Working at CVS — Reviews by Employees

This company is by far the worst company I have ever worked for. You work hard and you are told to work harder. You have no one to reach out to (that cares). The norm for this company is 6-7 days a week and yes you will be working a 6:30a-10:30 pm!!!! Thats right open to close! The DM's and emerging leaders in this company only care about numbers and their bonus! So what, it's just you and 1 associate in the store, You need to work like it's you and 5 associates in the store! If you complete your task and acheieve 99% of what you wanted to get done, good job right? WRONG!!!!!! if you get 99% of your work done you are still behind and your DM will be in to threaten your job! This company plays off the bad economy! We need our money, we need our benefits, but cvs tells you day in and day out that your job is on the line! Now unless you go and suck some D!@K and kiss a whoooooooooooooooooooooooole lot of corporate ass you will never be anyone in this company. CVS does not help improve the quality of human life, they simply slave the workers and kiss the complainig customers ass to get their way! Try it out for yourself. Go into a cvs and complain about anything, ask for corporates # and VOILA!!!!!! instant $25 dollar gift card! Oh but wait dont forget the DM is gonna be in to threaten the manager yet again!

Wanna move up? You have to become a SLAVE for your DM! Kiss his ass and you are well on your way! Make sure you clean the chocolate off your nose!

Didi I mention that the pay is so fucked in this company! You wouldnt believe me if I told you!!!!

In closing all I can say is this, You wanna work for a company where you like to go to work! You get treated with respect. You get an occassional pat on the back and a thank you. Doing a great job! This is not the company to work for! Tom Ryan wants his money and so do upper mgmt. If they have to step on you, Fire you, lay off, cut hours "15 times a year", threaten your job, force you to work open to close, put you in the hospital, THEY WILL DO IT. I used to love what I do. Now I just want to get out...

Fill out an app if you think I'm joking. Just know that when you do, you will be saying good bye to your family for a long time!

ciao.

I worked here for nearly 5 years working 3rd shift. For two years I was promised a promotion to shift supervisor that never happened. I stopped doing supervisor duties that they wanted me to and told them I wanted the promotion if they wanted it done, and suddenly stuff in my locker was classified as stolen merchandise and I was subsequently fired.

The work environment sucked with people being incompetent or just jerks in general.

In their quest to cut expenses,CVS holds the most foreign worker /pharmacist permits,because they pay them WAY LESS than American pharmacists.
Now that the pharmacists are allowed to give injections,a more extensive background check is given.

Lo & behold, there are CVS "pharmacists" who have been filling Rx's & GIVING INJECTIONS FOR YEARS, who are not, or ever were licesenced pharmacists!!!!!!!!

I hope the many ensuing lawsuits will finally put these evil scumbags out of business.

THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING OTHER THAN PROFITS !

I've been with the company for almost 10 years, and like many other people here, I can validate that the company has taken a steady nose dive since about 2006-2007. Raises have decreased to a maximum of 2% and most recently the corporate douc*ebags have shaved a decent chunk of hours off of every stores payroll. They even put a stop to ordering essential store supplies (like security labels). The cut in payroll and supplies is a direct response to the subpar performance of CVS stores in just about every market except mine (from what we heard), in an effort to appease the wall street investors. The regional manager here is another character. He simply cannot grasp the fact (or simply won't admit it) that PRODUCTIVITY CANNOT INCREASE WHEN YOU DECREASE HOURS. Then again I'm sure he's hearing it from his boss, so who am I to judge? The customers here are like every other retail customers, a handful of pleasant people and a whole
lot of snobs. Not to mention the people who seem to make a living off of extra bucks. All in all, CVS which was once a decent place to work for has now become a bottom of the barrel, glorified junk store. The company has lost all focus and has all the wrong priorities. I can go on and on about the horrors I'm enduring right now while currently being an employee, but I'll take a break for now ;). Bottom line, avoid this job at all costs.

I have been a CVS store manager for 3 years. In my 3 years this company has gone south quickly. Our VP and RM hammer the DM then the DM hammers us. What kills me is that the VP is out of touch yet he feels he needs to micro manage. The RM does not have the backbone to give the VP a reality check. It seems like we roll out a new program every other week and cut back hours at the same time. Our pricing is way out of line and yet we are asked every week why the sales are soft. The customer has wised up to the games we play with our extracare card. The VP killed this market. I hear So Cal is doing worst of all major markets.

I joined CVS after 14 years with Osco Drug and Brooks Pharmacy. Honestly, this was the worst mistake I ever made. I joined their "accelerated management program which was supposed to fasttrack me given that I was an experienced manager of 10 years. Yeah, right. After one year of the nonsense in which they told me I would be next to get a store, I got transferred to a district in which nobody knew me. Lost that one because as everyone in the retail world knows, people who get transferred out of a district to another one in which you are not known, do not get stores. That would require them to look at talent rather than who knows who. Well, I was subswquently demoted after I pulled my manager aside the tuesday before xmas eve and told him that I didnt appreciate being used and abused for working every holiday. Yup, I got to work xmas eve from 2pm - 2am. How Nice. Of course, I have kids and that is fair. Oh yeah, he left the store at 4pm that day. Shocker. Come to think of it, he never worked any nights,LOL. Anyway, I was demoted to a shift and subsequently got terminated for "Payroll fraud" as I was the only management member there the sunday I put my 20 hours of vacation in. I guess I should have called the manager to come in from her day off and put it in for me. What a joke.

All comments in this website are so TRUE!

Pay - I started out at over 40k / year which was great.

Respect - It depends on who you are dealing with. Some people were great and some people sucked. ESPECIALLY PHARMACISTS. They are some of the most overpaid, ungrateful bastards in the world.

Benefits - Benefits were great. Employee discounts on cars, cell phones, computers etc. Good deals on health insurance. Decent employee discounts.

Job Security - When your DM threatens your job on a weekly basis, I wouldn't call that good job security. The work load is ridiculous and if you only get 99% done your job is threatened. Not good.

Work/Life Balance - This is why I quit. DM's don't really pay attention to what goes on in stores. As long as the salesfloor looks decent and they aren't getting crap from the Area Manager about stores, they don't care. They turn a blind eye and deaf ear to store managers that suck. After 4 or 5 years of neglecting the store, the store manager is finally fired by the DM. The DM really didn't want to get involved but did to keep the area manager off of his back. Then they put a decent store manager in the neglected store to clean it up. At CVS, it is hard enough on minimum hours to get your work done. Throw on top of that the fact that I was cleaning up a store that had a horrible manager. I was working opening to close 2 or 3 days a week. 6 or 7 days a week. 60 to 70 hours a week. I never saw my family. Screw that.

Career Growth - CVS is truly a company where the more you kiss ass and keep your superiors snowed, the better chance you have at success. The truly good managers get shafted.

Co-Worker Competence - A fellow store manager was paying people cash under the table to call off at their store and work at his store (tax-free out of his pocket) so he could play golf, go drink, etc. AND HE WAS THIS YEAR'S PARAGON AWARD WINNER FOR THE DISTRICT! Screw that. The employees are even worse. I dealt with the union at Meijer, but CVS is ridiculous. These people have been with the company for 20-25 years, they are 60 years old, and you can't just fire them for being old. I hated them all.

Work Environment - I've been around retail my whole life. I know how things work. But CVS is over the top with this stuff. Too much work and not enough labor. Technology is from the 80's and 90's. A task that took 20-30 minutes at Meijer took 2-3 hours at CVS. Definitely would not recommend unless you have no family or friends and you are a glutton for punishment.

I work at CVS full-time as a Shift Supervisor B.

Pay: Not horrible, but not great either. Im only making 9.75/hour.

Respect: No matter where you work or what position you're in, if you're in retail you will NEVER get any respect from customers. As an hourly manager, i feel respected by both the salaried managers and clerks in my store. The pharmacy employees, especially the pharmacists, have no respect for anyone in the front store. They treat us like we're beneath them.

Benefits: Not bad for full-timers. I hear they suck for part-timers though. Also, we get 30% employee discount off CVS brand products and 20% off everything else in the store.

Job security: I feel secure in my job. Unless you really screw up, its quite difficult to get fired from CVS.

Work/life balance: I usually only get around 35 hours a week, even though im full-time. Plenty of time to have a life outside of work.

Career potential/growth: in this economy, stores are opening at a slower rate and openings for management positions are few.

Location: there are CVS stores everywhere, however my store is a 45-minute drive away.

Co-worker competence: most associates are good workers that know what they're doing. There is a few who are lazy college/highschool children and a few who are idiots, but for the most part you can rely on everyone doing their job correctly.

Work environment: Not bad for retail. CVS is a fairly laid back environment, you have plenty of time to get all your work done, have your lunch, and give your cashier a lunch before the store closes. Customers suck, but are not as bad as other companies ive worked for. Management at my store is good.

can't say enough bad things about my experience here. they make you do everything, stocker, photo, cleaning crew, cashier, etc etc and expect it ALL to get done in a set time which is difficult if you are working with idiots who are allowed to take a few smoke breaks during the 4-8 hour shift but if you want to take a (literall, i timed it) 60 second bathroom break even hour or so, (i'm healthy, SUE ME) you can't. they pay you a shitty 8 dollar wage or so but ask you to do more work that they are paying you for and cut hours left anf right so they have 5 people all getting 8 hours a week (maybe 12 if i, or we, were lucky) rather than just 1 or 2 full time employees. or course they have the shift leader, 2 of them, who get the hours and talk to you like you're dumb despite the fact you are college educated and they are not. oh and the one i worked at had like 400 dead knats in the refrigerator i had to put my food in. they never cleaned.