I vaguely recall this question coming up before but I cant find it. I just came from Rite Aid, where I was picking up a prescription. I also needed to get some beer for a date later, so i grabbed a 12 pack and brought it with me to the pharmacy counter.
I was informed, after waiting for my turn, that I would have to take the beer up to the main counter to purchase. Now this annoyed me, because it made no sense. After i got my script, I asked the pharmacist what the rationale was behind the policy and he just shrugged his shoulders and said its always just been that way.
So I bring my beer to the main counter to be rung up. While im purchasing the beer, I ask the worker ringing me up if she knew the reasoning behind the policy. She clearly had no idea, as she said they only want the register to be used for prescription medication, to save time. This was patently false, as I purchased non-medicinal products at the pharmacy counter all the time.
So i come here with my question. My hunch is that the businesses want to uphold the notion of pharmacies as being “places of good health” and alcohol isnt compatible with that notion. But then, why even sell the booze in the first place? Making the person go to a different register to purchase it doesnt make one goddamn difference. The pharmacy is still selling the stuff. What gives?
It could be a state issue. I know in Texas, I’ve bought beer at the pharmacy window before. Or, I guess it could just be Rite Aid policy. I think the only pharmacy I’ve bought beer at in Texas was a Walgreens.
I live in the northeast and have used Rite Aid for 25+ years. IMO it’s simply a store policy, namely they don’t want pharmacy customers to wait any longer than they have to. If they allow the pharmacy register to ring up general merchandise (even if you’re also buying pharmacy dept stuff) it’s a short hop to people wanting to check out at the pharmacy register regardless of what they have. In other words you must be buying a prescription in which case you can also ring up other medicinal, pharmacy dept items, but not potato chips or beer etc… It isn’t so much a ‘judgement’ against an unhealthy lifestyle as it is a practical matter of the pharmacy dept not being regular store checkout flunkies. What if they need a price check on a loaf of bread or a six-pack of Coke? The pharmacist should not have to be bothered with stuff like that.
The local CVS has strange rules like this that have been changing. At one time the pharmacy register was just another place to pay for anything in the store. Then you could only pay for non-pharmacy items if you were also purchasing something from the pharmacy. Now you can only pay for pharmacy items there and you have to take other things up to the front. I may be mistaken but you may not be able to pay for the pharmacy items up front anymore.
I’m told that decades back the pharmacies here were the only place you could buy alcohol on Sundays, allegedly for medicinal purposes.
Around here the prescriptions counter sends me to pay for the prescription at the front door checkout…
Some people may want to pay for non-prescription items at the back counter for privacy sake. Other people are asking the pharmacist for advice.
But for the beer, they just send you to the front door checkout… you don’t need to chat to the pharmacist or get advice… There can be practical reasons, maybe the large bags are only at the front… the prescriptions counter only has small bags, paper bags…
Incorrect. You can purchase anything except alcohol at the pharmacy counter at Rite Aid (with the obvious exception of tobacco products, which are behind the main counters).
I did a quick Google search last night and couldn’t find anything specific to Rite-Aid, but I did find some information about Michigan’s liquor laws covering Specially Designated Merchant alcohol licenses, which includes beer and wine sales by drugstores, among other kinds of retail outlets.
Basically, what I’m thinking is that it’s a combination of two things. First, there are restrictions on who can actually ring up sales. The cashier must be over the age of 21 and must be able to determine whether the buyer is already intoxicated. Either the state or Rite-Aid probably requires additional training to be certified to sell alcohol, and won’t allow anyone without that certification to ring up sales. There may also be a provision wherein an employee who does not wish to sell alcohol can’t be forced to as a condition of employment, in sort of a conscience clause. (I found the entire text of the Michigan liquor law. I’m not going to read it, but you can knock yourself out.) A pharmacy technician, who is generally the one to ring up pharmacy purchases, has a specific skill set, and who may be under the age of 21; that person’s technical training is more valuable than being able to ring up beer. Finally, the establishment is required to maintain dram shop insurance to specifically cover alcohol sales; the insurance company may have specific requirements as to who can ring, and where alcohol may be rung up.
The other issue is that both alcohol and medication sales have serious reporting requirements, and it’s generally easier to have dedicated registers to track each category.
It was supposed to be ethanol from a friendly pharmacist abusing his privilege to dispense it for necessity. I’m not saying it actually happened, it’s just a story I’ve been told.
“Medicinal brandy” was manufactured and recommended by doctors in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The ability to prescribe it became more noteworthy during prohibition, when your doctor could legally write you a prescription for it. Ethyl alcohol prescribed as a treatment by doctors more or less fell by the wayside some time after the end of prohibition.
It’s incorrect at your Rite Aid- not at mine. I can only pay for prescriptions ( and I guess maybe the stuff displayed right at the pharmacy counter ) at that register. If I want to pick up my prescription and buy toothpaste, I have to pay at the regular register for the toothpaste. And it’s precisely because when they allowed people to pay for a couple of items along with the prescription, it turned into people wanting to pay for full shopping carts along with the prescription and then people wanting to pay for full shopping carts without even having a prescription , just to avoid the line at the main register.
Also sort of along these lines, in a lot of places if a clerk fails one of the police compliance checks (where they send in an underage person to try to buy alcohol) there’s often a mandatory weeks-to-months suspension of that employee. It’s easy enough for the company to replace a regular clerk or just shuffle everyone else’s schedules, but if one of the pharmacists failed that could be a lot more difficult to work around.
I wonder if it has anything to do with deterring theft? I only say, as one time when I was working my way through school, I worked at a store and we could not do refunds through the main check out.
They literally took the ability out of the cash register/computer, because the management said, too much theft occurred and all refunds going through one central station (two registers) helped curb it.
A little more digging led me to the packet of information for candidates for licensure in pharmacy. If a candidate has a felony or misdemeanor on his record, he may not be eligible to get a license to practice. Being cited for underage alcohol sales or selling to an intoxicated person may, therefore, cause a pharmacist to lose his license and, thus, the ability to earn a living. Better to just not allow sales at the pharmacy.
It avoids having people carrying product past the front registers without paying. Pharmacy bags are usually small and cant hold much more than a few pill bottles. Someone pushing a cart out and claiming they paid at pharmacy could walk out hundreds of dollars in merchandise and the only way to verify would be calling pharmacy cashieror checking receipts which so far the doper community treats as criminally bad customer relations.
Wouldn’t that set off alarms for all the not-scanned and paid-for items, though?
Anyway I have no answers for the OP but I do chuckle that the Rite Aid discount card is called a “Wellness card.” Which is funny because they have several aisles of chips and other junk food, and sell cigarettes and liquor (here in Michigan anyway.)
