I was both a customer and employee to the company. Here is my review on both sides.
Reason for closing:
With Walgreens owning both Duane Reade and Rite Aid, the store quietly closed and the store across the street became the new Walgreens.
Customer Experience:
When the store first opened, it was a good store. All the workers greeted you and would come up to you to assist you. In the final days of this store, customer service quality dropped. The workers were visibly less happy, organization and cleanliness dropped. The employees stopped greeting people with a smile, there was a sensation of rush and wanting to get the day over with. There was a reduction in workers as well. There used to be a lot more workers on the floor, but they have dramatically reduced employees in its final days, but this also happened to all the Walgreens. You can tell the quality of the store overall was dropping. When I talked to the workers about the situation, they blame poor leadership and losing good workers. The former Rite Aid that was reformed as the new Walgreens never had the same energy as the previous store. People were quiet and it felt spiritless compared to the old store.
Store Management:
The business talks a great deal about creating a positive work environment and protecting the privacy of their employees, but it's all a lie. There wasn't a single manager that wasn't corrupt and/or incompetent in their ability to manage the store in some form. Good leadership requires training, earning the respect and trust of your employees, but all the store managers that ever managed this store failed at it in various ways. Many of the store mgrs merely followed what the previous store mgr does, none of them went to any special training to teach them the importance of proper leadership. Because of this, a lot of drama occurred.
Cronyism and favoritism prevailed in the first years of the store; employee performance ratings were rigged. The favored had high scores and the unfavored had lower ratings, even sabotaged to get fired. Despite formal complaints to other managers and upper-management, the mgrs never suffered any visible punishment. The open door policy to protect the privacy of employees was a severe joke! Certain employees suffered retaliation, unjust persecution or accusations, and was set to fail at their job to push them out. Because the employees aren't fools to what's happening, this caused several to misbehave or quietly retaliate in their own ways. After a change in management, certain aspects of management improved, but relations between the workers and mgrs became tense and awkward due to new intense management methods. In the final change of management, the store was in decline. Organization dropped, staff roster attendance was reduced, the store was poorly managed by an absentee mgr and quality of the crew.
Had Walgreens deployed a more democratic system into the mix, they woud've known that the employees favored two Assistant Mgrs the most and wanted them to lead the store. They showed respect to their employees, never abused their power, knew how to manage the workers, and we loved them back. Under their leadership, work was done without drama and there was mutual trust and respect, something all the mgrs never earned.
Wages & Reducing Workers:
The company paid smidge above mim-wage, but not as good as Starbucks or Costco. The employees were promised to have higher wages as they continued their service, but we only had incremental 15-cent increases. We were promised higher wages after a certain amount of time with the company, but that only happened due to the mim-wage increase.
When the city steadily increased the mim-wage to $15, many felt our paychecks didn't properly reflect how our wages should be. All of our wages are above what Walgreens wanted to pay us. Instead of giving the senior crew more money in reflection of their service, it was equal with the newbies. Even with the Assistant Mgrs, they only made $1 more than the service clerks; most companies would pay $3-$7 more.
Since the $15 mim-wage, work hrs and attendance dramatically dropped. We used to have 3 guys on the floor for opening and closing. These days, it's only the cashier and mgr during the morning and 2 workers to close. Despite having the billions to pay for it, they intentionally shorted the work staff to save money; that only added stress to workers expected to do more when they could've done the right thing and staff the proper numbers.
Overall:
Walgreens is miser with unnecessary headaches. The so-called oversight is a joke if there's management connections. Many of the mgrs can't manage and that has created so much drama to soap opera levels. Unless this is your first job (maybe not even then), I don't recommend you working at this place. Go to Chipotle or Starbucks, at least they'll help pay for your education and you'll have better wages. read more