Let me preface this by saying that your experience at WM like in any pharmacy chain has a lot to do with the quality of the RPH, techs and field management and the patient demographics but that is your standard boilerplate.
Walmart isn't exactly great but it's better than CVS for most people. RxConnect sucks but Connexus is not a good system. Anyone who thinks Connexus is good doesn't recognize all the bottlenecks unrelated to safety that impede workflow. Plus 45 min for e-scripts most of the day is ******ed unless your staff is super efficient (LOL...................). I had lazy-ass turtle techs that can't even type 20 Rx an hour by themselves at drop-off and keep the inbox and outbox clean and handle basic insurance reject issues. In the meantime 40 e-scripts just got dumped. It's hard to get rid of techs too because they will open door your ass for b.s. reasons like you hurt their feelings by saying you need to stop spamming F4 and do something actually useful (I welcome it but it just takes longer because of extra steps.) Much easier to write people up at CVS in my experience.
At least in my area I have to remember a lot of these people are losers who couldn't get into Kaiser or a cushier desk job. (Look in the mirror right)
I used to hate mandatory consult but now I just work close to CVS speed to compensate (e-scripts take 3-5 seconds; there is ample time to check profile and such when your store is lower volume) and come up with random B.S. on consult to smooth over interactions with irritated patients. The problem is most employees are turtles used to having 6 support staff everyday for 1700 Rx/week. All my semi-decent new hires are closer to my productivity expectations. Most old RPH and techs are ****. You wonder where all the idiot RPHs that call/fax prescriber on Ventolin vs ProAir work or Levemir Flexpen vs Levemir Flextouch or Qvar vs Qvar RediHaler? They all work for WM or Sam's Club apparently.
The workflow scales really poorly to higher volumes too. I mean I've only worked in **** areas with **** doctors and **** patients my whole "career" and 2800/week sold at CVS by yourself in a snowbird area is not fun but at least you can clear the queue with you, 2 good techs at in-window and 4 placeholders even with all CIIs being presented in-person. If you have to do QT and input a little bit in the early morning and late night so be it. I am not making that up either because I used to hit 90-95 on WeCARE regularly. If you had an equivalent WeCARE score at WM the company average for anything above 1500/week would be like 30 in Northern California.
WM really is a freak show if you work in areas with a lot of Medicaid (bad FQHCs and low-income clinics up the ass) so try to steer away from those stores if you can, even Neighborhood Market.
I also laugh when I hear RPH complain that a 2000/week store should have triple RPH coverage every day. Yeah it should have triple coverage a few days every two weeks so I can take care of my manager bull****, not for you to have a ****ing vacation every day and verify 100 scripts. TBF I am super jaded and immune to all customer theatrics/antics while most RPH are scared of their own shadow. Support hour wise I am seeing 210-230 hrs for 1700-1800 sold/week (I'd have to look at numbers for other stores) so that is still nominally better than a lot of CVS locations probably but you still have to consider the extra daily tasks involved and I would expect more cuts because reimbursement is getting worse, DIR b.s., they think "digital engagement" (more people using the website, the app, and Mobile Express) will increase efficiency and justify more cuts to support hours without addressing the root causes of inefficiency (having to do with Connexus itself).
I think as RXM if you come from CVS you would be really annoyed at all the B.S. you and your people are supposed to do regularly plus some miscellaneous inventory management things you don't have to deal with at CVS... it's like you moved from CVS to avoid it right? Everything is fragmented and not built into the software/workflow so it's really annoying, from error reporting to adherence calls.
Oh yes, finally... performance evals and bonuses. RXM can get a good bonus based on the total box sales your WM pumps out (SC RXM generally get a better bonus than your GM with limited grocery) so it is possible to hit 15,000-20,000 bonus assuming you work at a high-volume SC with "good" store-controlled profit control (and that is before the bonus multipliers for stores that do more than 140k Rx a year or whatever the cutoff is) without really having a profitable pharmacy. 50% of the bonus last two years was based on customer service surveys and script volume. The other 50% is based on the whole store. Staff usually get a crap bonus. But now performance raises are 50 cents for solid, $1 for exceeds and $1.50 for role model. But hey most people still get a raise??!?! You can kill it on sales and profit to plan or immunizations or order performance and get a nice bonus but still get a 50 cent raise. I'll take the fat bonus though.
So to conclude my poorly formed ramble Walmart has a lot of B.S. like other chains and nominally better staffing, both RPH and tech/support but the trend line is downward as far as job satisfaction is concerned
