Before We Get To Tonight's Main Event, Someone Insults The Honor Of CVS, And I Correct Them.

This all started with a piece in the Los Angeles Times that said people seem to have a way of ending up on CVS' automatic filling program (which they call ReadyFill) who never asked to be put there.

CVS' (spokesman Mike) DeAngelis denied that any production quotas exist for ReadyFill.

Seems pretty cut and dried. No quotas. Case closed.

I recently sent the following email to my district manager regarding our ReadyFill quota (playing dumb): 

To which he replied:
"Our target on ReadyFill is set at 40% of all ReadyFill eligible prescriptions." 

So CVS DOES have a ReadyFill quota despite Michael DeAngelis (LA Times article) saying there is no quota.

That was from my mailbag this night. And this letter writer could not have been more wrong. As you can see, CVS has a target, not a quota. Get your facts straight because the difference is very important.

It's like the difference between a program called ReadyFill and one called AutoFill. Get it now? I'm glad I could clear that up. Because being signed up for a program against your will to meet a target is way different than being automatically signed up for a program against your will to meet a quota. I'm sure patients understand that.

Because if there wasn't a huge difference between being pressured to meet a target and being pressured to meet a quota, that would mean CVS lied to the LA Times, or at least was disingenuous. And no corporation is more trustworthy than CVS.

A Scab Speaks.

Feeling the love in the mailbag I am. Got this one in response to my post about scabs possibly being called in if Southern California Rite Aid workers go out on strike:

Being one of the people called, one who doesn't have 40 guaranteed hours out here and is really hard-pressed for money due to just moving into a new place and my car dying on Friday, I'm anxiously awaiting the call to go because I can't afford not to at this point. So, sorry, I'll be happily crossing that line. We don't have a union out here either, so I'm more just a temporary fill-in. I'm not in love with the company or a slave to their will, but I gots bills to pay and this will let me do that. So fuck you for your tunnelvision view of the situation from the other side; this strike could save me from having to starve and being evicted in 3 weeks. The alternative isn't pretty.

Dear Tool,

Do you know why your job's so crappy? How it is that you can be employed yet still on the edge of eviction? Why your life is so miserable? It's because for the last 30 years there has been a war fought against working people and this is the result. They have bulldozed the type of person who just wants to get up, put in an honest days work and have some food on the table and a roof over their heads. Because wanting food security and desiring shelter is an affront to them. Anything that costs them a penny is an insult to their honor.

So your job has to suck as much as possible. You have to be fucked as hard as they can fuck you while still keeping you productive.

Do you walk to work or take the bus these days?

You're powerless to stop them alone. Stand up and you will be thrown aside. So you take it. You take less than 40 hours and hope you don't get sick. You hope they don't mess up your payroll so your rent check doesn't bounce. You stand and take that barbed wire penis up your ass and ask for more.

And now, you are so under their thumb, so under control, so much a complete and total success in their strategy, that you have joined their army in return for one decent week's pay. That's all it takes to get you to help crush others who want to know they can get sick and not go bankrupt. Who have the audacity to want  food in the fridge and a roof over their head. People who are fighting not to have a working life as awful as yours. They so control you tool, have so fucked with your mind, that instead of aspiring to raise yourself to a level where you might be able to work full weeks and keep your car running with your job, you can only help in tearing down others. They have trained you not to look up, but only to kick down.

You are a scab. Which my friend, is another word for a temporary fill in.

So by all means, enjoy the one week of decent pay you'll ever receive. Hell, maybe if these Californians prove tougher than expected you can get two out of the deal. Live it up and look at yourself in the mirror with pride, knowing that you had a part in dragging others down to the level of misery you have known. Be happy that you were able to do your part to ensure the downward slide of the American worker continues. Because as soon as you come home, you're right back where you started. The result of someone in your parents generation being just as spineless as you.

And you can also be happy that you did it cheap. They were able to use you for what amounts to next to nothing for them. Just like a piece of toilet paper. Used and never able to get the stink of shit off you. I'm sure you'll get used to it.

Fuck me indeed...but my price is much higher.

Sounds Like Rite Aid Is Fully Expecting The Southern California Strike To Go Down.

From the mailbag this day:

As an anonymous Rite Aid intern from the midwest, I can tell you that my PDM called all the interns in our district on Friday to ask us to scab for a week. Flight, car, food, hotel included. I asked if I would have to cross a picket line, and she said yes and that it would be "exciting" and "the best way to serve patients," because I would be helping them get their medication or something. She asked which week of the next four I could go, and if I chose to go I would hear from someone a few days beforehand with details about where I'd be going. She hinted that I would probably get more than 40 hours, but didn't say anything about overtime.

A couple of thoughts:

1) If anyone comes to California and works 40 hours, yes, they will get overtime. Thanks to the battles unions fought on your behalf long ago, it is the state law. Of course, you'll be depending on the integrity of a company in the process of fucking their employees out of health insurance and sick days to follow the law when employing temporary, out of state workers, who will have no one to complain to if they get the shaft. Good luck with that. Also...

2) If you come out here, you run the risk of me driving down there and kicking your ass so hard your rectum ends up in front of your incisors. I have heard rumors of union goons since my arrival in California, and I can only hope they are true, and that they'll give any scabs all the excitement they are looking for. 

3) If I were the UFCW, I would schedule the strike for September 15th. The first day Walgreens will be taking back Express Scripts customers.

4) Fuck anyone who even thinks about coming out here to scab. Fuck them hard and without lube.

Rite Aid's Statement Regarding Southern California Strike Authorization. (Enhanced)

I can honestly say their whole statement is here. Every word they sent. I may have added a few for clarity:

---------

The specifics of our proposal are matters we will be discussing at the bargaining table with the Union as we continue to work hard to reach a fair agreement for all involved.

We’re disappointed that the Union has called for a strike authorization vote and think such a vote is premature, especially since the Union hasn’t even given us a counter proposal to our first proposal.

With respect to healthcare, we’re simply asking associates to pay their fair share towards the cost of their healthcare, just as millions of people do across the country. We’re not unusual. According to one of the leading benefit consultants Towers Watson, 100% of retailers surveyed ask their employees to share the cost of healthcare insurance. The union only wants its members to pay a minimal amount for their healthcare coverage, but few if any companies in America can afford to provide that today. And as a company, we have decided it's important not to offer incentives that would allow us to attract any of the highest caliber employees in the talent pool. By being as miserly as our competition, we will ensure that the chances the people we put forth to be the face of our company are miserable, stressed out and lacking in incentive to excel are maximized

We basically took a look at K-Mart's people and said, "Yeah, that's what we want"

Of course this kind of philosophy cannot be extended throughout the company. It is critical that the people who make the strategic decisions and plot the direction of an entire organization be well compensated for their efforts. So it should be obvious why we chose to spend some of our limited resources to give our CEO and Chairman, John Standley a 292% pay raise in 2011, to a package worth $11,000,000. Without the proper incentives for performance,  a corporation simply cannot attract the kind of person able to achieve results in today's cutthroat business environment. And we'd like to think the numbers John's put up speak for themselves:

-Extending our string of profitless years to six, and counting.

-Sixteen million dollars of cash flow in fiscal 2011. We think you'll agree that spending an amount of money on the salaries of two people, our CEO and Chief Financial Officer, that is greater than a year's cash flow is a truly innovative, outside the box business strategy.

-A super secret plan to pay off the company's $6.2 billion debt. We can't divulge many of the plan's details, but it involves giving large bonuses and raises to top executives while telling rank and file employees who want sick pay to go fuck themselves.

Quite simply, if we didn't spend what it takes to keep our executive team, we as a company might suffer mediocre to poor financial performance. We can't take that risk.

Rite Aid has and will continue to work with UFCW locals representing their associates to reach a new agreement, one that is fair to all parties involved. In fact, we have bargaining sessions set for the next three weeks and look forward to getting back to the table.

UFCW's Statement Regarding Southern California Rite Aid Strike Authorization

Los Angeles (Tuesday, July 31, 2012) — Rite Aid workers all over Southern California voted overwhelmingly in the last few days to reject the company’s proposals for devastating concessions in their next labor contract.

The vote grants leaders of seven local unions of the United Food and Commercial Workers the authority to call a strike, if it becomes necessary.

Union members of UFCW Locals 8, 135, 324, 770, 1167, 1428 and 1442 voted July 26-30 at dozens of locations between Kern County and the Mexican border.

Rite Aid is seeking 34 concessions from the workers. The proposals include, among other takeaways:

• effective elimination of health care for workers' spouses and children

• out-of-pocket costs for health care benefits of up to $10,000 a year

• virtual elimination of all accumulated sick leave pay

• reduction of the number of hours workers are allowed to work

• elimination of the 40-hour workweek and 24-hour guarantee for part-time employees

UFCW leaders praised the workers for affirming their unshakeable solidarity with their union.

“The members’ emphatic rejection of Rite Aid’s demands and their vote for strike authorization will push management toward negotiating an agreement the workers can ratify,” they said.

GlaxoSmithKline Manages To Make My Cold, Cynical Heart Just A Little Colder.

I want you to remember two things as you watch this video, taken from the 2001 launch of the soon to be mega blockbuster med Advair.

First, the self-described mission of GSK:

 We have a challenging and inspiring mission to improve the quality of human life by enabling people to do more, feel better and live longer.

You'll see as you watch how GSK is focused, laser-like, on nothing but how to improve the quality of human life. Count how many times they mention enabling people to do more, feel better, and live longer versus the number of times Pink Floyd's "Money" plays while GSK executives take the stage.

The second thing I want you to remember is more important. Advair was never indicated as a first line asthma treatment. Never. It was approved only as a go-to med when others don't work. As a matter of fact, GSK specifically applied to the FDA for approval as a first line asthma med and was rejected. You'll see as you watch how GSK made it absolutely clear to their sales force that why it would have been nice to be able to sell Advair as first line therapy, they will just have to do the best they can with the indications they got.

The third thing you can do is help me decide if the opening scene here is freakin' hilarious or disgusting. Part of me wants to laugh out loud until I can't breathe when I see these King Dorkos, part of me wants to puke.

On to the show, courtesy of Mother Jones Magazine and an alert reader, to whom I owe a thank you.

News This Weekend Of Retail Pharmacy Workers Starting To Grow A Pair.

This may be the biggest pharmacy story of the year. Someone, my friends, has finally drawn a line in the sand:

Unionized workers at Southern California's Rite Aid stores, upset with company officials' contract proposals, are voting whether they will allow their leaders to call a strike against the pharmacy chain.

Some 6,000 workers represented by seven United Food and Commercial Workers locals began the vote on Thursday, July 26, to authorize a strike against Rite Aid. The balloting is expected to continue during the weekend, and the results will be announced Tuesday, according to a union statement. 

Workers, who include pharmacists along with clerks and cashiers, have been working under an expired contract since July 15, and two weeks ago both sides agreed to stop the clock and extend the expired deal into August. (emphasis mine)

My friends. I know you know what's happened to the profession over the last 20 years. I know you've seen its slow motion destruction and I know you know who's responsible. There are three major drug chains left in this country. Pharmacists stopped being independent professionals long ago. Those three chains are calling the shots. Even if you are not employed by these big three, they own you.

"But they pay us well" so many of you so wussily say in reply as you watch your patients endangerd by practices that never would have been tolerated only 10 years ago.

Yes, they pay us well, for now.....

union leaders are incensed by Rite Aid's latest proposal, which includes the elimination of health and welfare benefits for current and future retirees and a big increase in out-of-pocket costs for workers' families. All told, the company wants to take back 34 benefits that workers currently get, said Connie Leyva, president of Local 1428, which represents workers in western San Bernardino County and eastern Los Angeles County.

Well paid is all you have left my friend. Your dignity, your control over your own work environment, your professionalism have all been taken from you. Your 20 pieces of silver are all you have left. And now they're coming after that. This has to stop. If we are ever going to advance, we will have to stop retreating.

And now someone has drawn a line for you and said "no further" You really need to thank them.

Now I know a lot of you say your concerns lie elsewhere, with issues that are not financial. Working conditions, cuts in tech hours, orders to pump out the flu shots with no additional resources. Hell, most of you can't even take a piss when you have to go. But someone is threatening to punch one of your tormentors in the face. And you know what happens then?

They start listening to you. Because they don't want to get punched in the face again. They even start to take you seriously.

Are you being listened to now? Being taken seriously are you? If not what's your plan for being listened to and respected in the future? It starts here. Whether you like it or not, you are not neutral in this. Wherever you work, for whoever you work for in the retail pharmacy world, you are on a side.

Are you going to hide and keep quiet so you don't rock the boat? That's been your strategy so far. How's that been working out for you?

Or are you going to stand with the people who are saying "no further." I'll point out here that the UFCW represents workers at CVS as well.

No further. It. Stops. Here. UFCW's email is info@ufcwrx.com You may want to drop them a line and ask if there's anything you can do to help. Or at least give them a few kind words.

It is pretty much the least you can do.

Remember When I Wrote Awhile Back About CVS' Policy To Screw Walgreen's Pharmacists And Their Customers Who Need Prescription Transfers? And How CVS Employees Said It's A Policy Widely Ignored?

Evidently their overlords were not happy:

No word whether signatures are to be in blood.

In case you missed it, the nation's most professional pharmacy chain... that starts with the letter "C"... and has a second letter of "V" has decided that regular prescription transfers aren't quite enough of a pain in the ass. They also have determined that their pharmacists have a lot of extra time, and more pressing professional concerns than things like the upcoming flu season, like lying to other pharmacists for example. Here's a copy of that policy I wrote about earlier:

And just to make sure they're doing what they are told:

My favorite part is the "privacy office," where one can report someone messing around with a customer's prescription without the customer's permission:

"Hello, Anita? I need to report a privacy violation"

"Yes?"

"We had a customer very upset that a pharmacy automatically tried to fill one of their prescriptions without their permission"

"Awesome!! How sure are you that this skulduggery really happened?"

"Oh I'm 100% sure"

"Yesssssss!!!! We're finally going to sock it to those Walgreen's bastards!! No one initiates filling a customer's prescription without permission and gets away with it!! That would be a violation of the sacrosanct privacy that is so dear to us!"

"Well, here's the thing, it's already been in the paper, The Los Angeles Times actually"

"That's OK, we're still not going to let them get away with it!!"

"And the other thing? It's us. Here's what the paper says:"

But B.G. Stine, 52, of Torrance had a decidedly different experience when he stopped by a CVS branch to fill a couple of prescriptions for his brother, Mike, who has Parkinson's Disease

Normally, Stine said, he gets Mike's prescriptions filled at the in-house pharmacy of his 64-year-old sibling's retirement community in Seal Beach. But the pharmacy was able to fill only two of the four prescriptions during a recent visit, so Stine headed over to the nearby CVS.

He said he handed the CVS pharmacist the prescriptions and waited about 15 minutes. The pharmacist then had him sign a clipboard to show that he'd received the drugs, and that was that.

A month later, it was time to get the prescriptions refilled. Stine went, as usual, to the retirement community's pharmacy to pick up the drugs. 

This time, the pharmacist informed him that he'd have to pay the full $600 price for the medications that had been out of stock last time. CVS apparently had already filled the prescriptions and billed Mike's insurer.

"I couldn't believe it," Stine told me. "They just went ahead and did it, locking us out of having insurance cover it anywhere else."

He said he immediately returned to the CVS branch and asked to see the manager. She explained, Stine recalled, that Mike had agreed to enroll in CVS' ReadyFill program when he got his prescriptions filled last time.

"I informed her that he couldn't have done that because it was me who'd picked up the medicine, and I never agreed to anything like that," Stine said. "The manager's face just went blank. It seemed like this wasn't the first time she was hearing this complaint."

I don't mean to pick on CVS so much, really I don't. But there's just so much material, and their employees are so willing to talk. I have never seen anything like the level of anger CVS people have towards their employer. Today's deep pill was the latest in a long line of them.

Something tells me Anita's phone is gonna be pretty quiet. As long as the focus is on other companies that is.

I Miss The Car Talk Guys Already. In Their Honor, I Present This Week's Pharmacy Puzzler. Plus A Joke For All CVS Employees.

It was a horrifying day in the happy little pill room. Scripts were flowing in like the mighty Mississippi.  By phone and fax, by email and in person, the prescriptions were flowing in. The customers were like patrons at a fine French restaurant, attempting to send back each prescription until it was done to their liking. Except, prescriptions are not steaks, and I cannot cook them to please you. I understand your Lipitor co-pay card is emblazoned with a giant $4 on it, and I can see how that would lead a person to believe Pfizer was offering to sell them some Lipitor in exchange for four dollars. But, dear customer, you should understand, Pfizer hates us both. Their scheme was to pit us against each other, by giving you a card that says you will pay $4 and then setting up the terms of the offer so that almost no one pays $4. They then send me out to tell you you owe $23.76, in the hopes that we will mutually destroy each other in the resulting conflict. Because Pfizer would like nothing better than for both of us to die. After they sell you some Lipitor and before they have to pay my claim.

At any rate, amidst the pharmacy chaos, as hell was breaking loose and the whole pill room felt like it was about to blow, the commanding pharmacist said to his trusty tech, "No!! I need the suck 50!!!" and the trusty tech instantly understood and took care of the problem.

What could have just happened?

If you think you know the answer, zap it my way and you'll be eligible for a free copy of my second book, which currently exists only as a 20% completed first draft on my hard drive. Upon publication though, one of the first copies will be on its way to you.

If you know the answer that is. Some hints:

1) "Suck" isn't necessarily spelled the way I have it here.

2) It's not obscene or even the least bit naughty

3) You'll probably have to be in the profession to have a chance of getting it.

Speaking of inside pharmacy jokes, I've got a good one for everyone plugging away for the nation's second largest drug chain. As you're straining to meet your metrics upon threat of termination, as you're sweating over your numbers and obsessing over your stats, take a look at this real quote that appeared in a real newspaper:


"CVS' DeAngelis denied that any production quotas exist for ReadyFill."


They're talking about CVS spokeman Mike DeAngelis, and he seriously told the Los Angeles Times you don't have a production quota for your ReadyFill program. 


BWWWWWWWAAAAHHHHHAAAAHHAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Except, the jokes kinda on you guys really. Sorry about that. Maybe if you solve my puzzler you'll feel better.  


Thanks to the alert reader who tipped me to the Times story. 

These Are Tough Times For Soft Drinks.

Losing market share to juices and bottled water. Catching shit from the liberals over the explosion of obesity in this country, people catching on that no matter how many versions of Mountain Dew hit the shelves, it's all just fizzy sugar water.

"But at least I'm FIZZY!" I bet the soda thinks. "At least I have SUGAR! People are passing me up for friggin plain water in a bottle! All these educated, affluent assholes who think they care so much about the environment are paying money for water in a plastic bottle that will take a million years to decay. They not only walk past the drinking fountain, but right past me, who would at least give them some flavor and some caffeine for their money"

It's enough to drive a can of Coca-Cola to drink. Except:

I think I heard the Coca-Cola softly sobbing next to the convenience store door today. Quietly asking the old man going in if he could pay him to buy some beer.