400 to 500 stores.

https://www.thestreet.com/retailers/cvs-is-permanently-closing-hundreds-of-stores-for-a-surprising-reason