Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Changes revealed

Well, along with today's blog change we have another change around here. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about a change that would be happening in our family that I couldn't talk about and now I finally can.

Shawn is at work right now letting his employees know that they're closing the pharmacy at the end of the week. :(

Shawn manages a local independent pharmacy, and there are two parts to it. The front half of it is a retail pharmacy, which is what my husband manages, and the back half of it is a long term care pharmacy. They have contracts with a lot of nursing homes and mental health facilities in the area and the long term care pharmacy just takes care of those patients. That part isn't open to the public, they only handle facility contracts.

The people that own the pharmacy took Shawn out to dinner a few weeks ago to let him know that they've sold the retail prescriptions to a chain pharmacy and they're going to close the retail pharmacy and just focus on the long term care pharmacy. It was still a profitable business, it wasn't that they needed to close, the owners (who own other pharmacies) decided that they just want to focus on long term care pharmacies now and they got a good offer from a chain to sell the retail portion.

The good news is that Shawn still has a job. The bad news is it's not the same job he had, which is a job he really really loved. They're moving him to the long term care pharmacy and he's going to be managing a section of that. They're still considering him a manager, with the same salary and benefits and everything, but the type of work he'll be doing is a lot different than what he was doing before.

Before he was managing the entire retail pharmacy. He did the hiring, the scheduling, the ordering and pretty much kept that place running. He really loved that and he's good at it.

Now he'll be managing a few employees in one section of the long term care pharmacy but will be doing a lot less day to day managing and a lot more filling prescriptions. He's OK with it, but he's really going to miss what he was doing before. He likes working in a retail pharmacy. He's great with people, he enjoys working with the customers and he's a great manager. He'll interact with a lot fewer people now, which I think will take some getting used to.

The hardest part for him is that at this very moment he's telling several people who he considers his close friends that they no longer have a job. For a few weeks he's known that he was going to have to lay off people that he really cares about and it's been killing him. He's been so stressed out about it.

The saddest part for me is that he has to lay off our Korean friend Larry. We've gotten to be really good friends with him. He was just here a few days ago making us Korean food and he ran the marathon with Shawn on Saturday. Spending time with him knowing that he was going to be laying him off has been extremely hard for Shawn. He has absolutely no choice in the matter, but he still feels responsible somehow. I feel bad for what Shawn has been going through for the past few weeks and I feel really bad for the employees who are being laid off.

Pharmacist jobs aren't hard to find and I know the the pharmacists he's laying off will find work soon, but Shawn's worried about the techs, like Larry, and other people that he had to lay off in this economy.

So that's been really hard at our house for the past few weeks. It's really been eating at Shawn. He really loves that pharmacy and the people he works with and he's really sad to see it close. Heck, I'm sad to see it close. I didn't work there, but I've gotten to know and love the employees there over the years and we do consider the people that work there friends.

So anyway, there you go. It's been a rough couple of weeks around here and I think it's going to be rough for a while. Shawn is going to be swamped at work for the next few weeks, dismantling the retail pharmacy and getting his new job set up in the long term care pharmacy.

So now would be a really good time for a referral to come and cheer him up!! With all the chaos in his life right now, he needs some good news! We're keeping our fingers crossed that it's soon!

3 comments:

Amanda said...

((Hugs))

~April~ said...

Hugs for Shawn. I can't imagine how difficult that would be. I'm so happy that he still has a job though. That's definitely a blessing!

Pharmacy Podcast Show said...

I'd like to talk with Shawn about his experiences in the LTC Pharmacy world. Could you please have him contact me?

I like your blog and will be back to read more.

http://pharmacytechnology.blogspot.com/

Todd S. Eury
Pharmacy Technology Resource, LLC
teury@pharmacytechnology.net
(412) 735-4427