I live in a city of about 100,000 people. In the last two years we have had an invasion of the pharmacies.
How many fucking Rite Aids does one city need?! It seems that one has sprung up on every damn major intersection of the city. To add to it, there are CVS’s and Walgreens going up all over the place.
How many places do you need to buy asprin and tampons? You can’t turn around in this city now without running into another fucking pharmacy. We can be devoid of good resturants, movie theatres are shutting down, and if you don’t go to a mall forget about shopping. Unless you go to a FUCKING PHARMACY!!!
You can’t get a pound of hamburger there, yet. It’s just that there are way too many. The service in these places is lousy to boot, most times there’s only one employee in the whole store and if there isn’t a line at the register, you sometimes have to wait forever to check out. If they can’t or won’t keep enough help what is the sense of it being there? Anytime I go into one of these god forsaken places there’s never more than 3 people in a store the size of a warehouse.
Rite Aid is the worst. The one my mom used to go to kept screwing up her perscriptions. It was the only pharmacy in town until the local grocer let a pharmacist open up shop in his store. Everyone in her town is fed up with Rite Aid.
Get this, when it was built, it was the largest Rite Aid in the state. For a city of 2000? The man who owns the grocery store had to add on just to have a bigger store.
The place is always empty. Hopefully it’ll close soon, but I’m not holding my breath.
Maybe this should have been a rant about Rite Aid.
Excuse me, sweetheart, my dear old dad used to work for Rite-Aid. And he was a damned good pharmacist. He left Rite-Aid because of crummy hours and not-so-decent pay.
And now he’s working for Walgreen’s. Maybe you do have too many pharmacies, maybe you don’t. I wouldn’t know; I don’t live there. But to curse a whole pharmacy chain when you only know of the service around your area hacks me off.
Maybe that’s just because my dad is a damned good pharmacist and he had to put up with a lot of shit from customers and coworkers alike at Rite-Aid (I’ll agree with you; the higher-ups running it make some shit-headed decisions).
Starbucks is the evil empire of coffee; Blockbuster is the evil empire of video rental.
Here in NYC Duane-Reade is the evil empire of pharmacies. They are ubiquitous. But I like Duane-Reade. When I say evil empire I mean that these chains come in and force out smaller mom-and-pop stores. They do this the old fashioned way: good products at low prices. As Robert Wagner said in Austin Powers - deelish!!
I like Walgreens. Theres been an insurgence of Walgreens in Kansas City, and I couldn’t be happier. I refuse to shop at Wal-mart, so until the Walgreens started showing up everywhere, I had to break my pact to myself if I needed health products, condoms, whatever. Now, if I run out of deodorant, it’s a 2 block jaunt to Walgreens for more Speed Stick.
There’s an intersection in my hometown with a Rite-Aid on one corner and a Walgreen’s catty-corner to it on the other side of the intersection. Sometimes I wonder if they exchange cannon fire during the after-work rush.
Oh, and since there’s an Arbor Drug two blocks away (in both directions!) I heartily resent the further invasion of the chain drugstores. We go to a local pharmacy for perscriptions, anyway. Screw you, drugstores!
Or they do it by offering lower than cost sales and specials (to avoid anti-trust laws) and then when the under capitalized small time stores go under the prices go back to the normal gouging.
It’s part of the consolidation of some of the major chains. Plus, they’re investing money in building free-standing buildings, with more square footage and things like drive-thru pharmacies.
That’s why you may see gaps appearing next to the supermarket and a hugh MF-in store on the corner.
In York, SC, (pop 7,000), the Eckerd up and died when the chain was bought out, and the Revco built a huge building. (Or was it the other way around? Can’t tell those two apart.) In Rock Hill, Walgreen’s moved in as part of their expansion and did the same thing, while Revco was putting up their new buildings. All within the last few years.
The chain that really bites my crank is CVS. Their prices are way too high for cameras. And when I went to buy index cards, they offered me this deal: one pack of 100 for $2, two packs for $2.35. Now, I didn’t want 200. I just wanted 100, and the price sounded suspiciously high.
Walked down to the mom n pop bookstore in the same shopping center. yep, a buck a pack. CVS can bite me.
Me too. My dad used to work retail pharmacy, until the rules changed and he found out he could make a lot more money consulting, with none of the BS.
Many of the decisions that get made about pharmacy departments are made by people who know retail, not pharmacy. They’re concerned with profit margins for things like aspirin and toothpaste, not the management of the pharmacy. And, when it comes to the pharmacy, they’re concerned about how many prescriptions are filled per unit of time and with reducing expenses and increasing profits. When the nice Walgreens pharmacist spends ten minutes explaining a prescription to Mrs. Jones, that’s ten minutes that’s not being spent filling other prescriptions. Never mind the fact that Mrs. Jones could die of a drug interaction, or that it’s the pharmacist’s job to explain the function and use of the drug to the patient.
Sadly, the nature of pharmacies is changing. What used to be a nice mom-and-pop business is now being choked out by huge chains, some of which treat the pharmacy as an afterthought. And when you consider that drug therapy is becoming a more important part of the treatment and management of disease, this is a shame.
I almost never go to drug stores. If I need tampons, deodorant or whatever, I go to my friendly neighborhood Target. If it’s a prescription, I usually go to Publix or Kroger. In both cases I drive by at least one Walgreens and CVS. I avoid Walmart like the plague and places like CVS and Rite-Aid as well. Their prices always seemed very high, and the horrid customer service I’ve experienced has put me off them. I would drive farther out of my way if necessary.
Where I live, they’re getting ready to totally shut down and relocate a historic old-time diner (in one of the silver railroad-car style buildings and everything), located at one of the main intersections in town, so they can build…a Walgreens.
The kicker is, there’s already an Osco in the same strip mall. :mad:
I’d also like to take this opportunity to point out that the Kahiki Supper Club, arguably one of the most notable restaraunts of the 20th century, and a location on the National Register of Historic Places, was torn down to build another soulless Walgreens as well.
In conclusion, FUCK YOU WALGREENS AND YOUR SATELLITE-LINKED NEIGHBORHOOD PHARMACIES.
As someone else noted, a lot of the chains mentioned offer a lot more than kotex and Clairol. If you need a quick gallon of milk, a birthday card, and some diapers, one of these places would be my first recommendation. It’s faster for a variety of reasons.
There is an important difference between a pharmacy and a drugstore, and methinks you’re bitching about the wrong thing.
There is a drugstore right near my workplace. I hate to shop there because the selection bites and everything is overpriced. Its survival is assured because it’s close to campus and students who need health & beauty products in a hurry can get it there instead of driving to one of the mongo chain stores you’ve listed.
But the pharmacy in there, I loved. I loathe the pharmacy in our CVS store. I know they probably jerk around their pharmacists (not that I’d know; their system is designed to prevent you from ever speaking to one). I was disgusted with the service there. I stopped going to CVS and started going to this local independent pharmacy in this dinky aforementioned drugstore. Only they just closed their pharmacy. The drugstore still operates; the pharmacy doesn’t. All prescriptions were transferred to–you guessed it – CVS. I wish there were more pharmacies. Drugstores, I don’t care about. Pharmacies, I do.
The market is increasing geared towards catering to old coots. As the percentage of old people in the population goes up, old people services go up. And old people LIVE at pharmacies. It’s the old people’s Walmart.
Here (Canada) the pharmacy explosion is just as remarkable. We have two competing big chains, Shoppers’ Drug Mart and Pharma Plus, plus independents, and they’re everywhere. And you walk into them and look around, and it’s bluehairs as far as the eye can see.
Also, independent pharmacies have a HUGE paperwork glut re insurance companies, medicaid, medicare, etc. Think about not getting your money for 90 days. Think about how MANY insurance carriers are out there that offer prescription coverage.
There’s no WAY independents take every insurance but the big chains CAN, because it’s all computerized…prescriptions are approved right there, realtime. You don’t have to worry about figuring out if a deductible has been met, or what percentage co-pay they have, the computer tells you.
You know what else? This really gets my goat! Say you have drug coverage but you haven’t met your deductible so you have to pay full price. You will still pay LESS than someone with NO insurance because the insurance companies mandate how much they will pay for a particular drug.
The chains takes the loss just because they want all the business that insurer will send them. They’re counting on making the money up in the other crap people buy while in the store. Ever heard the term “loss leader”?
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the uninsured don’t have anyone making deals for them, so the pharmacy charges whatever they need to get to whatever percentage profit they aim for. It’s fucked!
Then you have the welfare recipients who get everything covered including medication that’s OTC, vaporizers, condoms (prolly a good idea) and then bitch because they have to pay 50 cents for a $75 drug.
Senior citizens are worse!
I swear I can’t figure out how pharmacists deal with it, I would go ballistic.
There’s an old hotel in Green Cove Springs, FL - from the days when folks went there to take the waters - and it’s in need of lots of $$$ to make it habitable. It was slated to be bought and torn down for a Walgreens, but the locals ranted and rallied and somehow won. Money appeared and the hotel is going to be renovated for office space. Score one for the little guys, and for the beautiful trees that would have been lost to construction, and the character of the town that would have been skewed by a mega-chain…
I usually don’t chime in on rants. However, Lady Ice has managed, in consecutive posts, to complain about too many pharmacies and too few pharmacies. If you don’t like Rite Aid, that’s fine, but you’ve overreached in your rant to the point that it’s a nullity.
I don’t know, do they? In any event, your argument would seem to support more chains in a given city since they won’t be able to run the other out of town.
On a related note, the nostalgia for the “mom and pop” store has started to get out of hand. I have nothing against independent owners, but throwing the word “mom and pop” on a page has become shorthand for the battle of virtue over evil. I’ve had prescriptions at mom and pop stores and at evil chains. I’ve received personalized service at both. I’m sure some get bad service at chains and some get bad service with mom and/or pop.
As a side note to the OP, only:
Many stateside locales have 24 hour access to pharmacies. Just a few years ago in Santiago, Chile I was in need of medication to treat a nasty case of pink eye that I’d contracted.
The private clinic (apparently MUCH better than some of the local hospitals) provided the prescription; our local driver was sharp enough to know the schedule for the “guard pharmacy” for that day and time.
The pharmacies there operate under a agreement that shares the responsibilitey for 24 hour service on a daily rotating basis.
Enjoy the availability you do have.
Many stateside locales have 24 hour access to pharmacies. Just a few years ago in Chile I was in need of medication to treat a really hideous case of pink eye that I’d contracted.
The private clinic (apparently MUCH better than some of the local hospitals) provided the initial treatment and follow-on prescription; our local driver was sharp enough to know the location for the “guard pharmacy” for that day and time.
The pharmacies in Santiago operate under a agreement that rotates the responsibility for providing 24 hour service through a rotating schedule that’s posted in the newspaper.
