Are there retail stores where night shift pharmacist is not busy?

[Dan Friesen]

Are there overnight pharmacist positions anywhere that are peaceful, with not much work? I am looking to do as little as possible, and was wondering if I might be able to find such a job, and where my chances would be the best...what state or area or chain, etc. I don't want to do 100 refills or be doing housekeeping duties all night.
If you know of a specific store or opening that would be nice too. Or is there an area where there is a big enough shortage that they would tolerate me doing nothing all night?
Also, generally, how is the job market in the USA. I am in Canada. Don't care where I go...Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, etc anywhere.

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[BMBiology]

Yeah get in the time machine and go back to 2006.

 

[Momus]

I knew 6 such 24 h stores personally. They are all closed now. Stores are no longer 24 hours because they don't need GY rphs sitting around doing 15 new rx (read: nothing) all night. The rest of GY pharmacies that still operate do about 100-120 rx/night, and has an avg volume of 600 rx/day.

 

[Gombrich12]

Canada doesn't have overnight pharmacies?

 

[Dred Pirate]

I am looking to do as little as possible,QUOTE]

I love the honesty - make sure you say this in your job interview. I worked overnight at Eckers 8 years ago - and had nothing to do, was the first time we changed this store to 24 hours. In 10 hours I filled on average 30 new rxs, and did 50-80 autorefills every night. I had the cleanest pharmacy in the district. You can only play computer games for so long.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

Are there overnight pharmacist positions anywhere that are peaceful, with not much work? I am looking to do as little as possible, and was wondering if I might be able to find such a job, and where my chances would be the best...what state or area or chain, etc. I don't want to do 100 refills or be doing housekeeping duties all night.
If you know of a specific store or opening that would be nice too. Or is there an area where there is a big enough shortage that they would tolerate me doing nothing all night?
Also, generally, how is the job market in the USA. I am in Canada. Don't care where I go...Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, etc anywhere.

With auto refills and inventory duties being the responsibility of night pharmacists these days in all the major chains, I doubt you'll find that unless you stumble into a new store. I work in one of the slower 24 hour stores I know of (we've been doing 1900/week, up from 1300/wk when I started in 2011, store originally opened in 2009) and to be honest, while I might have a total of an hour of complete down time to enjoy a night (I get a full lunch!), there is a lot more work to be done that you might imagine. 70-80 readyfills with all housekeeping,bookkeeping, and inventory responsibilities takes hours to do correctly. I'm usually pretty busy until 11:30PM with general store stuff. 30 minutes to do narc counts & cycle counts daily. Until 4AM to get readyfills done with the 4-5 ER people/narc seekers that stumble in to interrupt you. Take 1/2 hour for lunch. Do busy work like trash/vials/index hard copies, next thing you know its 5:30AM. Might be able to dick around a little between 5:30-6:15 or so if you wanted, but I usually have outdates and other nonsense to deal with. By 6:30 its time for the full on morning rush hour and you take care of general shop until its time to go. Most high volume 24 hour stores are complete madness at night. Those guys don't have any responsibility other than "just get the readyfills done and fill the robot." Which isn't that bad, either. Its nice, mindless, and low responsibility vis-a-vis inventory and bookkeeping.

But this sit around and do nothing utopia...very unlikely.

 

[IndustryPharmD]

Admirable honesty... While retail chain management can be dumb about some things, they are smart enough to count their money. Why pay someone a salary to sit around and do nothing? Especially when there is plenty of opportunity to make your existing staff pick up some more work in their regular business hours...

 

[Sparda29]

Retail, I don't know.

The hospital where I work, the overnight is really chill. I got mandated to stay one night because they couldn't find coverage for an overnight sick call. I had my laptop out and was on Netflix all night.

 

[Dred Pirate]

Retail, I don't know.

The hospital where I work, the overnight is really chill. I got mandated to stay one night because they couldn't find coverage for an overnight sick call. I had my laptop out and was on Netflix all night.

it is weird at our hospital - we have three overnight pharmacists, 1 a dedicated Emergency Department pharmacist. Some nights we barely get a chance to take a pee and eat our dinner, other nights we sit around bored out of our mind - and rarely anything in the middle

 

[Dred Pirate]

You've got to be pretty lazy if you're looking to move to a city in hopes of doing nothing at work.

either a troll
or someone who is truly lifting up the respectability of our profession

 

[THE MTL]

Are there overnight pharmacist positions anywhere that are peaceful, with not much work? I am looking to do as little as possible, and was wondering if I might be able to find such a job, and where my chances would be the best...what state or area or chain, etc. I don't want to do 100 refills or be doing housekeeping duties all night.
If you know of a specific store or opening that would be nice too. Or is there an area where there is a big enough shortage that they would tolerate me doing nothing all night?
Also, generally, how is the job market in the USA. I am in Canada. Don't care where I go...Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, etc anywhere.

Don't know if you're trolling or not. But go mail order. You sit at the computer and verify scripts all day. Very boring. Barely using your brain. And you get to sit. Sounds like something you're interested in

 

[WVUPharm2007]

WOW.... Sign me up. 1900/wk and still a 24 hr store!? This has to be the most cake retail spot I've ever heard. I worked nights at a store that did ~2400/wk and I thought that was the most cake job ever. I probably had 2+ hrs of downtime a night and that included me vacuuming the pharmacy and OTC section daily, doing all return to stocks, filling 100-150/night, etc, etc... Then the company took advantage of my hard work and sent me to a 5000/wk store.

Moral of the story, do the bare minimum to keep the day staff off your back, but never go above and beyond. Sadly, I think I'd be bored out of my mind at a store that did <2k/wk.

Plus all the busy work, plus everything that doesn't get done (112 tech hours), putting truck away...it's not like it was 4 years ago. I used to be able to dick around. But this is the first time all week I've had time to check SDN this week. It's finally caught up at 648am...and the morning rush will start any second. They snatched tech hours from all of the 24hr and made it a slog.

 

[owlegrad]

Plus all the busy work, plus everything that doesn't get done (112 tech hours), putting truck away...it's not like it was 4 years ago. I used to be able to dick around. But this is the first time all week I've had time to check SDN this week. It's finally caught up at 648am...and the morning rush will start any second. They snatched tech hours from all of the 24hr and made it a slog.

112 tech hours?! I don't know how that is manageable.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

112 tech hours?! I don't know how that is manageable.

You leave everything not due before 9pm for night shift. We've been doing it. 89 mce, 4.0 sos last month.

 

[sosoo]

theres a store i used to float n it still is not busy overnight. the queue is usually cleaned by 3am, so u got the next 4 hrs finding things to do (or take a nap). only once a week u have to put up the w/h orders. the only problem with stores like that is u dont know if someday they decide to close the 24hr service. then ur out of luck.

 

[WVUPharm2007]

theres a store i used to float n it still is not busy overnight. the queue is usually cleaned by 3am, so u got the next 4 hrs finding things to do (or take a nap). only once a week u have to put up the w/h orders. the only problem with stores like that is u dont know if someday they decide to close the 24hr service. then ur out of luck.

The other night guy at my store worked at a new 24 hr in my district Sat night. Less than 3 pages of Readyfill. I was amazed.