Walgreens names new CEO

[storewanderer]

So I am seeing signs at some Walgreens in my area about new store hours starting 2/22. I guess this is part of the cost cutting (?????) the new CEO is doing.

However the 2 stores I saw these signs, their pharmacy hours remain unchanged. Their front store hours were previously 8 AM to 10 PM, every day. Now their hours will be 7 AM to 10 PM, every day. These are low volume stores (they have the boxes on many aisles, now also have some bottom shelves covered in boxes in areas they just reset like shampoo).

Walgreens Store Managers have typically had a rather office like schedule doing 40 hours a week then a half day every other Saturday to get to 45 hours. So they show up to open the store by 8 AM then leave by/before 5 PM. My thought here is opening at 7 AM, now the store manager will need to get there an hour earlier, but will they leave an hour earlier too? Tough to leave a store at 3 PM or 4 PM- it is a busy time of day, shift change with night employees coming in, customers engaging you, vendors, etc...

So these extended hours look to me like a way to get 50 hours a week out of the store managers.

[ClownLoach]

So I am seeing signs at some Walgreens in my area about new store hours starting 2/22. I guess this is part of the cost cutting (?????) the new CEO is doing.

However the 2 stores I saw these signs, their pharmacy hours remain unchanged. Their front store hours were previously 8 AM to 10 PM, every day. Now their hours will be 7 AM to 10 PM, every day. These are low volume stores (they have the boxes on many aisles, now also have some bottom shelves covered in boxes in areas they just reset like shampoo).

Walgreens Store Managers have typically had a rather office like schedule doing 40 hours a week then a half day every other Saturday to get to 45 hours. So they show up to open the store by 8 AM then leave by/before 5 PM. My thought here is opening at 7 AM, now the store manager will need to get there an hour earlier, but will they leave an hour earlier too? Tough to leave a store at 3 PM or 4 PM- it is a busy time of day, shift change with night employees coming in, customers engaging you, vendors, etc...

So these extended hours look to me like a way to get 50 hours a week out of the store managers.

Unfortunately my Walgreens connection passed away unexpectedly a few years ago, but he did not leave me with the impression that their Store Managers work 8 to 5. He spoke of long work weeks 60+ hours, overnight trucks and resets, and generally hard work. Now he was in a top volume location which might dictate a different procedure. Flip side, I don't recall ever interviewing a Walgreens Store Manager for any openings... Whenever I had a job posting I would get a plethora of applications from Store Managers trying to escape from CVS. So maybe they offer a cushy schedule for lower volume stores but then the model does not scale well, forcing them to work a tougher schedule in higher volume stores?

[storewanderer]

So I am seeing signs at some Walgreens in my area about new store hours starting 2/22. I guess this is part of the cost cutting (?????) the new CEO is doing.

However the 2 stores I saw these signs, their pharmacy hours remain unchanged. Their front store hours were previously 8 AM to 10 PM, every day. Now their hours will be 7 AM to 10 PM, every day. These are low volume stores (they have the boxes on many aisles, now also have some bottom shelves covered in boxes in areas they just reset like shampoo).

Walgreens Store Managers have typically had a rather office like schedule doing 40 hours a week then a half day every other Saturday to get to 45 hours. So they show up to open the store by 8 AM then leave by/before 5 PM. My thought here is opening at 7 AM, now the store manager will need to get there an hour earlier, but will they leave an hour earlier too? Tough to leave a store at 3 PM or 4 PM- it is a busy time of day, shift change with night employees coming in, customers engaging you, vendors, etc...

So these extended hours look to me like a way to get 50 hours a week out of the store managers.

Unfortunately my Walgreens connection passed away unexpectedly a few years ago, but he did not leave me with the impression that their Store Managers work 8 to 5. He spoke of long work weeks 60+ hours, overnight trucks and resets, and generally hard work. Now he was in a top volume location which might dictate a different procedure. Flip side, I don't recall ever interviewing a Walgreens Store Manager for any openings... Whenever I had a job posting I would get a plethora of applications from Store Managers trying to escape from CVS. So maybe they offer a cushy schedule for lower volume stores but then the model does not scale well, forcing them to work a tougher schedule in higher volume stores?

If he had a poor team below him (poor assistant managers) the 60+ hours is possible but the general attitude at the District Manager level would be if a store manager has to work 60+ hour weeks there is something very wrong with that store/its people.

There have been periods over the years where they make the store managers spend a lot of their time in pharmacy. In my area when that happened, those store managers basically neglected self serve entirely and did their required hours and went home. They let the assistant managers run front end the best they could; the store manager may escape pharmacy for brief periods to help on trucks and deal with limited office paperwork tasks but that was it. I could see it easy for a manager who actually cared about their store to get sucked into pharmacy for 40 hours then have to do another 20 hours on self serve.

Higher volume stores typically have more management support (more assistant managers/shift leads). The store manager pay also varies by store volume (as does bonus potential). Also 24 hour stores get extra labor due to being overnight and the store manager can typically rely heavily on the overnight shift to do things like ad tags, stock seasonal, outdates, and various other projects. Walgreens has historically had layers of management in the stores- old pre-Boots model was Store Manager (salary), Executive Assistant Manager (salary) (this was a store manager in training), and multiple Assistant Managers (hourly). Boots cut some layers out basically getting rid of Executive Assistant Manager and the multiple Assistant Managers but added more "Shift Leads (hourly)." More recently they added a new position called Emerging Store Manager which I think is the old Executive Assistant but I'm not sure if that is salaried or not.

The overnight trucks could be common once a week depending on the store/truck schedule.

The overnight reset would typically involve a "wall" such as cosmetics wall, or a nasty aisle such as vitamin aisle. Those take place once or twice a year. Typically they would pool together teams from multiple stores to do those and go around for a number of weeks to different locations.

Walgreens also used to be pretty generous with overtime. It wasn't unusual for those hourly assistant managers to be working 55-60 hour weeks while the salaried store manager and salaried executive assistant manager were doing their 45 hour weeks. This is no longer the case since Boots. But a lot of this is why the stores don't look as good as they once did. Also they have cut so many SKUs in the stores to cut down on labor.

[veteran+]

I have never heard of a Store Manager in retail working only 40 to 45 hours a week.

[storewanderer]

I have never heard of a Store Manager in retail working only 40 to 45 hours a week.

That's why the position has lower turnover than many other retailers...

[veteran+]

I have never heard of a Store Manager in retail working only 40 to 45 hours a week.

That's why the position has lower turnover than many other retailers...

Is this recent?

I was almost hired as a Store Manager for them in Palm Springs back in 2006?

The required work hours was nothing close to even 45+ hours a week, it was more (I was not surprised because that's pretty normal).

[ClownLoach]

So I am seeing signs at some Walgreens in my area about new store hours starting 2/22. I guess this is part of the cost cutting (?????) the new CEO is doing.

However the 2 stores I saw these signs, their pharmacy hours remain unchanged. Their front store hours were previously 8 AM to 10 PM, every day. Now their hours will be 7 AM to 10 PM, every day. These are low volume stores (they have the boxes on many aisles, now also have some bottom shelves covered in boxes in areas they just reset like shampoo).

Walgreens Store Managers have typically had a rather office like schedule doing 40 hours a week then a half day every other Saturday to get to 45 hours. So they show up to open the store by 8 AM then leave by/before 5 PM. My thought here is opening at 7 AM, now the store manager will need to get there an hour earlier, but will they leave an hour earlier too? Tough to leave a store at 3 PM or 4 PM- it is a busy time of day, shift change with night employees coming in, customers engaging you, vendors, etc...

So these extended hours look to me like a way to get 50 hours a week out of the store managers.

Unfortunately my Walgreens connection passed away unexpectedly a few years ago, but he did not leave me with the impression that their Store Managers work 8 to 5. He spoke of long work weeks 60+ hours, overnight trucks and resets, and generally hard work. Now he was in a top volume location which might dictate a different procedure. Flip side, I don't recall ever interviewing a Walgreens Store Manager for any openings... Whenever I had a job posting I would get a plethora of applications from Store Managers trying to escape from CVS. So maybe they offer a cushy schedule for lower volume stores but then the model does not scale well, forcing them to work a tougher schedule in higher volume stores?

If he had a poor team below him (poor assistant managers) the 60+ hours is possible but the general attitude at the District Manager level would be if a store manager has to work 60+ hour weeks there is something very wrong with that store/its people.

There have been periods over the years where they make the store managers spend a lot of their time in pharmacy. In my area when that happened, those store managers basically neglected self serve entirely and did their required hours and went home. They let the assistant managers run front end the best they could; the store manager may escape pharmacy for brief periods to help on trucks and deal with limited office paperwork tasks but that was it. I could see it easy for a manager who actually cared about their store to get sucked into pharmacy for 40 hours then have to do another 20 hours on self serve.

Higher volume stores typically have more management support (more assistant managers/shift leads). The store manager pay also varies by store volume (as does bonus potential). Also 24 hour stores get extra labor due to being overnight and the store manager can typically rely heavily on the overnight shift to do things like ad tags, stock seasonal, outdates, and various other projects. Walgreens has historically had layers of management in the stores- old pre-Boots model was Store Manager (salary), Executive Assistant Manager (salary) (this was a store manager in training), and multiple Assistant Managers (hourly). Boots cut some layers out basically getting rid of Executive Assistant Manager and the multiple Assistant Managers but added more "Shift Leads (hourly)." More recently they added a new position called Emerging Store Manager which I think is the old Executive Assistant but I'm not sure if that is salaried or not.

The overnight trucks could be common once a week depending on the store/truck schedule.

The overnight reset would typically involve a "wall" such as cosmetics wall, or a nasty aisle such as vitamin aisle. Those take place once or twice a year. Typically they would pool together teams from multiple stores to do those and go around for a number of weeks to different locations.

Walgreens also used to be pretty generous with overtime. It wasn't unusual for those hourly assistant managers to be working 55-60 hour weeks while the salaried store manager and salaried executive assistant manager were doing their 45 hour weeks. This is no longer the case since Boots. But a lot of this is why the stores don't look as good as they once did. Also they have cut so many SKUs in the stores to cut down on labor.

He was in a top store, training store, basically everyone who wanted to be promoted to Store Manager had to have a stint at that location first. So definitely the normal operation. It was in a heavy tourist area, I don't care to say where for quite a few reasons I apologize. One of the busiest locations in California, and might not necessarily be on anyone's radar as such a store.

[storewanderer]

I have never heard of a Store Manager in retail working only 40 to 45 hours a week.

That's why the position has lower turnover than many other retailers...

Is this recent?

I was almost hired as a Store Manager for them in Palm Springs back in 2006?

The required work hours was nothing close to even 45+ hours a week, it was more (I was not surprised because that's pretty normal).

Salary was based on 45 hours even back then...

Store managers typically worked that 45 hours, some may have worked 50 hours from time to time... the executive assistants (who was trying to get promoted to store manager) usually tried to work more than the store manager in an effort to stand out/get promoted, including putting extra time in pharmacy doing tech tasks to demonstrate an interest in pharmacy. Then the hourly assistant managers who were getting heavy overtime offering to work 55 hour weeks picked up most of the slack, most of those were not pharmacy tech licensed (unless they were trying to get promoted to executive assistant). Maybe it was different in the region you were talking to and they were not so generous with overtime for those hourly assistant managers so the store manager was expected to pick up the slack? That is how it is at CVS/Rite Aid for the store manager...

Walgreens especially now doesn't pay store managers very well, especially at low volume stores. And multiple years now they've changed the bonus program mid-game and basically screwed store managers out of bonuses. Longer term store managers who got hired back in that 2006 period are still pretty well paid compared to the newer hires.

[veteran+]

If this is true, that would be a dream job in America to be a Store Manager in a retail setting and only have to work 40 to 45 hours per week.

Like, wow!

[storewanderer]

If this is true, that would be a dream job in America to be a Store Manager in a retail setting and only have to work 40 to 45 hours per week.

Like, wow!

45 hour weeks... morale is not very good. Most don't even care to put in an extra hour anymore even if it could help the store. It may be a dream on its face but the attitude makes it dreadful. Like someone would enjoy working 55 hours in a more positive environment.

One store in my area had its cosmetics wall ripped up for the major reset almost a month back in the fall. That should take an overnight or two with the store manager and multiple staff involved. They just don't care anymore.