u/drtiredtief

Back at the beginning of July I interviewed for a pharmacy manager position for a grocery store pharmacy (Shaw's if anyone is curious). They gave me the offer immediately during the interview, but I ended up backing out for financial reasons. This week, I got an email from them again saying they're revising the offer to increase the hourly rate and to give a large sign-on bonus. While I'm definitely interested in these new numbers, I also am unsure if I should be suspicious of this. It feels like they're desperate to fill the role, but I'm not sure why. On paper, the position looks like a flat upgrade from my current manager role at Walgreens, but something about this feels off. (also, if anyone here has any experience with what working at the pharmacy in a Shaw's is like, lmk!)

Title, mostly.

I just turned 29 a few days ago, I've been diagnosed and dealing with PCOS since I was 14. I have my annual coming up soon so I was reviewing questions to ask, and while taking stock of my health I realized that in the past year, my management of my PCOS has torpedoed due to my workplace. I work as a pharmacy manager for a big name chain pharmacy which is an insanely stressful and damaging job, and recent changes/upcoming expectations paint a very depressing picture for the rest of the year.

Primarily, the long hours mean I don't get home until late, which means I have to have late dinners not too long before bed which I know isn't very healthy, and because I'm at work all day and exhausted by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is cook something healthy every night especially with the limited time I have before bed. I also don't eat proper breakfasts anymore as I'm so tired in the mornings that I just take something like a to-go skyr yogurt and my coffee with me to work. And of course since I work in a pharmacy there's no food allowed inside, so I can't snack at work (and stepping out to eat something is a bad idea with how busy we can get) so the advice of many smaller meals throughout the day doesn't work for me either.

I'm looking for advice from anyone else who knows the framework of this sort of job on how they manage their working days. For some additional info, I do exercise by going to a HIIT gym on my days off (at least one a week) or doing walks, and I'm taking metformin, birth control with drospirenone, and magnesium daily. Also, I'm a vegetarian, so options that don't utilize meat would be great (byproducts like cheese/milk/etc okay).

Thanks in advance!

Title, mostly.

I just turned 29 a few days ago, I've been diagnosed and dealing with PCOS since I was 14. I have my annual coming up soon so I was reviewing questions to ask, and while taking stock of my health I realized that in the past year, my management of my PCOS has torpedoed due to my workplace. I work as a pharmacy manager for a big name chain pharmacy which is an insanely stressful and damaging job, and recent changes/upcoming expectations paint a very depressing picture for the rest of the year.

Primarily, the long hours mean I don't get home until late, which means I have to have late dinners not too long before bed which I know isn't very healthy, and because I'm at work all day and exhausted by the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is cook something healthy every night especially with the limited time I have before bed. I also don't eat proper breakfasts anymore as I'm so tired in the mornings that I just take something like a to-go skyr yogurt and my coffee with me to work. And of course since I work in a pharmacy there's no food allowed inside, so I can't snack at work (and stepping out to eat something is a bad idea with how busy we can get) so the advice of many smaller meals throughout the day doesn't work for me either.

I'm looking for advice from anyone else who knows the framework of this sort of job on how they manage their working days. For some additional info, I do exercise by going to a HIIT gym on my days off (at least one a week) or doing walks, and I'm taking metformin, birth control with drospirenone, and magnesium daily. Also, I'm a vegetarian, so options that don't utilize meat would be great (byproducts like cheese/milk/etc okay).

Thanks in advance!

Hi all!

I've been having trouble dealing with severe stress/anxiety (work-related) for the past two-three months. It's continually gotten much worse and the past week has been a disaster for how I've been handling it.

I'm curious if anyone here has had any experience with specific anxiolytic/anti-anxiety meds that are fast-acting besides the usual Xanax/Klonopin/Ativan. I specify fast-acting so that if I see/feel I am spiraling/collapsing into hysterics I can take it to restabilize. Despite being a pharmacist, I know that all meds affect people differently, so I'm crowd-sourcing opinions/experiences.

I don't feel super comfortable using benzodiazepines for two main reasons - a) I am concerned about addiction (especially as a pharmacist who dispenses these meds to patients and sees how they end up), and b) I've actually used a number of things that are supposed to reduce anxiety like (post-surgical) Percocets, recreational high-dose marijuana, and calming vitamins/supplements, and not a single one has ever had a significant effect, so it's possible that a benzo might not even work on me (or I'm just too high-strung lol).

Thank you all for your input!

ETA: I don't usually have physical symptoms like heart-racing or shaking, but I get very in my head and upset/crying if that helps clarify things.

Yet another 'pharmacist who is burnt out' post incoming - my apologies. Also sorry for the length.

I'm 28 (turning 29 in a few days) and I just graduated last year. I was hoping to go from pharm school into the pharma industry, but my fellowship interviews didn't work out. I did both my IPPE and APPE rotation at a Walgreens, and my preceptor liked me enough to offer me a job with her, which at the time I accepted because I had nothing else lined up and needed financial help with student loans. I passed my boards in the months after, became a licensed pharmacist, and started working as a floater in September.

Here's where the trouble started - I had mentioned a few times to one of my supervisors that I was interested in a stable/permanent position instead of floating, especially after some bad experiences where I floated at atrociously-run high tier stores. In January this year, the supervisor offered me an interim PiC position at a lower tier store with the option to become a manager if I liked it. I had a good time for the first month - made some positive changes, the staff liked me after their awful previous manager, and the store manager was supportive to me as a newbie - so when the manager role was offered to me formally, I accepted. The big mistake I made here was that since I was in the middle of buying a home, I also took the retention bonus, which tied me to the role for three years. I would not have been able to afford the home without it, and like I said at the time the role didn't seem so bad so I thought it was okay.

It's now July, and since May the position has taken a massive nosedive for me. Because we are lower volume and it's a very vax-hesitant area, we don't get vaccines and are constantly being bullied by the higherups for underperformance, despite being average or even very high in other metrics like promise time. I also, as someone brand new to management, made a lot of mistakes with how I handled my staff - I was very lenient and friendly in an attempt to not be as bad as the previous manager/because my personality is very conflict-avoidant, and now my staff do not respect me as a boss and are regularly resistant to any attempt I make to actually be a manager, such as being rude in responses/not doing what I ask them to do. The store manager has also taken a completely hands-off approach to the pharmacy and rarely speaks to me or goes back to the pharmacy unless it's to get mad at me for a complaint from a customer/higherups. And to top it off, we recently became aware of new expectations for the pharmacy starting in September (e.g., yearly bonuses/performance reviews are now tied to total store profit instead of personal performance, flu shot goals have tripled, etc), and even the senior managers who have been there 10-20 years are anxious about it let alone me who is barely a year into pharmacy at all.

At this point, I'm not handling the stress well - I am crying almost every single day, I am not eating or sleeping well, and any progress I made towards recovery on my days off is dashed the moment I get back into work. I already have weekly therapy and we are discussing putting me on medication at this point, but I know that this situation is not sustainable even with that help. Given that all my stressors are from the managerial side of things, I genuinely believe the universal advice on this subreddit to find a new position elsewhere or even just to go back to a floater role would make this job much more bearable for me, but unfortunately that is not possible for me right now unless I can find a job that is willing to give me a bonus/huge raise to cover the retention bonus payback or if I can suddenly get the money to pay it off myself (since I sunk all the money I got from it into paying off student loans). I either need advice on how to handle the stress/burnout at least until I can find an alternative position, or how I can negotiate a payment plan for paying back the bonus so I can go back to being a floater until I can find something else. I am actively interviewing - I do multiple on my one day off a week - but of the two offers I've gotten (Shaws, CVS) neither was willing to help pay back the retention.

TL;DR - young pharmacist, recent grad, only a year into pharmacy. Was pulled into manager position with predatory retention bonus, mishandled some things due to inexperience, now dealing with difficult staff/unreasonable expectations from higherups/unmanageable levels of stress and anxiety but can't leave due to retention bonus. Looking for advice on how to manage stress/burnout, how to negotiate ways to pay back bonus and reduce role, or any tips how on what to do.

ETA: Addressing a common refrain - telling me I 'should have known better' than to go into pharmacy at all or to take this bonus isn't helpful. I obviously know that now, but I can't exactly undo that decision. That's why I'm asking for advice.

I (RXM) have two regulars at my pharmacy, and I appear to have made a particularly egregious mistake by being nice to them.

Both are older and have various health issues so they're in the pharmacy a lot, and because their first interaction with me was me being kind and listening to them thoroughly and helping them out as best I could in the moment (pulling scripts from elsewhere, calling doctors, etc), they have now developed a unhealthy attachment to me specifically. They'll call and talk to me for 10, 20, even 30 minutes on the phone about everything under the sun, and will give my techs/staff RPh a hard time if I'm not there or can't take their calls. They also both get controls and will routinely ask me to give it to them early/call their doctor to authorize early fills (which I refuse to do) and will go on long rants about bizarre stuff I do not have the time for (one thinks the entire state of MA is persecuting him and that the government here racist against white people, the other tells long stories about how she met her boyfriend/all her grievances with her doctors). I've tried using excuses like 'I have a doctor on the line' or telling them that the technicians can help them with anything they need filled, but then next time they call it's back to square one.

Anyone else have these patients that you dread hearing when you pick up the phone? Suggestions on what I can do to avoid getting stuck listening to them without being super rude?

I started with WAG officially last year, when my HCS helped me sign up for the PEAP program ($20k towards your student loans if you work for WAG for one year). I believe my date for this is considered either late August/early September, depending on what the internal system counts as your start date.

I also was promoted from floater to interim PiC and later RXM in February, and was given a three year retention bonus at that time. I agreed to it at the time as I was in the middle of multiple financial changes such as buying a house and the bonus was immensely helpful.

In the few months I've been here, I've completely cleaned up the pharmacy (even before CNO was implemented) including mylars/dusting/sorting documents, I've worked with my team to bump up almost every single metric (myWag, texting, etc) to expected numbers/ranges, we've increased survey numbers from pharmacy, I've gotten my store to #1 in the district for routing to cenfill, my name is regularly at the top of the MTM earnings leaderboard, and we hit vax goal for April at over 130%. All of this was thanks to the efforts of both me and my awesome team of techs. And yet, no matter what I do, the DMs are constantly picking on our store.

The final straw was today when the DPS emailed us to say we are at the bottom of the district for vaccines for May, since we vaccinated most of our regulars in April and we live in an area that's very anti-vax so new patients are rarely interested. I tried to gently point out to the DPS that this is because of this and because we're a Tier 2 with just less customers/vaccine opportunities, and she referred us to another Tier 2 that is meeting goal (even though that Tier 2 is located in an affluent, educated, predominantly white area and mine is an area that is 50/50 white conservatives and ESL immigrants).

At this point, I need advice on what to do next - I don't feel like the insane effort I put into making the store run smoothly and meet metrics/compliance is recognized, and I can't be this level of stressed over whether I will get demoted/my store will get shut down because it's not profitable enough. However, I also don't know where else I can look for/find work that would be willing to pay off one or both retention bonuses - I could probably suck it up until September which would alleviate the PEAP one, but the RXM bonus is another story.

Does anyone know what places are covering retention bonuses when poaching pharmacists? Ideally somewhere without metrics to hold over our heads? Or am I better off just sucking it up for the three years? Also, how likely are we to get closed down/me to get demoted over this? Should I even be concerned over that? Also, does anyone have any suggestions for how to manage the stress of all this?

TL;DR - I have two retention bonuses, a one-year one expiring in September and a three-year one expiring in February 2029. Should I suck it up or should I seek out an employer who will cover the bonuses somehow?