What's the best place to work as a pharmacy technician?

[SavoirFaire]

I am a CPhT at CVS and have been working for a few months now. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like working somewhere else. Sometimes customers are very rude, more so than I have seen in any of my other jobs (restaurants or retail). The work load seems very high with the drive thru and number of prescriptions to fill.

As far as overall atmosphere, pay rate for technicians, and work load, what do you think is the best place to be as a technician? Because I am honestly thinking about jumping ship at CVS.

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[headortail]

I think it depends more on the individual stores and the staff you work with than the chain. When I worked at Rite Aid, my store was on the slow side, and all the other pharmacy techs and pharmacists were very efficient, so that really eased the load on me. I've heard at Rite Aid pharmacists get more help, whereas at CVS they tend to work by themselves more, but I've never worked at CVS so I wouldn't know.

It might have to do with the fact that you work at a busy store with drive-through. Rude customers are everywhere, I don't think they just pick CVS to go to over Wal-Greens for example, ya know what I mean 😉 ; this depends more heavily on the area and what sort of establishments there are in that vicinity (ex. psych ward) and some areas have a larger share of the more "difficult" patient. Again, I don't think it has to do with which retail chain much.

 

[owlegrad]

I am a CPhT at CVS and have been working for a few months now. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like working somewhere else. Sometimes customers are very rude, more so than I have seen in another of my other jobs (restaurants or retail). The work load seems very high with the drive thru and number of prescriptions to fill.

As far as overall atmosphere, pay rate for technicians, and work load, what do you think is the best place to be as a technician? Because I am honestly thinking about jumping ship at CVS.

Fellow CVSer here, so I can't answer your question.

I will say that the comment I bolded surprised me. I have worked several retail jobs and pharmacy is by far the nicest. Most customers have a decent amount of respect for you and the vast majority are quite polite. Sorry to hear your experience has not been the same.

 

[dkphx]

Costco!! 😀

 

[xNeenax]

Do you live in New York?

 

[xtsukiyox]

I will say that the comment I bolded surprised me. I have worked several retail jobs and pharmacy is by far the nicest. Most customers have a decent amount of respect for you and the vast majority are quite polite. Sorry to hear your experience has not been the same.

I don't know, it doesn't necessarily surprise me. If you get between someone and their drugs / medical care, their money, or their house, you evoke a much stronger response than, say, if you don't carry their shoe size. Most people tend to be politer in that situation, unless something goes wrong - then they can be rude or ridiculous when they wouldn't be otherwise. I guess it depends on whether you focus on individual stand-out interactions or the majority of smooth customer interactions.

Also, as a comparison between retail / restaurant and pharmacy, you have the immediate power to fix the problem in the former but you often don't in the latter (it's often a "call-your-doctor" or "your-insurance-said"). So you have a measure of control in retail / restaurant as to what you can do to appease the customer, where you don't always have that same level of control in a pharmacy.

 

[snopharm]

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[MSSimpson12]

Personally, I would say that if you can land a job at an independent pharmacy (especially one that does compounding), you would find that the customer base is much nicer. Many customers are long term/repeat rather than transient customers which you likely encounter at the large chain retail pharmacies. Plus, having compounding experience looks great on a school application.

This! I have worked at a independent compounding pharmacy for about a year and a half now and I feel like the atmosphere is relaxed and it's true the patients we get are generally repeat/long termers.

I think I have learned so much more working at the independent one then if I had landed a job at CVS or Walgreens but then you never know, I assume it depends a lot on the pharmacist. The one I work for is awesome 😀

Btw does it really look a lot better to schools if you've got compounding experience, because I have plenty hahaha still waiting to hear back from schools

 

[Nguyen]

Don't work at Walmart! That's where I work now and even though there isn't a drive-thru window, we pump around 800+ scripts in one day. Slow days are 300-400 (Sunday). Customers are so cheap and rude. They know that Walmart sells everything cheap; however, they think that medications are cheap as well. I mean yes we do have $4 generics but not every single medication is on that friggen list!
My friend works for Target and she loves it there.

 

[fluorometholone]

At the end of the day, a lot of retail pharmacy comes down to similar themes. How rude or nice the customers are could also depend on your customer/patient base. I've probably worked at about a dozen CVSes in my metropolitan area over the last 4 years and have seen the total range of everything. My home store is a high volume store in a fairly ritzy suburb (we have a very high concentration of physicians who are our customers). Very demanding, very stressful. One thing you might consider is convenience. In general, yes, an independent would pay more and might have nicer customers, but is there any chance you could move away? Then you'd need to begin a new job hunt. I've stuck with CVS (even though I've been offered other things!) because no one else can match my requests for school/work balance and because when I lived away from home for a year, I just switched stores for a while.

 

[azerkail]

worked at kaiser outpatient for like a month. liked it, good customers, rarely if ever had a problem with insurance (they all had to be kaiser... only had problems back when you could get otc's from us...) hours were not compatible with school, did not stay for long unfortunately. good pay, comparable to other retailers like cvs.

worked at a inner city hospital for a few months. fast paced but often got out in your 8/10 hours shift on time. never dealt with insurance never dealt with patients who were overly negative but did get puked on, coughed at, etc etc the 'dangers' of working in a hospital (didn't bother me, but its a real threat). the higher ups can be pretty pushy but at the end of the day mostly autonomous. pay is surprisingly comparable to retail, but its the shift differential you want.

then worked at a large long term care inpatient pharmacy (have been here for 2 years). no patient contact (we're closed door), but big headaches with insurances and the nuances of the organization of our system (dealing with getting refills there 'on time' when the facility is a good 30 minutes drive from us, or when a med gets 'lost' because the night nurse doesn't tell the morning, etc). nurses/facility staff often are a pain the rear, but enough diamonds in the rough to redeem that part of the situation. sit down office job basically... easier in terms of dealing with people, harder in terms of workload, somewhat autonomous. pay (at least here) is lower than retail, lots of OT.

ultimately for me a working student, long term care is working out the best but your mileage may vary.