CVS and Other Pharmacies Closing at 7 PM

[Alpha8472]

CVS is closing pharmacies early starting in March. Walmart is following suit by closing its pharmacies at 7 PM.

Perhaps Walgreens will also do the same.

Due to the cold weather and other reasons many pharmacies have been doing very little business after 7 PM. It is a slowdown that is limited to nighttime. The daytime hours are busy, but people seem to not stay out as late anymore.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/compani ... r-AA16OWT4

[norcalriteaidclerk]

Actually for the past year or so (at least in or around Sacramento and Stockton)quite a few lower volume Walgreens locations have been closing their pharmacies at 7pm on weekdays.Two Stockton locations in fact have been closing pharmacy at 6:30 which may or may not be safety related considering that it is Stockton.

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[storewanderer]

CVS has been closing at 7 PM for quite some time in certain locations. Around Reno basically if there is no Walgreens nearby, close at 7 PM. If Walgreens is nearby pharmacy mysteriously stays open until 9 or 10.

As someone who goes in the evening closer to closing time whenever doing any pharmacy transaction I don't particularly like these policies and if possible will stick with chains who continue to keep pharmacy open until 8 PM or 9 PM.

Yet I very often hear the pharmacy staff working inside the closed pharmacy well after the posted closing time in various CVS Stores. This is very common and has been happening for years. Another place where I routinely see and hear pharmacy staff working in the closed pharmacy filling pills past the posted closing time is in the Safeway in Sparks on Vista. Vista is funny as there is a very sad CVS in the same shopping center that hardly does any volume; Safeway has a far busier pharmacy there for whatever reason.

[Alpha8472]

The corporate executives are cutting pharmacy hours to save money on payroll. They think that by having shorter hours that they can run on fewer employees. It is simply greed on their part and many employees will either lose their jobs or get reduced to part time. You can't make a living on part time hours. The few employees left will be worked to death. There is going to be an even bigger wave of resignations as employees leave and look for other jobs. Pharmacies will really be shorthanded.

[storewanderer]

The corporate executives are cutting pharmacy hours to save money on payroll. They think that by having shorter hours that they can run on fewer employees. It is simply greed on their part and many employees will either lose their jobs or get reduced to part time. You can't make a living on part time hours. The few employees left will be worked to death. There is going to be an even bigger wave of resignations as employees leave and look for other jobs. Pharmacies will really be shorthanded.

I am laughing when I read headlines that say Wal Mart and CVS are cutting pharmacy hours of operation to lessen the load on pharmacists.

Really? If you have 300 customers per day coming to your pharmacy, having it open 9-7 instead of having it open 8-10 just means now you have 30 customers per hour whereas before you had 21.4 customers per hour.

Unless they expect customer counts to drop, this won't lessen the workload on pharmacists. It will just make the operating hours even more intense than they already are. And they are already VERY intense. Those last couple slow hours are usually a "catch up" time. Closing at 7 PM when it is still somewhat busy, is just awful.

I am wondering if they will formally operate the pharmacy where it is only open to serve customers from 9-7, but it has staff present for an hour or two before/after to fill scripts without interruption of customers. Some pharmacies are designed in a way that won't be very easy.

[Alpha8472]

Typically morning employees are scheduled to start working 15 to 30 minutes before the pharmacy opens. The later shift is expected to clock out of work exactly at 7 PM. Work will be left unfinished for the next day. Overtime of even a few minutes is frowned upon.

[storewanderer]

Typically morning employees are scheduled to start working 15 to 30 minutes before the pharmacy opens. The later shift is expected to clock out of work exactly at 7 PM. Work will be left unfinished for the next day. Overtime of even a few minutes is frowned upon.

I just don't see this making things any easier for the pharmacy staff... unless volume drops.

At this point there may be little enough competition in the industry that this will actually work out. It won't be good for employees or customers and will make the pharmacy that much more "profitable per labor hour."

15-20 years ago this never would have worked out, there was too much competition.