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.
When they started locking up my shampoo, deodorant and body wash I started getting that stuff on Amazon rather than wait for the lone store employee to come unlock it.
Good riddance. Nobody needs a pharmacy that lets their employees enforce their private religious beliefs on patients. I guess the market had something to say about it as well, huh?
The vast majority of people are not actively hateful bigots, turns out.
Most regular folks all want the same basic stuff. To do better for their families, a peaceful life, and food on the table.
From the US to Iran to Amazonian tribes.
San Francisco has lost a lot of them but we still have at least three CVS/Walgreens options in the core of downtown. The CVS inside a Target is the only one that isn't horribly depressing at all times.
Interesting. Where I live it was CVS that was building across from every Walgreens that had been there fir decades. They suck even more. Never heard of them until 10-15 yrs ago when they came to St. Louis.
And Walgreens started out in Chicago, so it all makes sense. I have Myrtle Walgreens autographed biography. She was a friend of my great aunt. Their connection was through their passion for gardening but she was quite instrumental in her husband's pharmacy growth.
Cool piece of history.
CVS and Walgreens followed different paths. CVS jumped into vertical monopoly as soon as it became clear the health insurers were going to squeeze the pharmacies. They bought Aetna, so have their own pet insurance company.
In a world where retail competes with delivery the geniuses running these companies have decided that making the in person buying experience as painful as possible is the answer to that competition. Slash staff, self checkout, most items locked which can't be unlocked by the slashed staff.
If they were ONLY a pharmacy, they'd probably be doing fine. But they also want to be a gasoline-like convenience store, yet near me none of them are well placed, and they always have one guy working the entire retail side.
Maybe the corporate philosophy of "rip off your customers" doesn't always guarantee returning customers? How many crimes has Walgreens been charged with over the last 25 years? How many DOJ settlements? Anyone know?
Good. They expanded like a virus, driving lots of local pharmacies out of business. And the corporation's worse offense was leveling one of the last remaining tiki clubs in the US - the Kahiki in Columbus, OH. I've never stepped into a Walgreen's since then.
I don't think the music is nearly as much of an issue as lying about rashes of shoplifting, locking up product, reducing pharmacy hours, reducing staffing...
