Walgreens: Pharmacist salary restructuring?

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iFarm said:
We must never acquiesce, for it is together... together that we prevail!! :D
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Mussolini, or Dwight... can't tell :D
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gotdrugs said:
Between that and basic economic laws, I'm surprised this hasn't happened sooner.

My first job in 1998 I made less than half of what is being quoted (i.e. 23/hour), pharmacists' salaries are still pretty darn good (at the moment). Even at "only" 48/hour, that has still outpaced inflation by a great deal over the last 15 years.
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You took the words right out of my mouth. When I got out of school in '97, the staff rph salary for Walgreen's was around $65,000 per year. At the time, I felt that it was AWESOME money to be making! I never could have imagined that salaries would go up the way they did in the 2000's. Salaries did indeed far outpace inflation due to rph shortage's and the expansion of pharmacies at that time. How quickly we forget. I have a staff rph who is 60+ years old, just ask me what I thought the pay raise would be this year. I had to fight back the laughter.

I think that the possibility of lowered salaries underscores the need for all of us to exercise fiscal responsibility in our lives. Many of us have lived like the money would never stop coming in, and have gone further and further into debt. A salary decrease would be a severe problem for a lot of rph's and their lifestyle. Unfortunately a lot of my colleagues have made well over 100+k per year for a long time and have nothing to show for it but car payments, credit card debt, mortgage payments etc.
 
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They are not going to cut the salary of already employed pharmacists. That is dumb, and they know it. If salary gets restructured, its the new hires who would be starting at a much lower rate.
 
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farmadiazepine said:
They are not going to cut the salary of already employed pharmacists. That is dumb, and they know it. If salary gets restructured, its the new hires who would be starting at a much lower rate.
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hahaha... just keep telling yourself that. I personally don't think it will be an outright pay cut, but you won't get a raise, but you never know, have you seen the number of new schools that opened up. My prediction will be that raises will come slow and once a decent crop of new hires at lower pay are stable. Who do you think they are going to start cutting...exactly... A two-tierd pay stucture only works for unions like in the auto industry because the higher paid workers can't be cut, most pharmacist are not union, and even if they were, the unions will cave in.
 
moolman said:
hahaha... just keep telling yourself that. I personally don't think it will be an outright pay cut, but you won't get a raise, but you never know, have you seen the number of new schools that opened up. My prediction will be that raises will come slow and once a decent crop of new hires at lower pay are stable. Who do you think they are going to start cutting...exactly... A two-tierd pay stucture only works for unions like in the auto industry because the higher paid workers can't be cut, most pharmacist are not union, and even if they were, the unions will cave in.
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I'm going to work hard to differentiate myself.
 
Hello2011 said:
I'm going to work hard to differentiate myself.
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Exactly, it's going to be like any job out there, you need to make yourself invaluable and not replaceable. The days of sitting on your butt and expecting the standard 3% raise and even getting more than that in pharmacy is coming to an end for the time being.
 
confettiflyer said:
you and everybody else
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Not sure I agree. Lots of lazy people. I don't mean that I think hard work is some kind of magic cure-all for landing a job (especially because anyone can claim to work hard in an interview), but let's face it - many people just do not put in the work or only do the bare minimum.

Side note: Anyone notice that people who do work hard rarely discribe themselves that way? They often think they are just doing enough to get the job done or that they are really only working at a normal level. Meanwhile, slackers often think they work hard or that they are the ones doing all the work. :confused: Huge disconnect in that area, IMO.
 
Hello2011 said:
I will also get involved because networking is my secret wepon.
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Dang, you took my backup idea!

owlegrad said:
Not sure I agree. Lots of lazy people. I don't mean that I think hard work is some kind of magic cure-all for landing a job (especially because anyone can claim to work hard in an interview), but let's face it - many people just do not put in the work or only do the bare minimum.
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IMO, its all relative. I am semi active in a handful of organizations, work retail, volunteer hospital, likely get rho chi, started attending weekly ID meetings at a different hospital, and I'm doing PharmD/MBA. While I think I'm doing more than 90% of my classmates in terms of professional development, I still worry as come residency time I'll be competing nationally where my "hard work" might be lazy compared to other people. Here's hoping for a little luck for us all :luck:
 
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moolman said:
hahaha... just keep telling yourself that. I personally don't think it will be an outright pay cut, but you won't get a raise, but you never know, have you seen the number of new schools that opened up. My prediction will be that raises will come slow and once a decent crop of new hires at lower pay are stable. Who do you think they are going to start cutting...exactly... A two-tierd pay stucture only works for unions like in the auto industry because the higher paid workers can't be cut, most pharmacist are not union, and even if they were, the unions will cave in.
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I dont think there will be no raises. Ultimately the companies need incentives for RPHs to work hard and raises are a good way to do that.

Experienced pharmacists bring value to a company and are worth the extra few dollars. They do not need training, loyal, knows the "in and outs", stable, and makes less mistakes. They also are good mentors. If they are not good at this point, they are pretty much out of a job too.

A new hire can be good or bad, will make a lot of mistakes, requires a lot of training and attention, and might leave for a better job within a few months.

Companies know this and that is why there wont cut pay for experienced pharmacists. It does not make sense and I will short any stock of the companies that do because their management do not understand the basics of business 101.
 
Has nothing to do w working hard. Has to do w how many metrics you can meet. Autofill, f4, wait time, reciept survey, blah blah blah. How many people you saved frrom an allergy? Drug interaction? Irrelevant...
 
Apteka said:
Has nothing to do w working hard. Has to do w how many metrics you can meet. Autofill, f4, wait time, reciept survey, blah blah blah. How many people you saved frrom an allergy? Drug interaction? Irrelevant...
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You can't exactly meet those metrics you mentioned by being lazy. ;)
 
joetrisman said:
Dang, you took my backup idea!


IMO, its all relative. I am semi active in a handful of organizations, work retail, volunteer hospital, likely get rho chi, started attending weekly ID meetings at a different hospital, and I'm doing PharmD/MBA. While I think I'm doing more than 90% of my classmates in terms of professional development, I still worry as come residency time I'll be competing nationally where my "hard work" might be lazy compared to other people. Here's hoping for a little luck for us all :luck:
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To be honest, those things you describe are things you differentiate yourself in school, but have no implication in the work world. Rho Chi, active in orgs, weekingly ID meetings, nobody cares. PharmD/MBA, so many people have one now, it's getting old, and everyone snickers at it and just calls it a mini-MBA, cause it probably only took you 1 year to do it with no real life work experience. Compared to a regular MBA where you are usually accepted after working 3-5 years in your field and you go there to network with other people who worked for many years, etc. They are only going to care about performance and how you are irreplaceable, if they can replace you with someone with less pay, good bye.
 
moolman said:
To be honest, those things you describe are things you differentiate yourself in school, but have no implication in the work world. Rho Chi, active in orgs, weekingly ID meetings, nobody cares.
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Residency directors care. I've asked several what they look for in a CV when inviting someone for an interview. I can handle the rest once I'm in an interview.
moolman said:
PharmD/MBA, so many people have one now, it's getting old, and everyone snickers at it and just calls it a mini-MBA, cause it probably only took you 1 year to do it with no real life work experience. Compared to a regular MBA where you are usually accepted after working 3-5 years in your field and you go there to network with other people who worked for many years, etc.
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Before returning to school and switching careers, I had worked my way through three promotions in a fortune 500 company to oversee ~ 3000 accounts and 20 contractors - it was interesting during management meetings being the youngest by 15+ years of anyone in the room. I have real world experience, just not as a manager in pharmacy.

I agree that what I'm doing now, sans the MBA, will not translate into a job. But my goal is not a job at this point. My goal is to land a residency.
 
Aznfarmerboi said:
Experienced pharmacists bring value to a company and are worth the extra few dollars. They do not need training, loyal, knows the "in and outs", stable, and makes less mistakes. They also are good mentors.
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Really? How does an experienced Pharmacist bring value? Take a prescription factory like CVS. It makes no difference if you are a new grad or a Pharmacist for 20 years. All they care about is pushing prescriptions out the door as fast as possible. I would argue in a set up like this an experienced Pharmacist is a liability.

Make fewer mistakes? Not necessarily.
 
MountainPharmD said:
Really? How does an experienced Pharmacist bring value? Take a prescription factory like CVS. It makes no difference if you are a new grad or a Pharmacist for 20 years. All they care about is pushing prescriptions out the door as fast as possible. I would argue in a set up like this an experienced Pharmacist is a liability.

Make fewer mistakes? Not necessarily.
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Experienced pharmacists know how to deal with daily craps more efficiently and therefore are faster at pushing prescriptions out of the door.

Experiences should teach a pharmacist to make fewer mistakes. When I first started working fresh out of pharmacy school, I made about two significant mistakes that got reported a month on average. Now, I have not make a single mistake for couple of months already, and life at work appears empty.
 
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joetrisman said:
Residency directors care. I've asked several what they look for in a CV when inviting someone for an interview. I can handle the rest once I'm in an interview.

Before returning to school and switching careers, I had worked my way through three promotions in a fortune 500 company to oversee ~ 3000 accounts and 20 contractors - it was interesting during management meetings being the youngest by 15+ years of anyone in the room. I have real world experience, just not as a manager in pharmacy.

I agree that what I'm doing now, sans the MBA, will not translate into a job. But my goal is not a job at this point. My goal is to land a residency.
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As someone that switch careers too, I worked for 8 years before going to pharmacy school. I can understand where you are coming from, if you have the work experience, then you might actually be able to use the MBA.

As for what makes you stick out for a residency, take a hop over to the other forum where I posted my opinions, MY OPINIONS, there's no rhyme or reason why people match at a residency, I can name just as many people who do none of the things you do, Rho Chi, active in school and some how managed to match. My theory is that, it's all about personality and if you are a good fit for the program.
 
Brightlight, Mountain is right on this one. CVS doesn't care about experience. They have their pharmacies set up so you could plug a new grad in and they would do just as well. They don't mind shifting work on the DM's to make up for the lack of PIC experience. It's all about the bottom line. They also don't care about mistakes. They will shift the blame to you if necessary. I don't envy the new grads coming out into the miserable retail environment the chains have created.
 
Although this strays from salary talk, here are my two cents:

Many chain retail pharmacies are only hiring internally. Basically, if you don't have an 'in' you will never know the job opening exists. For example, Kroger has a new program where they have a number of interns (who are PharmD students) compete for a competitive internship. A select few are chosen and they are guaranteed a job early in the P3 year upon graduation. Furthermore, you keep your seniority from the day you began working at Kroger as an intern/tech. Look for these sorts of programs to gain popularity in the upcoming years.
 
moolman said:
To be honest, those things you describe are things you differentiate yourself in school, but have no implication in the work world. Rho Chi, active in orgs, weekingly ID meetings, nobody cares. PharmD/MBA, so many people have one now, it's getting old, and everyone snickers at it and just calls it a mini-MBA, cause it probably only took you 1 year to do it with no real life work experience. Compared to a regular MBA where you are usually accepted after working 3-5 years in your field and you go there to network with other people who worked for many years, etc. They are only going to care about performance and how you are irreplaceable, if they can replace you with someone with less pay, good bye.
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having an MBA is one way of differentiating yourself

but you have to be able to position yourself to sell yourself to companies. what is your focus in? mgmt? contracting/sales? budgets? etc....companies always need help in these department and the MBA will come in handy

you obviously need real world experience, thats what a residency is for

and even if there are too many pharmd/mba (which i dont agree with), there still is a demand for rph who have good financial background

but this is nothing new, as Mr Z here says, to be successful in the future, its looking like pharmd + residency + mha/mba will be necessary....we have had plenty of talk in this in the past here (focusing around is all that education worth it compared to other careers)
 
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MountainPharmD said:
Really? How does an experienced Pharmacist bring value? Take a prescription factory like CVS. It makes no difference if you are a new grad or a Pharmacist for 20 years. All they care about is pushing prescriptions out the door as fast as possible. I would argue in a set up like this an experienced Pharmacist is a liability.

Make fewer mistakes? Not necessarily.
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the only experience in retail that counts is experience managing a BUSY store

companies always have districts where they want to put in a strong manager, but cant find the right candidate for it
 
MountainPharmD said:
Really? How does an experienced Pharmacist bring value? Take a prescription factory like CVS. It makes no difference if you are a new grad or a Pharmacist for 20 years. All they care about is pushing prescriptions out the door as fast as possible. I would argue in a set up like this an experienced Pharmacist is a liability.

Make fewer mistakes? Not necessarily.
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There is a huge difference between somebody driving on the road for 10 years and a new driver.

A new graduate may lose their patience more easily and argue with a customer while an experienced pharmacist knows how to calm the situation.

I met a recent graduate who was more clinical than checking and while he might be a better pharmacist in some sense, he wont be replacing me anytime soon. He might not also be making less mistakes either. I also know a few new hires who do not know the computer system.

Some of the new hires let the situation take control of them instead of them controlling the situation. They do not know how to say no to techs or to the customer when it is appropriate. All of this comes with experience.

I can go on and on but I would prefer an experienced pharmacist over a new grad any time.
 
lorain said:
the only experience in retail that counts is experience managing a BUSY store

companies always have districts where they want to put in a strong manager, but cant find the right candidate for it
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Exactly but the same goes for the slower stores. I can argue that every store is busy since the less scripts you do, the less help you will have. This means if your one tech sucks, you dont have a good tech to go to. This is where "diversity" comes into play.

Either way, any store without a strong sense of direction will do horrible. I have floated in many stores in many districts and I can tell you what makes a store good or bad to work in is the management in that store. I can care less about the script count of the store. Ive been in store where I do 50 scripts and had every customer being a time bomb and at stores where I fill 500 a day without a hiccup. The difference is the staff and the leader who directs the staff.
 
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