Dec
All things being equal
Posted by The *Angriest* Pharmacist as APhA, Disgusting, Drive-Thru, Drug Companies, Drug Topics, Errors, Management, Me being a dick, Me hating others, PHARMACY SECRETS!, Politics, Stupid People, Technicians, True Story, Work Sucks
Prereading for this post:Â Â Walgreens has POWER (80 COMMENTS!)
I was going through some server logs and discovered something. This tid bit of information was shocking to me. The above post/link was and is being heavily monitored by Walgreens themselves. As you know, the bottom of each post I type has two links these days. One allows you to email a post to a friend using my server’s resources. The other link opens a printable copy of the post along with links and annotations.
The email function is heavily used across the entire site — very heavily used…and it is also logged for security purposes. Today is the first day I’ve looked at said log since implementing the function and verifying it worked eons ago. It’s been used by a plethora of people. From students spreading the funny advice, to bikers spreading stories about our little spat, to companies seeing what’s been said about their new policies and procedures.
Such as WAG… who used it to spread the post amongst their corporate headquarters and various offices. One employee sent it to a great number of other “@walgreens.com” email addresses some time ago stating, “it’s important we know this is circulating…” and “continued monitoring is necessary.” Several were sent as, “FYI per meeting agenda.”
I don’t have more information than that. Their hits from their walgreens IP address (which resolves to walgreens.com) number in the thousands to this site in the days to weeks following that post. I’m sure it’s blocked at store level — but they were watching.
So, my POWER Pawns — did anything change? In my area, I’ve noticed nothing of this program as I’m rural and not yet touched. As I said before, I’m excited. The Walgreens I compete with couldn’t possible provide worse customer service. We’ve actually stopped advertising in the local paper as they do it for us. POWER won’t do anything but make me money. Did we rattle their cage a little bit?
One of the pharmacists working at that store actually just quit a few days ago. Just walked out. Now he’s commuting over an hour to an independent pharmacy. He was filling more than 800 per day and never allowed more than 2 pharmacists, 5 techs and 1 dedicated cashier. They had a counting machine, he said, which accounted for about 25-50% of the volume, but it was constantly on the fritz. Remember what Drug Topics said a few months ago? It’s what I remind my coworkers of every time I catch a mistake — 4 errors per 250 scripts. That’s just not good enough for me.
Commentors will be kept anonymous on this post.
Power is up and running in only 3 states I believe. Arizona, Florida, and Texas. There is not much talk of it in my state, I first heard of it a couple of years ago in a managers meeting. Doubtful it will come to my statefor at least a few years.
We WAGsters know the company monitors everything. If you mention WAG in your facebook, twitter, myspace etc there’s a very good chance some corporate weasel has seen it. Our DM has made it clear that the only way the company will survive is not by negotiating with the insurance maggots for fair fees– no, the only way to make a profit is to cut the cost of putting out a prescription. The biggest expense is the pharmacist’s wage, so there is your objective. Cut 1/3 of your pharmacists = cut 1/3 of your cost. Flood the market with foreign grads and soon you’ll be able to cut wages overall. I am predicting a wage freeze next year and real cuts the following year. Hope I’m wrong.
Walgreens is a wonderful place to purchase cosmetics- they have a large selection and good sales. It’s a nice balance to my Sephora addiction.
But I would NEVER have a script filled there. Ever.
I remember my brief stint with Walgreens (less than a year) with not so fond memories of running around like a chicken with its head cut off I was working so fast. It is a sorry excuse for a retail establishment and they work everyone to death, store managers, front store personnel, and not just pharmacy staff. The stores were always short handed, ALWAYS. And there is no way in hell you could find an available tech from another store to fill in if someone called in sick at your store which happened all the time. They provide such shitty customer service that they practically give free advertising for any other pharmacy that is close to them just by comparison. I can’t type here what I’d do before I’d work for them again but lets just say it involves an electric hedge clipper and dropping my pants!
I’ve worked for WAG for nearly 9 years. It’s not that bad. I’ve worked for at least 20 stores and have been at my current store for close to 3 years. Most of the floaters suck which was probably your problem redheaded. I don’t have many problems, I can keep ahead of the workload. My store gives pretty good customer service, I would like a little more help at times, at the end of the it’s not that bad of a place. At least they put the pharmacy first and spends the required monies on current technology.
A pharmacist of mine booked it from walgreens to work for us because, in addition to this, there was another fun little thing they were doing – the techs were filling scripts, and the pharmacist was required to run the register, and check the scripts at the register. If there happens to be a problem with it, it has to be sent back.. not exactly the most efficient method of verification.
I was a cashier at Walgreens for about 3 months in 2000. It was a horrible time. They let me fill scripts on my 3rd day. I was shocked, I sent out some amoxicillin without mixing it with water, I had no clue….
WAG bigwigs need to read this and get some idea of how dangerous their $ saving time saving ideas are. Ah WAG, even where they haven’t implemented POWER, they certainly have workload balancing – and turned it into a competition. it’s a dangerous game. I’m not a pharmacist to play games, especially not with people’s medicine. I waste so much time fixing errors on Rxs that were typed by a tech at one location and verified by a pharmacist at another location. The proper way this works is that at my location I am to “product verify” i.e. look at the pill in the vial and make sure it matches the image on my screen. I don’t have to look at the original Rx. I’m supposed to be devoting my “free time” to remote verifying rxs for other stores. Unfortunately for my store’s score I actually care about the people who get there drugs from MY location. (The district supervisor emails us a scorecard every damn day letting us know which store’s techs have typed the most for other locations and which stores pharmacists have checked the most for other locations.) It’s made into a very competitive game with NO regard for patient safety. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that the WAG system makes it too easy to “check” an Rx without even paying attention to it (enter enter enter) and the competitive nature of workload balancing means that errors get through in unbelievable numbers. I insist that my techs send me the hard copy with the filled vial so I can check it the old fashioned way. Then I find myself redoing everything at the last step. Enter the correct info, check it myself to get a new label printed, fill it, and product verify it. I may be “wasting time” and increasing average wait time, but at least I know my patients got the right drug, dose, and directions.
Last word from WAG corporate regarding POWER is that it’s on a nationwide indefinite hold after the Arizona roll-out is finished. Thank god.
As a Technician in FL, I have seen the whole power program go down. Since your original posting on it, we have had our hours cut twice, most recently from 270 to 240. My pharmacy manager fought against this from the beginning and we have more help than most.
In the good old days, our total hours were somewhere around 340 and we have been threatened to be cut down to 210.
We have 4 techs at around 35 hours each, 2 staff pharmacists, and 1 regular floater rph twice a week.
Since my manager actually has some balls regarding cuts, all of the customers have fled the shitty customer service of the stores with 100 tech hours and our business keeps going up and up (we try our best to take care of the patients).
My personal opinion on the whole thing is that yes, it sure does look good on paper but when it is implemented, there are tons of problems. Perhaps due to that other rumor of the company who created this program has never had anything to do with pharmacy.
Call in scripts or messages from patients never make it from the call center to us in the store.
Scripts are entered incorrectly, which then get verified incorrectly, which leads to them being sometimes filled incorrectly.
They register “new” patients all the time on call-ins when the “new” patient is already in the system. So this means we get to do the whole script over again with no hard copy.
We are supposed to have less phone calls but I have heard rumors that their time with patients is limited and it seems that the phone rings more than ever now. We used to have 6 or 7 phones but they took all of them away but 3 and 1 of them is used for a double drive-thru, so that leaves two phones and someone is always on one of them.
Which reminds me that I also heard that when they made all of these labor cuts they didn’t take into account that people are lazy and blow up the drive thru all day and ooops! they may have cut too many hours and burned all of the techs so guess who’s screwed?
The people at the call center also have a wonderful habit of royally pissing off someone and then cold transferring them in the middle of their rage to us in the pharmacy who have no idea what is going on (not even the name of person who is screaming.)
There is a center that is supposed to handle Third Party Rejections, at first it was great and so efficient, but now I find myself sending them scripts back with specific directions multiple times because they are too lazy/stupid/illiterate to fix the error and I end up doing it myself.
They hold the rejections for 10 days and then send it to “resolve at store” and then I realize that it was a simple matter of changing 90 day supply to 30 and the patient waited 10 days for this?
It also seems to all come down to numbers, they are so eager to get rid of the rejections on their end that some of the easiest fixes just rot without being fixed and just get sent back unsolved.
I also once heard at a meeting straight from the horse’s mouth that they were so desperate to hire at these centers that there was once a real estate broker or something like that who quit after one day. So that explains why HCTZ or Z-Pak get sent back to store for data entry as “Illegible drug”. They don’t know!!
I am not so sure why he quit though, the centers portray this awesome image of always having fun while working there or chilling out listening to your ipod while you work if you want to.. no wonder there are so many mistakes.
I think I have said enough for now, but it seems that all this program is doing is making myself and my coworkers do extra work and get yelled at for shit that we didn’t do, especially since the customers cannot seem to comprehend “you spoke to the call center”. They just come in and raise hell which wastes more precious time that we have to spend fixing problems caused by the program that is supposed to be helping balance workload.
Walgreens has made a huge mistake. i know in my last state before I moved to CA, they would never let POWER in because it doesn’t create the safety precautions needed to fill a script. Back home they still have to double check every script at least 2 hours later to make sure it was correct and if not. In CA there is no double check, there is the one time check and I guess pretty much in every other state they don’t require a double check so at least they can get POWER there but if POWER ever comes back Im moving home to work or an independent pharmacy because there will be job security. Power is going to eliminate jobs even more. What a great way for this economy. I should hunt for the old copy of Walgreens World and send you the info on the whole Power shit they are trying to feed the employees saying that it is the best advancement for walgreens. BS!
I’d publish it in a second…
When I graduated pharmacy school, my first job was with Walgreens.
I was with them for 2 months! The amount of work and stress combined with drive-thrus was nerve recking.
I even tried to work overnight instead. I tried it for one week and realize that the first 2 hours of my shift would be literally crazy. I’d walk into the pharmacy understaffed. The pharmacist I would relieve, was so anxious to run out of the store as soon as I showed. I couldn’t blame him, he most likely had a rough day!
When I was there almost 10 years ago, I was on hourly pay.
I just heard from a friend of mine working at Walgreens in Illinois that they are now on salary!
Either way, hourly, salary, bonus pay, or raises, I would never work for Walgreens again.
This is just my opinion.
There are so many other options for us, that I don’t feel we need to subject ourselves to such harsh work environments.
I’m sure there are some decent WAG stores. Best of luck to all of you WAG employees.
(I posted this in the wrong comment section earlier – I am reposting here; sorry)
As we all know, Walgreen’s is, of course, proof that the Anti-Christ is alive and currently consolidating power on earth. This is being done by using Walgreen’s to subjugate everyone to the will of the Evil One by convincing the world that Walgreen’s cares ONLY ABOUT THEM, not profits or obscene amounts of power! This supposition (or perhaps in Walgreen’s case this suppository) is of course a moral deception (commonly known as a “lieâ€) designed to allow Walgreen’s (henceforth referred to here as The Minions of the Evil One) to be able to control the thoughts of all physicians, pharmacists, patients, press, Presidents currently attempting health care reform, people in general, polls effecting and affecting opinions, the public and possibly all others who claim existential reality of any kind and convince them that stores serving The Minions of the Evil One are GOOD, and everyone else in the practice of pharmacy is BAD.
This is of course total bullshit, as we know that The Minions of the Evil One are in fact the personification of postcedent, puss drooling evil incarnate (ok, I will stop with all of the “P†alliterations). Walgreen’s…err, that’s to say The Minions of the Evil One, are the personification of everything that is wrong with the practice of pharmacy, medicine and, for that matter, life in general in the United States. They cannot tolerate any legitimate disagreement, differing position, policy or pricing diversity, nor competition (or competitor for that matter) and feel the need to destroy everyone that is not them. My ideal practice of pharmacy is in the local independent pharmacy where the pharmacist in charge actually knows the names of his or her patients, knows what they need and expect, and is a part of the life of the community that they practice in and are a part of.
The Minions of the Evil One are what those wise sages Simon and Garfunkel referred to as “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machineâ€, except that there is no pleasure in having anything to do with them, either as a pharmacist, a staff member or a patient, they are not bright, just big, and they are a heartless, human-less, humorless, horrifyingly amoral glimpse of the future if we allow them to continue to get away with all that they do that makes everyone who has anything to do with them turn green (not with envy, but with nausea). They are monitoring this site because the very thought of anyone dissenting from their party line scares them into literally whimpering, peeing on the floor and running for Guido and Rocko Soprano to come beat the crap out of anyone who dares say anything against The Minions of the Evil One.
Want to improve health care and the moral health of the nation? Make Walgreens…oops, I did it again – The Minions of the Evil One – follow the same rules, both in letter and spirit, that every independent Mom and Pop community pharmacy must follow. That begins with not allowing them to engage in yet another terrorist round of intimidation by doing what they did by “monitoring†your site. That is why your site, and others similar to it such as TAP, are so important. Without them, there will be no voice to call The Minions of the Evil One, and the Assistant Minions of the Evil One with initials such as RA, CVS, etc. to account and to follow, if not the law, at least basic decency, ethics and morality. It will probably never happen, as they are, after all, The Minions of the Evil One Pharmacy Chain, but the truth must be proclaimed. Please keep doing so here and stay as angriest as you can, whether The Minions of the Evil One monitor it, like it, tolerate it or not. Perhaps somewhere in the corporate offices of The Minions of the Evil One Pharmacy Chain or the offices of the Assistant The Minions of the Evil One, there are still a few human beings drawing a salary over there who still care about something other than profiting obscenely and destroying anyone who dares speaks against The Minions of the Evil One….or their boss.
It’s a return to the 80’s and the economy was bad. Those who provided jobs knew they had you. Last year Walgreens said “thank you for working the holidays, taking time away from your families to care for our customers” then cut out the $25 bonus (before taxes) and subsequently the Walgreens gift card (where they get the money back).
I left a WalMart ten years ago to buy my own store. My Regional manager told me I was and idiot because retail pharmacy was going to be replaced with “Central Fill” (or POWER as Walgreens calls it) I told him I would take my chances. I now own the building and property, half the property next to it and the inventory. I have a house that is twice the size as back then and have more equity in it. I own my 2005 truck outright, the first time since my college pos vehicle that I have owned a car. Contary to popular belief, I do go on vacation form time to time, own a time share in Mexico. I have had season tickets to my favorite NFL team the last few years and take my RV to games 8 hours away. Oh, and by the way I have automation at my pharmacy, I hire as many techs as I want, as much counter help as I want and kick out the crapy customers, sending them to WalMart and Walgreens. Boy am I glad that Regional manager was wrong! Somebody call the electrician, it looks like the POWER is out!
^^^ There has never been a $25 bonus to work the holiday. Something maybe only your store did. I’ve worked the last 7 or 8 holidays, mainly Christmas and nothing. There was a Christmas bonus but you get that if you work or not.
Walgreens has suspended the advancement of the POWER program indefinitely. They realized it’s not working the way they thought it should. They rolled it out first in FL and AZ because those stores fill 800+ scripts a day. At a store in my state, which normally fills only 200-400 per day, they realized that POWER has no chance of working at all.
POWER is coming to East Tennessee in the next few months FYI!
How do you know this Jennifer? I work in the area and am curious. Thanks!
Oh to be a fly on the wall when they tell the NY pharmacists about power…hahahahaha!!!
Damn Walgreens sounds bad. I’m at CVS, got another new program coming out tomorrow, which means another report I have to print up everyday. Why is it when pharmacists move up the corporate ladder they forget everything, forget what it’s like to be in a store, forget the constant phone calls, forget the constant insurance issues, and come up with more shit for us to do? Anyone know any good places to learn about going independent?
When the question is why, the answer is money…
They haven’t forgotten. Remember they need to survive too. I can’t even imagine the nightmare that they are going thru.
Diane Sawyer is doing a piece on abc nightly news re:Pharmacy..who is behind the counter..
hmmm…let’s see who could it be…
DrugsbyJoe,
As a matter of fact, I do. Our website Pharma*****.com coaches pharmacists how to become an independent contractor. I really don’t like to self promote our website on other peoples site, but because you asked, I really wanted to answer this question.
I’ve been a pharmacist for 10 years and the last 4 years I have been an independent pharmacist. I swear to you this is the happiest I ever been practicing in retail.
This site was created so we can connect and help other pharmacists practice in a different way. My days aren’t perfect but I am happy practicing pharmacy this way.
Best of Luck.:)
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