Walgreens needs to get a grip on this, and fast. It is fine for employees to have their own views and for those to be respected by politely handing over a transaction, but those views cannot be forced on customers and shoved down their throats. No customer should be abused or harangued or even questioned for buying perfectly legal products that the store stocks. Any member of staff doing that should be dismissed immediately and Walgreens should make that very, very clear to all involved.

I am sure Walgreens’ response will be acceptable to most customers. But from a business POV, I see it as weak. It may even encourage more associates to decline to serve customers occasionally.

Employees are hired to do a job, not let their beliefs and biases, personal, religious, or political, be imposed on the customer. Imposed is the operative word! If an employee finds this objectionable, they ought to work somewhere else. I believe both incidents are unacceptable. But the pharmacy incidence is most egregious. Simply, a pharmacist is there to fill the doctor’s orders.

Yes they do need a new response – if they feel that their employees have the right to not serve customers they have a responsibility to their shareholders to make this clear. They deserve to be boycotted and they should be changing their policy. I’ll be boycotting them until they make a change.

There is something very, very wrong at Walgreens. I have written about this before. The employees can be rude, slow, and don’t follow protocols one would expect in a pharmacy (like wearing masks at the prescription counter). I have filed two formal complaints with the company as an outcome of my Twitter shaming of them. The behavior of associates in their stores is unacceptable, period. And the stores also cut their inventory of prescriptions too low. I had influenza about a month ago. My doctor called in a scrip for Tamiflu, I waited in the drive-thru line for an HOUR before it was my turn, and I was glibly told “We don’t have that medicine now.” It used to be they’d check around to other stores. Now they just don’t care. And every hour is critical once the flu begins. They cost me two weeks of upright life because I ended up having to get a new script sent to CVS. I’m not going to boycott their business. I AM going to move my prescriptions… Read more »

Sounds like Walgreens is going to have to decide what’s more important: latitude for their employees to make decisions on a 1:1 basis or the masses who shop them. Since public companies are judged on topline revenue, this boycott could force Walgreens’ hand. They can’t have it both ways.

This is a massive problem for the retailer who loses the trust of a customer – probably for life, not to mention the customer who is denied legal access to products advertised as available. Normally I would say the employee should find work elsewhere if their personal beliefs don’t align with the company they have agreed to work for. But finding labor is tough for retailers right now, making compromise more important than ever. Walgreens should offer an online/delivery option for uncomfortable employees to offer customers, rather than imposing a personal judgement by denying a customer services promoted by the retailer.

I believe that all employees of Walgreens are employees at will. Having personal beliefs is guaranteed by our constitution. Bringing one’s own biases to the workplace should be cause for dismissal. Bottom line: Walgreens needs to revise its policy to “You are entitled to your own views — just not while you are at work. You don’t HAVE to work here.”

Walgreens has a big mess on its hands and one, in my opinion, of its own making. Allowing their pharmacy techs to make health decisions for customers is a huge problem. Regardless of the tech or, for that matter, the pharmacist’s personal beliefs on birth control, those drugs are prescribed for several reasons besides contraception. Reasons that I don’t believe are any of the tech’s business.
I don’t think Walgreens is going to be alone in this situation. Pharmacies need to either mandate that their employees serve the needs of all their customers, or they need to make it a policy that the chain will not carry these products and let customers vote with their feet before they come to the counter and are embarrassed by a store team member. To allow every individual to make those decisions arbitrarily is just inviting problems.

I really don’t understand how it is OK to impose your personal religious beliefs on your customers. But here we are.

These incidents will quickly gain traction and drag Walgreens into the weeds unless the company takes a proactive position in addressing them and changing its stance. Waiting for this to pass is like the Titanic waiting for that iceberg to go by – the real damage is being done where it’s not obvious.

#boycottWalgreens

Enough said.

#clueless #outoftouch #thelongerthisgoesonthemoreitwillgrow #themarketiswatching

Women are furious these days, and Walgreens hasn’t figured that out yet. If a Walgreens associate can refuse to ring up a product that the company sells, something is seriously wrong. They need to hire a crisis PR firm to get on this, STAT.

Inspiring trust among consumers is critical for any brand. Walgreens is undoubtedly facing incredible headwinds as the growing threat of a boycott mounts. The company must get out ahead of this situation and tactfully, consistently, and empathetically communicate to customers AND associates. Expectations and practices must be understood by all.

1. I don’t understand the employee’s logic of “passing someone off” to a manager. Their actions don’t stop a transaction, it seems like the intention is to cast judgment – which is ludicrous to enable with a store policy.
2. If you don’t want to literally DO THE JOB then you should find alternate employment. Again it does roll back up to Walgreens’ enablement.

Walgreens’ tepid response to customers’ needs (items it sells, a non-judgmental experience) shows it isn’t rushing into damage control mode.

Values-based division is now more overt. Walgreens’ conscience-laden associates will funnel some traffic to its rivals. These headline-grabbing incidents will also deepen loyalty to Walgreens among consumers who hold similar values.

Absurd that we are still discussing the Walgreens situation on RetailWire a week after the first time without an adequate response from the company. Time for some PR damage control and — more importantly — time for Walgreens to revisit its hiring and HR practices as urgently as possible.

First lesson to learn as an associate – “The customer is always right.” Also, business and politics should never be mixed. Walgreens needs to fix this problem quickly even if it means letting go of employees. This story will spread like wildfire to other Walgreens customers. Walgreens should not wait it out.

I’m still waiting for their first “response.” What they’ve done so far is, in my opinion, just pouring gasoline on a forest fire created by their own really questionable policies. What’s the defense against a boycott, that Walgreens associates reserve the right to not fill legally ordered prescriptions or sell OTC products that may offend a clerk? That really isn’t much of a defense. I say change the policy to say that all associates are obligated to sell all products and announce that – while Walgreens respects their associates’ rights to free expression as individuals, customers are the chain’s highest priority. This is a real mess and it is only likely to get worse.

Strategic communication is significantly more than the usual PR. It is one of the most ignored strategic pillars in business and includes integrated internal, external, executive, and crisis communication plans and programs. The messages (internal and external) should be coherent, clear, and straightforward.

Walgreens’ leadership team appears lost and inept in handling the situation, let alone having the foresight to anticipate the likely scenarios for their business and industry. It’s more than getting a response right; it’s about having a coherent communication strategy that anticipates and is executable. Walgreens should be in profound damage control and quickly invest in building strategic communication capabilities.

Nineteen out of twenty negative comments says it all. Walgreens has a significant problem, and the only way it will solve the problem is by letting the world know that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.

A pharmacy tech’s self-righteous refusal to fill a patient’s legally authorized prescription is not a problem that can be successfully papered over with “crisis PR.” This is a matter of corporate policy. Failure to state and enforce ethical pharmacy practices is, in my opinion, a fiduciary violation by top management.

The #boycottwalgreens backlash raises some other troubling questions for me. Why did multiple reports about problems with birth control purchases at the chain’s stores surface on the heels of the overturn of Roe v Wade? Is this part of a pervasive pattern at Walgreens or just a few egregious incidents?