London Drugs Reviews

Pros

Very little turnover, they really look after their staff.
Very competitive salary and benefits.
Great working conditions with well trained and competent management. Mgmt are understanding and very flexible when it comes to scheduling.

Cons

Head Office leadership have lost ability to communicate effectively with front line sales staff. It's retail, you will have to get used to working all sorts of shifts. Open every day of the year but Christmas.

Advice to Senior Management

Store management and staff are awesome! HO leadership could learn a lot from store management about how to be profitable.

Pros

Good compensation. Good team of co workers.

Cons

Politics as with all jobs. Tech department can't seem to get with the times as far as buying is concerned. Profitability would probably increase if they could compete with the other major electronic stores: Best Buy, The Source.

Advice to Senior Management

Find a new source for high ticket electronics. Find a way to buy direct instead of through third party dealers especially where computer products is concerned.

Pros

Frequent, informative communication from management to employees, flexible scheduling, ability to move between departments for a change of pace, accessible management.

Cons

Promotions are difficult to come by, wages are strictly on a hours-based scale, occasional "us and them" feelings between part-time and full-time staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Give department management more flexibility in using hours and trust them to make the right staffing level choices based on what they know is coming up.

Pros

A very well run company. Well trained staff with a fair system for advancement. The management team was friendly and fair with their treatment of employees.

Cons

I really didn't have a whole lot of negative experience with London Drugs. There were a few employees who were a bit difficult to get along with, but you'll get that anywhere.

Advice to Senior Management

Again, there's not a whole lot for me to criticize on this topic. There were a few times that I had concerns and whenever I voiced them to any member of the management team, I was listened to and treated fairly.

Pros

Flexibility with hours for part time employees is nice - especially for students looking for part time work. ta da

Cons

Management is ruthless. Decisions coming from head office are backward and unnecessary. Hours cut across the board, can barely earn a liveable wage.

Pros

Friendly Staffs
Family Oriented Stores
Supportive Department Managers at most locations
Willing to train staffs by providing different training courses

Cons

Lots of work load and pressure
Lack of staffs most of the time, you will be mostly by yourself in the department during your shift and they expect you to perform above and beyond when you are dealing with customers and phone calls.
Management at H.O. always keep pushing the department managers to cut the front line staffs hours in order to save the payroll.

Advice to Senior Management

Cutting hours is not the right and only way to make London Drugs profitable. I strongly suggest the upper management should go down to the store at least 1 week every year to experience the work load and the pressure the front line staffs are facing.

Pros

Some people made it a fun atmoshpere. There was an acceptable discount offered to employees. Taking time off wasnt an issue.

Cons

Where do I begin. You get treated like a low life by customers who are without a doubt unemployable. Some staff had issues, especially store managers, that were brought from work to the workplace such as addiction issues. Not a fun place to work.

Advice to Senior Management

Start hiring people who will make decent managers, not those who just put enough time in to be moved up.

Pros

Depending on your management team, they are flexible about scheduling and caring when it comes to what's going on in your personal life. There can be great commraderie amongst the team.

Cons

London Drugs used to be focused on customer service as the heart of their business but in the last several years have become more focused on sales, targets and add-on sales. The importance of customer service seems to be slipping in favour of up-selling.

Advice to Senior Management

Get back to the roots of customer service and less on pushing products on people.

Pros

Flexible time off
Not stressful
Relaxed environment
Easy to bring issues up to management
Room for advancement if desired and made known
Not huge barriers between departments

Cons

Erratic / inconsistent schedule
Hours cut get cut back many times during the year
Not many substantial raises issued.

Advice to Senior Management

The main drawback is hours due to lack of sales. Not much you guys can do here! That's up to head office on how many hours they allocate per sales.. and if they started giving people more hours when sales were low, the company would be no more.

Pros

Great coworkers. Nice customers. Nice supervisor.

Cons

The pay was lousy. The discount was bad. I got mad that instead of hiring one full-time tech, they hired two part-time techs, and then didn't even allow us to get a second part-time job. How could I support myself on one part-time job? Plus, the pharmacy was dirty and they never cleaned it but they didn't give us time to clean it either. Also, they didn't provide training for me to use the computer system, therefore, my first 8 weeks were trial-and-error which I think cost the company hundreds of dollars lost - not kidding!
The craziest thing was that I was one technician working alone with 3 pharmacists in the store at the same time. Why hire more expensive pharmacists but not a cheap tech?

Advice to Senior Management

Please increase pay, also please provide more support to the pharmacists. Do not have one tech only at a time. Please hire full-time techs.