* When is it going to get to the point where there is too much shit to do in the pharmacy? I remember the days when you just filled scripts as they came in, rang people up and answered questions. Now there's this automated refill trickery, CSI, PCQ, FBI, CIA....WTF???

* Confidential Records...why must I rebox 50 pounds of random, orderless scripts from 2002 and somehow fit them into an already full stockroom. Moving 30 of those boxes and climbing a 10 foot ladder to find a spot in the rafters to fit them is just insane.

* What happened to just getting people in and out of the store. Why do cash register transaction have to take 10 minutes apiece now and consist of 21 questions to ask an already annoying customer?

* Can we figure out an easier way to get viable customer feedback besides the stupid phone survey? Most people can't be bothered for that. If they are, its only to complain. Why not incorporate something into that idiotic coupon machine in stores, so they can actually compliment us when its on their mind and they are still in the store. The fact that they base our scores on such a moronic system is dumbfounding.

* Stop making the stores look like an epileptic seizure waiting to happen. I know the purpose here is to sell things, but its like sensory overload, or visual rape if you will, with all the stuff plastered everywhere. What happened to sense and simplicity? Its like crap stacked on top of crap in all stores.

* No more silly niche products. No one just happens to be shopping at the drug store and compulsively buys an alcohol breath tester or an at home herpes test.

* Make the extreme couponers go to the back of the line after each of their transactions. No one wants to wait 23 minutes to buy a soda and some ibuprofen.

Feel free to add more....

We don't get a lot of pharmacy specific posts here so I figure I'll share a little story about people and the crazy things they do to try and get their narcotics. I thought I've seen every excuse possible people would use to get prescriptions filled early but this just kind of bordered on insane. I'd also be curious to hear other people's stories about the ridiculous things people do to get early fills.

The other day during our midday rush I get this frantic call from a person wanting to fill their oxycodone they have on file with us. Of coarse, this prescription is not in the computer, not in the drop off area, and no where to be found. Generally we NEVER hold narcotic scripts for any reason, but in a few rare occasions (like a prior auth) we may perhaps put one on file. So I'm thinking we lost this prescription and this person is going to chew me out on the phone and perhaps even come down to the store and raise hell...

As I'm trying to stall this person on the phone and find this lost script, I'm listening to her go off on this random tangents about being a single mother of 5, her 12 year career as a pediatrician, her snowmobile accident etc. I actually had to put her on hold a few times just to wrap my head around the random BS she was telling me.

Now, as you all know with RX Connect, you have to type in the first three letters of the first and last name in order to get a "hit" for in store customers. She had a really strange name, and when I typed in first three of both names, I only got two actual customers. For the sake of anonymity, we'll call her Jane James. However with RX Connect, you will also get hits for people who have similar last names as the search query's first name and vice versa, so in this case a search for "Jane James" also brings up "Jamie Jane", our second fictionalized person in this. From here on out it gets more confusing...

So I start talking more to "Jane James" and she reveals she dropped off the narcotic script for herself to be put on hold for future use, but returned that day to pick something up for her 'high school friend', "Jamie Jane". This made obviously made no sense as Jane was about 10 years older than Jamie. So at this point I get my detective hat on and once again put Jane back on hold.

So she was right, Jamie did have an an oxycodone script filled and it was picked up that same day. Upon looking at the signature log Jane James did in fact sign for it. The next logical step was to look at the script. Low and behold, the script was filled wrong. It was indeed written for Jane James, but it was incorrectly typed in for Jamie Jane. Not only that, it was verified wrong and given out to the wrong person. Whoops.

So now that things are starting to make a little sense, I decide to just tell Jane, that I will have to further look for the script and I will call her back when I find it. Now the question is, do these two people really know each other? We decide to give Jamie Jane a call to see exactly what is going on but get no answer and just leave a message.

At this point where are wondering if both of these people had Oxy scripts and maybe we lost one, or maybe they didn't know each other at all. A few hours later another local pharmacy gives us a call. Their pharmacist speaks to our pharmacist and goes on to tell him that their customer Jamie Jane keeps getting phone calls from a Jane James saying she has some medication for her from CVS and she paid for it but will deliver it to her at no charge and she won't have to worry about the copay.

The other pharmacist didn't elaborate a whole lot about it, but it all started to make sense after that. We typed up a script for Jane James, under the wrong name of Jamie Jane, gave it to the wrong person, when in fact it WAS Jane James picking it up. At some point Jane realizes her script was filled under the wrong name but as the right medication. In some sort of oxycodone induced epiphany she must have got the idea to call our pharmacy and say she never got her medication, and then devised this crazy plan to get more by give us this load of BS and calling a complete stranger to try and coerce her into taking his medicine she "accidentally" picked up for her, when she doesn't even use that pharmacy to begin with.

I guess it will be interesting to see how this could play out, as we haven't heard anything from either people in a few days.

Until recently, I've known that employees got to choose their own gifts for their loyalty to CVS. Now, I found out just when I reached the 5 year mark, they decided to change it and send you whatever and not give you a choice. I'm pissed because I looked on a site last year and had my eye on a luggage set and I'm going to be so pissed if they send me a dumb pen or 5 year plaque. Wouldn't there be something against this such as being "grandfathered" in where it would not apply to me? - or CVS just screwed me out of a nice gift and I cannot do anything about it? Thoughts?

about three weeks ago a group of men drove a stolen pick-up truck through our doors to get the atm which they did not get even after hitting the atm five times with the truck and causing over 100,000 dollars worth of damage and then going to another CVS twenty minutes later and doing the same thing and guess they did not get that one either that one either but on Monday this week we got our door back yay no more wooden door

I watched another episode of Undercover Boss tonight.  Wouldn't it be great if the CEO of CVS did this?  Maybe he'd realize
how hard his employees work their a__' s off for little or no appreciation.  Someone at our store went home sick yesterday and
was not coming in to work today - that is until he couldn't find anyone to fill in for him.  So, with a fever of 104 he had to work his
shift because there are too few employees left to fill in when something like this comes up. (The supervisor on duty would have had to
work a nine hour shift by herself.) I knew all this cutting hours would catch
up with reality sooner or later.

Also, we've had some big items walk out the door unpaid for because there are too few associates to keep an eye on suspicious customers.
The money CVS is losing because of this would be enough to give some hours back to that former full time employee they dropped to part time.

But what the heck do I know.  I'm just a lowly cashier.

In my 16 years with CVS this was the first time I have ever seen us be allowed to close early we are a 10pm store and the DM called at 3 and said we would be closing at 5 because the roads were almost undriveable again wow and that surprised me

I might be in the minority here but I am technician who worked with rxConnect for about six months then transferred to a store still with rx2000 and went on to again using that system for another two years. I first used the "new" system in 2008 and just converted with my new store last week. I guess this was frustrating because the roll out took so long to get here and Since then rxconnect became basically a grainy snapshot in my mind. I have no idea why Cvs didn't do a more uniform roll out of this. Needless to say the first week post conversion in the pharmacy has been a nightmare. The system is still buggy and slow. It doesn't keep up with quick typing and "sigs" get messed up, scanning hardcopies and printing Rx number stickers is markedly slower, and flipping screens and multitasking leads to crashes. Data entry in general just seems slower with the exception of on hold stuff.

On top of that we got our hours cut again, are short staffed and approaching back to school In a college town. Despite only doing about 300-400 scripts a day during the week it's becoming impossible to manage this new system while having to enter data, count and get the drive thru and the phones.

What do some of you guys cthink of the new system, like folks that have had it awhile?

For non-24 hour stores obviously...do you guys lock your doors a few minutes early when you close? I have worked at my store for almost 4 years and we've always locked up a couple of minutes before we close, but no more than 5 at the most. We do this because if not, we get tons of people in casually shopping and then we can't get them out. Usually this isn't a problem, except for on the weekends during the summer when it's not quite dark when we close. (We close at 8 on Saturday, 6 on Sunday, and 10 the rest of the week.) We've never really had many complaints about it until the last month or so. Is this so bad? Even when we lock up, we still monitor the door and if someone needs a prescription or something important, we'll let them in. I know of plenty of other stores in my area that do this, and even before I worked retail I never thought much about it or became offended. Retail employees want to finish their shift and get home just like everybody else does, not have to stay an extra 30 minutes so someone can leisurely shop.

The most recent complainer said she came at "5 or 6 minutes til closing" (she did not, we locked up around 4 til and no cars were in the lot) and myself and the pharmacist both offered to let her come in if she needed a prescription even though at this point it was AFTER closing time, but she refused and said she wasn't coming for a prescription. I personally think she wanted beer or cigarettes. She actually asked me why we had our lights on if we were closed. Wth! I told her they were on a timer and didn't go off until a half hour or so after we left and she said, "Well, if you're closed the lights need to be OFF!" Yes, so we can handle the money and stumble out in pitch darkness. That makes perfect sense.

I just wondered if we're alone on this.

 Today my supervisor told me this story, which happen at one of the other CVSs in my city.

"A customer complained to corporate that the cashier didn't ring up the coupons in the order she handed the coupons to the cashier. She said that she had added up what her total should have been and because he didn't scan the coupons in the right order she ended up paying more then she should have. The cashier got in trouble and got written up for it. The district manager said about it, "What am I, the (freaking) coupon police?!"

I said, "But they still wrote the cashier up for it?"

My supervisor: "Yeah, they had to because the complaint went to corporate."

Me, "No they didn't..."

My supervisor, "Yeah....well I would have refused to sign it."

Me "Yeah!"

I must learn this con......I mean....completely legit way to scan coupons in a certain order to get savings rather then scanning them randomly.