Comments on: Rite Aid, revisited…

By: peter duran

peter duran — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:38:26 +0000

i worked for this company as a manager for 13 years….you all should sell your stock.it would be the only way to send a message to the upper management that you are not happy with their management results. they are very quick to find fault in the working people at store level yet seem to find every excuse to protect themselves for their own mismanagement abilities. The stock is at .95 cents as of today…where was it when you bought it, now ask yourselves, why did i invest in a company who in 2000 had the SEC come down on them and the CEO sent to jail…why in 2006 did they buy a struggling company Eckards when they themselves after 6 years of still struggling, why yesterday did they fall in bed with a grocer and plan to remodel 10 stores in SC. yet they are still struggling….how much did you pay for your stock….who do you blame…the cashier and local management….or those who pull the strings…corporate personal?

By: meincali

meincali — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 02:35:51 +0000

Would be nice if they upped the criteria on who they higher. Having a pulse, and a clean background check isn’t enough. Tougher rules that Management has to follow if an employee screws up! warnings, write ups, and then termination! just like any other company.

By: meincali

meincali — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:56:38 +0000

I work for a Rite Aid in Norcal……..summer time is the busiest time for our store, we’re a tourist town. We hire people or have even borrowed staff from other stores. We have enough people working at our store now, however its making these young kids we do hire appreciate their job, now a days. We have a guy who didn’t call or come to work for quite a few days, in any other company that’s considered job abandonment. We came back to work he had the balls to complain about always being the one who has to be in the checkstand?!? talk about being grateful you even have a J O B! Had another young girl who would call in sick every Wednesday, and found out she was going into town with a bunch of her little gang bangn friends to beat up other little girls, Police called and came in looking for her at Rite Aid….but Management lets it ride. She finally quit.
So we have a few really great people who work very hard for this store and have been here for a long time, they have always abide by the rules, worked the shift they were scheduled, on time everyday, and never call in sick. So I ask, what happens to those people? what happens to those people who do their job everyday and does what theyre suppose to? what do they get? since we ” we let ride” for the idiots that are just taking up space. It seems that the people we tend to hire lately are people that have a mental issues or lack social skills! …however! we have a lot of people working both shifts. So Im not sure which is worse? having the NEW Hire Rejects? or just keeping the few good people that we do have and working them to death!?

By: Kimberly

Kimberly — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 02:33:46 +0000

I am upset that we are calling someone that looks at the positve movement a struggling company is trying to make and calling them names as if we are in elementry school. They are right. I have seen slow movement toward staffing our stores within our budget. It is tough. Do a corporate job for one week and see how you like it. Granted I have never held a position higher than assistant with rite aid, but anyone with eyes can see that this person speaks truthfully. Look at your profit and loss statement. Lok at what ou are running. Everything is there for you to see. Are you sending your boxes back, you just cost ra $. How about maintence of the photo machine, replacement chemicals are expensive. Is your store oderering from the ad, if your not you are causing the shortages in the warehouse and making it more difficult for our buyers to get good prices from manufactors. Are your planograms set right? they may be a pain, but those positions are paid for. you don’t compleate them accuratly and in a timely manner, our are costling the company important moneys. Look around and see all that you can do and stop complaining about what other people ar not. as for the ccc, it is a good tool, but only if it used. they are looking into the sugestions, if people would make them. Ours suggested $50 to spend in the store on whatever we wanted. The day the whole staff had chinesee for lunch was a great day for customers to be in the store. For one day we were reminded that we really do matter. And yes, use the raptar cards. My district manager has been known to send them out to his managers when they meet or exceed company standards on things like csi. They mat mock in public, but i havent seen them thrown out. they are important. One a week. try it, see what it does to your fellow workers.

By: DearGodNo

DearGodNo — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 21:42:18 +0000

Last year I put in a stint at RA… I have done 20+ years in drugstores. Riteaid, at least in this area has failed to invest in the stores, as least as far as front end ops go.

Registers are antiquated… a mix a a few modern touchscreens in Pharmacies, with junkers out front. They present a real training obstacle for new associates, and it seemed there was always at least one. Customer service is impaired by all voids and refunds being approved by mgt. Come a good rainstorm or thunderstorm, the satellite was knocked out, so now debits, ebts, or charges were possible.

The handhelds, antiques there too.. Slow, difficult to read, with cumbersome software for vendor check-in and about any other application.

God help if you had a Friday truck, with once a week (yuck) price changes, cycle counts, ad change-over AND delivery. The 14+ hours a day on weekends were never long enough to get it all done. And don’t forget “freshness Friday”, the initiative to help reduce all the out of dates in the stores. Mangers have no option but to do something along the way halfway.

The Portal had some semblance of helping on workload planning and ad ordering, and training, but email communications system based on some mainframe setup was pathetic. Just generating a simple email to a dm was too much of an affair. No wonder those guys relied so heavily on faxes. T

Virtually all the systems that RA had for basic front end ops were cumbersome, cut productivity, which in the new environment of hour cuts take a toll.

Throw in a leaky roof, coolers and air cond. systems well past their prime, make-do on store fixturing. No money was gonna be spent there.

For you Ra vets, my hat is off to you, if you feel your are excelling is such a poor environment. Your peer group has far better tools for virtually every task that you face every day.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:50:57 +0000

ManagerAid = PDM or just DM. Either way, a general Rite Aid subhuman retard.

By: Lizee

Lizee — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:52:20 +0000

Your store may be fine and great buddy according to you…but in general, most Rite aid employees are treated poorly by uneducated management, including your pharmacists! It is a thankless company who doesn’t really give a crap about its employees! Most of us are there because of buy outs and economy and no matter how hard we work, its never good enough!! Ever!! I’ve been in pharmacy for 25 years! You are the only manager I’ve ever come in contact with thats been happy, since we’ve been through 4 in the last 5 years!! Good luck with “your rite aid”!

By: MangerAid

MangerAid — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:04:05 +0000

Unless I missed something, I believe no one forced anyone to take a job with RA. You sat in an interview and the interviewer told you about the pay and job detail. You then had the option of turning the job down or accepting. YOU chose to join the team. YOU chose to enter the building and fill out the application and take the quickscreen. If you have skills that exceed those needed to work at RA, YOU have the chose to make a change. Everyday that you work you can do what you agreed to do or sit and complain about how you are the best thing to come through the doors. If you don’t like something You can go into the managers office and use the Portal computer (black one used for CBT’s) and log a RACS to the CCC, don’t know what that is, ask your manager. The new RAPTAR poster can be used by associates and managers also. Change in your store starts with YOU. The worst thing for RA is an associate that is unhappy.
Hours are granted by your sales/script. If your sales/script are down you remove hours to reflect the drop. Currently we are given more hours then we should be allowed. For example, the norm is 10% times weekly sales figure (25000.00) would give you a budget of $2500 for the week (this equals about 225hrs). This same store is given 255 hours to schedule under the new structure. I believe this is an increase.
I can’t answer for your manager or pharmacy staff. I know in my store I keep an open door policy. I don’t force anyone to stay if they need to leave. I give hours out to the ones who perform and counsel those who don’t. I encourage you to put forth your best or bring your talent to another place, because if your talent is grumble, complain, stir up conflict or just being a downer, get out of the way of those who are willing to do what we were hired to do.

By: WrongAid

WrongAid — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 02:47:34 +0000

Rite Aid is a sinking ship. They pump money into this new workflow bullcrap program showing cashiers how to use a bag and showing managers how to unload a truck? Why not put that money into the stores? No, instead some pinhead at corporate who never ran a store in his/her life comes up with this crap.

Also, the culture change crap is a farce. Every quarter, we give a $10 gift card, to be spent in the damned store, to our best employee? What a fricking joke. Employees don’t want certificates and pats on the back, they want to be treated as human frickin beings, and get more than a 2% raise per year. Don’t even start on the Rx savings bonus program, which is stupid.

By the way, is Mary Sammons a transvestite? She sure looks and acts like one. Leads me to another topic….the in-store TV with Mary and her ‘take time’ segment is enough to make anyone wretch.

If the corporate pinheads want good customer service, then they have to free up some payroll, otherwise, it will never happen.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 01:21:38 +0000

I have worked for rite-aid since the transition from brooks/eckerd and before…This is the worst company I have ever worked for, and considering leaving after all the years. Of course, they would be pleased as I wouldn’t be sucking out the money for their payroll.
I work in the pharmacy. I am a tech. I see it is the same story from many of the above comments. In the pharmacy, they have cut back our hours so badly, that usually, it is just a pharmacist and a tech or cashier for most of the day. In the meantime, you have all these new rx’s coming in, the phone ringing off the hook, deliveries to take care of, not to mention all the aged rx’s in will call to be pulled and put back in stock, and then comes order day with the warehouse order coming in and with it seems to be a line of people following the delivery man in because they need there medicine, and it had to be ordered because we are out of stock. However, it is our fault because our “counts” are off. But this all doesn’t matter. They are thriving on this customer service survey where the customers must call this number on their receipt and give us a 5 rating. I don’t know if anyone has ever taken this survey, but it is about 10 minutes long. Now, as a employee, this whole program irritates me that I have to beg every customer for a “good score” on customer service. As a customer, I don’t want to be bothered with a lengthy survey, by this time, I am irritated and NO I wouldn’t be giving a high rating of 5. This whole thing is a little stupid. Instead of wasting time and money figuring out these programs, why don’t they figure out more ways to keep the stores stocked with sale items, increase hours, boost moral, along with maybe being more on the side of the employees rather then the side of some big ceo monster women that only cares about her hefty bonus. I don’t need to name names do I?