Tag Archives: Rite Aid

Spotlight: Anam Shah

31 Jul

July 31, 2012

Spotlight Week 2012 continues with Anam Shah. Anam writes the blog My perception and then yours, which you can find in the sidebar or just click the image below. Take a second, it is worth a look around. Among the things you’ll find there are some intriguing literary analysis and also some interesting personal insights. She has a very interesting point-of-view and sharp insights into the world. I hope you find her as engrossing as I do.

Anam has done something a little different for Spotlight Week. She’s homed in on one of her recent experiences and described for us one of life’s too-common annoyances.

Rite Aid should be called Band Aid

It’s laughable how easy it is to find a job in the sales industry and yet the lack of actual customer service is so daunting. I don’t know about you guys but I pride true customer service. I was part of that industry and I had always exhibited the best.  To find it and be shocked into speechlessness is how often I come across it. Besides the fact that the title rhymes; the horrific experiences that I’ve had at this Pharmacy chain is beyond belief. Now one “W” is very prominent. “Why do you go there?” I will answer that question in due time. So don’t slip in your puddle with your lack of patience or pee in your pants.

     It all started in the month of April and yet the confrontation is still fresh in my mind. It was unwarranted the harassment I faced just to buy bottles of shampoo and boxes of soda. Instead of being heralded as a great customer, loyal to the extreme that spent over 100 dollars at this store; I was treated worse than a shoplifter.

     The sale was to buy three boxes of soda of 12 oz cans for 11 dollars, which was a great deal, but the real reason I was there was to buy overpriced shampoo bottles that were on sale. Rite Aid was the only pharmacy that I found to have John Frieda on sale for “Buy one and Get one for 50% off” with a 5 dollar cash back option if you bought shampoo for more than fifteen dollars.

     Then the notch count against the common people began. First the soda cans that were on their shelves were expired. Then there was only one person on the floor who had a clue about the sale. Next, their sale stickers were all old and no one had bothered to put the new ones up. Then I went up to the counter and found out that the cashier had no clue which soda brands were on sale. He was asking me, the customer, if I knew. Worse, he went ahead and charged me for the soda that I didn’t want even though I repeated a zillion times that I didn’t want the product. Annoyed, I was a bit short with the guy and I told him this is his job to know the current prices in the store not mine.

     After the horrendous trial of just paying, I was catching up with my ex-roommate that I had happened to bump into while at Rite Aid. She had worked on Wall Street and had recently been laid off. We mentioned our various occupations, the economic downturn and lack of jobs. During this time the incompetent staff was privy to our conversation and I didn’t know that it would escalate into a situation where I would personally be under attack. I was about to leave the store and I mentioned to the security guard that I would need to take the shopping cart to my car since I had so many purchases that would make it hard for me to carry. He grunted and said as long as I bought the cart back to the store it was fine. I said farewell to my roomie and went to the car. When I turned back and wheeled the cart back into the store I found the guard outside and the first thing he said “You gave the cashier a very rough time.” I frowned in confusion and responded “Well he didn’t know what he was doing.” He agreed but then he prolonged the conversation and he tried to turn the tables and said “You should have been nice to him.”  Incredulous I was like “I am just returning the cart, unless you are the manager of this store why are we having this conversation?”  Then the personal attacks began; I was bitter ……. I had problems… Did I even have a man………he was just talking to me. Who cares if I just spent an easy 50 dollars on one transaction?  At this point I had enough. I gave him a really good backlash which included losing my temper and giving him a good dose of the true Brooklyn language. The manager was not there and the guard’s name tag was turned around. Very sarcastically I said “So that is why you make sure your name is so inconspicuous.” I laughed in his face and I said “You are a waste of my time. I will be making a few phone calls and filing an online complaint with Rite Aid.” During this time a crowd had gathered and one customer actually came and asked me what the whole scene was about. My response was I should have called the cops and pressed charges for such harassment of the verbal kind. Plus I should have just left the cart in the parking lot instead of being courteous and returning it to the store.

               I got home and filed an online complaint. The next business day, I called the company using their 1-800 number open to the public. That very afternoon I got phone calls from a 718 number. No voicemail, just hang-ups. This made me raise my eyebrows. Finally, I found that it was the Regional Manager of Rite Aid. Why didn’t he leave a voice message which would be the norm? He apologized for my experience. During this time I was not allowed to talk and mention my grievances. He blamed the easy target: the cashier. My complaint was with the security guard. Then he mentioned policies and procedures like I was a two year-old. Like come on, even if you worked at McDonald’s there are policies and procedures to follow. There was no talk of reprimanding the security guard.  The apology: a band aid. Useless when wet and came off easily.

            The next time I went to that Rite Aid………………… the cashier wasn’t present but I did see the security guard. Oh and by the way he was telling another female customer ahead of me, quite candidly, how stupid he thought she was. She responded with a smile. Did they know one another? I don’t know. Was it professional? No. As a customer I believe once you’re on the job your personal life should be out the door. He saw me looking at him and I believe he refrained from using perverse words of another nature.  I was highly irked with these new tidings and the outcome of my complaint which had been so easily disregarded. I sent the Regional Manager an email. It said the following:

Dear Richard:

Not that long ago I went to that location again. I was horrified to see that you still have that atrocious security guard working there. I see that the customers opinions are considered null and insignificant. His inappropriate remarks are generously rewarded. Considering that factor I was not surprised to overhear another inappropriate remark with his then present conversation with another customer.

I used to work for a Rite Aid as a teenager, but if  he had did what he verbally did with me at my current firm which  I work for, he would have been terminated for his lack of professionalism. I am surprised that you keep on such employees when he is from a third-party and probably a dime a dozen.

I will take my business elsewhere and trust me when I say that word of mouth is very powerful. I was willing to consider the Rite Aid employees being written up or given a verbal warning because I understand that procedures differ at each company. For you to keep on a security guard that intimidates customers is horrible. Your lucky that nobody has called 911 for his harassing behavior.

Since I am an Accountant and well versed in the business world I will tell you this. I will make sure everybody that I know in the immediate vicinity will not go to that Rite Aid or any other. I will even post my bad customer service experiences on my blog. I hope you will enjoy that since I can see how much you care about customer service. I will take all my prescriptions and my family members to CVS. I will also promote CVS and tell everybody I know or even briefly acquainted with why I don’t go to Rite Aid. Competition is lovely thing isn’t it? Especially in the private sector.

I hope this has given you food for thought. I am disgusted that I have to mention my background for you to take me seriously.

Regards,

Anam Shah ……

The Regional Mangers response to my concerns about a security guard that harassed female customers?  There was none. Great Customer service! My only regret, I should have called the cops and filed a complaint against that bloke of a security guard when I had the chance!

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Pain like an American Idol Winner

18 Nov

from February 24, 2008

Wow, what a vacation! It was so good that I had to wait until I woke up violently ill this morning to find the time to write it up.

I’ll back up.

I woke up around 4am this morning. Nothing new there. For some reason I wake up at either 4:20 or 4:40 every morning. There is no external reason for this. There is no bus that goes past my window and backfires. No one’s defibrillator shocks them back to life, causing a hysterical scream that awakens me. I just wake up.

This morning I woke up with a discomfort/pain/burning like at the gates of Hell in my middle. It wasn’t my chest, wasn’t my stomach, it was straight across my diaphragm. “That’s strange,” I thought, as I sat straight up and screamed.

Well, the pain didn’t stay that bad for long. In fact, in only a few minutes, the pain had settled down to the equivalent of listening to a Clay Aiken CD on a really long car ride. So like most smart Americans I just lay in bed and hoped it would go away. I was waiting for the socialized health care that Obama hid in the stimulus to kick in so I could get a standard of care that kills scores of French during a hot summer when the doctors are all on mandatory vacations and hospitals only work at 60% efficiency.

Well, despite the good prospect of getting $13 extra in my check every week (that’s a stimulus?) I soon decided that I should go to the doctor and, after calling out of work, made an appointment with my doctor for 11:45. The office opens at 10 but the first hour and a half are spent with health-care reps.

Of course it wasn’t that simple. At 6:30, thinking that I had the world’s worst case of heartburn, I walked a few blocks to Rite Aid. I’m out of the house at 6:30 all the time, but I’ve never gone to Rite Aid before. The people you see at Rite Aid early in the morning are strange. I would have guessed that anyone in the store at that time would be, like me, there to get something they need. Nope. Instead, there was a guy, maybe 55, wandering up and down the aisles, picking up and examining things at random. He was wearing a long brown furry coat and an Australian outback hat- you know, the kind with one side pinned up and a band of teeth around it, like Crocodile Dundee wore. Another guy was out walking his dog and stopped in to look at the magazines, with his little white poodle on his shoulder. The dog looked terrified and wanted to get down. There was a security guard who looked so much like a thug that I was sure that it was a thug who had knocked out the real guard and was going to rob the store. I almost left, but my discomfort was so bad that I figured that if I got shot in a robbery I’d end up in the hospital and get some relief so I shopped. I bought a box of Pepcid AC and, despite being the only paying customer, still had to wait at the register until a cashier turned up. The cashier had no name tag and no Rite Aid vest, and spoke English in such a thick, impossible to understand accent that I thought he had to be the guard’s accomplice and was sure that the guns were being pulled any second. Luckily I got out with my life. Unluckily the Pepcid dind’t help.

I got to the doctor’s office around 11:30 and shared the waiting room with a sick old woman (who’s main complaint was, I think, the VD she picked up from the Wright Brothers) and about 15 men and women in business suits waiting to sell the doctor on Viagra and nicotine patches. Usually I like women in business suits but today all I could see was that they were keeping me from the doctor. And OK, I noticed that one of the women had very nice legs.

They all knew each other. They chatted about other doctors they were seeing and which reps were seeing which doctors and where did you manage to park in Bay Ridge? So on and so forth. I managed my pain by focusing intently on the tv, which was showing a program on the Science Channel about a man who pays for his meals with small paintings of money. Not actual money, art-money, which he convinces people to take because “if you sell it, it will be worth twice the cost of my meal.” For the record, the meal was $17.68

I eventually got in and I’ll spare you the details but I know I’m getting old because for the first time the doctor mentioned the word “prostate,” which sent shivers down my spine (and elsewhere) when I noticed he was wearing gloves and the sunlight picked out a small bottle of Vaseline nearby. But that fun will be in the future. He had no desire to see me sans pants today. That was a good thing but, I reflected, most women felt the same way too.

Turns out the problem was muscular. The way I slept inflamed the upper thoracic schmemperial muscle which then impinged on my glaxoproblaxical nerves, (or something like that) thus causing the pain which nearly turned me into a quivering mass of whatever would be quivering under my blankets at 4am. The solution? Sleep on my back. And for that I had a $20 co-pay. Plus an extra charge for the EEG he took.

Ever have an EEG? You lay down on the bed and the doctor attaches about 3 dozen leads to your body, some on your legs, some on your arms, some on your chest, and hooks you up to a machine which sends mild electric currents through your nipples and privates giving you a sexual thrill. No, sorry, that’s the S+M machine which he keeps in his basement. No matter how many times he asks, I’m not going down there. But the EEG was normal.

Eventually the pain faded and at home I took a nap, on my back, on the couch. For those of you looking for a nice mental picture, I took off my sneakers, wrapped myself up in my blue Snuggie, and slept while The People’s Court droned on my TiVo. Yes, I have a Snuggie- one of those blankets with sleeves. Sometimes I put it on just to walk around the house- with a belt around the middle I can pretend to be a monk.

That was my day. As for my vacation? I accomplished exactly nothing I wanted to. Oh sure, I saw Paul Blart, Mall Cop, but the thrill of Kevin James can only last so long. But nothing beats the thrill of waking up at 4am convinced that someone slipped some burning barbed wire under your shirt.

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