Rite Aid Corporation cannot believe this mess Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

I have had the same job for seven years now. My first employer was Eckerd, who was then bought by Brooks, and most recently Rite Aid. I can only say that my job has gotten exponentially worse since becoming a Rite Aid employee. 

All their money is a mess, which is leading to ridiculous constraints on payroll and hours, increases in prices of products in the store, and in general more underhandedness with customer and employee relations. 

As a pharmacy tech, it is impossible to fill more prescriptions, while signing more customers up for more inane programs with inane benefits (+up coupons, really? an absolute abomination), ask them to take our survey and answer in a specific way so we get the contrived results we want, and keep up with almost offensive customer nagging programs like calling patients to make sure they're taking their medicine and to be sure to come back to get more, with less employees, less pharmacists, less overlap and less hours. And also, not to go unmentioned, for embarrassingly little pay. 

These are the kinds of situations that create awful customer service. Ridiculous wait times (people are not placated with a 5$ gift card, they want their medicine in a timely fashion, it shouldn't be that difficult, that's the bottom line), very poor associate knowledge base, high employee turnover, and even long waits at the front end checkout due to cashiers' inabilities to complete simple voids and refunds themselves.

The prices are high, the myriad sale/rebate/TPR/video value signs are very misleading and rife with tiny print, customer complaint resolution is almost nonexistent, pharmacies are understaffed, and employees are unhappy. I don't shop there, I work my shift and I leave. I only get my prescriptions filled there because Rite Aid's god awful employee insurance plan forces me to. 

The store management is totally incapable of management, and the upper echelons of management are a tight knit group of buddy buddies who are only interested in protecting themselves and their bonuses. I have had an ongoing problem at my store for the last two years which my manager refuses to acknowledge, my district manager refuses to acknowledge, and more recently when I had given up on them and gone to HR, my district HR person refuses to acknowledge. It is enraging, to say the least. 

Aside from my own problems, I have born witness to several other egregious failures of management, execution, service and appreciation. RAPTAR is a joke. We are alloted 25$ or something every quarter for a "RAPTAR party?" We have had maybe two of these since it's inception. I don't know where that money goes. Complete failures of employees to do one's job are grossly overlooked by everyone, total lack of customer service and downright rudeness is treated at best with a slap on the wrist.

It's depressing, really, to be here so long and to see that this is how it works, that everyone involved is complicit with this type of behavior and that basically no one is around to help you out (read: HR for employees or store managers for customers) if you need even the smallest of assistance.

For a corporation that talks so much about promoting health and wellness I can't see how taking away all employee sick days (even previously earned days were taken, there was no expiration period or grandfathering for those who had accrued time) and making customers wait hours for their prescriptions is doing anyone any good. I work here because I have to but I do not enjoy it, and I cannot wait to be rid of it. The problems are systemic, so ingrained they are not even noticed. Our stock prices are telling, I can't believe Rite Aid has made it this far, or that their employees and customers have let them. 

I totally agree with you and everything that you said.  I have never worked for a company that was so unethical.  They took away my benefits because I got married and took a few days off for my wedding!  I give them 40 plus hours a week and work very hard and that is the thanks I get.  Store Managers are treated very poorly by the District Office.  The DM has lost all respect from our entire district because of how badly he treats people.  HR doesn't keep anything confident. I overheard one of them speaking about one employee to another employee... not so professional if you ask me.  The only decent member of Upper Management that treats store managers with any respect is our LPM.  It is too bad he isn't the DM because I think that with higher morale, production would be a lot higher but the DM continues to beat us all down on a daily basis. It's sad because it is the Corporate District... one would think that with Corporate so close that they would put a stop to this madness, especially after the DM made some comments that could get the company sued by the Dept. of Labor and the employees.  I don't think that Rite Aid needs another law suit on their hands... By looking at the stocks, it is apparent that our company is in trouble.