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Was CVS Pharmacy right or wrong?

Was CVS Pharmacy right or wrong?


  • Total voters
    42
This is just so wrong on a human decency level.

I understand that the woman bears a lot of the responsibility for what happened here. Someone with her condition should carry an inhaler, even two!, at all times.

And I also understand that a company needs to make money and can't be giving discounts to everyone.

This, however, was a special case. She was ONE measly dollar short for pete's sake. She was in severe distress and could have died. At some point, rules have to be broken and human decency has to take over.

Either way, that stupid dollar bought this company the WORST publicity ever. What a bunch of idiots.

Exactly. Whether or not a particular individual backs the pharmacy's actions in this case, CVS has just shot itself in the foot on a grand scale.

I know I won't shop there any time soon ever. It's clear I'm not alone in this sentiment.

Good job, CVS / employees! :thumbs:
 
Was it the counter help up front they were pestering, or the pharmacists back in the pharmacy area?
That would make a difference in my opinion as to whether or not the employees did anything wrong.

You raised the point I was going to make. Generally, the pharmacists are not the ones waiting on customers. The people at the pharmacy counter are usually trained more than average clerks, but they are usually not the pharmacists. So the oath doesn't mean much.

My other question is re: the inhaler. Did she need/have a prescription for it?

And is there some sort of odd liability involved here when it comes to prescription meds? If a customer does not pay in full, is there some sort of legal issue involved?

These may have been the issues going through the clerks mind at the time. Frankly, I'd have grabbed a buck of my own and thrown it in. I've done that in grocery stores when little old ladies either didn't have enough money or were too dang slow looking for change. But if the clerk had some liability issues, then I guess I can see them making a poor choice. Shame on the other customers standing around who didn't cough up a buck.
 
Exactly. Whether or not a particular individual backs the pharmacy's actions in this case, CVS has just shot itself in the foot on a grand scale.

I know I won't shop there any time soon ever. It's clear I'm not alone in this sentiment.

Good job, CVS / employees! :thumbs:
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So you're going to hose over thousands of great & hardworking innocent CVS employees nationwide because one clerk made a bad call. That's nice. Hopefully all those unrelated meanies will suffer from the loss of business, lose their jobs and their kids won't get new bikes for Christmas. :wow:
 
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So you're going to hose over thousands of great & hardworking innocent CVS employees nationwide because one clerk made a bad call. That's nice. Hopefully all those unrelated meanies will suffer from the loss of business, lose their jobs and their kids won't get new bikes for Christmas. :wow:

Agreed. If it were some sort of storewide, universal policy, that would be different.
If they had clerks refusing to sell birth control or MAP on moral grounds, that would be different too (I'd boycott them, because the CEOs of the company should find a way to get rid of those jackasses, whether or not they have a legal right to).

But this? It has nothing to do with corporate policy, or with any other employee besides the one involved.
 
Was this employee an ass for not giving her the inhaler when she was having an attack and the boyfriend was willing to give collateral for a dollar? Yes he was and if I was a manager I would have a brief chat that it is OK to be a dollar short when a woman is having an attack right there.

Are the other customers wrong for not helping out with a dollar? Hell yes! It is a dollar and the woman obviously needs the inhaler so just be a good sport and give them one. Hell I have paid for homeless men and women's dinner before.

Will I stop going to CVS because of this one employee? Hell no.
 
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So you're going to hose over thousands of great & hardworking innocent CVS employees nationwide because one clerk made a bad call. That's nice. Hopefully all those unrelated meanies will suffer from the loss of business, lose their jobs and their kids won't get new bikes for Christmas. :wow:

:lamo Riiight. Thousands of CVS employees are going to be fired and their kids won't have Christmas this year because I won't shop there. :lamo

I don't like Big Pharma one bit. Nor do I give a rip about its CVS minions. Why should I care about them when they clearly don't care about me/their customers? For them, it's all about the holy greenback.

The fact is, the whole of society would be better off today if CVS had been shut down when they first started breaking the law in 2005.

CVS will pay record fine over sale of drug

The nation's largest pharmacy chain will pay a record fine for illegally selling large amounts of a key methamphetamine ingredient to criminal traffickers, a problem that prosecutors say led to a surge in production of the widely abused drug in California.

CVS Pharmacy Inc. agreed to pay a $75-million fine and forfeit $2.6 million in profits on the unlawful sales of pseudoephedrine in California and Nevada in 2007 and 2008, according to federal prosecutors based in Los Angeles.

The company admitted that CVS stores in California, Nevada and 23 other states were vulnerable for more than a year to criminals who bought enough PSE through repeated purchases to make methamphetamine, a highly addictive stimulant abused in epidemic proportions and linked to violence and other crimes.

CVS blamed the problem on the flawed implementation of an electronic monitoring system that was supposed to guard against excessive purchases. [Yeah, riiiiiight.]

In an effort to curb the production of methamphetamine, the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005 required retailers to store PSE products behind the counter, check purchasers' identifications and limit sales to the equivalent of one package a day and three a month. Customers also had to sign for each purchase.

Prosecutors said the company fixed the problem only after discovering that the government had opened an investigation. "CVS's flagrant violation" made the company "a direct link in the methamphetamine supply chain," said Michele M. Leonhart, acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Meth makers targeted CVS stores, especially in the Los Angeles and Las Vegas areas, sometimes "cleaning out store shelves," according to a news release announcing the agreement Thursday.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Shana T. Mintz, who led negotiations with CVS on behalf of the government, said that from September 2007 through November 2008, CVS sold more generic pseudoephedrine in Southern California stores than in their stores in the rest of the country combined.

Mintz said investigators found many CVS customers who made up to a dozen purchases in a single store in one day. One customer made 10 transactions in 53 minutes at a CVS in Huntington Park, she said.
 
Was this employee an ass for not giving her the inhaler when she was having an attack and the boyfriend was willing to give collateral for a dollar? Yes he was and if I was a manager I would have a brief chat that it is OK to be a dollar short when a woman is having an attack right there.

Are the other customers wrong for not helping out with a dollar? Hell yes! It is a dollar and the woman obviously needs the inhaler so just be a good sport and give them one. Hell I have paid for homeless men and women's dinner before.

Will I stop going to CVS because of this one employee? Hell no.

As was pointed out, you probably need a prescription for one, and dispensing prescription medications without a prescription is against the law.
EXTREMELY against the law.
I doubt it was a matter of a dollar.
I would've probably called an ambulance, in this clerk's position.
If the woman had died waiting for it (unlikely), I would've felt bad, but I still wouldn't have regretted my decision, which would've been the right one at the time.

Responsible asthmatics keep their emergency inhalers full and on hand.
 
As was pointed out, you probably need a prescription for one, and dispensing prescription medications without a prescription is against the law.
EXTREMELY against the law.
I doubt it was a matter of a dollar.
I would've probably called an ambulance, in this clerk's position.
If the woman had died waiting for it (unlikely), I would've felt bad, but I still wouldn't have regretted my decision, which would've been the right one at the time.

Responsible asthmatics keep their emergency inhalers full and on hand.

True, but I didn't see anything in the article saying whether or not she had the prescription, granted I read over it pretty fast. If she didn't have a prescription than I agree the employee did nothing wrong. Hell he didn't do anything wrong to begin with, I just would be like if a situation like this happens again, assuming there is a prescription, it is OK to be a dollar short.

I do would have called an ambulance though. They are far better equipped to deal with a situation like this than a mere clerk can most of the time.
 
I shop at Walgreen's. :p
 
I shop at Walgreen's. :p


I usually shop at Walgreen's too; there are more of them, and they're more conveniently located.
Their selection of makeup and hair products is good, and that's usually what I'm shopping for when I go to a drugstore. I like their generic brand stuff pretty well (tampons, cold medicines, allergy pills, advil). It compares favorably to name brand stuff, and is significantly less expensive.
Oh, and they have a great selection of candy. I loooove candy!
 
There are legitimate arguments for both sides. I don't blame CVS because it's probably corporate policy to sell things for x and expect x payment for it. Corporations do not operate as humanistic entities.

Having said that, if the clerk, a bystander, or someone else couldn't help out to the tune of a buck or let something slide then that's a real bummer.

Conversely, I've also been heckled by people at gas stations who claim they didn't have enough gas and are in dire straits if they can't get a few bucks of your gas. They'll even promise to pay you, a complete stranger, back.

This is not a case of right or wrong. It's a strict judgment call.
 
There are legitimate arguments for both sides. I don't blame CVS because it's probably corporate policy to sell things for x and expect x payment for it. Corporations do not operate as humanistic entities.

Having said that, if the clerk, a bystander, or someone else couldn't help out to the tune of a buck or let something slide then that's a real bummer.

Conversely, I've also been heckled by people at gas stations who claim they didn't have enough gas and are in dire straits if they can't get a few bucks of your gas. They'll even promise to pay you, a complete stranger, back.

This is not a case of right or wrong. It's a strict judgment call.

Corporations do not operate as humanistic entities.

Corporations are legally considered 'entities' which are entitled to much of the same rights, rules, regulations - and then some - as an individual.
 
:lamo Riiight. Thousands of CVS employees are going to be fired and their kids won't have Christmas this year because I won't shop there. :lamo

I don't like Big Pharma one bit. Nor do I give a rip about its CVS minions. Why should I care about them when they clearly don't care about me/their customers? For them, it's all about the holy greenback.

The fact is, the whole of society would be better off today if CVS had been shut down when they first started breaking the law in 2005.

First of all you, said it wasn't just you chosing to boycott. If you really feel you won't make any impact, then your boycott is pointless other than making yourself feel good.

I am not kidding, my son just said the same thing to me. We're on way to a farm stand that I avoided for a year because I was pissed at the owner. My son just told me I was only hurting myself during that year. :lol:
 
And then the district attorney could ask you why, if you know you have asthma, didn't you carry an inhaler with you if you knew you're susceptible to asthma attacks. Individuals should be responsible with their health and have the foresight to carry their medications with them if they can have an attack at any moment. That is not the responsibility of a private pharmacy business.

That's a good point too.
 
Having worked retail and restaurants, I have to comment that the cashier shouldn't be blamed for this either. In every restaurant and retail store I've worked in that if your drawer comes up a dollar short that you can be terminated for it. Add in the fact, that the job the cashier works is minimum wage. It's hard to pay bills and have any money left over to help someone else. The entire story reeks of sensationalism just to paint CVS as the bad guy.
 
Having worked retail and restaurants, I have to comment that the cashier shouldn't be blamed for this either. In every restaurant and retail store I've worked in that if your drawer comes up a dollar short that you can be terminated for it. Add in the fact, that the job the cashier works is minimum wage. It's hard to pay bills and have any money left over to help someone else. The entire story reeks of sensationalism just to paint CVS as the bad guy.

If you were the manager of a CVS, and you had someone in your pharmacy who could die if not for a $1, then would you or would you not simply take it out of your own wallet? This is a matter of simple human decency. I don't give a crap about CVS, the people who were working at this pharmacy were heartless.
 
If you were the manager of a CVS, and you had someone in your pharmacy who could die if not for a $1, then would you or would you not simply take it out of your own wallet? This is a matter of simple human decency. I don't give a crap about CVS, the people who were working at this pharmacy were heartless.

As someone said CVS is a business and not a charitable organization. As far as the manager, I would have but at then we don't know exactly what the business situation was like. I've seen managers take up to 10 minutes to respond to a customer's needs due to them being busy and short staffed.
 
They use to sell a variety that could, but I believe they discontinued it. They weren't inhalers for asthma.


Well, I know Walgreen's now keeps the "real" Sudafed (the kind which features Pseudoephedrine as the active ingredient) behind the counter in the pharmacy.
You can still buy it- I bought some just the other day- but you have to fill out some paperwork and show them your ID.
I think they want to make sure you aren't buying, like, a hundred boxes, or a dozen boxes each from every Walgreens location in the area.

But yeah, I believe most asthma inhalers also contain ephedrine or some derivative of it, or some synthetic form of it. Ephedrine is tweaky all by itself, and I believe it is a component in meth.
 
First of all you, said it wasn't just you chosing to boycott. If you really feel you won't make any impact, then your boycott is pointless other than making yourself feel good.

1. Apparently, you believe I have some sort of monolithic power over where other people shop. :screwy I assure you, I don't.

2. My choosing not to spend money at CVS has nothing to do with me trying to hurt them in some bizarrely minuscule fashion (seriously, how much money do you think I spend at pharmacies of ANY kind?!?). It has everything to do with protecting myself from, and not contributing to, unscrupulous businesses that harm society as a whole.

3. My choosing not to spend money at CVS has nothing to do with me trying to "make myself feel good." It has everything to do with protecting myself from, and not contributing to, unscrupulous businesses that harm society as a whole.

4. I take it you skipped the article I posted about CVS' huge contribution to today's meth problem.

I am not kidding, my son just said the same thing to me. We're on way to a farm stand that I avoided for a year because I was pissed at the owner. My son just told me I was only hurting myself during that year. :lol:

If CVS was the only place that sold aspirin, I guess I'd be screwed. :shrug: Happily, my government prohibits monopolies, giving me the all-American right to spend (or not spend) my money anywhere I wish.

YAY!
 
As someone said CVS is a business and not a charitable organization. As far as the manager, I would have but at then we don't know exactly what the business situation was like. I've seen managers take up to 10 minutes to respond to a customer's needs due to them being busy and short staffed.

I would say if someone is on the ground having an asthma attack and there is an ambulance on its way, then that is the kind of situation that calls for a manager's attention. The fact is that anyone who could have stepped up, the cashier, the pharmacist, fellow customers, etc. should have. This has very little to do with CVS and a lot more to do with the people who were there.

However, I regularly shop at CVS and this is the kind of thing that will make me think twice about doing so in the future. I as a customer have the power to choose where I do and do not shop and there is usually a Walgreens right across the street from a CVS.
 
1. Apparently, you believe I have some sort of monolithic power over where other people shop. :screwy I assure you, I don't.

Your disrespect ends this conversation.
 
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