Pros
The benefits and retirement options remain very lucrative. A new CEO, Larry Merlo, is on the way in very soon. As recently as about 2 years ago, my CVS in Western North Carolina was a challenging but very rewarding place to work. If Merlo jumps in and really gets his hands dirty in dealing with the company's "top-heaviness" in general, and abusive and/or incompetent middle managers specifically, CVS might once again become a place where anyone looking to put in an honest day's work for an honest day's pay would be happy to spend the rest of their working days.
Cons
-Literally impossible goals to meet, ensuring that no matter your position or seniority in the store, you can be fired at any time. IE, if you focus on customers at the store, you can't do the endless other tasks (PSI, CSI, immunizations-on-demand, etc) required of you. If you do THOSE tasks, you can't satisfy the customers! -Aggressively anti-Union. -Middle management with ZERO experience in how things run at the store level, reminding us every day that we're all "replaceable." -PharmDs now MUST become immunizing Pharmacists, or get fired. -RxConnect software still rather fragile, company-wide outages still occur. -Almost all hardware (printers, faxes, even vacuum cleaners) is falling apart, it gets refurbished until the useful life on a unit is measured in WEEKS. -Aggressive Loss Prevention personnel treat employees as "guilty until proven innocent." -Salaried employees must routinely put in more hours than their salary is based on in order to stay on top of the workload -Lead Techs and Inventory Specialists essentially have to do two jobs at once (for pretty much the same pay as those with only Tech duties). -Inadequate pharmacy staffing regularly leads to Techs/Pharmacists having to work over to keep things going smoothly. But heaven help you if you get overtime... -Speaking of that, yet another way working at CVS is a no-win scenario: Overtime is absolutely forbidden, yet you're also disciplined if you refuse to stay past closing to serve a customer that comes in right as the store closes (no matter how NON-vital the Rx is). -"Adherence" call lists are obviously cleared by NON-pharmacists, as well as people who can't look at a screen and determine that the patient is currently not even living in your STATE. "PRN" medicines like Ibuprofen are always on there, as are refills for 'seasonal' patients that are currently getting their meds filled at their OTHER CVS location. -Any laws or regulations requiring Pharmacist breaks are ignored. I hear the same about Techs a lot, but have not personally seen it myself. -District management is always yelling about "budgets," but they burn TONS money on (mileage and food) and tie up employee productivity with meetings (sometimes 2 a week) and conference calls, ALWAYS during peak script-filling periods (Mondays, Fridays, Saturday mornings). -Micro-management abounds. When you're told you can only have one trash can for "regular" trash, and where you have to locate it, you start to wonder when you enlisted in the Army...?