Benzer Pharmacy Nidhi Prajapati Alpesh Patel Diana Calle My employment was terminated 'officially' due to poor work performance and prescription filling errors Tampa Florida, Virginia

I was hired as full time pharmacist on May 30, 2016 with full benefits. By mid November my pharmacist partner and myself were both reduced to part time (from 40 to 26 hours a week) due to decreased sales. I was promised at that time by Alpesh Patel that if I stayed at part time I could keep my full time health care benefits. I passed up a full time position with Wal-Mart at that time with full benefits because of closed on Sundays and evenings. My wife had recently been diagnosed with uterine cancer and I thought as long as I could keep my medical coverage the extra time off may be needed so I stayed with Benzer. The first of May, 2017 when my wife went to Kroger pharmacy to get her prescription filled we discovered that without notice Benzer had discontinued my health benefits. Not only that but Diana Calle from the HR dept at corporate told me on more than one occasion I did not qualify for Cobra continued health insurance due to the fact I lost my benefits during a new enrollment period. After a couple of weeks of me requesting further consideration for this I finally had to call the Dept of Labor and ask them about this. They requested the person's name and position they needed to talk to. I gave them Diana Calle's name and she was head of Human Resources.

After this I never received any notification from dept. of Labor or from Human Resources about my Cobra insurance but in about a week's time the Cobra packet arrived in my mailbox. This company is ridiculous in the things they try to pull against their employees. Some time during the next summer 2017 a young man from around Bristol, Virginia came into the Benzer Pharmacy in Moneta, Virginia and introduced himself as the new full time pharmacist. No one at store level (at least that is what I was told by the pharmacy manager, Nidhi Prajapati) was aware of any part of this. I told him he should speak to the pharmacy manager, Nidhi, and he did. After he left she said she was not aware of this corporate decision to terminate my and my partner's employment and would contact corporate. It took her about 3 weeks to confirm to us that indeed we would keep our jobs and the young man was not hired after all. I'm sure that came as a surprise and disappointment to him as he had already turned in his notice.

After this time Benzer pharmacy maintained an advertisement on several recruiting websites for a pharmacist position at Benzer pharmacy in Moneta, Virginia. The first part of this year my partner went out for hip surgery. He was out about 12 weeks. During the same time the pharmacy manager, Nidhi Prajapati, decided to go to India to visit family for about 10 weeks. The week before she was to leave one of my 3 remaining full time employees quit. It really left the pharmacy short staffed by 3 and as the staff pharmacist I was responsible in the eyes of the employees of making decisions. During those 10 weeks Benzer hired 2 different pharmacists to work my partner's hours (even though I had said I would work the extra) and neither one worked out even though each told me they were promised a full time permanent position. The employees had so many questions and decisions had to be made during the absence of the manager and the pharmacist in charge.

There were many distractions and requests from corporate during this time as the whole company was converting to a new pharmacy software program. Now after all this responsibility and distraction my pharmacist in charge had a slow recovery and when he came in to check on things a couple of days before his schedule was to begin he was told he was not scheduled that day and in fact was not on the schedule. He had been notified of nothing concerning his return to work. At this point he assumed he was terminated and came into the pharmacy, picked up his pharmacist license and the store pharmacy license with his name on it and left. He even mailed the pharmacy PIC permit into the Virginia Board of Pharmacy. I had been told nothing about this situation either and all the regular employees and customers are asking me where my partner is and I have no idea. Two weeks later it is determined it is ok for him to return to work and he does. After handling all of these situations on the third of July I receive an email saying my services were no longer required at Benzer Pharmacy. The official reason on this notice was "poor work performance and prescription errors that occured during my shift".

The amazing thing about this is that Benzer has a policy and procedure manual that states "documenting and preserving prescription error reports is solely for education and work improvement and NOT for punitive reasons so as to promote recording". So I think it is strange for the termination reason given. This is also puzzling as I can not recollect that many 'prescription errors" as defined in the manual and in over a 2 year period I know I did not sign more than 2 actual prescription errors. Now the company is trying to deny me unemployment compensation, which I had to apply for because at 62 it is hard to find employment and may have had an influence in Benzer's decision to terminate me, due to reason of termination due to MISCONDUCT. Wow, really, I can guarantee you I was never written up or even spoken to for this reason so is totally confounding to me. As reported by others on this site it is my estimation that if you are employeed at the corporate office or if you are of the same culture as the executives then you are treated professionally. If you are in a store and you are not of similar background then you will not be treated professionally or even civilly.