Recently the service at the pharmacy has been awful.  Regularly your prescription is not ready after being requested several days earlier, or you have to wait ages while doing some shopping only to find when you go back it still isn’t ready and will be another 20 minutes.  And then to often find some items are still on order and have not been delivered yet.

As a result there is often a very long queue which means you can wait up to 15 minutes to reach the counter,  only to be told come back in 20 minutes and when you do, to come back tomorrow!!

It’s very obvious there is now usually only one pharmacist on, and one other member of staff – some working overtime on their day off.  When things were running smoothly there were often two pharmacists and three or four people serving.  Some staff have obviously left, but have not been replaced.  Perhaps the pressure of working like this is why they left – it was too much pressure. 

On my last visit a member of Tesco staff who was suffering an awful cold, sinus and cough issue, had to give up waiting to be served as otherwise she’d have been late for work.

We hear that the pharmacy has also taken on the 4000 Sainsbury’s chemist customers following them shutting down their pharmacy service.  Surely this should have required more staff not less. 

Rumour has it the new store manager has decided to cut the pharmacy staff to the minimum, leaving customers to have to put up with these problems, and sometimes to run out of some of their medications because they were not ready to collect.

This is a key service that the store should be taking more responsibility to ensure customers get their medications on time and without any problems.  The situation now is letting down the customers, and the store.

We the undersigned request the pharmacy returns to previous staff levels and the resultant better service