75 YO Tech Still Working at a Busy Pharmacy

Started by Teddybear123456
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Teddybear123456

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Hi guys,
Thank you for all of your feedback on my previous post. Today, I have another dilemma I want to ask your guys for advice. We have a very old old technician (75 YO) who has been working part-time as a tech for 10+ yrs. He is a very nice, friendly guy. He will take care any task I ask him to do. However, i guess due to his age, he is a very very slow tech. He would be a slowest tech u've worked with. It takes him 5 mins to fill 1 rx or to type up an rx. Even though he has been with the company for so long, he still doesn't know how to solve a simple insurance resolution. He never get anything done on time at the end of his shift. His work ethics sucks too. After closing, I always has to stay late to clean up the mess he left for me. I feel drained every time I work with him. All techs complain about him. They have to put in their efforts twice as much as they could whenever they work with him. This has been an ongoing problem for years with previous managers. We are not able to fire or remove him due to age discrimination. Even though his work performance is so poor, we cant do anything to solve this problem. He said he loves this job and I know he has bills to pay, but I dont think he is capable of keeping up with fast pacing job. I told him multiple times trying to look for another easier job but he ignored me. Please give me some suggestion. thank you very much
 
Teddybear123456 said:
Hi guys,
Thank you for all of your feedback on my previous post. Today, I have another dilemma I want to ask your guys for advice. We have a very old old technician (75 YO) who has been working part-time as a tech for 10+ yrs. He is a very nice, friendly guy. He will take care any task I ask him to do. However, i guess due to his age, he is a very very slow tech. He would be a slowest tech u've worked with. It takes him 5 mins to fill 1 rx or to type up an rx. Even though he has been with the company for so long, he still doesn't know how to solve a simple insurance resolution. He never get anything done on time at the end of his shift. His work ethics sucks too. After closing, I always has to stay late to clean up the mess he left for me. I feel drained every time I work with him. All techs complain about him. They have to put in their efforts twice as much as they could whenever they work with him. This has been an ongoing problem for years with previous managers. We are not able to fire or remove him due to age discrimination. Even though his work performance is so poor, we cant do anything to solve this problem. He said he loves this job and I know he has bills to pay, but I dont think he is capable of keeping up with fast pacing job. I told him multiple times trying to look for another easier job but he ignored me. Please give me some suggestion. thank you very much
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One day when you die and go before god he will asked you why you felt this way about another human and you will feel embarrassed. One day, if you are lucky you will be his age. Imaging having to work at that age just to get by. Have some empathy.
 
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Sine Cura said:
Empathy's nice but someone 60+ should have never been hired in the first place. Even I'm not that stupid
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It's a cheap insurance policy against getting an age discrimination lawsuit. Keep one old man around as a tech allows the corp to fire all the middle aged pharmacists and bring in cheap young blood pharmacists. If they were to get sued all they have to do is point to the old man still working there.
 
Modest_anteater said:
One day when you die and go before god he will asked you why you felt this way about another human and you will feel embarrassed. One day, if you are lucky you will be his age. Imaging having to work at that age just to get by. Have some empathy.
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If he can’t do this job then he is preventing patients from getting their meds and therefore, affecting their lives.

In addition, people have to work extra hard because of him = not good for their health and they may die early because of it.

The problem with your mentality is you only look at one side of the coin. You don’t care about patient lives and his coworker lives.

Think and analyze.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I like @Rouelle's suggestion, but it is possible to also take the approach of screwing him over by placing him in every position that you can architect his own failure (this is called constructive termination and while illegal, is difficult to sustain). A supposedly nice person, really, but he's not such a nice guy if he's oblivious to every else's suffering due to his work habits. That's not nice. My grandparents did practice into their 80s, but were in shape and sharp, and their numbers reflected that (they were at or exceeded the 75% mark for order completion in the inpatient). That said, they retired gracefully in their late 60s rather than continued to be a burden (their practice post 70s was either as reserve or as a nonessential volunteer).
 
Modest_anteater said:
One day when you die and go before god he will asked you why you felt this way about another human and you will feel embarrassed. One day, if you are lucky you will be his age. Imaging having to work at that age just to get by. Have some empathy.
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You are becoming the new laughing stock of this forum.

To answer the question, are you guys not doing reviews every year? While I wouldn't fire him, he would be working the register up front. Keeping your job requires you to be able to do all tasks, if he can't, he either has to learn or work in a different department.

Yeah I know I'm heartless, read my sig.
 
CetiAlphaFive said:
Lol. Was this outpatient?
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SClENCE said:
Just put him at cash register
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We have cashier for most part of the day so we wouldn't need him at register. He usually is at filling station but still he fills at a extremely slow speed. We are a high volume store, but for some reasons, he still works there (sad). I think the only legit reason we could fire techs is if they have poor performance within the first 90 days of hiring. After 90 days, it is hard to impossible to fire them due to poor performance. I just want to tell him to pls call out when Im there. I hope multiple call-outs would be a legit reason to let him go.
 
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Teddybear123456 said:
We have cashier for most part of the day so we wouldn't need him at register. He usually is at filling station but still he fills at a extremely slow speed. We are a high volume store, but for some reasons, he still works there (sad). I think the only legit reason we could fire techs is if they have poor performance within the first 90 days of hiring. After 90 days, it is hard to impossible to fire them due to poor performance. I just want to tell him to pls call out when Im there. I hope multiple call-outs would be a legit reason to let him go.
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So you guys don't do yearly evaluations?
 
RxPreceptor said:
I like Rouelle's strategy...if that doesn't work out there's the good old fashion method of slowly cutting his hours over a long stretch of time until he gets the message (slightly evil, but less cold hearted than just flat out cutting him inappropriately). If he's PT, this should be doable. Some techs are more trouble than they are worth
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In term of cutting his hrs, could you go into more details pls. What excuses should i use when I cut his hrs. Do I cut his hrs consistently every week?
 
Teddybear123456 said:
We have cashier for most part of the day so we wouldn't need him at register. He usually is at filling station but still he fills at a extremely slow speed. We are a high volume store, but for some reasons, he still works there (sad). I think the only legit reason we could fire techs is if they have poor performance within the first 90 days of hiring. After 90 days, it is hard to impossible to fire them due to poor performance. I just want to tell him to pls call out when Im there. I hope multiple call-outs would be a legit reason to let him go.
Click to expand...

What a nightmare.

Please tell me you're not the PIC.
 
lord999 said:
I like @Rouelle's suggestion, but it is possible to also take the approach of screwing him over by placing him in every position that you can architect his own failure (this is called constructive termination and while illegal, is difficult to sustain). A supposedly nice person, really, but he's not such a nice guy if he's oblivious to every else's suffering due to his work habits. That's not nice. My grandparents did practice into their 80s, but were in shape and sharp, and their numbers reflected that (they were at or exceeded the 75% mark for order completion in the inpatient). That said, they retired gracefully in their late 60s rather than continued to be a burden (their practice post 70s was either as reserve or as a nonessential volunteer).
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He has troubles keeping up the work at drop-off. If I put him at drop-off, my day is screwed. We usually just place him at filling station all the time.
 
Teddybear123456 said:
I think we do. I will double check. But I am sure previous managers would already look into his yearly performance evaluation as a way to remove him, but they weren't successful of letting him go
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If this is Walgreens, if he can't get a 3 in his evaluation two years in a row, he should have been put on a PIP.

Again I don't want him fired, he just needs to work in a different department
 
RxPreceptor said:
I like Rouelle's strategy...if that doesn't work out there's the good old fashion method of slowly cutting his hours over a long stretch of time until he gets the message (slightly evil, but less cold hearted than just flat out cutting him inappropriately). If he's PT, this should be doable. Some techs are more trouble than they are worth
Click to expand...

Is there any other way that I could make him voluntarily leave or transfer out? Any way to make him feel like this place is so stressful/unbearable to work at and it isnt worth working there?
 
Teddybear123456 said:
He has troubles keeping up the work at drop-off. If I put him at drop-off, my day is screwed. We usually just place him at filling station all the time.
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It'll be painful, but do that, write him up for performance issues and manage him out the door. Not nice, but it'll work. You need to turn goodwill into badwill. The more uncomfortable you make him, the faster he'll go. You're all covering for him. @RxVampire also has it right.

“One of the major mistakes people make is that they think manners are only the expression of happy ideas. There’s a whole range of behavior that can be expressed in a mannerly way. That’s what civilization is all about — doing it in a mannerly and not an antagonistic way. One of the places we went wrong was the naturalistic, Rousseauean movement of the Sixties in which people said, ”Why can’t you just say what’s on your mind?” In civilization there have to be some restraints. If we followed every impulse, we’d be killing one another.” -Miss Manners
 
What's that saying, we are all happily lenient toward incompetent, but friendly individuals, while extremely hostile to competent (perhaps even brilliantly so), but overly arrogant/annoying individuals...
 
Amicable Angora said:
What's that saying, we are all happily lenient toward incompetent, but friendly individuals, while extremely hostile to competent (perhaps even brilliantly so), but overly arrogant/annoying individuals...
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Yep, it works that way. That's when I play Moneyball as a Director and hire all those irregulars, because if you can put up with some quirks, you get far better work out of them than the nice and useless people.



I specifically recruited the productive problem children, and accepting their shortcomings and cleaning up after their messes is the cost of doing business when they violate federal issues or blow their clearance. That said, I have hypertension and I get calls in the middle of the night over my staff's antics (stuff that I've actually had to defend them before an AIB which is a US Attorney referral in a couple of cases). The one thing that I learned from Al Davis beside "Just Win, Baby" was to not only turn a blind eye to irregular behavior, but to celebrate "creative" thinking even when it causes problems sometimes.

If you do ever adopt a management philosophy of "Just Win, Baby", remember that "Just" is as important as "Win", where the work is actually dealing with the problems caused by everything else "just" happening in order to win.
 
Teddybear123456 said:
We have cashier for most part of the day so we wouldn't need him at register. He usually is at filling station but still he fills at a extremely slow speed. We are a high volume store, but for some reasons, he still works there (sad). I think the only legit reason we could fire techs is if they have poor performance within the first 90 days of hiring. After 90 days, it is hard to impossible to fire them due to poor performance. I just want to tell him to pls call out when Im there. I hope multiple call-outs would be a legit reason to let him go.
Click to expand...

Damn....you know it’s bad when techs can’t be fired due to poor performance or are impossible to replace....but PharmDs.....lol. Shame
 
Having faster younger techs is nice but they are far more likely to call off and have limited availability (no evenings or weekends or going to school). The older techs may be slower but in my experience they have better availability and take the job serious without call offs. They also are great with handling the senior citizen customers.

I have met two pharmacists working full time at chains both older than 75.
 
"Start low & titrate to effect"; start off subtly, take off 1 shift (6-8hrs or so?) @ first...you can always blame corporate for not giving you enough hours or flat out pit other part time techs against him (ex) Joe has been persistently hitting me up for more hours the past few months, etc.)

Cut again by 1 shift Q3 months or so until down to the bare bones minimum 1 shift per week. You should be able to convince him the job simply isn't worth keeping due to all the learn net modules (cvs? Or whatever training your chain requires) he still has to do just to keep working so infrequently
 
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RxPreceptor said:
"Start low & titrate to effect"; start off subtly, take off 1 shift (6-8hrs or so?) @ first...you can always blame corporate for not giving you enough hours or flat out pit other part time techs against him (ex) Joe has been persistently hitting me up for more hours the past few months, etc.)

Cut again by 1 shift Q3 months or so until down to the bare bones minimum 1 shift per week. You should be able to convince him the job simply isn't worth keeping due to all the learn net modules (cvs? Or whatever training your chain requires) he still has to do just to keep working so infrequently
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If he was hired as full-time and guaranteed a base # of hours, this approach might be problematic. I’m not an expert on employment law, but it seems like an employer might get in trouble for this.
 
lord999 said:
It's the ones that are on Wife 3.0 and still paying alimony on Wife 2.0 (and possibly 1.0) that you still see working.
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Ha yea....my staff pharmacist at my previous store was 73 years old. He'd joke with me all the time that his checks all go to his three previous wives. Guy was spry though and an excellent pharmacist.
 
If this is Walmart you can demote a tech to a 201 associate. Why pay someone up to 6 bucks extra (as certified tech) if they can't do ****

I have come to realize that sadly some techs just want to find work as a means to collect unemployment later, not even just collect a check and do the minimum or worse don't even meet a minimum level of productivity so it is a drain on pharmacy morale, so you really need to make a good hire or run people off ASAP if you screw up and you hire a bad one. "Running people off" meaning apply the same strict standard to everyone else too or get in trouble.

Long-time techs tend to have terrible attitudes too and are actually underproductive. They act like they are hot **** because they're still around after 9-15 years, got good evals year after year because previous managers are soft but in reality they have no prospects in life or they would have moved on from crap retail a long time ago. They sustain themselves with cheap praise from longtime customers who like to see a familiar face but somehow it does not motivate them to get better. It's a hoot how the ****tiest techs get the most praise from customers because they come across as jovial. It's pathetic.

Another thing to consider is that as chain retail pharmacy demands more and more and script volume goes up and up and workload increases, mentally slow techs who are passable at 1k/week are exposed at 2k/week or more and then they get butthurt when you tell them they have to adapt to the new reality of more scripts and more responsibilities. I guess that makes me totally corporate now

I'd rather have a revolving door of techs than have a malcontent longtime tech.
 
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Is he a part timer? I would cut his hours back to just 1 or 2 hours a day, his shift being overlapped with that of a strong technician. If he can't improve or take a hint, scale him back to just one or two days of the week.

Modest_anteater said:
One day when you die and go before god he will asked you why you felt this way about another human and you will feel embarrassed. One day, if you are lucky you will be his age. Imaging having to work at that age just to get by. Have some empathy.
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nice bait m8
 
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