Today I turned in my resignation as a certified pharmacy technician with CVS

Leaving the bench

Today I turned in my resignation as a certified pharmacy technician with CVS.

I’ve been working as a tech for the last 18 years and the changes that come down on us are getting worse and worse. I’ve lost hope that our patients will be taken care of. Last week was the worst shift of them all. A flood of people coming in for flu shots, phone lines lighting up, people piling up at the register, and stacks of prescriptions waiting to be filled. We were drowning with no relief in sight. As I looked at my overtaxed pharmacist all I could see was a mistake waiting to happen. She’s being pulled in no less than 5 different directions, while the flu shots are piling up and she’s suiting up for the task, the narcotic waiter she still has to count and verify is 40 minutes past the promised time. While the patient was extremely understanding after watching us for the last hour, it’s not fair to him or any of our patients to have our attention pulled away in different directions constantly. I went home after my shift, defeated, and really thought about why I was still working here. It most certainly wasn’t because of the money, I could make more working at a coffee shop or as a cashier at a grocery store, shoot a lot of them even got hazard pay during this time. No raises since my pharmacy was bought out 5 years prior and most likely none in the future even with minimum wage creeping up in my state. No hazard pay, no thank you for coming in, nothing but headaches and chest pains. Our patients are no longer patients but are treated as customers who should be up sold at every interaction. Do you need this or that, how about we call your doctors for refills you don’t need, what about auto filling, what about any of these 3-5 vaccines, do you have a rewards card…. Looking back over the years the best thing to happen to me was NOT going to pharmacy school where I would have been saddled with a mortgage in student loan debt and in a job market that’s over saturated. 12 hour shifts, no time for a bathroom break, let alone trying to have a lunch break and many working extra hours before and after their shifts uncompensated just to clear the work for their colleagues. It was bittersweet turning in my 2 week notice, I feel awful for the team I’m leaving behind but I’m glad the abuse will be over. I did not join the pharmacy team to become a used car salesman but that is what CVS has turned it into, minus the commission of course. It’s time to let go and focus on myself, my son has been counting down the days to my last pharmacy shift so he came have some more mommy time… life is too short.

5 Responses

  1. Walgreen is systematically buying up independent pharmacies in Springfield. During the 3 years I have lived here I have gotten a form letter after the fact for Cost cutter, Sunshine Health and now no letter but The phone for Family just rings at Walgreens. I won’t go there either. I wonder if Walgreens is doing this alone or with Walmart/etc.?

  2. When are we striking. I’ve heard too Many Pharmacist writing to the Board of pharmacy just to be denied with the reason the board does not control the company operations…

    Yes but the board sets the guidelines for operation and if they’re refusing to do anything then the pharmacist have to take it in their own hands.

    • According to this article https://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=6552337&page=1 the majority of BOP’s are stacked with non practicing corporate pharmacists …so is it any wonder that “they” claim that they can’t interfere in how a permit holder operates their business.. My money is on that if a BOP did try to take corrective actions against a chain… those non practicing corporate pharmacists would find themselves “holding down a counter” and they would probably not be able to “keep up” in a work environment that they helped to create… so the safest “professional” thing for them to do is to do nothing… allowing them to keep their position on the BOP and their paycheck from their chain employer. The primary charge of the BOP is to protect the “public’s health & safety”. I have even seen quotes from some BOP’s that they see no relationship between staffing levels, volume levels and Rx mis-fills.

  3. I NO LONGER use CVS, Walmart. or Walgreen pharmacies! I am DAMN tired of being seen as a “drug addict” while simply attempting to get my MEDICATION filled, used for the last 25 years. No increase in dosage. As a matter of fact, I CHOSE to reduce my dosage 8 YEARS before forcibly “tapered” to a dosage that is not effective by the CDC “guideline” but it is enough to keep me from thinking very bad thoughts. I do not blame the pharmacists personally at CVS and I realize they are overworked! I will do my very best to keep the “mom and pops” pharmacies in business! I am sorry for the working conditions of the pharmacists and techs at CVS but, CVS wishes to be a monopoly and that needs to STOP!

  4. Fight back!

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