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Ignored Employees

Not surprised to read this story about CVS pharmacists. My local one is a quiet part of a small town and still manages to produce long wait times for customers who need to pick up their prescriptions. There is only one pharmacist there that has been around for any length of time. The rest are a revolving door. If you step on the system even in the smallest way, the whole thing grinds to a halt. My own experience involved a very trivial issue compared to what others might be faced with. I was traveling out of country for several weeks and need my refill a few days ahead of schedule. That out-of-turn request caused a massive issue and required me to wait for an hour almost. The customers queuing up behind me got super-frustrated as I can imagine. As some point I stepped aside and asked to come back later. 

When I got back, the issue was not resolved but they were nearing closing time so the queue was lite. The problem was finally resolved and I went on my way but standing there as long as I did that day, gave me some insight into how over-worked that crew of pharmacists is given the flow of traffic to the desk and the drive through window, endless phone calls and what appears to be a very clunky system. When a company decides to leave its frontline, customer-facing employees stranded with systems that are very frustrating to work with, it is a strong signal that they do not treat their employees well generally. They might make all the right sounds about caring about their customers and even make some half-baked effort at delight but in reality the customer experience nearly on par with the employee experience. No one is winning here. 

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