re: Is the pharmacy slower than the DMV?

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Is the pharmacy slower than the DMV?

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No. Want to know what's even worse than the DMV? Any social security office. Good luck talking to a responsive human .

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This is not the practice at Walgreens anymore,if it ever was. Yes I am sure about it.

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Well, I worked for Walgreen's 3 years ago and this was absolutely the practice. Most Walgreen's have huge pill dispensers (capital equipment that costs upwards of $125K and higher) and it literally takes seconds to fill a prescription. Walgreen's makes money off of the impulse and convenient items they sell and in order to achieve this, they want you to shop while you wait. I'm not saying they overly draw out the process, most locations will have a prescription ready in 15 minutes, which is still enough time to make other purchases without getting too pissed about the waiting time.

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Where would you put the pharmacy in the store? I'm not saying that isn't by design, but there are only so many places to put it.

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You better believe it's by design. For safety purposes, as much as anything. Before I worked at Walgreen's, I worked as an independent pharmacy rep and supplied 99% of the items that stock a pharmacy. On average, I would get one call per week that one of my stores had been robbed (once by a guy demanding oxycontin while wielding a samarai sword). It's much safer to have the pharmacy in the back. It also forces the customers to take a certain path and walk by strategically placed items for sale.

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The pharmacy is not trying to make people wait, they are actually judged on turning waiting patients over more quickly, and have a certain quota of waiting patients they need to have.

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To an extent, this is true, but it's a balancing act. Every owner I've ever met with wants customers to have enough time to make impulse purchases. The wait can't be so long that the customers get pissed off and take their business elsewhere.