What would you guys do?

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RXasaurus

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I have a question and I would really appreciate everyone's advice. :)

I've been working as a grad intern for CVS for the past month now. I should be fully licensed within the next 2 weeks. To be honest, when I had originally signed on, the atmosphere, company, and employees were absolutely ideal (I know, I was definitely blind to that!). However, I feel that after working for them for about a month now, I can fully see that working for CVS is not what I had expected. I don't feel adequately trained after talking to the pharmacy manager and DM about it. I don't want to waste their training $$$ by being there nor do I want stay with the company. I'm just thinking about me and my goals and I just don't think my goals align to CVS' goals. So I'm thinking about quitting, putting in my two weeks, waiting until I get licensed, and just applying to other jobs. I just can't work for a company like this. Has anyone ever experienced the similar situation? What would you guys do? I've been getting a lot of "just stick with the company for a few months" but I just can't stand it any longer.

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Remember you need a job to get a job. Don't quit until you have something lined up.

Yeah you don't know how it is like working for CVS until you have worked there 40 hours a week x12 weeks.
 
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Don't be surprised if they decide to let you go on the day that you give them 2 weeks too. That happened to someone I know.
 
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I have a question and I would really appreciate everyone's advice. :)

I've been working as a grad intern for CVS for the past month now. I should be fully licensed within the next 2 weeks. To be honest, when I had originally signed on, the atmosphere, company, and employees were absolutely ideal (I know, I was definitely blind to that!). However, I feel that after working for them for about a month now, I can fully see that working for CVS is not what I had expected. I don't feel adequately trained after talking to the pharmacy manager and DM about it. I don't want to waste their training $$$ by being there nor do I want stay with the company. I'm just thinking about me and my goals and I just don't think my goals align to CVS' goals. So I'm thinking about quitting, putting in my two weeks, waiting until I get licensed, and just applying to other jobs. I just can't work for a company like this. Has anyone ever experienced the similar situation? What would you guys do? I've been getting a lot of "just stick with the company for a few months" but I just can't stand it any longer.

I will echo BMB's point. While I personally wouldn't be willing to work for CVS, I recommend not let go of basic safety net until you have another job solid in writing. Maslow's hierarchy, basic needs come first. While CVS might be an insult to your esteem and self actulization, it's better than lack of basic physiological and safety needs.

If I were you, I would put up with it for now and be actively looking for a way out. Be a survivor is better a starved to death idealist.
 
Rule #1, never quit a job UNTIL you have a new job lined up (and make sure its in writing.)
Rule #2, don't burn bridges. It would be hard to quit a job after 1 month, without burning bridges. It's easy to say now at age 23 that you would never ever want to work for CVS in the future.....but considering you probably have at least 40 years ahead of you to work, its impossible to predict how things may change. I did have a job once, that I realized the first day I had made a mistaken in accepting....I stayed there 9 months.
My advice, unless you really get a really good unicorn job offer, I think you should stay with CVS for at least 1 year(and why should you trust your own judgment on another job offer anyway, since you thought CVS was giving you a really good offer?) Are you floating, or are you in 1 store? If just one store, maybe you can see about being transferred to another one. Do you have other pharmacy experience?
 
Rule #1, never quit a job UNTIL you have a new job lined up (and make sure its in writing.)
Rule #2, don't burn bridges. It would be hard to quit a job after 1 month, without burning bridges. It's easy to say now at age 23 that you would never ever want to work for CVS in the future.....but considering you probably have at least 40 years ahead of you to work, its impossible to predict how things may change. I did have a job once, that I realized the first day I had made a mistaken in accepting....I stayed there 9 months.
My advice, unless you really get a really good unicorn job offer, I think you should stay with CVS for at least 1 year(and why should you trust your own judgment on another job offer anyway, since you thought CVS was giving you a really good offer?) Are you floating, or are you in 1 store? If just one store, maybe you can see about being transferred to another one. Do you have other pharmacy experience?

I'll be floating. I've never really had any other pharmacy experience aside from rotations.
 
Don't be surprised if they decide to let you go on the day that you give them 2 weeks too. That happened to someone I know.

Since he's not licensed and just training as an intern, I would be completely shocked and surprised if they let him keep working after giving his 2 weeks notice. OP, most companies don't want to waste money on grad interns who will work for someone else so I would fully except them to tell you to not come back after putting in your notice.
 
Do not quit. You will be shown the door if you put in your notice. Wait until you have a new job lined up. You are lucky to even have a job with no prior pharmacy experience.
 
do not quit until you have another job lined up, that would be a very poor decision in my opinion.
 
as other ppl say, wait until you have another job lined up for sure. I am currently an intern at cvs and I am desperately trying to leave here. F cvs....
 
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Do they treat grad interns bad? I figured as a grad intern another pharmacist would be there training you and you would be eased into the responsibilities as a pharmacist.
 
Do they treat grad interns bad? I figured as a grad intern another pharmacist would be there training you and you would be eased into the responsibilities as a pharmacist.

In my case, it has been 4 weeks now and I still don't feel adequately trained. I've asked to do transfers and take Rx's down from voicemail, be involved with the verification process, help create staff schedule, etc. but unfortunately, my pharmacy manager does NOT want to teach me at all. He has a very indifferent attitude toward me and he has been like that since day one. I've asked the DM to move me to a different store so I could actually learn and I have voiced my concerns about my training to him as well. I'm going to be completely licensed in the next two weeks (if all goes well!) and I feel that I'm not ready yet or nowhere close to feeling ready. So, I was thinking of just quitting now, focusing on the rest of my time to study for the NAPLEX (June 30) and MPJE (July 12) and then applying to either a Publix or Target once I become fully licensed because there are a couple of positions open within the state.
 
In my case, it has been 4 weeks now and I still don't feel adequately trained. I've asked to do transfers and take Rx's down from voicemail, be involved with the verification process, help create staff schedule, etc. but unfortunately, my pharmacy manager does NOT want to teach me at all. He has a very indifferent attitude toward me and he has been like that since day one. I've asked the DM to move me to a different store so I could actually learn and I have voiced my concerns about my training to him as well. I'm going to be completely licensed in the next two weeks (if all goes well!) and I feel that I'm not ready yet or nowhere close to feeling ready. So, I was thinking of just quitting now, focusing on the rest of my time to study for the NAPLEX (June 30) and MPJE (July 12) and then applying to either a Publix or Target once I become fully licensed because there are a couple of positions open within the state.

What did your DM tell you?

The pharmacy manager is not doing his job! As an intern, you should be doing all of that. Have you ever talk to your pharmacy manager about it? Did you show him your experienceRX binder?

Another resource that you can utilize is your Intern coordinator, recruiter. They are responsible for picking the correct preceptors and clearly, this pharmacy manager is not a good preceptor. I think if you shoot an email or phone call out to them, they will immediately make sure this situation gets fixed asap!
 
Do they treat grad interns bad? I figured as a grad intern another pharmacist would be there training you and you would be eased into the responsibilities as a pharmacist.

I don't think CVS as a company treats their interns bad at all. A lot of it comes down to pharmacy managers/ preceptors, and district pharmacy supervisors doing their job properly.

The intern program has gotten a lot better since I was an intern. Back then, we had no formal program to monitor our training. As grad interns, we had 120 ICH hours to train and learn the ropes including orientation and a few meetings. After getting licensed, I had 40 hours to train as a pharmacist (which is no where enough).

Now, we have something called experience RX which is separated into 4 phases. The phases include key experiences which the preceptor along with the supervisor has to certify. The idea of experienceRX is to create a road map for the intern so that they can take part in the store and end up being a "leader" in the store.

The company provides RVC hours for intern training, ICH for grad intern training, and 40 pharmacist hours.

It has gotten a lot better in my opinion because preceptors are now picked by the supervisor along with the intern coordinator. Instead of putting interns in busy stores, they are suppose to be placed in stores that provides them with learning experiences such as in excellent stores. The idea is that when they become pharmacists, they are trained and ready to take on challenges and roles in the company.

The problem with that is that a lot of supervisors (bad ones) don't do their job properly. They put interns in stores where they are not trained properly, under preceptors who do not care, in hopes of fixing a store. For me, that is why they are bad supervisors because they want to contain a "fire", but instead they are going to allow another store to "catch fire" because the grad intern wont be ready for their role, and destroying the store while they either burn out, or take a few months to catch up on the learning curve.
 
The actual problem at CVS is that they load so much on the preceptors they don't have the time to train the interns properly. They also load so much on the supervisors that they can't do their jobs properly either. Don't worry just do your time there while you look for a better job. Most new grads only stay at CVS for a year. It's become the training chain. When you go to apply to a new job you won't even have to explain why you're leaving. They already know.
 
Training an intern is time consuming without a doubt. But it really is rewarding and does have it's tangible benefits, like having someone to take voice-mails, transfers, counsel, etc. The intern should be doing all of that and at least for me I find it to be a huge load off not to have to do all of that myself.

Personally I am a little torn on the experience RX binder. I "get" the need to have more formalized training, but I really think they take it too far. Most of the experiences are stuff any have decent preceptor would have done anyway, and if you are not a half decent preceptor then the binder isn't going to magically fix that. Plus I think the whole program is not exactly efficient. The number of miscommunications I had between my PIC, pharm sup, and intern coordinator as an intern, I couldn't keep track of (this was before experience RX, but still, I think it is too many chefs in the kitchen). I do like how they focus a lot more on tasks that they will be expected to know how to do as an RPh. The program I went through had a bunch of busy tasks that had very little to no practical application and no one ever actually checked on my progress anyway, so I think they are on the right track at any rate. It is still in its infancy, I am sure they will improve the program with time.
 
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