Or did we really reach the bottom? It feels like we cannot sink any further.
17 replies (most recent on top)
@dc Have you been drinking the Sickamore Kool Aid again?
I was laid off earlier this year and I'm still struggling to find another role in this absolutely terrible job market. Hope this company crashes and burns to the ground.
@dc 😆
@OP Not yet, we still need to enter the abyss!
@dc Have you been drinking the Walgreens Kool Aid again?
Sycamore Partners’ approach at Walgreens reflects the broader private equity business model that emphasizes cost-cutting and financial engineering shortly after acquisitions. Sycamore installed the former CEO of Staples US Retail to lead Walgreens, an executive who oversaw the closure of roughly one-third of Staples’ U.S. stores and tens of thousands of layoffs after Sycamore Partners took Staples private. During that period, Sycamore also added debt to Staples’ balance sheet in order to extract a $1 billion dividend for itself.
@gs 😀
Can you all post what it's like for store managers at Walgreens now! What's new and what has been added to your plate? I quit six months ago!
@e9 Walgreens is looking for some off the street cheap RVPs!
@cr Working for the Walgreens call center I can report that we certainly contribute to bad pharmacy customer behavior. Callers ask us when their prescription will be ready. We tell them the "expected" pickup time knowing full well this often inaccurate. The caller often presses to know if their prescription will actually be ready at the time we told them. Since we are penalized for transferring callers to the store, it's expedient to mislead them and say with confidence that it'll be ready on time. Of course the customer shows up at the appointed time only to find their order not ready. Other than submitting prescription orders, our main function seems to be telling callers what they want to hear so we can get them off the phone and move on to the next back-to-back phone call in the que. We cannot resolve most issues so basically we provide a buffer to keep callers from reaching the woefully understaffed in-store pharmacy. We're set up for failure.
What’s with the RVP openings now?
Just around the corner corner. We will dominate once again!!
@cp Apologies in advance - this turned into a novel.
I'd say pay is probably one of the highest causes of turnover for the company. I've been with Walgreens since 2016, and everyone who has left around me mentioned they're leaving to get better pay. Every store level position is highly underpaid for what is expected.
I'd also contribute the rising amount of daily tasks for every position in the store. When I started, I was a CSA. There was a short list of things that were done daily as an opening CSAs and a short list for closing CSAs. There's now a huge list of tasks for everyone and little to no time to thoroughly train people for it.
photo was simple back then, a few different projects to learn, and you could catch on quick. There weren't a hundred services staged around a photo like there is now.
In my opinion, Walgreens keeps increasing the workload due to terrible decisions to buy pharmacies that are going under (RiteAid). This, of course, increases the amount of scripts the pharmacy is filling and increases the number of customers the store is seeing on a day to day basis.
Just recently, I did two double shifts back to back. 6:30am to 10pm on Thursday, and 6:30am to 11:30pm the second day. How I didn't decide to turn in my keys yesterday is beyond me. My SM was hospitalized on Thursday morning, and I like my SM. She's actually a good boss. My DM was supposed to relieve me around 7 pm. on Friday, but he never did. I called, and he said I could close early at 8 instead, but only after pharmacy was done doing their quarterly inventory. They didn't finish until 11:30 pm, so the store stayed open, and closed at 10pm like normal.
Our support team is terrible when issues arise and do everything to put a bandaid on something, rather than fix it and be done. I can't tell you how many times I've spent hours on the phone just trying to get someone to tell me how to fix it rather than take me through a dozen troubleshooting tasks that I've done before calling them.
Customers are also a reason for high turnover for employees. We're not dogs or servants - we're human beings. Scripts aren't meeting promise times because there are 300 to 400 sitting on the counter to fill, verify, and package. Customers lose their fu--ing minds when they arrive and it's not ready to go when it was called in an hour ago. Customers lose their minds when we are out of stock on something they want. Employees start to lack empathy or will to help someone when they lose their sh-t for something simply out of our control.
So, as a result- you get overwhelmed, underpaid employees who are hitting the ground running, just to be knocked down by a company who continually increases a workload that is barely achievable on a good day, and impossible on a bad day. The customers then make it worse by being pi---d off at employees, leaving bad reviews or surveys. Then corporate a--holes come down on everyone twice as hard to 'do better' when there's no path to achieving that goal.
@bk No, it won't! It's finished! Just do the research!
Chronic understaffing and high-volume expectations—intensified by ongoing store closures—drive volatile workloads and stress across stores. This pressure-cooker environment often overshadows benefits and career pathways, shaping morale, schedule predictability, and retention.
It will bounce back...have faith....
Oh, we can and we will. Make no mistake.