Maggie Astor: Look, I'm not a highly paid consultant so I could be wrong, but I think that probably I am not the only person who has left the store dozens of times without the product I intended to buy because it was locked up and no one responded when I pressed the button

Look, I'm not a highly paid consultant so I could be wrong, but I think that probably I am not the only person who has left the store dozens of times without the product I intended to buy because it was locked up and no one responded when I pressed the button

Walgreens will close a “significant portion” of its 8,600 U.S. locations over the next three years as it struggles to keep up with a rapidly evolving retail pharmacy industry, the company announced Thursday.

Walgreens to shutter many stores as profits tumblewapo.st The retail pharmacy giant expects to close a “significant portion” of its 8,600 U.S. locations over the next three years.

“But the retail industry’s own figures on shrink cast doubt on their claim that the problem is ballooning. Researchers say retailers may be blaming theft for losses when they don’t actually know the cause.” Translation: We fired everyone that actually knew why we were losing money.

Stores say shoplifting is a national crisis. The numbers don’t back it up | CNN Businesswww.cnn.com The masked thief rode into a Walgreens in San Francico on a bicycle, pedaled to an aisle in the health and wellness section, and loaded a black garbage bag with items off the shelf. Then he got back o...

Bingo. The theft excuse is old, tired, and largely bullshit.

It also has to do with massively overplaying their hands. At one point there were 7 or 8 different drugstores (CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens) within about a 2-mile radius of my apartment, as well as pharmacy sections in several grocery stores in the area. L.A. is a big city, but it was ridiculous.

I would say that over 50% of our store’s shrink is “damaged in shipping” because the Distribution Center is dedicated to maximizing the amount of crap that can go in a truck with no consideration of the differing durability of products. (Direct-from-vendor shipments are palletized and less damaged.)

Or just got to the aisle and said, “fuck it I’ll get it from Amazon” and scooted right out the door. And the wildest part of this is that a lot of people like myself were consciously trying to limit our Amazon purchases which brick and mortar places should have fucking hopped on!

This exactly. I used to LIVE for Target shopping trips when I needed shampoo, toothpaste, deodorant, etc. etc. because then I'd get to go browse the clearance racks and the jewelry department. Now 1) everything's locked up or missing, and 2) their jewelry sucks. Walgreens, same vibe. Point, click.

I went to my local Duane Reade which I'm pretty sure is owned by Walgreens now, couldn't find someone to open the cabinet, went home and ordered from Amazon. Now I don't even bother trying to go to Duane Reade.

Yup, it is!

I have stood in front of the locked body wash display at Walgreens and ordered it on my phone’s amazon app

In addition to locking up their merchandise so you can't buy it, Walgreens has made at least two gigantic bonehead investments I know of: Theranos, and refrigerator doors with video ads. Both ended in lawsuits.

Unless it is a product that I urgently need at that moment, I refuse to press the button, replace any other items, and simply leave the store. It just seems easier for everyone involved.

They don’t lock too much up at mine. But they reduced the size to almost 1/2 to put in a med center. Which they closed ~6 months later. So now that space is empty and a large majority of items I could easily find before are no longer available b/c of reduced shelf space. Not worth even entering.

I once went to a Walgreens to buy chocolates (to give to someone!), and the milk chocolate was on an open shelf but the dark chocolate was behind a locked door. I just left, unsure if I was in a psychology experiment.

Chocolate racism

Sexually Suggestive

Labeled by Bluesky Moderation Service

Jail Chocolate

haven't shopped there in probably years for this reason. The Walgreens in my neighborhood is a nightmare. Literally. I would have stress nightmares if I had to get my medicine there.

I refuse to call an attendant. There are enough stores around that don't lock up all their shit. I'll shop there.

Could it be because the shelves don’t have OTC items on them any longer, or because those items are twice as much as other stores (e.g., Target, H-E-B, Costco, etc.)? They’re not so much a drugstore as they are a junk store - junk food, makeup, cigarettes, etc.

i absolutely hate being treated like a suspect when i shop. don't like amazon but they don't assume i am a criminal

Walgreens combines stupidly high merchandise pricing and horrible treatment of employees with empowering their pharmacists to decide whether they approve of the medication you're trying to buy. I haven't set foot in one for years.

I think of it as a 120 year old business model, where the majority of the store is filled with impulse buys and cure-alls that are placed between you and the pharmacist counter. You don’t see a ton of Woolworth stores these days either.

Didn't buy socks (why the hell are socks locked up) at Target yesterday because they were locked up. Didn't even bother pressing the button because f that.

I literally would rather order the locked-up stuff online that bother with that hassle.

Meanwhile, if you buy from them online, and add a few things to get up to the free shipping threshold, they break your order up into multiple orders. Which is fine until they charge each sub-order separately, triggering the Apple Pay fraud protection.

Also assuming they actually ship the right order to you, and don't send you a case of Gold Bond powder, and then you get a Facebook message from some lady in Florida a month later that she got the shaving soap you ordered and asking if you still need it. You know, hypothetically.

Or, and again totally hypothetically, you get a call from a random Walgreen’s location asking if you still want your order, two days after it was delivered.

There’s a rite aid near me where everything’s locked up *and most aisles don’t have buttons at all*

The fact that I as a customer know “IC3” yelled over the Walgreens PA means the front register has a long line and they need help is embarrassing. Also love shopping there an hearing the automated “assistance needed in Photo” over and over to no avail. Like Dollar Tree, no employees.

You can imagine how much the employees like this system. And, yes, this will be an excuse to close stores because they aren't "earning." Does anyone at these companies understand what the problem is? It's obvious to the (former) customers.

I refuse to shop there. www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/...

Before abortion pills, Walgreens customers said they were denied birth controlwww.washingtonpost.com Walgreens found itself back in the news after announcing that it won't offer abortion medication in 20 states with Republican attorneys general.

I've always been under the belief that locking up the merchandise was more about reducing the number of staff on the floor than anything and therefore overhead. It seems like others experience align with that.

Corps who play this level of the game can get so disconnected from customers they don't care if the button is connected.

Locked up merchandise and skeleton crews struggling to keep up with all the other things that need to be done around the store. Can't believe the inconvenient convenience store isn't working out.

Not just that, it’s way more expensive than other retailers so people are going elsewhere.

At least Walgreens was able to protect its inventory long enough to have a Going Out Of Business sale

They treated their pharmacists horribly and I couldn't get my meds any more. Switched to CVS and haven't looked back.

Walmart, Target, Amazon, etc are wiping out the drugstores......

Not without help from those same drugstores. Nobody forced them to be opioid pill mills, and none of their customers demanded high prices and lousy customer service.

Every time Walgreens locks another product behind glass, Jeff Bezos buys another yacht.

most of these stores are closing because they themselves saturated the market X.x Like I've seen Walgreens 2 blocks from a Walgreens more often than not.

It's super fucked up just gotta much they have locked up at US pharmacies. Do people really steal the crap nail products with that much regularity?

I don’t even go to those stores as much anymore…simply because this is so annoying/such a waste of time. Once, myself and another customer waited in a Target for 10 mins for an assoc to unlock nasal saline drops 🤷🏻‍♀️..who knew those were in such demand 🙄..never again. Online is easier, unfortunately.

There's no one in healthcare that did not see this coming: - They were in a race with CVS and Rite Aid to saturate the market (narrator: No one wins) - They made VERY poor investments (Theranos, Village MD, etc). - They strayed so far off mission they could not sustain core business. Sine die

I thought we all knew the theft panic was just some shit they were saying but I guess they really believed it all along

Don't they also have a zillion stores on every block, with every rite aid?

Rite Aid went bankrupt (Walgreens bought some RiteAid stores but not the entire chain)

And ended up just ordering it online.

same.

For a variety of reasons, the customer experience at Walgreens stores in Chicago is just pretty poor. It's rough in there. (And CVS, of course, but Walgreens used to be better.)

that part

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