New grad hire rate Columbus Ohio

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n64bomb

n64bomb

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I am wondering if anyone has an offer for a super saturated area. My market in Columbus Ohio used to have 58$/hour for new hires when I graduated. I was just offered $95,000 per year, salaried, as a floater, with Kroger, with 3 weeks vacation, and standard insurance and 401K. This seems to be really low. Has anyone else received an offer recently in the Columbus, Ohio area? If so, please share.
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It just says full time as a floater pharmacist. I'm assuming 40 since it doesn't specify.
 
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Not exactly the same market but I'm pretty close to you in a similarly sized city with comparable cost of living. This would be pretty much on par with my pay at Rite Aid.

I'm at $53.75 if you calculate my hourly rate but only guaranteed 30 hours per week. That being said, I'm almost always paid over my base since I regularly pick up a few shifts per pay period. Not great but that seems to be the going rate.

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Graduating this month. Kroger in Midwest city different state Floater $54/hr at 32 hrs which is their version of modified full time. Been an intern with them for approx 2 years
 
They told me its off 32 hours per week. Oh that is way different.
 
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2020graducandoit said:
Graduating this month. Kroger in Midwest city different state Floater $54/hr at 32 hrs which is their version of modified full time. Been an intern with them for approx 2 years
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54x32 is approximately $90k/year. For a grocery chain too. Ouch.
 
I don’t think it’s way different. If your offer is $95k at 32 hrs/week then that is $57/hr. I was offered $90k at 32 hrs/week
 
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Yeah I took the 57$/hour. Seems pretty good for me. Now I just have to figure out the dress code for pharmacists! :) Thanks everyone.
 
I just left Kroger after 10 years. I hope you don't expect any type of raise for a very long time as they froze wages four years ago. They also cut an additional 24 hours from my store the week after I left.
 
3 weeks vacation is excellent for a new grad. You have to work 5 years to get that at CVS.
 
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mentos said:
3 weeks vacation is excellent for a new grad. You have to work 5 years to get that at CVS.
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It's decent but Kroger changed the way you earn vacation to a progressive system. You earn a couple days every month so you can't just use up all three weeks immediately otherwise you owe them should you leave.
 
ValeRx said:
It's decent but Kroger changed the way you earn vacation to a progressive system. You earn a couple days every month so you can't just use up all three weeks immediately otherwise you owe them should you leave.
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That's how it works everywhere...
 
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mentos said:
That's how it works everywhere...
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Yeah imagine that happening for salaries as well. If my salary of let's say $100,000/year was distributed in the first paycheck of the year then I'm taking that money and dipping for another job immediately...
 
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owlegrad said:
No, I have had jobs where you get it all at the beginning of the year.
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So if you took a vacation from Jan 1-14 and quit on Jan 15, did you have to pay it back?

Let me rephrase then, this is how it works at 90% of places in America. Why would any employer give vacation time before it's earned?

These grocery store pharmacists have the best retail jobs. They need to stop whining about low pay and "decent" vacation.
 
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mentos said:
So if you took a vacation from Jan 1-14 and quit on Jan 15, did you have to pay it back?
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Nope! And you better believe everyone made sure to use it all before quitting. That was always the joke when anyone used up their Vacation days early in the year.

I actually really liked that system but the down side was you couldn't roll anything over. But you had all year to use however many weeks we get per year. It’s a better system than waiting to earn a week before you can use it. What if you want to take a week in Feb but you haven’t earned enough days?
 
n64bomb said:
I am wondering if anyone has an offer for a super saturated area. My market in Columbus Ohio used to have 58$/hour for new hires when I graduated. I was just offered $95,000 per year, salaried, as a floater, with Kroger, with 3 weeks vacation, and standard insurance and 401K. This seems to be really low. Has anyone else received an offer recently in the Columbus, Ohio area? If so, please share.
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That's a **** salary for a "doctor". Bs in computer science get that out of school.
 
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Luol Deng Fan said:
That's a **** salary for a "doctor". Bs in computer science get that out of school.
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That's cause programmers generate revenue. Pharmacists are overhead.
 
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Luol Deng Fan said:
You would think the opposite would happen. There should be more jobs for healthcare workers.
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There are for real healthcare workers (nurses, prescribers) in the hospital. Script volume is down at pharmacies because everyone's afraid to leave their house. "Clinical" pharmacists at hospitals have been repositioned as dispensing pharmacists because there's no other work for them to do.
 
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mentos said:
That's how it works everywhere...
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Not at my job. You get a full bank every year and could absolutely use it all up ASAP and quit. You're only allowed to roll over 40 hours a year though.
 
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I'm hearing Kroger is a lot more numbers centric the last few years, like cvs or walgreed. Is this true? I'm hoping working for a grocery chain isn't all that bad. After remembering my days at CVS, I have PTSD even thinking about those times.
 
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Just reading posts about Kroger on reddit, only pharmacy managers are guaranteed 40/week. Everyone else 32 base or under. So yeah that's one metric Kroger focusing on (cutting rph hours)








 
n64bomb said:
I'm hearing Kroger is a lot more numbers centric the last few years, like cvs or walgreed. Is this true? I'm hoping working for a grocery chain isn't all that bad. After remembering my days at CVS, I have PTSD even thinking about those times.
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This is accurate. When I first started with them as a tech, I remember thinking I really lucked out because Kroger was a grocery chain and not as Rx-driven as Walgreens or CVS. Over the last few years they began getting more numbers-centric. Making yearly bonuses nearly unattainable, for example having a part of it STARS driven (which you can talk to someone until you're blue in the face about being adherent to medications but you can't force someone to pick up/take their meds) and then cap you on how much you can get based off of the lowest bonus metric. For example, you can make 100% of your vaccine goal, 100% of your MTM/clinical goal and 100% of your operational goal but only get 50% of your STARS goal (which is what pretty much every store ever gets) and then you're low-balled on your bonus at around 55% max due to your STARS bonus metric being low.

Micromanagement of daily tasks has skyrocketed, I guess to make the district coordinators feel more involved in daily operations. You get daily emails about inventory, etc. They now do "amber vial counts" every week which has to be emailed to said coordinators. If you do say 3500 scripts per week, your weekly amber vials (return to stocks) can only be I believe 5% of your weekly script count. So if you have more than that, you're on the naughty list. 7 day calls (scripts that have been ready for 7 days) must be made every day, documented, scanned and emailed to coordinators. Conversion to 90 day scripts, same. Document, scan, email to coordinator. Weekly shelf maintenance, same. Documented, scanned, emailed. Pharmacists are required to do certain amounts of release to patient numbers (cashier) and clinical billing claims per week otherwise you're in trouble.

I could go on and on about how things have gone right down the drain there. Luckily my area was not affected (yet) by the whole mandatory 32 hours problem. This could be due to the fact that we, as a KMA, did more scripts than anywhere else in the whole company nationwide. However, all surrounding areas have or will be changing to reduced store hours and reduced staff pharmacist hours. They even cut an additional 24 staff hours from my store the month I left. That was in addition to 20 hours already being cut the month before. Script count was exactly the same, +/- 100 or so. You will only be hired at 32 hours guaranteed and most likely never move up to 40 hours. 40 hours are basically reserved for those who have been with the company for a while and had signed contracts for 40 hours and PICs. Every time I saw a staff pharmacist quit (which is quite frequent because everyone is jumping ship due to how things have been going there), they were only replaced with a 32 hour person when the person who left was working 40 hours there.
 
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LMAO sounds even worse than Walmart (I have had to send cycle count printouts, send proof of calls). Micromanagement "FTW"

If they really put money where their mouth is they would close ghetto stores due to high shrink % or at least close the pharmacies inside those ghetto stores for bad performance, but they won't if they manage to wring water out of the EBT rock
 
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Thanks for the info. That is still nowhere near the amount of crap expected from CVS or Walgreens, but it looks like Kroger is going in the direction of corporate greed. I already assume I will never get any reasonable bonus at a pharmacist job after working for cvs, where the metrics were essentially designed against pharmacists. I will do the minimum to keep the boss off my back, while maintaining my sanity. :)
 
Big chain pharmacies now paying under 6 figures. Hope others are reading this.
I got paid more working for an independent pharmacy back in year 2015~2017, but they offered no real benefit packages.
I would say your offer is still not too bad as long as you can find good balance between work and life.
 
I'm not sure I would saying paying under 6 figures is accurate. My offer is based off 32 hours per week. 1 FTE would put it around $118,750 per year. I actually want closer to 30 hours per week because I am well situated in life, so works perfectly for me. For money hungry new grads with $250,000 in debt, maybe not so much.
 
n64bomb said:
I'm not sure I would saying paying under 6 figures is accurate. My offer is based off 32 hours per week. 1 FTE would put it around $118,750 per year. I actually want closer to 30 hours per week because I am well situated in life, so works perfectly for me. For money hungry new grads with $250,000 in debt, maybe not so much.
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That is less than previous starting salaries. About seven years ago Kroger was starting new grads at 120k.
 
ValeRx said:
That is less than previous starting salaries. About seven years ago Kroger was starting new grads at 120k.
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Don't kick him while he is down. I'm sure he knows this. :rofl:

Anyone switching job now and getting a new grad rate is getting screwed big time.
 
ValeRx said:
That is less than previous starting salaries. About seven years ago Kroger was starting new grads at 120k.
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It is pretty much the same. Especially seeing as how pharmacist wages have dropped 9-10% in columbus the last couple of years.
 
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