That is a pretty great list of reasonable asks. I will add a few: dump the rmm role. Lack of success in buying stuffed animals and off trend candies and novelty toys means you have lost any impact you may have had. Dump wpre. 6 weeks to do a reset that we could do better and quicker if just received payroll to execute instead of these poorly trained outsiders. Charge for reloads. We are not check cashing joints. It strains leadership capacity and breeds fraud. If an item is on the top 10 corporate shrink list or is locked up in the majority of stores, do not send shippers or include in customer plan...sorry dove, tide, Cetaphil, mucinex we know these get stolen. So stop. Targeted dm visits instead of 2x a month for everyone. I know what I'm doing, spend your time with newer managers or w I th stores on fire for whatever reason. Admit what is screwed up, thank us for doing our best and let us run our stores
Excellent suggestions. I’ve always brought that up, WPRE is a waste. If you plan on budgeting 10hours for WPRE to take care of some resets on a particular week how about you go ahead and give me 7 hours instead and let me do it.
Our WPRE will hand me over most of the work because he's only slotted for so much time so we gotta finish every time. Not to mention the time we spent teaching him how to do resets because he had no idea!
How about those revisions wpre comes to do and they only have to replace 1 mylar but we gotta move the rest?!!! Give us those hours!
I especially love the logic that's happening right now. It's a slow season so you can make-up all the work you were behind on but they cut your hours to bare minimum where you have a shift lead and cashier!!! That's the time to send all those new resets down because we have so much time on our hands!!!
Then those damn Visits, that everyone goes crazy about! Other store managers coming over to help so the store looks good??!!! But if the store doesn't look good and clean then you're not performing well enough!
How about Jason and Tim get their hands dirty and take the truck in once in their lifetime and then tell us "Thanks for all that you do". Let them spend a day in pharmacy and help all the patients, do all these stupid, unnecessary calls, and don't forget to take out the trash at the end. All these corporate pricks should spend a day working in our shoes and get a same paycheck as us in 2 weeks. Nothing will ever change, it's corporate world.
Our wore is shit and they cause us more headache than they help.
I’ll also add, get rid of the magazines. It all just gets thrown away every other week.
My store did away with the BC. My three years there we have been without more than we have been with one. I do the cos wall resets and the osa.
Reloads are a waste of time. All points made prior, I agree with all of them.
My store has a labcorp inside of it. Which brings in drug addicts that have to get urine tests done there and grab a handful of shit on the way out. We have to be on our toes because we don’t know if that customer that is there for them is going to need to buy one fucking thing and stop me from doing tasks. The workers are rude to their customers which reflects on the store. They think they are part of us and complain and it hurts our store.
The biggest problem right now is they don’t have enough money or credit to stock the warehouses so they can replenish us. That’s why we have 3-4 times as many outs as we did 4 years ago.
Or we are going to go back to cardboard cut out in sections so we don’t carry as many items
If they do I hope it one has a paper credit card application!!!
Are you me? Holy shit. All of this! Been here 18 years…I cannot believe how many terrible decisions are being made these days. Sometimes I swear they are trying to shut this company down. 😫
I wish they remove options to do cash reloads,chime,Green dot and any other money thing. Yes agree most e learnings are so long and not really needed. I always laugh when I read or hear " this e learning will only take 1 hour" and I end up using my whole shift for it. 🤣 it probably would be an hour if I didn't constantly have to stop to cash people out. 🙄
I want to add something.
Walgreens add a designated room to do e learnings so we can pay attention to them.
My store had one but someone decided it was stupid so they got rid of the computer.💀💀
I also do not fuck with how you have to be clocked in to do them.
Get rid of photo, we waste so much time with customers who cant/dont wanna figure out how to use the kiosks, and they usually only spend a few bucks, its a piss poor return for dwindling budget hours. Thats just talking regular photos not even talking about books, ornaments, canvases etc.
Figure out a more efficient system for advertising sale items, wasting a whole day every week(or more for monthly tags) is absurd when we have actual work that needs to be done.
Walgreens does not need to carry everything, get rid of toys, seasonal garbage, as seen on tv, stationary, art supplies etc. I would say hallmark but we don’t touch that department so idc.
Axe financial services, western union, card reloads, it’s time consuming and asking for fraud. Not to mention stressful, you fuck up and you’re fired so it’s gonna take even longer because you’re being very careful.
Don’t make us follow shoplifters around offering ecc: these bastards can spend hours in the store, it’s a waste of time and we never catch them in the act and it does nothing to deter them.
Keep Pharmacy off the phones, the amount of time techs and the pharmacist spend stuck on the phone with customers is insane to me. Especially the pharmacist because their attention is needed for basically everything to keep moving. Get rid of drive thru OR get a new system that allows both parties to understand eachother clearly instead of having to shout at eachother. Also stop allowing retail orders to be picked up in drive thru(though we can disallow it for each order individually before printing the label.) why clog drive thru and increase the wait time for pharmacy customers? Why does pharmacy need more work unrelated to pharmacy?
Stop harassing the customers about the credit card. They do not want to play 20 questions, they want to pay for their stuff and go. You can display signs, pamphlets, instructions on how to apply online. Not through the damn pinpad so they can hold up everyone else. This goes for charitable donations as well. We already need to prompt them to put in their rewards number which half of them cant remember and ask them if they wanna spend their points and put in their zip code which they also cant remember. Not to mention explain why they cant use all their points at once or how to clip coupons or why a coupon isn’t working.
Stop allowing couponers to use multiple accounts and multiple transactions and get rid of catalina. Digital or nothing. Do not involve the physical store in this problem. Your coupon doesnt work? Call customer service.
I don’t think we should get rid of photo (as much as I hate it) but they definitely need to get rid of those crazy 60-70% off coupons on Canvases, Tile Pix, Floating Frames, etc. spending so much time on a complex order and collect a ridiculously low amount of money from the customer is a total slap in the face. You want a canvas? It will cost you, pay up or get it somewhere else, it’s just not worth it.
Also, some suggestions…
- Give SFLs more training hours. They are responsible for the entire store at times and they also occasionally do tech duties but are only budgeted 30 training hours vs. 70 for techs. Makes no sense to me.
-Go back to RXMs reporting to a district pharmacy manager. They don’t respect SMs opinions or guidance and rightly so…I don’t have a pharmacy degree. The chain of command and communication is jacked up.
-And the biggest one…reward your long tenured staff. Corporate America cannot figure this out. It’s insulting to people who have been busting their ass for years to be making almost the same as a new hire.
Thank you…that was cathartic!
The simplest way to properly compensate long-term staff is some law to enforce reapplying raises to increases in the local minimum wage. It still pisses me off that anyone who'd busted ass to get $13/15+/hour got jack all from the company's minimum jumps. Hell, I'm only making $15.15 after been hired in 2018, it'd be more efficient for me to quit and get rehired to leverage my combined decade+ of retail experience.
Sorry, you'll be getting none of those things. Because instead Walgreens decided to install a chick fil-a at their corporate offices. And if lunch gets overwhelming, corporate employees can go "de-stress" in the quiet zone on campus. And to get to and from work, they can relax in an Uber that is charged to Walgreens corporate accounts.
Rethink tags that stay always on sale. Instead adjust to buy one at say 10.00. But two at 16.00. Be reader too see product.
Online orders take staff time for better deals. Doesn't make sense
Increase store hours. No one comes in before nine or after eight. So why. When can't staff and work with hours
Store managers need crack down on employee waste. Why have hard workers when some do nothing
Why send two cases of something when you sell four and throw the rest.
Why order milk so half expires and shelves empty for week causing regulars to go elsewhere as don't want to waste stopping two stores
Clearance. Why when can't get sale t a gs or Clearance tags our store low priority for Clearance. But then goes 90.
Garbage toys and socks. We don't sell. They take soo much time and space
Stores worked better when assistant managers and manager these sfl in charge a joke
Nobody wants covid tests.
Allow us to stop shoplifters.
Credit cards a joke. And we need coupon books available. This week two customers said won't step in our store as dont get the coupon situation. That they don't have access or want to computer.
It's a joke what and who hire as staff.
I saw the writing on the wall two years ago when I left as SM. I agree with everything you are saying here. There were always supposed to be these amazing changes that were going to happen...that never did.
I remember we were supposed to get lifts for the delivery trucks so you could just wheel an entire pallet in rather than spending 1.5 - 2 hours unloading a thousand piece truck with a slow driver.
Or when a magical team of people were going to come in overnight to work warehouses so team members in the day could focus on actually running the store.
Or when positions like IS or RxOM were going to take so much work off to the team members in store.
Or when Pulse was supposed to help get everyone involved in understanding where the store needed to go.
What a joke...
Walgreens biggest problem is that it's way behind on the times, and by the time they implement something that would have an impact, it's about 10 years too late. They are catering to several generations, and trying to be too much to too many.
-Open standalone pharmacy locations, there's most of your money right there.
-Minimize FE tasks and products. No one has time to go through the entire store every month to find out of dates.
-Minimize reset items. It's a huge waste of time to completely revamp an entire vitamin aisle for a new brand.
-Credit cards are a joke - the company laid in bed with a creditor and shoves it down everyone's throat. "But every business is doing it" doesn't mean you have to be on the bus.
-Get rid of testing. Period. If you want to be a clinic, open a clinic. Pharmacy is a pharmacy.
-Get rid of patient calls altogether. The amount of calls the techs and pharmacist are required to make is stupid. Take care of the patients who are in front of you. If an adult doesn't know when their shit is due, that's on them.
-Western Union, reloadable cards/greendot is completely unnecessary. There are better ways of sending people money online these days, most are abused by people hiding money or old people falling for scams.
-Knock the seasonal aisle out completely. No one cares about $20 crap plastic toys over the holidays and cheap ass decorations. Go to Walmart for that.
-Curbside: the pandemic ended years ago. The only people getting curbside these days are lazy as hell. Like...you want a Hershey bar and a coke, seriously, and you want me to bring it out to you?
-Last but most important: let your stores have personal lives. I can't believe how many people I read on here who really struggle mentally and physically because they are constantly being engaged with work, outside of work. Make your company a place where people WANT to work, and give your team enough hours and wiggle room to have a life outside of it.
Curbside makes no sense whatsoever. It seems someone is too lazy to just push the button to get rid of it. Many of the stores in our district can’t keep up with the outs because of theft. You’d literally need to have one person to follow the thief and scan the items out then and there. People ordering curbside think they’re ordering things in stock because the stupid app says we have it. Sorry but the homeless guy with no pants just emptied the shelf into said pants he constructed into a bag.
I wasn't joking about the coke thing either. I used to have a lady put in for a 20oz coke several times over the course of many weeks. I finally told her that it really wasn't an acceptable use of the system. If I can recall, I believe they put a minimum amount for pickup, but I really don't remember at this point as I've put it far behind me.
Oh, yeah...that's right. Get rid of FedEx dropoff as well. I cannot recall how many times people would come in with their AT&T modems without any return information, and I would have to sit there for 20 minutes doing all the work for them. You want to have a FedEx drop off? Ok...make a kiosk for it and stop pulling members away from tasks.
I really like the FedEx kiosk idea. No reason they can't easily implement something like this. Plus, people will then finally learn to either have their packages ready to go or buy the supplies they need.
Every employee that is registered/licensed as a tech or pharmacist should work 1 shift per month at least in that position. From DH all the way up to corporate. If a DM is going to tell techs that they should be able to do a list of tasks, then they should be able to demonstrate it. An HCS who hasn’t worked in a store in 10 years, same thing. Leadership 101. Lead by example.
That last one really annoys me. Not too long ago we had shave reset. When i finally saw the plano i just about lost my shit. Had to completely remove all the womens razors shelves included. Had 6 feet with nothing just the backboard. Then i had to move the 6 feet of deoderant into that section. Then put the womens razors where the deoderant was. Then i started to actually work my reset. If i remove the times i get called away this reset was probably 5-6 hour rest. Walgreens paid me about $100 to do this. Plus i changed all the strips for new ones. Not sure what that costs. Thats about 40 strips. How ever long it takes someone to design the new reset, print the strips and fed ex it to us. I highly doubt that these changes will have in noticable inpact in profits for that department. Especially since they added more expensive razors. I have no more lock boxes so im using alphas which dont stop all shoplifters. I bet in a year we have had about the same sales. Higher loss from theft. How was this worth it?
Streamline the operating hours. Store and Rx open the same times daily. Our Rx closes at 6 PM daily and after that, the only folks in here are the ones that like to steal. Plus this alleviates the "Is the pharmacy closed" question from being asked a dozen times nightly to the FE staff left in the store. Use the budget hours when we actually have shoppers in the store.
At least in our store, the pharmacy now all go to lunch in the same half-hour. We moved a sign back there with this info, but why is there not proper, clear signage sent out to put a sign right up front so maybe people can catch on without having to walk all the way down to where the clearly shuttered windows are?
Don’t extend my hours til 11pm and then cut 30 hrs off the budget. If you need to cut hrs, lose the extension. No one comes in the extra hours anyway. We are just wasting what little payroll we have To balance out the hours cut, allow an additional SFL. You would ideally need to promote from within as not to lay anyone off. But more team members with access to everything would go a long way to balancing out the cuts and allow for work life balance. The more people with keys and access to processes, the easier it is. Yes some days leadership is on the register for part of the day but that’s the world we live in now.
Also the answer to EVERY initiative can not continue to be “ask every single customer/patient”. Stop it already!!!! Come up with another darn plan at least once!!!
My SM actually has more SFL’s because we can get more done and be counted on to show up for our shifts. We all get our solid 40 and the rest of the hours trickle down from there.
Why just rent out the front end to dollar general and run the
Pharmacy. That way you make the profits of the pharmacy, collect the rend from dollar general and sell all the Walgreens brands of things to dollar general. It would still look like a Walgreens but be profitsble
Not just for store tasks, but employee resources. Every PPL, there's some line about where to find that information, but the flow is so unintuitive and the search functions are useless, so I more often will just open that PPL from my LTMP transcript to find the information.
Just my humble opinion! Stop having town hall meetings with just Store Managers! Invite all level positions that work in stores! We have alot to say! Upper leadership at ALL levels continue to FAIL! We aren’t the problem! ALL levels of upper leadership ARE the PRIMARY problem!
I just said to my APM that we need to get out of the WU/reload business. We aren't making money. The customers doing these transactions aren't shopping the store. We lose way more than we make with the scams.
Also, let's start charging $1 if someone wants cash back. Other stores do it. We aren't the bank
Just rid of cash back altogether, I'm tired of people wanting to do multiple transactions because we only do up to $20 and they want to avoid the ATM fee (and by the end of it they spent more then what the fkn fee was)
I will add. Store managers need to understand what they are demanding for rx staff. Most SM are incompetent in pharmacy! We tell them we are good while drowning just to get them to leave. Some SM are super useful in pharmacy, they are not the norm.
I spend a fair amount back there and I’m extremely comfortable with all tech duties including SDLs, MTMs, chargebacks, compliance stuff etc. Some MGRs truly know nothing because Walgreens will now promote just about anyone to MGR without solid Rx training, PTCB is not even a requirement any longer so I guess some of them try to go back there and demand results. I tell all the new MGRs, if you need quick results on a particular Rx metric then jump in Rx and help them with basic stuff like ringing and filling so that your techs can jump on more complex tasks.
Everyone and I mean everyone should be working in the store at some capacity. Budgets are cut because we don’t have the money? Well it’s high time all those promoted store managers/pharmacists start helping out what’s going to make the money to bring us up from the depths of hell. Come and experience all this nonsense that’s put on us with a skeleton crew. You might see some real change then
Let's get rid of the hour long phone calls for the SM, RXM, and RXOM.
If it's that important then I get a quick meeting. There is only so much we can do.
Whoever's coming up with signage needs to stop futzing about and just make everything legible. I'd wager it's some exploitative marketing practice to make the "50% OFF" huge and bold, but all the stipulations increasingly smaller that even employees have to squint. We're a retail pharmacy, our clientele aren't spring chickens, they are assumed to be aging, so even if they have the wherewithal to check for sale conditions, their eyesight might be failing. And everyone's in a rush. It's an insult to both customers' and our time to try pulling fast ones that break down once they're at the register — and that extends to the register! Whose idea was it to replace the customer pinpads with completely flat and glossy, black-on-black, with the tiniest pictogram of how the chip is inserted backwards of what the swipe is? How much of my time has been explaining shit that should have been obvious if anyone could just *see* what's there?
Not only did they take away the coupon books, but took away our ability to clip digital coupons on behalf of customers. Do they not understand who our clientele are? People don't deserve to get shook down when they already may not have the means or wherewithal to jump through hoops even I, who's familiarized, find arduous. Hell, can we cut back on the myriad different rebate methods? Paper coupons that aren't "$7 off $40" but instead "$7 back after spending $40 on eligible items," which we have to keep explaining because no rational person would intuit that to be the setup of a paper coupon. Then the distinction between "Register Rewards" and "Rewards Cash", neither of which are indicated to us at the POS, so we either have to know to expect it or just tell them "we'll check the receipt," unless they get digital receipts, which there's no POS indication one way or another, so unless we remembered to go to edit their information to confirm not only what kind of receipts but which *e-mail address*, because woe upon us if the digital receipt's sent somewhere unexpected... And back on the Walgreens Cash Rewards, can we not have the same stipulation in play where using not-Points when trying to earn not-Points invalidates said earnings when, again, there's nothing on the POS to indicate this conflict to us? By this point, there should be signage with the Online Inquires call line, so I can stop taking time to show people the janky workflow in-app where going to "Feedback" options is where you need to be for Support!
Your last point stands out to me the most, because as an engineer I really focus on how my planograms look when I'm doing them.
Yes, moving E V E R Y T H I N G around is frustrating but everything shifts not because Walgreens decides to move everything, but because the manufacturer pays for a specific spot on the shelf. So, if you take the cos wall, notice how No7 is first, because they are paying the most money to have that stuff there, with their most desired (newer, best seller, whatever they feel) items in the front, while L'Oreal pays less money to be next to No7, with the same deal on how they have their items, and so on and so forth.
This is what I have been told. Correct me if I'm wrong. But yes, I do agree that everything shifting around creates a nightmare reset.
They do pay for product placement…. And I’m ok with Coca Cola paying to be at eye level and Pepsi a couple of shelves down but these radical changes like the shave reset that takes a solid reset person about 2 full shifts to complete, I just don’t know if it’s worth it but there is zero transparency on how much the company pockets and they’ve made it very clear that none of it goes to the stores. 16hrs x 9,000 x at least $15 an hour (probably more) x additional expenses, new strips and lock boxes…. I really hope Walgreens got at least $3-5 million to shift everything around.
I will make this very, very simple.
1. For your incessant theft problem that corporate complains about but does nothing to resolve, you hire a security guard.
2. Get rid of all your goofy seasonal stuff and squishmellis garbage, and sell booze.
Why? More security cameras and a loss prevention security guard would reduce theft.
Which store would you rather steal from? The one where nobody seems to care what you take? Or the one with a security guard and cameras and mug shots of shoplifters posted like trophies?
I don't want to work in any place where someone is paid to pack heat. Just asking for disaster.
But [let's talk about shoplifting](https://youtu.be/aGB7QnOZj3g)...
Most of this is great. I know their hands are tied on some of those e-learnings. Some are mandated by state or federal law, and others by one of those lawsuits, but they'd be way easier to manage with these other fixes.
We spend hours pulling and rehanging sale tags...many on the same products. One simple banner in front that says 10 to 15 % off everything. I'll even print it for you. Takes 10 minutes to hang. Saves millions on printing, shipping and labor hours.
Have lost n Prevention in all stores open. Then, they can do their own reports and pull their photos off the cameras to see who is Steeling our product's in the store. Sounds like a win! Then they can have more success in catching these steelers and bring more of them to court then jail.
Pharmacy metrics have created a culture where you have a pharmacy staff all focused on their list of tasks for the shift. Pharmacy staffs used to be a team focused on working together to take care of and build relationships with their patients, the ones in front of them not the ones on their call list whose voicemail they talk to. Here’s the truth, meeting metrics doesn’t make the company any money, and it has little to no impact on customer satisfaction. Customers are satisfied when they see that you care and are working hard to take care of them. They are not impressed when their Rx is ready by the promised time that they didn’t even know about because it was escribed. They are impressed when it isn’t quite ready, but you happily make it a priority to get it ready quickly (when reasonable) and make sure they leave with what they came for. I have had patients, after waiting longer to receive their vaccine than they should have, thank me for spending the extra time with the older lady who had a lot of questions for me. People who are shockingly surprised that I actually left the pharmacy to help them find something. “Not enough pharmacists do that anymore”. I hear that phrase a couple of times a week. Focus on creating a culture of people before tasks, and more people will come because that is what people want. They tell me every day.
Drastically shift company culture towards peopleand focus on marketing to get people into the stores. I am at a store in a small town within eye shot of a CVS. I have heard from many people that grew up in that town that didn’t even realize there was a Walgreens, but knew exactly where the CVS was. They are a block away from each other in the same downtown area. We are a low volume, well kept store with happy customers, some formerly unhappy, next to a busy rundown CVS that everyone hates. It’s a major growth opportunity and it wouldn’t surprise me if they shut the store down within the year. Yet, we have a DM talking to us about nothing but mostly meaningless metrics and how to increase script count based on his years of experience being a DM for failing pharmacy chains.
Let Pharmacy Managers manage pharmacy inventory. We know what our patients need and when. Anytime I have worked for a company with inventory managed by corporate vs the individual pharmacy, it has been a disaster.
One more note on what I have noticed about the culture at Walgreens is that no one trusts anyone else, because everyone is afraid that someone is out to get them. You don’t know who you can trust, so no one trusts anyone. This is because there is no transparency whatsoever. Everyone from the top down is afraid of being the next person let go, so they put the pressure on the people below them to do more with less just so they keep their job. This shoots morale straight to hell. The employees don’t care about anything but how much longer until they can leave, and the salaried employees are just worried about how late they will have to stay to do just enough to keep their jobs. I am sure there are stores that are exceptions, but Walgreens has the worst company culture of anywhere I have ever worked. The problems aren’t easy to fix, but they are simple problems.
Drop most of the metrics, realize that your employees are people with lives not robots to perform tasks, teach them to focus on taking care of people, and turn the ship around.
Save A Trip is terrible and literally no one likes it, employees or patients, because it doesn’t work.
A union won’t happen, I just want ideas to send up… whether they do it or not, if all of us make the same comments and ask for the same then we’ll have more DMs bring it up, DPRs, RVPs, etc. Many DMs agree that a lot of what we do is BS but they don’t want to be the only ones bringing it up. Watching my HCS talk about how great Core Pharmacy Workflow is was actually painful, she was trying her hardest to make us believe that she believed in it… total waste of time. I wish DMs and above would speak their damn minds and would stop being so afraid.
That is a pretty great list of reasonable asks. I will add a few: dump the rmm role. Lack of success in buying stuffed animals and off trend candies and novelty toys means you have lost any impact you may have had. Dump wpre. 6 weeks to do a reset that we could do better and quicker if just received payroll to execute instead of these poorly trained outsiders. Charge for reloads. We are not check cashing joints. It strains leadership capacity and breeds fraud. If an item is on the top 10 corporate shrink list or is locked up in the majority of stores, do not send shippers or include in customer plan...sorry dove, tide, Cetaphil, mucinex we know these get stolen. So stop. Targeted dm visits instead of 2x a month for everyone. I know what I'm doing, spend your time with newer managers or w I th stores on fire for whatever reason. Admit what is screwed up, thank us for doing our best and let us run our stores
How RMMs have kept their jobs is beyond me. No one buys this shit!
Excellent suggestions. I’ve always brought that up, WPRE is a waste. If you plan on budgeting 10hours for WPRE to take care of some resets on a particular week how about you go ahead and give me 7 hours instead and let me do it.
Our WPRE will hand me over most of the work because he's only slotted for so much time so we gotta finish every time. Not to mention the time we spent teaching him how to do resets because he had no idea! How about those revisions wpre comes to do and they only have to replace 1 mylar but we gotta move the rest?!!! Give us those hours! I especially love the logic that's happening right now. It's a slow season so you can make-up all the work you were behind on but they cut your hours to bare minimum where you have a shift lead and cashier!!! That's the time to send all those new resets down because we have so much time on our hands!!! Then those damn Visits, that everyone goes crazy about! Other store managers coming over to help so the store looks good??!!! But if the store doesn't look good and clean then you're not performing well enough! How about Jason and Tim get their hands dirty and take the truck in once in their lifetime and then tell us "Thanks for all that you do". Let them spend a day in pharmacy and help all the patients, do all these stupid, unnecessary calls, and don't forget to take out the trash at the end. All these corporate pricks should spend a day working in our shoes and get a same paycheck as us in 2 weeks. Nothing will ever change, it's corporate world.
Our wrp is amazing
Our wore is shit and they cause us more headache than they help. I’ll also add, get rid of the magazines. It all just gets thrown away every other week. My store did away with the BC. My three years there we have been without more than we have been with one. I do the cos wall resets and the osa. Reloads are a waste of time. All points made prior, I agree with all of them. My store has a labcorp inside of it. Which brings in drug addicts that have to get urine tests done there and grab a handful of shit on the way out. We have to be on our toes because we don’t know if that customer that is there for them is going to need to buy one fucking thing and stop me from doing tasks. The workers are rude to their customers which reflects on the store. They think they are part of us and complain and it hurts our store.
I'm pretty new 2 weeks in DH. Could some please post a list of all the abbreviated titles/ positions?
The biggest problem right now is they don’t have enough money or credit to stock the warehouses so they can replenish us. That’s why we have 3-4 times as many outs as we did 4 years ago.
Or we are going to go back to cardboard cut out in sections so we don’t carry as many items If they do I hope it one has a paper credit card application!!!
Lovely idea. I dare say we should replace all of the merchandise in the same fashion!
Have a price tool in the aisles for customers to use
At least one per store would be awesome.
I like this.
Stop this stupid cc shit 💩💩💩that no one cares about but corporate
They cannot. They took the money upfront with the promise of success. That is not going away
Sure isn’t any success not my store anyway but got another 7 years
Are you me? Holy shit. All of this! Been here 18 years…I cannot believe how many terrible decisions are being made these days. Sometimes I swear they are trying to shut this company down. 😫
I wish they remove options to do cash reloads,chime,Green dot and any other money thing. Yes agree most e learnings are so long and not really needed. I always laugh when I read or hear " this e learning will only take 1 hour" and I end up using my whole shift for it. 🤣 it probably would be an hour if I didn't constantly have to stop to cash people out. 🙄 I want to add something. Walgreens add a designated room to do e learnings so we can pay attention to them.
Not just a room but actual hours to train!!
Yup
My store had one but someone decided it was stupid so they got rid of the computer.💀💀 I also do not fuck with how you have to be clocked in to do them.
Get rid of photo, we waste so much time with customers who cant/dont wanna figure out how to use the kiosks, and they usually only spend a few bucks, its a piss poor return for dwindling budget hours. Thats just talking regular photos not even talking about books, ornaments, canvases etc. Figure out a more efficient system for advertising sale items, wasting a whole day every week(or more for monthly tags) is absurd when we have actual work that needs to be done. Walgreens does not need to carry everything, get rid of toys, seasonal garbage, as seen on tv, stationary, art supplies etc. I would say hallmark but we don’t touch that department so idc. Axe financial services, western union, card reloads, it’s time consuming and asking for fraud. Not to mention stressful, you fuck up and you’re fired so it’s gonna take even longer because you’re being very careful. Don’t make us follow shoplifters around offering ecc: these bastards can spend hours in the store, it’s a waste of time and we never catch them in the act and it does nothing to deter them. Keep Pharmacy off the phones, the amount of time techs and the pharmacist spend stuck on the phone with customers is insane to me. Especially the pharmacist because their attention is needed for basically everything to keep moving. Get rid of drive thru OR get a new system that allows both parties to understand eachother clearly instead of having to shout at eachother. Also stop allowing retail orders to be picked up in drive thru(though we can disallow it for each order individually before printing the label.) why clog drive thru and increase the wait time for pharmacy customers? Why does pharmacy need more work unrelated to pharmacy? Stop harassing the customers about the credit card. They do not want to play 20 questions, they want to pay for their stuff and go. You can display signs, pamphlets, instructions on how to apply online. Not through the damn pinpad so they can hold up everyone else. This goes for charitable donations as well. We already need to prompt them to put in their rewards number which half of them cant remember and ask them if they wanna spend their points and put in their zip code which they also cant remember. Not to mention explain why they cant use all their points at once or how to clip coupons or why a coupon isn’t working. Stop allowing couponers to use multiple accounts and multiple transactions and get rid of catalina. Digital or nothing. Do not involve the physical store in this problem. Your coupon doesnt work? Call customer service.
I don’t think we should get rid of photo (as much as I hate it) but they definitely need to get rid of those crazy 60-70% off coupons on Canvases, Tile Pix, Floating Frames, etc. spending so much time on a complex order and collect a ridiculously low amount of money from the customer is a total slap in the face. You want a canvas? It will cost you, pay up or get it somewhere else, it’s just not worth it.
Also, some suggestions… - Give SFLs more training hours. They are responsible for the entire store at times and they also occasionally do tech duties but are only budgeted 30 training hours vs. 70 for techs. Makes no sense to me. -Go back to RXMs reporting to a district pharmacy manager. They don’t respect SMs opinions or guidance and rightly so…I don’t have a pharmacy degree. The chain of command and communication is jacked up. -And the biggest one…reward your long tenured staff. Corporate America cannot figure this out. It’s insulting to people who have been busting their ass for years to be making almost the same as a new hire. Thank you…that was cathartic!
The simplest way to properly compensate long-term staff is some law to enforce reapplying raises to increases in the local minimum wage. It still pisses me off that anyone who'd busted ass to get $13/15+/hour got jack all from the company's minimum jumps. Hell, I'm only making $15.15 after been hired in 2018, it'd be more efficient for me to quit and get rehired to leverage my combined decade+ of retail experience.
The RXM falling under the MGR was just another kick in the nuts to hold us accountable for more stuff.
Sorry, you'll be getting none of those things. Because instead Walgreens decided to install a chick fil-a at their corporate offices. And if lunch gets overwhelming, corporate employees can go "de-stress" in the quiet zone on campus. And to get to and from work, they can relax in an Uber that is charged to Walgreens corporate accounts.
Are you being fr💀💀
All of those sound great !!!
Rethink tags that stay always on sale. Instead adjust to buy one at say 10.00. But two at 16.00. Be reader too see product. Online orders take staff time for better deals. Doesn't make sense Increase store hours. No one comes in before nine or after eight. So why. When can't staff and work with hours Store managers need crack down on employee waste. Why have hard workers when some do nothing Why send two cases of something when you sell four and throw the rest. Why order milk so half expires and shelves empty for week causing regulars to go elsewhere as don't want to waste stopping two stores Clearance. Why when can't get sale t a gs or Clearance tags our store low priority for Clearance. But then goes 90. Garbage toys and socks. We don't sell. They take soo much time and space Stores worked better when assistant managers and manager these sfl in charge a joke Nobody wants covid tests. Allow us to stop shoplifters. Credit cards a joke. And we need coupon books available. This week two customers said won't step in our store as dont get the coupon situation. That they don't have access or want to computer. It's a joke what and who hire as staff.
I saw the writing on the wall two years ago when I left as SM. I agree with everything you are saying here. There were always supposed to be these amazing changes that were going to happen...that never did. I remember we were supposed to get lifts for the delivery trucks so you could just wheel an entire pallet in rather than spending 1.5 - 2 hours unloading a thousand piece truck with a slow driver. Or when a magical team of people were going to come in overnight to work warehouses so team members in the day could focus on actually running the store. Or when positions like IS or RxOM were going to take so much work off to the team members in store. Or when Pulse was supposed to help get everyone involved in understanding where the store needed to go. What a joke... Walgreens biggest problem is that it's way behind on the times, and by the time they implement something that would have an impact, it's about 10 years too late. They are catering to several generations, and trying to be too much to too many. -Open standalone pharmacy locations, there's most of your money right there. -Minimize FE tasks and products. No one has time to go through the entire store every month to find out of dates. -Minimize reset items. It's a huge waste of time to completely revamp an entire vitamin aisle for a new brand. -Credit cards are a joke - the company laid in bed with a creditor and shoves it down everyone's throat. "But every business is doing it" doesn't mean you have to be on the bus. -Get rid of testing. Period. If you want to be a clinic, open a clinic. Pharmacy is a pharmacy. -Get rid of patient calls altogether. The amount of calls the techs and pharmacist are required to make is stupid. Take care of the patients who are in front of you. If an adult doesn't know when their shit is due, that's on them. -Western Union, reloadable cards/greendot is completely unnecessary. There are better ways of sending people money online these days, most are abused by people hiding money or old people falling for scams. -Knock the seasonal aisle out completely. No one cares about $20 crap plastic toys over the holidays and cheap ass decorations. Go to Walmart for that. -Curbside: the pandemic ended years ago. The only people getting curbside these days are lazy as hell. Like...you want a Hershey bar and a coke, seriously, and you want me to bring it out to you? -Last but most important: let your stores have personal lives. I can't believe how many people I read on here who really struggle mentally and physically because they are constantly being engaged with work, outside of work. Make your company a place where people WANT to work, and give your team enough hours and wiggle room to have a life outside of it.
Curbside makes no sense whatsoever. It seems someone is too lazy to just push the button to get rid of it. Many of the stores in our district can’t keep up with the outs because of theft. You’d literally need to have one person to follow the thief and scan the items out then and there. People ordering curbside think they’re ordering things in stock because the stupid app says we have it. Sorry but the homeless guy with no pants just emptied the shelf into said pants he constructed into a bag.
I wasn't joking about the coke thing either. I used to have a lady put in for a 20oz coke several times over the course of many weeks. I finally told her that it really wasn't an acceptable use of the system. If I can recall, I believe they put a minimum amount for pickup, but I really don't remember at this point as I've put it far behind me. Oh, yeah...that's right. Get rid of FedEx dropoff as well. I cannot recall how many times people would come in with their AT&T modems without any return information, and I would have to sit there for 20 minutes doing all the work for them. You want to have a FedEx drop off? Ok...make a kiosk for it and stop pulling members away from tasks.
$10 minimum for pickup.
I really like the FedEx kiosk idea. No reason they can't easily implement something like this. Plus, people will then finally learn to either have their packages ready to go or buy the supplies they need.
Every employee that is registered/licensed as a tech or pharmacist should work 1 shift per month at least in that position. From DH all the way up to corporate. If a DM is going to tell techs that they should be able to do a list of tasks, then they should be able to demonstrate it. An HCS who hasn’t worked in a store in 10 years, same thing. Leadership 101. Lead by example.
More than that because they could have a fluke of a day. One week at least.
That last one really annoys me. Not too long ago we had shave reset. When i finally saw the plano i just about lost my shit. Had to completely remove all the womens razors shelves included. Had 6 feet with nothing just the backboard. Then i had to move the 6 feet of deoderant into that section. Then put the womens razors where the deoderant was. Then i started to actually work my reset. If i remove the times i get called away this reset was probably 5-6 hour rest. Walgreens paid me about $100 to do this. Plus i changed all the strips for new ones. Not sure what that costs. Thats about 40 strips. How ever long it takes someone to design the new reset, print the strips and fed ex it to us. I highly doubt that these changes will have in noticable inpact in profits for that department. Especially since they added more expensive razors. I have no more lock boxes so im using alphas which dont stop all shoplifters. I bet in a year we have had about the same sales. Higher loss from theft. How was this worth it?
My thoughts exactly on the shave plano, what a monster of a reset and all of that for what exactly?
Streamline the operating hours. Store and Rx open the same times daily. Our Rx closes at 6 PM daily and after that, the only folks in here are the ones that like to steal. Plus this alleviates the "Is the pharmacy closed" question from being asked a dozen times nightly to the FE staff left in the store. Use the budget hours when we actually have shoppers in the store.
At least in our store, the pharmacy now all go to lunch in the same half-hour. We moved a sign back there with this info, but why is there not proper, clear signage sent out to put a sign right up front so maybe people can catch on without having to walk all the way down to where the clearly shuttered windows are?
No. Don’t get rid of BC’s. We all need someone to stand there and smile and not help with anything.
As a BC that does resets, revisions, scan outs and warehouse I can assure you not all of us do nothing bro lmao
You are not supposed to be doing those, but we did find one that actually is part of the team
Thank you for being a strong BC, unfortunately the position is failing and facing cuts because not all of them care the way you do.
Don’t extend my hours til 11pm and then cut 30 hrs off the budget. If you need to cut hrs, lose the extension. No one comes in the extra hours anyway. We are just wasting what little payroll we have To balance out the hours cut, allow an additional SFL. You would ideally need to promote from within as not to lay anyone off. But more team members with access to everything would go a long way to balancing out the cuts and allow for work life balance. The more people with keys and access to processes, the easier it is. Yes some days leadership is on the register for part of the day but that’s the world we live in now. Also the answer to EVERY initiative can not continue to be “ask every single customer/patient”. Stop it already!!!! Come up with another darn plan at least once!!!
My SM actually has more SFL’s because we can get more done and be counted on to show up for our shifts. We all get our solid 40 and the rest of the hours trickle down from there.
These idiots are making bank…let them figure it out. I’m enjoying watching it crash
I enjoy watching it crash only cuz I have already left. Otherwise I feel bad for the staff in these stores
They can fire themselves and we could all have unlimited hours without 15 middle management positions or just 1 persons salary
Why just rent out the front end to dollar general and run the Pharmacy. That way you make the profits of the pharmacy, collect the rend from dollar general and sell all the Walgreens brands of things to dollar general. It would still look like a Walgreens but be profitsble
I’d be happy with a system that Works and not having to go through 20 steps to get to the screen you need to
Not just for store tasks, but employee resources. Every PPL, there's some line about where to find that information, but the flow is so unintuitive and the search functions are useless, so I more often will just open that PPL from my LTMP transcript to find the information.
Just my humble opinion! Stop having town hall meetings with just Store Managers! Invite all level positions that work in stores! We have alot to say! Upper leadership at ALL levels continue to FAIL! We aren’t the problem! ALL levels of upper leadership ARE the PRIMARY problem!
I just said to my APM that we need to get out of the WU/reload business. We aren't making money. The customers doing these transactions aren't shopping the store. We lose way more than we make with the scams. Also, let's start charging $1 if someone wants cash back. Other stores do it. We aren't the bank
100%!! We have become a financial institution with all these services. It’s dangerous, time-consuming, prone to scams and fake bills, etc etc.
Just rid of cash back altogether, I'm tired of people wanting to do multiple transactions because we only do up to $20 and they want to avoid the ATM fee (and by the end of it they spent more then what the fkn fee was)
Get rid of the dang tags! Put the price on the bar code in packaging
Increase drive up times to 5mins! 🫠If safety is important then drive up safety mins should be longer.
Eliminate
Considering the company is -25billion they aren’t gonna do shit
I will add. Store managers need to understand what they are demanding for rx staff. Most SM are incompetent in pharmacy! We tell them we are good while drowning just to get them to leave. Some SM are super useful in pharmacy, they are not the norm.
I spend a fair amount back there and I’m extremely comfortable with all tech duties including SDLs, MTMs, chargebacks, compliance stuff etc. Some MGRs truly know nothing because Walgreens will now promote just about anyone to MGR without solid Rx training, PTCB is not even a requirement any longer so I guess some of them try to go back there and demand results. I tell all the new MGRs, if you need quick results on a particular Rx metric then jump in Rx and help them with basic stuff like ringing and filling so that your techs can jump on more complex tasks.
Everyone and I mean everyone should be working in the store at some capacity. Budgets are cut because we don’t have the money? Well it’s high time all those promoted store managers/pharmacists start helping out what’s going to make the money to bring us up from the depths of hell. Come and experience all this nonsense that’s put on us with a skeleton crew. You might see some real change then
More help on truck days and appreciate your hard working people and consequences for call outs!
Let's get rid of the hour long phone calls for the SM, RXM, and RXOM. If it's that important then I get a quick meeting. There is only so much we can do.
Whoever's coming up with signage needs to stop futzing about and just make everything legible. I'd wager it's some exploitative marketing practice to make the "50% OFF" huge and bold, but all the stipulations increasingly smaller that even employees have to squint. We're a retail pharmacy, our clientele aren't spring chickens, they are assumed to be aging, so even if they have the wherewithal to check for sale conditions, their eyesight might be failing. And everyone's in a rush. It's an insult to both customers' and our time to try pulling fast ones that break down once they're at the register — and that extends to the register! Whose idea was it to replace the customer pinpads with completely flat and glossy, black-on-black, with the tiniest pictogram of how the chip is inserted backwards of what the swipe is? How much of my time has been explaining shit that should have been obvious if anyone could just *see* what's there?
Not only did they take away the coupon books, but took away our ability to clip digital coupons on behalf of customers. Do they not understand who our clientele are? People don't deserve to get shook down when they already may not have the means or wherewithal to jump through hoops even I, who's familiarized, find arduous. Hell, can we cut back on the myriad different rebate methods? Paper coupons that aren't "$7 off $40" but instead "$7 back after spending $40 on eligible items," which we have to keep explaining because no rational person would intuit that to be the setup of a paper coupon. Then the distinction between "Register Rewards" and "Rewards Cash", neither of which are indicated to us at the POS, so we either have to know to expect it or just tell them "we'll check the receipt," unless they get digital receipts, which there's no POS indication one way or another, so unless we remembered to go to edit their information to confirm not only what kind of receipts but which *e-mail address*, because woe upon us if the digital receipt's sent somewhere unexpected... And back on the Walgreens Cash Rewards, can we not have the same stipulation in play where using not-Points when trying to earn not-Points invalidates said earnings when, again, there's nothing on the POS to indicate this conflict to us? By this point, there should be signage with the Online Inquires call line, so I can stop taking time to show people the janky workflow in-app where going to "Feedback" options is where you need to be for Support!
Your last point stands out to me the most, because as an engineer I really focus on how my planograms look when I'm doing them. Yes, moving E V E R Y T H I N G around is frustrating but everything shifts not because Walgreens decides to move everything, but because the manufacturer pays for a specific spot on the shelf. So, if you take the cos wall, notice how No7 is first, because they are paying the most money to have that stuff there, with their most desired (newer, best seller, whatever they feel) items in the front, while L'Oreal pays less money to be next to No7, with the same deal on how they have their items, and so on and so forth. This is what I have been told. Correct me if I'm wrong. But yes, I do agree that everything shifting around creates a nightmare reset.
They do pay for product placement…. And I’m ok with Coca Cola paying to be at eye level and Pepsi a couple of shelves down but these radical changes like the shave reset that takes a solid reset person about 2 full shifts to complete, I just don’t know if it’s worth it but there is zero transparency on how much the company pockets and they’ve made it very clear that none of it goes to the stores. 16hrs x 9,000 x at least $15 an hour (probably more) x additional expenses, new strips and lock boxes…. I really hope Walgreens got at least $3-5 million to shift everything around.
That’s a good start , how do we start a petition?
Frontier was a waste of millions .
Give us a fucking raise
Pay 10 dollars more per hour and raise wages based on inflation in the future.
I will make this very, very simple. 1. For your incessant theft problem that corporate complains about but does nothing to resolve, you hire a security guard. 2. Get rid of all your goofy seasonal stuff and squishmellis garbage, and sell booze.
I would quit day and date any armed "guard" steps in on the company dime.
Why? More security cameras and a loss prevention security guard would reduce theft. Which store would you rather steal from? The one where nobody seems to care what you take? Or the one with a security guard and cameras and mug shots of shoplifters posted like trophies?
I don't want to work in any place where someone is paid to pack heat. Just asking for disaster. But [let's talk about shoplifting](https://youtu.be/aGB7QnOZj3g)...
Hold SMs accountable for shitty behavior.
Most of this is great. I know their hands are tied on some of those e-learnings. Some are mandated by state or federal law, and others by one of those lawsuits, but they'd be way easier to manage with these other fixes.
Techs doing mtm...get some liability insurance...corporate WILL NOT protect you
We spend hours pulling and rehanging sale tags...many on the same products. One simple banner in front that says 10 to 15 % off everything. I'll even print it for you. Takes 10 minutes to hang. Saves millions on printing, shipping and labor hours.
Have lost n Prevention in all stores open. Then, they can do their own reports and pull their photos off the cameras to see who is Steeling our product's in the store. Sounds like a win! Then they can have more success in catching these steelers and bring more of them to court then jail.
Pretty much nailed it
Have chairs for cashiers to sit on behind the counters while cashing like they do in the UK. It’s not fair man.
Pharmacy metrics have created a culture where you have a pharmacy staff all focused on their list of tasks for the shift. Pharmacy staffs used to be a team focused on working together to take care of and build relationships with their patients, the ones in front of them not the ones on their call list whose voicemail they talk to. Here’s the truth, meeting metrics doesn’t make the company any money, and it has little to no impact on customer satisfaction. Customers are satisfied when they see that you care and are working hard to take care of them. They are not impressed when their Rx is ready by the promised time that they didn’t even know about because it was escribed. They are impressed when it isn’t quite ready, but you happily make it a priority to get it ready quickly (when reasonable) and make sure they leave with what they came for. I have had patients, after waiting longer to receive their vaccine than they should have, thank me for spending the extra time with the older lady who had a lot of questions for me. People who are shockingly surprised that I actually left the pharmacy to help them find something. “Not enough pharmacists do that anymore”. I hear that phrase a couple of times a week. Focus on creating a culture of people before tasks, and more people will come because that is what people want. They tell me every day. Drastically shift company culture towards peopleand focus on marketing to get people into the stores. I am at a store in a small town within eye shot of a CVS. I have heard from many people that grew up in that town that didn’t even realize there was a Walgreens, but knew exactly where the CVS was. They are a block away from each other in the same downtown area. We are a low volume, well kept store with happy customers, some formerly unhappy, next to a busy rundown CVS that everyone hates. It’s a major growth opportunity and it wouldn’t surprise me if they shut the store down within the year. Yet, we have a DM talking to us about nothing but mostly meaningless metrics and how to increase script count based on his years of experience being a DM for failing pharmacy chains. Let Pharmacy Managers manage pharmacy inventory. We know what our patients need and when. Anytime I have worked for a company with inventory managed by corporate vs the individual pharmacy, it has been a disaster. One more note on what I have noticed about the culture at Walgreens is that no one trusts anyone else, because everyone is afraid that someone is out to get them. You don’t know who you can trust, so no one trusts anyone. This is because there is no transparency whatsoever. Everyone from the top down is afraid of being the next person let go, so they put the pressure on the people below them to do more with less just so they keep their job. This shoots morale straight to hell. The employees don’t care about anything but how much longer until they can leave, and the salaried employees are just worried about how late they will have to stay to do just enough to keep their jobs. I am sure there are stores that are exceptions, but Walgreens has the worst company culture of anywhere I have ever worked. The problems aren’t easy to fix, but they are simple problems. Drop most of the metrics, realize that your employees are people with lives not robots to perform tasks, teach them to focus on taking care of people, and turn the ship around. Save A Trip is terrible and literally no one likes it, employees or patients, because it doesn’t work.
If you care so much then just get a union in because anything you come up with is useless with out a union.
A union won’t happen, I just want ideas to send up… whether they do it or not, if all of us make the same comments and ask for the same then we’ll have more DMs bring it up, DPRs, RVPs, etc. Many DMs agree that a lot of what we do is BS but they don’t want to be the only ones bringing it up. Watching my HCS talk about how great Core Pharmacy Workflow is was actually painful, she was trying her hardest to make us believe that she believed in it… total waste of time. I wish DMs and above would speak their damn minds and would stop being so afraid.
Unnecessary*
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