Pros
Excellent pay and benefits. The majority of my co-workers were amazing, hardworking individuals.
Cons
Too many to mention, but I will list some significant cons. First and foremost was the constant fight to catch up. Smaller stores had no issues with volume and traffic, often having an excessive amount of free time. Larger stores, like mine, were always inundated with customers and prescriptions. In the five years I worked with CVS, at 2 different stores, the trend at the beginning of each year was the same; we saw a 10 to 15% increase in prescription volume, yet we had a 5 to 15% reduction in technician and pharmacist hours. This resulted in a few things... First was the uptick in angry customers, who would then leave negative reviews, which subsequently affected our numbers and overall bonuses. Second was increased work without pay. As a salary job, pharmacists were paid for specific set of approved hours, any excess was unpaid. Because we all liked and respected each other, each pharmacist often stayed 4 to 10 hours extra each week to help catch up. Yes, the salary is great, but working for free was not. Second, was the general attitude toward safety of the employees. Pharmacy robberies have become relatively commonplace with several incidents proving fatal to pharmacists and staff. With the increase in violence in our workplace, CVS' response was to install timed safes. No alarms, no guards, just timed safes. With hundreds of thousands of dollars of controlled substances on the line, they felt this was the most cost effective way to deter criminals. It did not work and robberies continued at a steady pace for some time (up to when I quit). I had 3 friends that were robbed at gunpoint, one of whom had a gun pressed to her head for 5 minutes while she waited for the safe to open. How did CVS response to the continued robberies? They sent out a training module that illustrated the best way to avoid robberies. One of their amazing suggestions was to shout and scream at the assailant as a last resort. At some CVS stores, they required the pharmacists sign forms that placed blame on them if there was a loss to the store if a safe was left open while a prescription was not actively being filled. Makes sense, right? Why else would the safe be open if we aren't filling a prescription? Well, the safes are open when we: 1. Perform a CII inventory. 2. Put away our CII delivery. 3. Perform CII out dates and returns. Clearly, they were not thinking and even after admitting their error, they refused to change the wording on these "contracts." Third, was the way we treated customers. I recall a time when we had the opportunity to get to know our customers and treat them like human beings. We could better take care of their healthcare related issues by being more aware about the circumstances in their lives. Over time, this became impossible and we were forced to treat each customer as a number and a paycheck. This led to increased customer dissatisfaction and increased complaints, again affecting our numbers. However, corporate never really tackled the issue, instead stating that we needed to find a balance between filling prescriptions and listening to our patients. Lastly, the balance between work and life was non-existent. Family members often spent time apart and many of my co-workers had younger children that they rarely saw because of the amount of work required to do their jobs. My pharmacy manager came in after her shift multiples times after tucking her kids in, so she could get work done. Why not do it while she was at work? It was impossible to do at work because of the number of patients coming through our doors. These were the factors that led me to leaving CVS and ultimately finding a better job with another company that cared about my well-being. CVS treats it's employees and customers poorly.
