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Walmart h20...new grads are screwed
- Thread starter rxdawg21
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owlegrad
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It's a good deal if you aren't burdened by student loan debt, which almost all new grads are. Working 32 hours a week or less, with no clear route to greater hours consistently is going to be hard to pay off your loans. IBR for everyone lol. I couldn't imagine paying 1800 a month (the payment for someone with 150k in debt) on a salary of 100k and even come close to maxing out retirement, living a normal life with vacations etc. on a 100k salary after taxes and insurance costs you are looking at a 70k salary, 22k to student loans, hopefully your putting 10k plus to your 401k. leaves you with <40k for food, car expenses, rent, etc. So you go to pharmacy school for 6 years, work your butt off, work long undesirable hours for your take home pay to be around 40k. Sounds wonderful
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But but... you get to wear a white coat
Thats what I do. Actually its worse because I pay daycare for two kids as well. Helps that Hubbs earns as much as I do. We dont max out retirement, but we contribute. Its doable, even enjoyable. Hell, anything is.
Certainly isnt the :baller: status some pre-pharmers expect, thats for sure.
So it's safe to say you as a couple are living off of a 200k gross salary, not 100k. Obviously having a spouse etc contributing helps a lot. Even if they have the same amount of student loans, it doubles your left over money, cuts expenses like rent, utilities, food down as well on a per person basis.(unless you eat out all the time)
Like I said, its not :baller: statues, but living off $40k for 10 years or less is certainly doable. Then afterwards you get benefits working part time (hard to get) with a very reasonable salary. Not the desired path of everyone but I can see the appeal.
I see your point about part time work with benefits. That isn't a guarantee and is rather rare, I'd be surprised if Wal-mart continues to offer those working <32 hours a week benefits in the future. If I wanted to make 40k or so plus and have great benefits I would have been a teacher...3 months off each year, great hours, etc.
I know when I was at Publix they had an aggressive push to get rid of their part time people around 2008-2010 to as far as I knew there was very little if any part time people, and they certainly didn't have benefits such as health insurance. Pharmacy is a great paying career for those that want to work 20 hours, I'm not sure how prevalent or easy to get part time jobs are and will be in the future. I could be way off base and they are very prevalent, I'm just not aware of it.
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Well, it depends where you live. LA and so cal are so saturated that their hours are severely cut.
However, I work in central cal and have two jobs. I'm pushing 200k+ a year.
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This type of opportunity almost makes me want to pack up and move to California. I'm in the Southeast and barely making $135k a year after picking up extra shifts each month.
Are your 2 jobs both retail-based?
Just out of curiosity, can I ask what chain you work for?
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I'm curious to see if older pharmacists really take a liking to this. I would definitely stay on longer when I hit 50 if I could work 24 to 32 hours per week at one store compared to having to float if I asked for 3 to 4 days per week in the future.
Once these kids and mortgage are gone, there's no reason to keep putting in 42 per week in the cheap midwest.
Once these kids and mortgage are gone, there's no reason to keep putting in 42 per week in the cheap midwest.
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There are still good opportunities in California if you live in the less desirable areas. In my region, there are signing bonuses to be had and recruiters are stopping by or calling the pharmacies to get experienced pharmacists to switch jobs. It seems we never have enough floaters so there are extra shifts if you want them. Add in the labor laws with real OT for anything over 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week, double time for more than 12 in a day, and it is pretty lucrative. I almost never work extra shifts and I make an extra 40K or so in OT just for my normal work week which is about 44 to 45 hours per week. Plus I get to leave the pharmacy for lunch. I'm never leaving California.
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How are they going to force staff pharmacist at other stores to cover all the new time off of pharmacists at other stores when they're no longer paying drive time. Who will want to spend 2 extra hours of their own time driving without getting paid for it...
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I work one retail and one hospital.
If you want to work and make money, this is the place to be. In that district, you can literally work 30 days straight because there are just that many openings. And retail companies are willing to dish out OT just to keep a pharmacist to open a store. It was so bad that my DM had to drive about 2 hours to open a store because they couldn't find coverage. And he's not paid by the hour haha.
I think that's the point -- Walmart realizes that nobody actually wants to do those things, but with so many new pharmacists graduating from schools every year, they realize that they (Walmart) are now in the position to force pharmacists to spend 2 hours of time driving without getting paid for drive time, while all the new graduates are not in a position to turn them down for jobs.
They aren't going to force anyone, pharmacists will willingly cover these shifts due to needing/wanting more money. Just at my meeting I had pharmacists that were getting 72 hours that were already networking and strategizing ways to be first to be called in any store within an one hour drive. This was not a young pharmacist either. People are living high on the hog and have bills to pay, or you are a new graduate with a crapload of student debt that the previous generations of pharmacists simply didn't have (unless they chose to go to a private school, as public instate schools were dirt cheap in my area just 10 years ago.
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Which retail companies would you say are the best in terms of staffing needs?
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I've paid off all my debts including my mortgage so I signed up for a position which can be flexed down to 3 x 10 hrs. Still get full benefits. Unfortunately, they haven't flexed me down yet, but I'm hoping things will slow down this Summer.
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So seems like Walmart pharmacy will be great for those who are student loan, mortgage free looking for full time benefits while only working 30ish hours per week. Definitely not for new grads.
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Being debt free is an amazing feeling. Id pay off my mortgage but I'm having too much success using the money in the market. Its sad to see these new pharmacists coming out with $200k in loans then buying ridiculously priced homes in cal. They will be working until they're well into their 60s and hating every bit of it having to work either ot all the time or traveling hours to pick up shifts.
That would be a nice gig. In my market the new templates and new hours etc. won't go into effect until October. I have also been told that at my store they no longer want 2 pharmacists there for 10 hour shifts. Instead they want 3 pharmacists there, 3 for 8 hours, so we have more coverage during busy times and don't have long period of time with only 1 pharmacist with the other at lunch.
Not sure anyone knows 100% how it will affect staff pharmacists just yet (other than being able to offer a a variety of hours to be considered staff), but it seems like it will have an immediate impact on Part Time workers. From what I hear, part timers are being given a choice of staying Part Time or jumping to this new staffed scale. If they stay PT, their hours will be capped (I've heard at 20hrs a week so none of this making $40K extra just from working a regular work week like someone noted they were getting in Cali). If they move to new Staff scale, then their pay will be fixed and controlled. I'm sure they must feel confident that they can fill in hours that these people may have covered should they choose to stay as PT (i.e. with other PT & Staff folks looking for hours).
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Newish grad here. I'm about to go to this meeting. We just got information about it. Wish me luck. I have been averaging >80 hrs/pp recently (FT hourly) so I doubt I will get any lower than 80 hr maximum offers for hours, if their formula in the webinar on the WIRE holds true. I plan on taking the maximum available to me. Already paid my student loans but I want a home soon.
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Let us know how the meeting goes...
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Yep, being debt free is awesome. Actually I used to think like you and everyone else: 'why pay off a mortgage when you can make more on stock?' Then I realized the answer is you have to balance it with your cash flow situation.
Obviously stocks don't always go up. One day you're going to get trapped in a bear market. Unable to sell because you don't want to take the loss, so you just try to hang on and wait. But what if the whole economy is bad as well and you get laid off? Now you're in a cash flow crunch. And if you have a $3,500 mortgage, property tax & insurance payment in Cal, this is also a massive cash flow burden.
So being debt free is about putting yourself in an awesome cash flow situation. I'm getting about $7k/mo in disposable income! This gives you tons of options, like reducing your work hours, and also lots of security for when times are bad.
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No. I didn't have many loans for school.
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Very true. For starters, private contractors must be allowed to set their own hours, this would never work in a retail environment.
How did the meeting go?
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Have not had it yet. Will let you know.
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Has anyone had a H20 meeting recently?
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Has anyone had experience working at walmart neighborhood market pharmacy? I am guessing the new pharmacies are slower and easy to work for as a pharmacist!!!
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I thought they closed all those.
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One just recently opened up in my home town of south ga so I don't think that is accurate.
They closed 5 in south Georgia that I know off, closed quite a few nationally. Pretty much closed stores that weren't performing, lot of small towns refuse to shop at walmart
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I can't speak for the rest of South GA, I simply know my hometown had a Supercenter and in the past 3 years they made a Neighborhood market as well.
I know a guy who was a hospital pharmacist for 25+ years until he got laid-off last year. He's working as a staff pharm at a new Neighborhood Market location that just opened up near where I live. He says it's pretty tolerable ("eh, you know, it's job," etc.) and doesn't seem to have the same retail-related complaints that many pharmacists on here have.
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Not any easier. Might even be more difficult than plenty of supercenters, depending on volume. Some are slower, but almost every NHM has a drive-thru. Drive-thrus are relatively new or much rarer with supercenters. I float regularly to both.
No, they closed all express-format stores. Those were smaller than half the size of NHM's, and most were located in rural towns. Some NHM's were closed too but not that many, and they were opening about as many NHM's as NHM's they were closing, if not more.
Majority of Retail pharmacy (save the walgreens, cvs and probably rite aide) is tolerable if you are in the right situation. What does that look like? You have good/great technicians (makes a huge difference). You do between 200-400 rx a day with adequate help and a good system. You do not have a drive thru. Preferably have 3 full time pharmacist so you work every 3rd weekend (even better if you are at a SAMS etc that is closed on Sunday. ) Even doing 100 rx a day is a good job if you can do other activities when not busy (read magazines, ipad/tablet, etc.)
From personal experience at walmart, a store that does 600 with great technicians is better thena store that does 400 with crap technicians. Or on a weekend when alone, doing 200 vs 300. The technicians make a big difference.
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Not just Walmart. Walgreens too. They are reducing hours for current floating pharmacist and new graduates. 56 to 64 hours per two week period and 6 hours work shift.
Are they just guaranteeing 56 and 64 hours with the possibility of getting more hours, or is Walgreens flat-out only letting people work 56 or 64 hours during the pay period?
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From what I've heard, part time and floaters will be getting shorter shifts by removing overlap. So if you go to an 8 to 10 store the regular pharmacist may work 8 to 4 and you would work 4 to 10, that is 6 hours. If my understanding is correct you'd get 30 hours per week full time.
Yikes
Obviously floating to 9 to 9 stores and getting the 12 hour shift will help raise that number.
That sucks. :/ Do you know if this company-wide scheduling change was implemented due to the number of new pharmacists graduating from schools? Or is it due to other factors as well (such as declining reimbursements)?
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They don't say why but it's always about money. Instead of pay cuts its less hours. After awhile they will probably drop all overlap and even staff pharmacists will be down to 65 or they might do a 70 hour staff 80 hour rxm.
I didn't hear anything about more tech hours so I doubt it will increase but it makes sense from their view to replace pharmacists hours with tech hours.
