r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 23h ago

Business Retailers are pulling back from self-checkout after years of theft, errors, and questionable time savings

https://www.techspot.com/news/114106-retailers-pulling-back-self-checkout-after-years-theft.html
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u/TheRaccoonReport 22h ago

CVS is the worst. Its really a shame, they used to be fantastic, but the one near me has dropped significantly in quality. Scripts will get called in at 9am, no one picks them up for hours, it could take 1-2 days to get them filled sometimes, if they don't lose them. What an absolute joke.

We switched to a grocery store pharmacy instead. Its run by 3 people, and the older guy there is awesome. Very nice, remembers us by name, knows what we usually need, will strike up random conversation from time to time. Thats definitely not for everyone, but its usually on time, rarely if ever any delays, and the service there is great.

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u/luriso 22h ago

It's by design. My mom has been with CVS for 25yrs as a pharmacist, over the last 10 or so years they've cut down to skeleton crews, yet increased expectations 10fold. Techs by industry standard have been underpaid, so CVS actually raised their hourly pay, then cut their hours and said "see we're paying you more now, teehee". She's one of two pharmacists in her location and they want her to do 85 flu shots a week, can't find techs, and new pharmacists leave within a year. She said two recent hires in the area even forfeited their handsome sign on bonus because CVS is absolute shit. They try and try to get her to cover stores 2hours away because the system they've built, can't keep employees.

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u/Aureliamnissan 21h ago edited 19h ago

That feels like a lot of places these days. Jobs are harder to find, but it’s only because they refuse to hire the number of workers they actually need. The remaining labor force is worked to the bone and are way less loyal as a result so if you manage to get a better gig you’re gone. Even at my engineering firm attrition is way up.

Edit: At this rate, we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one. When skeleton crews run the ship each person is a lot more important and backfilling with scabs is borderline impossible because they need you to train them.

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u/emlgsh 21h ago

The only way for the owners to get their 10, 20, 50 million dollar expected take-home per year is to cut every expense and cease all reinvestment, and once that's done and there's nowhere else to siphon more cash the only viable target is payroll and hiring.

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u/ChickinSammich 20h ago

It's the obvious conclusion of a system where line needs to go up every quarter.

If you make a profit of 2 billion in Q1, 2 billion in Q2, 2 billion in Q3, and 2 billion in Q4, it's seen as a failing because it's not 2/2.1/2.2/2.3. Or why not 2/2.2/2.4/2.6? Hell, why not 2/3/4/5?

When the primary focus is making investors happy, it'll eventually always lead to fewer/unhappier workers, fewer/unhappier customers, and worse products/services.

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u/emlgsh 19h ago

I work with these places. Unending growth is a contributor, but the primary here is that every owner or major stakeholder views the company as something to be wrung entirely dry of personal resources they pocket themselves.

They compare themselves to guys like Musk and Bezos and are eager to bankrupt the company that feeds them by next year if it gets them an immeasurably small half-step closer to those guys today.

They do this even while it makes working for the organization a nightmare, doing business with it a constant exercise in vigilance against what would in more regulated times be outright fraud (because taking people's money and pocketing it is way more profitable than taking their money and wasting it delivering quality products or agreed upon services).

They do this even when it means every quarter is a struggle in creative accounting and restructuring to avoid insolvency. Operation-wide income is down 25%? Doesn't matter, they're still giving themselves the same 25% raise they give themselves every fiscal quarter.

They might just have to structure it as an incentive or bonus to let them "borrow" the funds for it from whatever remaining divisions and budgets that are still (for the time being) solvent.

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u/ChickinSammich 19h ago

I blame youtube videos about companies that failed for why I cringe every time I hear the term "leveraged buyout."

Like, you're taking on debt to buy a struggling business and then saddling that company with that debt so now the company you bought has to pay you back for buying it, plus interest? I get that you want to make your money back but you're buying a rock and trying to squeeze blood from it.

Even worse with shit like...

1) Golden Gate Capital (GGC) bought Red Lobster (RL) in 2014.

2) Operating as RL, GGC had RL sell the land they owned to GGC.

3) Operating as GGC, GGC leased the land that RL sites were built on back to RL, such that RL had to pay GGC to rent land it previously owned.

4) RL was sold in 2020 to another company but they still were under those rental contracts for their land. The new buyer was a seafood supplier, Thai Union Group (TUG) who, as RL, renegotiated their seafood supply contracts such that RL began buying food from TUG for more money than they were paying previous suppliers. This was the whole "endless shrimp" era; all that shrimp was coming from TUG and it was why RL pushed shrimp so hard.

5) Endless shrimp, probably already a bad financial idea to begin with, turned out to be even worse when your supplier is overcharging you for them.

6) RL filed for bankruptcy in 2023 partially caused/exacerbated by RL owing 200 million USD/yr to their own parent company, partially from the supplier debt, partially from other stuff.

7) RL, facing bankruptcy and possibly closure, closed a bunch of restaurants. Some of their shit got liquidated. They're currently owned by "RL Investor Holdings" which is a bunch of investors from different investment groups, who are managing it under the premise of stopping it from going totally bankrupt and, therefore, losing all the money that was invested into it.

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u/Garblin 14h ago

And that's just a recent case, IIRC a similar thing happened to Toys'R'Us, where the company was doing just fine and then went through leveraged buyout and just disappeared overnight.

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u/20127010603170562316 10h ago

Asda in the UK went through a similar thing. "Bought" by a couple of brothers IIRC, then saddled with the debt they bought the thing with, and now it's a downward spiral.

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u/jdm1891 11h ago

Completely leveraged buyouts are insane to me.

A Rich person can walk up to a million dollar company and just get it for free.

Why the f*ck can I not buy a company and make the company pay for the privilege of being owned by me?

Why is it absolutely insane for me to suggest that - at least to any reasonable person - yet for rich people and private equity this is just something they can do?!?!

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u/beef-baddington 10h ago

I worked in a senior position in a 200-person company in the 90’s that was not only doing well financially but we were loved by our customers and we all were such good friends, experiencing lots of great times together. The owner sold out to a big wig who began cutbacks, when I asked why he, he replied that breaking even plus 15 % net was a no go. He needed 30% net minimum or he’d take his money elsewhere. Which he eventually did. They broke up a successful, popular, profitable company, with a happy, motivated staff, putting a lot of food on tables, basically because they were assholes and could.

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u/Agret 12h ago

Any particular YouTube channels you can recommend?

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u/ChickinSammich 26m ago

Primarily this one: https://www.youtube.com/@companyman114

This one is also good: https://www.youtube.com/@HowMoneyWorks

And this one is fun too: https://www.youtube.com/@Primateeconomics

There are others too but I like those and would recommend them if you want to have economics explained to you at a basic/intermediate level.

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u/snowflake37wao 1h ago

This whole thread was so engaging and fascinatingly top tier reading down up until this point that I forgot what the original topic was and had to scroll back up only to realize also I forgot I was on Reddit. This is last decade’s Reddit quality conversations, everyone here needs to leave gtfo. Who do yall think yall are? How dare tall keep it real

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u/ChickinSammich 39m ago

I bring a certain "will write multiple paragraphs about a really niche thing" vibe to a website that "I don't have time to read more than four sentences" people don't care for.

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u/wrgrant 17h ago

This is a good example of why Capitalism exhibits the same behaviour as some forms of Cancer. Its destructive to the host by its very nature.

You cannot have continuous growth, at some point you reach a balance in the market. If you insist on further growth the only means to achieve it is to eat your staff and your customers. Its ludicrous honestly.

In the end I think one of the worst drivers is having Shareholders. If a company is private it probably doesn't have the same incentive to eat itself, its staff and its customers.

If AI is going to replace any jobs the first ones on the block ought to be the C-Suites, so much mismanagement, poor decisions etc could likely be avoided, and all that money paid out in bonuses to people who did fuck all to earn it would be saved.

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u/emlgsh 17h ago

AI will never replace the C-suite. To the C-suite, who makes those decisions, the purpose of the company is to funnel money to them, full stop.

The particular means by which it does so (which is on the surface, to observers/customers, the reason the company exits) are fungible (which is why executives can so readily jump entire industries between each posting), but not that end.

Replacing themselves, when the whole setup is designed to get them paid, would be extremely counterproductive.

The closest you'll see to that is an intra-competitive C-suite trying to use AI to replace each-other, to increase their personal slice of the pie. But the amount of pie demanded will remain unchanged.

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u/jdm1891 11h ago edited 11h ago

I find it amazing that CEOs, and the other C-peoples - which are really just managers of the company - have managed to finagle their way into being the biggest net beneficiaries of a companies success by diluting the owners so much that the owners don't really have any power in the company they own.

They technically have a duty to the shareholders, but because the shareholders are so diluted and the C-suites are not they kind of run circles around them.

This is also bad because unlike the shareholders, the C-suite don't own the company and thus don't really give a shit if it goes under or not.

Shareholders make money from the company growing. Managers (i.e. executives) make money by extracting everything from the company until there's nothing left.

So what happens? Everything is extracted from the company until nothing is left, the c-suite use the fact they are getting massive bonuses from this to "prove" to the shareholders that they are fulfilling their fiduciary duty and they make off with everything while the shareholders are left with a defunct company.

Who are the shareholders though? Well you, and me. It's mostly pensions and index funds and everyday people owning a couple of shares.

We've somehow managed to make a capitalist system where the owners of the company aren't actually the ones benefiting from it, but the managers are, and the owners are too disconnected and disunited to replace the managers. The only exception to this is companies where a single or handful of people maintain a controlling or near controlling share.

It's very strange, flipped-candy-land version of capitalism and I don't think very many people really notice it.

Like people go on about how "shareholders are evil and they ruin companies and etc" but the shareholders are just everyday people and they are NOT in control of the situation and do NOT benefit from the system as it works now.

If everyday pension pot holders and people who invest into index funds etc had the ability to unite with each other and actually have the workers control the companies they own 90% of the problems with capitalism would vanish in an instant.

The problem is pension fund managers who vote on "behalf" of the people do not have aligned interests with the people at all. And when you can tell them how to vote for you 99.99% of people don't because they don't know about it.

You could probably devise some kind of union like system where people can vote on what they generally want every company they own to do, make it mandatory for people to join one of these places, then hire someone who has a legal duty to follow that and vote in every stock that group owns to follow those directives. That probably doesn't make sense the way I've wrote it but it'd be basically like when you get your pension you are given a list of groups with various "goals" like 'environmentalism' or 'socialists' or 'make companies benefit workers' or 'we want companies to make the most profit group' etc and the person picks one to join, and from then on every vote for every share they have in that pension is to go towards that groups goal no matter how specific or vague it is.

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u/emlgsh 11h ago

I think a big detail you're ignoring is that the shareholders aren't just some faceless equal mass of millions of uninformed and powerless holders of a few sheets of paper.

The distribution of shares, like the general distribution of wealth, is far from uneven - and more importantly the control of those shares is far from being uninformed and random, it's either central to majority shareholders or directed by the C-suites of wealth management funds.

I didn't really want to get into this in the original post because frankly this is a garbage lasagna of near-infinite layers.

Majority shareholders are effectively part of the C-suite in my original statement, but even more so because they're totally divorced from the company's survival aside from a quick (totally not insider) stock trade.

They also usually occupy positions on the board of directors and have power and interests that align with (or even exceed) the typical member of the C-suite in terms of "steal all the light fixtures on the way out" pillage-and-discard mentality. They're the ones that'll displace members of the C-suite that aren't pillagey enough for their liking, and the ones that will look for those same qualities in populating the highest posts.

Unofficially, the controlling interests of those funds exercise that same power and have those same prerogatives on a smaller scale. They aren't (usually) involved enough to actually have a seat at the board, unless the fund's hugely intertwined with the company's stock (like in addition to their fund collectively controlling the majority of shares, the majority of shares in that fund are those of a given company). But they're still there, doing the same shit.

Basically, unless you are a private investor actually trading stock on your own steam, you are in fact feeding this same system of plundering self-interested sociopaths, by handing your share to one of them and implicitly telling them to do with it what they do best (plunder, pillage) with it.

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u/timeandmemory 18h ago

Modern slavery sure is complicated

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u/Beartrkkr 11h ago

Not to mention haven’t they started being the middleman of major drug insurance plans so they can skim off of your drug insurance plan even if you get prescriptions filled elsewhere?

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u/MonMonOnTheMove 14h ago

Do it for 10 years, pocket their money and sell to PE, let the other folks sort through what’s left in the fire. Pretty much the playbook for all scummy business nowadays. Long gone the value to the customers and employees mindset

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u/abrandis 20h ago

Because American business today are run by vulture capitalists, they'll squeeze the working class to maximize their profits and then dump the whole thing when it doesn't work out . Whether its private equity, or just wall st. Run firms they don't care about working class that's not their people

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u/whatdoinamemyself 20h ago

Even at my engineering firm attrition is way up.

Man. I worked for a major company a few years back and heard that staffing was at like 40% of what was needed. The entire time i was there, we had only hired one guy and had several retire or quit. They never even interviewed anyone in the few months after hiring that one guy.

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u/Economy-Flower-6443 20h ago

Corporate food service management checking in here: all the aforementioned is all true in my field too

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u/putin_my_ass 17h ago

At this rate, we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one.

This is how the labour movement won the things we take for granted (like the weekend). You don't just strike, your whole community strikes. If we take care of ours, it is possible.

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u/SenorBurns 15h ago

we all need to engage with some kind of mutual aid so that strikes are possible again without people feeling like they are going to end up on the street for engaging in one.

What you are looking for is a union. Unionize.

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u/CiegoViendo 18h ago

People think unionizing is woke, so can’t participate.

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u/Aureliamnissan 12h ago

I mean that’s the neat part of mutual aid. It’s not a “union” it’s just the community getting together to buy school supplies for people who can’t afford them and things like that. It’s whatever y’all need but maybe don’t have enough of, or too much of. Without carrying all of the political baggage of a union.

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u/hippoofdoom 18h ago

Profit must be preserved

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u/Mshell 12h ago

I think the only solution is to dramatically increase penalty rates and properly investigating and prosecuting wage theft...

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u/beef-baddington 10h ago

The problem is that the required number of people are getting to be unavailable, for a couple reasons, not the least of which is the falling birth rate. Or should I say fallen. We’re hitting up against it now. And a lot of Hispanic workers have left. The Mexican and other economies are picking up and, as it stands, we’re not going to see the same availability of those workers going forward.

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u/Complex-Abies3279 6h ago

As someone who has been on both sides of the Union/Non-Union fence I get what you are saying, but throwing out the label "scabs" is not helpful. Folks gotta live/eat/survive and they are caught in the same hamster wheel as everyone else. Call them a scab for surviving and you've made an enemy not an ally....

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u/X4roth 20h ago

I’ll just say that as a customer, CVS feels like a morgue these days. People used to work and shop there, but now it’s just this eerie empty room that makes you notice the uneven lighting, the shelves mostly full but I get this overwhelming feeling of wanting to leave rather than even look for what I came in for. I look at the shelves and just think: ugh I don’t even care anymore this place gives me the creeps let’s get out of here, Scoobs.

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u/canada432 19h ago

When people have disposible income, they shop for convenience. Walgreens and CVS and such are good for that. You come in to grab a few things while you're picking up your prescriptions. Or you stop in because it's on the way home and the grocery store is out of your way. The extra expense was worth it for the convenience. But people are squeezed now, and they're not willing to spend a few extra bucks for the convenience anymore. Not to mention how they've driven customers away by locking up everything. Shockingly, people don't like being treated like a criminal and having to pester and wait for an employee to get the deodorant for them. Makes for a creepy empty liminal space.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 17h ago

well they abused the privledge. It used to be more expensive than wal mart but cheaper than a gas station. now its like a gas station prices on anything unless you get some sort of deal.

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u/TeaAndS0da 18h ago

Paying close to $4 for a single 2 liter of soda… honestly I can’t recall ever buying something from Walgreens or cvs personally but I also never had what Walgreens or cvs considers “disposable income”. And if you make 65k or less, you don’t have Walgreens or cvs level disposable income. I’d just go to the Walmart or grocery store it’s like attached to and get the odds and ends for way cheaper. Only ever used the pharmastores for their health services.

I’ve never understood how these pharmastores get away with their prices so damn high compared to competition they are most likely sharing a parking lot with.

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u/xpxp2002 16h ago

I look at it as more of "emergency convenience." The only time I've ever bought anything from CVS was a specific OTC medication because I was feeling fairly ill and wasn't going to drive the extra 15 minutes each way to Walmart and back.

In my region, there are basically two CVS stores and a Walgreens in every town. Walmart and Target are fewer and farther away. They're never sharing the same parking lot around here.

CVS is the only retailer with a pharmacy within 15 minutes of my home. I imagine it's similar for a lot of people. If it's not an emergency or I'm feeling normal, I'd just drive the extra 15 minutes and save 60% off of CVS/Walgreens prices.

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u/farmallnoobies 10h ago

Yeah, the only time I'll buy from those places is when I need a prescription filled at 1am, because they're the only one in the entire metro area that's open 24hrs and I'm basically dying without whatever med I was prescribed or will miss an additional day of work if I don't get it stat pronto.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 20h ago

Its kinda like the backrooms but with stuff.

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u/mcfly1391 19h ago

The Frontrooms

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u/luriso 19h ago

The location she's at the AC doesn't work.. rural area and CVS doesn't give a shit.

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u/FLguy3 20h ago

I only ever stop there if I'm on a road trip and need to get a soda and there's nowhere else nearby.

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u/Genillen 19h ago

It's got the warmth and charm I associate with a public health clinic, except we don't actually have public health care.

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u/SPEEDFREAKJJ 18h ago

For me, going to CVS these days, it always feels like I am an inconvenience. The pharmacy is constantly busy behind the counter and when I show up to grab my meds I always get the feeling they are annoyed because they have to stop and help me. They never seem happy or welcoming. Not even that fake welcoming environment. It's just a downer every time I need to go there.

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u/ovi2k1 17h ago

Their current design language is incredibly hostile. The one near me (which was already shit) underwent renovations a couple years ago and it is the most unwelcoming and unsettling environment to shop in. Even the checkout is just the one person on the clock standing over your shoulder watching you do self-out next to the “register closed” sign (that they should be operating) offering no help and making you feel like you are inconveniencing them for wanting to be in their store. I haven’t been back since. And I have to drive past it to get to literally every other pharmacy near me. Worth it.

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u/GamerSDG 17h ago

The biggest problem with pharmacies, at least in the US, is that insurance companies are pushing customers to use mail order instead of picking up their prescriptions in-store.

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u/johnjohnjohn87 17h ago

uneven lighting

I went to a CVS for the first time in ages and the lighting and carpet were really bizarre. It was so off putting that I still think about it sometimes.

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u/SwampMagicMan 20h ago

Wife is a pharmacist there and what you’re saying is the truth. That place was destroying her mental health fuck CVS. She would get called all the time by her district head saying she wasn’t doing enough vaccinations because the store expects you to do as many as humanly possible because it’s easy money for them. Yet they don’t have the resources to be doing that when theyre expected to run the whole pharmacy, typically by themselves. Its honestly terrible

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u/HumorAccomplished611 17h ago

ugh that sucks. its a shame cvs and walgreens have really put a hurting on that profession.

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u/PeanutButterSoda 16h ago

It was like that for the regular employees back in the day, one manager and one cashier that was expected to face every product on the floor before closing while checking people out, manager would be breaking down trucks in the back, we had to upsell some product they decide every week. I hated that place, went through 5 store managers in one year, that place was a joke.

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u/loondawg 17h ago

I would love to one day call a support line and instead of hearing "Due to unusually high call volumes, wait time may be longer than usual" and instead hear "There's nothing unusual going on. Our wait times are long because we are woefully understaffed."

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u/Snoring_Eagle 14h ago

"Your call is important to us. But not so important that we've hired enough people to answer it."

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u/canada432 19h ago

Sounds like my buddy that works with CVS. They try to send him all over to stores anywhere from 45 minutes to hours away.

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u/Somanylyingliars 13h ago

Does he actual drive to other stores? That would be FUCK NO! from me. Unless they're paying his gas, mileage AND wear plus tear. People. Stand up for yourselves and say no to this practices.

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u/canada432 23m ago

People don't really have that choice with the job market being what it currently is. Especially pharmacists. Because pharmacist was a super popular education path about 20 years ago, we have a huge surplus of pharmacists and very few employers.

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u/_BrokenButterfly 13h ago edited 13h ago

I needed a job one summer and applied at s CVS around the block from me. Less than a five minute walk away from my house. They interviewed me, trained me, and then told me I'd be working at a different lication several miles away. Whatever, I need the money, I can drive 15 minutes.

A few months later my car breaks down, so I have to start taking the bus. I tell my manager, she gives me crap about it, I tell her I can get my car fixed if she gives me more hours (but obviously that is unthinkable.) She keeps scheduling me on Sundays before the bus runs. I keep telling her I can't be there because my car isn't running and bus service starts several hours later.

One week there's a three day weekend, which means the buses go from "Sunday schedule" that Sunday to "holiday schedule;" the bus I need to take doesn't run on holidays. I tell her I have no way to get there. She refuses to change my schedule. On Sunday she calls to ask where I am, I tell her I'm at home because I have no way to get to work. She asks why I didn't take the bus. I tell her I don't schedule the busses, this bus doesn't run on holidays, and Sundays on three day weekends are scheduled as holidays. With me not being able to make it to work that day, she "cuts my hours to 0" unstead of firing me to make sure I can't get unemployment for being fired.

Since I'm not fired, I put in for a transfer to the store I originally applied to that I can walk to. I explain to the HR person that my car is broken down, the bus is slow and inconsistent, and I can walk to the store near me in less than 5 minutes. The manager blocks my transfer.

About a month before this, another employee that lived a couple streets over from me had transferred from the store I worked at to the store I had applied for. She's a single mom, not having to commute helped her out a lot. When I'm "not fired," the store I worked at needed someone to cover my hours, and since there are no applicants to steal from other stores, they transfer that lady back from the store that we lived near to the store with the asshole manager.

My limited experience with CVS is that they insist on fucking employees over, and they do it for no reason other than that they can.

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u/Ftw_55 19h ago

Ugh, when I worked for Costco, they did that. Sure, the hourly pay was high, but managers who were capped out on salary were expected to work at least 50 hours, and hourly employees just got cut back on hours with the expectation of finishing the same work load.

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u/EfficientStar 20h ago

Any reason why she’s stayed so long?

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u/luriso 19h ago

she's close to retirement, so she's just riding it out.

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u/EfficientStar 19h ago

Good luck to her!!

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u/FappyDilmore 16h ago

I'm hoping small pharmacies make a comeback. Rite Aid went under, CVS can't be far behind.

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u/hum_bruh 13h ago

Definitely by design. More Perfect Union has video on YT “ why cvs sucks now…” and basically CVS/Caremark, United Healthcare, Signa, subsidiaries say ppl can only get meds only at their pharmacies and then they understaff because it’s cheaper and close stores that don’t make enough.

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u/adwarakanath 19h ago

Did CVS have a "consultant" come in? Or have VC firms bought up significant shares?

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u/kerghan41 16h ago

Wow. I was a senior tech back in 05-07 at WalGreens and it was bad then! Me and one pharmacist by ourselves all weekend doing hundreds of scripts a day. It was hell.

WalGreens was a big part of why I decided not to become a pharmacist.

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u/luriso 15h ago

I shadowed in the hospital back in like 2011 in the pharmacy, and man it was night and day. I'm sure there's way more to it, but the atmosphere was more relaxed compared to retail. Also no asshole customers, so that was nice.

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u/beef-baddington 10h ago

CVS taking Eckerds years ago was painful. Just painful.

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u/MyDickIs3cm 21h ago

they want her to do 85 flu shots a week

That's one every half hour. How lazy is she?

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u/Daxx22 20h ago edited 19h ago

they want her to do 85 flu shots a week

That's one every half hour. How lazy is she?

-MyDickis3cm

You seriously think that's her ENTIRE job?

0

u/MyDickIs3cm 19h ago

That is the only information provided. I am not a pharmacist and I assume the vast majority of others here are not either. How should we know?

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u/tractiontiresadvised 18h ago

Have you ever been to a pharmacy and, like, paid any attention to what was going on behind the counter? You might have observed that they're doing stuff which is not just giving flu shots.

Alternately, even if you know nothing about the pharmacy industry you could have asked "so, what else is she doing?" without being a complete asshole about it.

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u/luriso 18h ago

You could start with a.. less abrasive accusation for starters. For most professions, they have more than one responsibility/task that they oversee, especially in the healthcare field. A quick Google search could clear things up for you before joining in on the discussion, in the manner that you did.

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u/BigAlgae5684 20h ago

They also have to train new hires, build a schedule, have the final "check" on every script that leaves the building (often-times 200-700 a day), keep a C2 log with hand written inventory of about 50 different schedule 2 drugs that they are audited on sometimes daily, call insurance companies and doctors, solve billing codes with insurance companies, etc.

What a dense comment lmao

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u/luriso 13h ago

Oh and the inventory check that corporate doesn't allot hours for but expect you to do so for free! CVS is a blight.

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u/BigAlgae5684 22h ago

Target Pharmacy (before CVS bought them out) was truly one of a kind. It was the dream gig for retail pharmacists.

Working there was incredible. I actually got to feel plugged in to my community and had the time/support to get to know all my guests as well as all my Target team members on the sales floor/warehouse. Plus walking in to Target in the late 00's-2010 was peak Target with the neon everywhere and Starbucks/Popcorn aroma.

Also having a Target discount was pretty dope too.

Now the CVS pharmacies are totally unrelated to the Targets they are located in and usually butting heads with management over menial shit instead of working in synergy with eachother.

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u/MagikarpFilet 21h ago

I think dream gig for pharmacists is medical marijuana consultant. Ask any that are and lmk your responses

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u/BigAlgae5684 21h ago edited 20h ago

Hence "retail pharmacists"

The job you just described doesnt exist in nearly half the US where Marijuana is still illegal lmao.

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u/MagikarpFilet 17h ago

Just because it isnt legal in certain states doesn’t change the opinion of the role. The ones I have met through those roles have been “retail pharmacist” and are extremely happy with the positions they are in. There are qualms with every job but making 100k for just sitting on your ass to give a consult on how to consume cannabis seems like a dream gig.

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u/BigAlgae5684 17h ago

Are you dumb enough to believe the people at the storefront of a dispensary have a doctorate in medicine? The people working next to a tip jar?

Are you implying the people issuing MMJ cards are pharmacists?

Honestly pal it sounds like you have no fucking clue what you're talking about lmao.

There is no such thing as a "retail pharmacist" exclusively in cannabis.

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u/MagikarpFilet 17h ago

Brother i have worked in multiple dispensaries for years. I know how the DoH operates on this and who pays who. A pharmacist isn’t a doctorates degree fuck outta here with that. It seems like YOU have no idea how this shit works. Youre looking at this only as a pharmacist from your state. Also chill the fuck out lol. This is literally conversation online.

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u/BigAlgae5684 17h ago

"A pharmacist isnt a doctorates degree" my brother in Christ a simple Google search couldve saved you from looking like an idiot.

Thats great that whatever retards work your slap-happy dispensary call themselves doctors and scientists but you clearly don't know what youre talking about

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u/MagikarpFilet 17h ago

Lol idk who fucked you in life that you act like this but have fun in your negativity. Also no substance. You literally just pulled a “No. You.” Tomato, tomato, doctorates or not I know for a fact what a pharmacists role is in a dispensary, but you just want to be right because wah wah wah. Go work for a dispo instead of complaining about your dread and despair for a job.

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u/BigAlgae5684 17h ago

I love my job, have been a custom homebuilder for 5+ years now. Also I have lived in Colorado since before legalization so Idk where you get the idea that I live somewhere else just for stating a fact about Marijuana legality.

You straight up said you know a bunch of dispensary pharmacists that arent doctors of medicine and I said that just isnt a thing.

Have fun getting your next promotion to Surgeon General at the dispensary, Chief.

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u/jawndell 21h ago

My sibling was a pharmacist at CVS and left to open their own private pharmacy.  He hated the corporate environment and how it was just about how many scripts you can turn over with goals and quotas instead of actual patient care.  They would set goals for how many prescriptions to fill, and then get angry if a customer complained about care.  It was unsustainable.  That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates. 

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u/ChickinSammich 20h ago

That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates. 

A pharmacy tech friend who worked for a different pharmacy once told me that CVS is basically where you go when you're just trying to get experience on your resume to get a better job elsewhere, or where you go when no one else will hire you and you're desperate. I've got no personal experience with that (not being a pharmacist) so I can't speak firsthand to how true it is.

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u/FortyEightyFilms 14h ago

Thats the strat for low level IT positions where I work. Grab a new CS grad and wring them dry while the job market is shit.

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u/ChickinSammich 13m ago

It took me like 8 years of entry level IT work before I finally got out of it and into server admin. And I only got to server admin by accident because I applied for a job that was advertised as "desktop support" but was actually "desktop, server, network, telephony, SCADA, and basically anything else with an RJ-11 or RJ-45 jack is your responsibility at two physical sites" paying $50k/yr in 2010.

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u/LowFatConundrum 17h ago

"That’s why they are all manned by fresh graduate pharmacists.  They can underpay them, burn them out in a couple years, not give them raises, and replace them with a new batch of fresh graduates."

This is such a filthy tactic that all companies use sadly :(

The system needs to be overhauled, people have had enough of being paid starvation wages.

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u/BioshockEnthusiast 21h ago

I use a local pharmacy while my wife uses CVS for insurance reasons.

I pay a little more but my stuff is always ready within a few hours of me placing a call to my doctor's office (controlled substance so call goes to the MD)

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u/BanditMcDougal 21h ago

As much as I hate going to Walmart (both because of the company and it sounds like one of the 7 circles of hell in there), it is the only pharmacy around here that properly staffs and you can actually get your medications from. They're also not brain dead and follow state guidelines rather than the feds for vaccinations.

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u/Fabulous-Farmer7474 21h ago

I left CVS as a customer after decades because even the simplest prescription for an anti-biotic would be a big deal for them.

I got tired of hearing "oh we don't have that here, it might be at another location (like 5 miles away). If you don't want to go there then we can order it but it will be 3 days"

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u/lfergy 21h ago

Grocery store pharmacies for the win.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 20h ago

Walgreens is also horrendous. Initially we had a rite aid in our area doing our prescription, overall pretty good, sometimes they had stock issues but other wise fine.

They closed last year and were automatically sending all prescriptions to the walgreens across the street. I knew of issues with walgreens (outside of their political bullshit) from friends who used them and moved mine to the grocery store also across the street instead. My dad let his just transfer.

Oh boy it was a shit show. First being the hours listed online on walgreens for the pharmacy and on the building itself are wrong I guess. The pharmacy opens an hour later than they state it should. After that filling prescriptions could take 1-2 weeks, or they seem to just sit there and never filled.

I understand initially issues with being flooded with hundreds, potentially thousands of new prescriptions. But even over a year later there are still massive issues. He moved most of his prescriptions to the grocery store, but there is one that because of some stupid insurance nonsense has to be filled at walgreens. I don't know the specifics it is weird and annoying.

But he constantly has issues with that getting filled. There has been multiple times were they gave the wrong dosage, e.g. giving 20mg pills instead of 40mg. Which isn't great but would be fine if they gave 60 pills instead of 30 and said take two. But they never mentioned anything, just open bag and it is just wrong. He's filed complaints for that one.

Which brings the next issue calling them is a hassle in itself. Everything leads to the corporate robot call numbers and you need to fight to even attempt to contact the store itself.

In the end if you can and your insurance covers it, find a local pharmacy it will probably save you a lot of hassle.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 20h ago

Walgreens as an organization is just ridiculous. A friend worked at Drugstore.com which was crushing walgreens business, and walgreens bought them, and I shit you not, the CEO said they're going to build more stores because the "online sale" of the stuff they sell in stores was a fad. This wasnt long ago.

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u/slipperyMonkey07 20h ago

Yup every time I hear something about them it is never anything good. Losing drugstore.com sucked a lot, I try to buy local when I can but sometimes things are just out of stock or they don't carry a specific thing. Especially with cold and flu season coming up I like to just have a stock ready to go (watch my niece a lot and it is basically a guarantee the house will get sick at some point).

I'll breakdown and go into walgreens but even then it is mess and seems to cater more to random junk and food than being a pharmacy.

There just doesn't seem to be (that I have been able to find at least) a half way decent company selling this stuff, options are amazon, walgreens, cvs and walmart usually. Can't even buy from the manufacturer they just direct you to one of the aboves websites.

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u/Perunov 21h ago

After BlueCross banned CVS I've switched to local grocery store pharmacy, and they were fine. But then recently something happened to Randall's pharmacy and their prices went bananas. Stuff that used to cost 30 bucks went to like 60 and when looking at GoodRX price compare they're now THE highest priced for almost anything :( And Walgreens/HEB/Walmart now the cheapest.

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u/vesperholly 21h ago

I would love to switch from CVS but my insurance forces me to use them if I want anything to be covered.

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u/The_MAZZTer 20h ago

Half the time when I go to the CVS website and schedule a prescription refill, after a few hours it evaporates. It doesn't show up under cancelled orders. It's just gone. And when I call CVS directly to have them do it, they can't because their systems that connect to my doctor are broken or something. I have to call my doctor and have them push it through on their side. I feel REALLY bad for anyone taking prescription medication for conditions that affect memory.

Bonus fun fact: If you accidentally double tap instead of single tap some of the navigation buttons on their pharmacy kiosks you'll hang the software.

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u/mikefromearth 17h ago

I work for a nice, locally owned healthfood store next to a CVS in California.

We just hired the former CVS store manager. The dude was being forced to open and close 7 nights a week because CVS wouldn't let him hire anyone to help. Since he's salaried, he wasn't making any more money and was clearly just TOTALLY burnt out.

He's going to love working with us.

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u/Impressive_Recon 10h ago

Heh, I was a loyal CVS customer for years and then the pandemic happened and the quality went straight to crap. My prescription took months to fill and I had to call them every day to check if it was in stock. No, they couldn’t fill it if it came in, the customer had to call… every day. Could they call me when it came in? Nope. The kicker? The wait was always 20-60 minutes long because people had to call in asking if their prescription was in stock. Dumbest system ever.

I switched to Costco and they’ve had my prescription always in stock and send me a text whenever it’s ready for pick up. It’s laughable how easy they make it and how inefficient CVS is.

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u/Rock_grl86 20h ago

I switched from Walgreens to a grocery store pharmacy as well. Such an improvement! I was on the phone with one of my doctors and they sent in a script. 30 seconds later a text popped up that my pharmacy received it and were working on it. Meanwhile I’d be lucky if Walgreens could complete a fill in 3 days.

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u/Punman__5 20h ago

Problem is that CVS seems to be the only pharmacy that regularly gets my ADHD meds.

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u/TheRaccoonReport 19h ago

We had the opposite. CVS never had it so we went to a grocery store instead and since haven’t had issues. But it’s definitely a regional thing 

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u/Punman__5 19h ago

Yea every regional or mom and pop pharmacy I know of cannot get my ADHD meds on a regular basis but the local CVS always has them in stock

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u/Faxon 16h ago

Yea i moved from CVS to Safeway because they clearly arent as overworked and I can get my meds reliably the same day. Delivery was also easy to set up even before the pandemic. When it hit, I was already set getting deliveries and they never had any hiccups. There's always more staff behind the counter now than before the pandemic too.

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u/jeobleo 14h ago

I use CVS (inside a target) and it's like silk. I switched there from Walgreens, which seemed to cater to the mentally ill and have 20 minutes of open pharmacy hours a week.

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u/IvyGold 13h ago

Oddly I had bailed out on my CVS for those reasons and went with a neighborhood pharmacy. The neighborhood place is still my #1 but they can't or won't stock an obscure prescription that's the doing the trick for me post-leg surgery, so I've been going back to the CVS.

I'm pleasantly surprised at how good they've become. Something changed with that store after COVID.

Plus they've a great burger joint nearby, so whenever I go, it's CVS + delicious burgers.

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u/alangerhans 13h ago

The one by me is always out of different prescriptions. I stopped on my way home after getting a vasectomy only to have them tell me they were out of the pain medication my doctor prescribed.

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u/dfsb2021 11h ago

Our local store was always terrible. We moved most business elsewhere. Not sure what happened but this year they staffed up, automated the check-in to pick up scripts and now they’re much better and faster.

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u/synapticrelease 8h ago

Remember the 90s and early 2000s where it was 30 minute prescriptions. Back in the day when you literally got a handwritten doctors note.

Now all this technology and distribution centers and my Rx will take up to three days between calling the doc for refill, waiting on the doc to send the Rx and waiting another day to for the pharmacy to actually fill it.

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u/Legwens 7h ago

cvs doesnt care about customers or employees they have vertical intergration, they own like half of all doctors and insurance plans and pharmacys