Beginning in March, CVS and Walmart, two of the nation's largest pharmacy chains, will close some or all of their stores earlier than normal due to an alleged pharmacist shortage.
Thousands of locations will either cut or shift their hours of operation to accommodate this mysterious shortage – (is it due to sudden deaths caused by covid "vaccines"?) – and deal with "waning consumer demand as the height of the COVID-19 pandemic recedes," to quote ABC 7.
Nearly all Walmart pharmacies – there are about 4,600 across the United States – will close two hours earlier at 7 p.m. beginning in March. CVS plans to do much the same across its 6,000 U.S. locations.
A statement from CVS claims that the shifting or cutting of hours is necessary to ensure that the company's "pharmacy teams are available to serve patients when they're most needed."
This is a "regular course of business," the pharmacy chain told CNN, to meet customer demand. (Related: In 2021, CVS suffered a "cloud storage misconfiguration" that exposed billions of patient records to potential hackers.)
Walmart, meanwhile, says that its hours are changing in response to "direct feedback" from both pharmacy employees and customers.
"Walmart has a strong and incredible pharmacy team, and we are making this change to not only enhance their work-life balance but also to maintain the best level of service for our customers," a company spokesperson said.
"By positioning our teams in the hours where our customers say they want to visit our pharmacy, we are better able to deliver excellent customer service."
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Walgreens also cut its store hours last year, citing staffing shortages
Last year, the Walgreens pharmacy chain saw similar hours of operation cuts across its thousands of U.S. store locations, also due to staffing shortages, the company indicated.
Walgreens told CNN that "at times" it "had to adjust store or pharmacy hours at some of our locations as we work to balance staffing and resources in the market to best meet our patient and customer demand."
A spokesperson from Walgreens also stated that the company has seen "positive staffing trends for the past several months as we work to return more stores to normal operating hours."
Locally owned pharmacies are reportedly experiencing similar staffing problems. A survey released last year by the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) found that more than 75 percent of community pharmacies are having a "tough time filling open positions."
The result is longer waiting times for customers and difficulties maintaining regular store hours, much like the big box chains are experiencing. Staffing shortages are likewise being blamed for similar issues across other sectors of the economy.
Another issue plaguing pharmacies and other retail stores is low pay, which makes it unattractive for eligible people to even want to work for these companies.
Walmart says that cutting pharmacy hours will help to improve their "work-life balance." The company also announced higher wages for more than 36,000 pharmacy technicians whose average hourly pay will increase to more than $20.
"Walmart is committed to helping our associates live better," the company said. "Walmart has a strong and incredible pharmacy team, and we are making this change to not only enhance their work-life balance but also to maintain the best level of service for our customers."
Walgreens is also attempting to entice more employees by offering them hefty sign-on bonuses of up to $20,000.
How long can this all go on before something gives, we wonder? Will things ever return back to "normal," or is this the new normal as the current economic world order unwinds, soon to be replaced by a new economic world order? Stay tuned and learn more at Chaos.news.
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