Why employees of major pharmacy chains are quitting their jobs


It’s my last day at the WAG and this is my final (i think) draft of the email that I‘ll send to upper management as I end my shift. I held back many unprofessional words but also wanted them to hear my frustration for not just myself but all other pharmacists and techs.

This is a final “goodbye letter” to Walgreen after 7 yrs working up to being a pharmacy manager. All the things/tasks that this tech is referencing in this letter is in the industry as “metrics”.  Generally this is something that your local independent pharmacy doesn’t worry about. When I had my own independent pharmacy… the “metrics” that I looked at… was the number of prescriptions filled and $$ generated this month compared to the previous month or the same month one year ago..  Once a month that took – MAYBE – 10-15 minutes of my time.  If my pharmacy was filling more prescriptions and generated more revenue – it was easy to come to the conclusion that we were doing something right…  if those numbers did not increase, we were doing something wrong and we need to find out what it is and how we make adjustments.  These pharmacy chains seem to want to over analyzes even minute details. Often they waste all of these staff hours trying to figure out how they could cut staff hours and generate more profits for the corporation. When work feels more like a battlefield, it’s essential to take steps to cope and improve your experience.

If you patronize a chain pharmacy and you wonder why you have to wait too damn long to get your prescriptions filled… or the pharmacy doesn’t have your meds in stock or why the Rx dept staff looks like they are running on a tread mill all the time… or why you can’t get them to answer the phone when you call.

If you are tired of being treated just like another number when you are trying to get your necessary medication filled… here is a hyperlink to find a independent pharmacy by zip code https://ncpa.org/pharmacy-locator

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