Interview With a Walgreens Manager

Since 1901, Walgreens has had a strong passion for customer service. The founder, Charles Walgreens, goal was to create a drugstore that was like no other. He said that for as many drugstores as he had worked at, he had never worked for one that had a focus for good customer service and low prices. Walgreens has grown by leaps and bounds since 1901 and is now recognized as the leader in the market with over 7000 stores. Charles Walgreen had an eye for good managers. He said he was able to pick people that he knew were smarter than him so to promote them and make them the heads of his drugstores. As a store manager, not only is it your job to run a store which includes ordering, customer care, and inventory control, but also it is your job to manage the staff. As a part of managing staff, it is their responsibility to hire, train and develop, and terminate if need be. While there are many jobs to choose from when it comes to HR and employee staffing, I choose this one because it is by far to me the most intense.

Walgreens is a very well known name when it comes to drugstores. However, most people don’t know how big “big” is. In this case it is 7,015 stores nationwide. On average, each store has 30 employees on staff. This means that the company has 211,000 employees working for them. This type of responsibility calls for an HR department. In this company however it is done a little differently. When it comes to hiring staff for a store, it is solely up to the store manager. The HR department functions as a reference source for the store managers only (typically in cases of discipline). This is a great undertaking for a store manager when they are first promoted. As a store manager, you are faced with ever...

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...it gave me the opportunity to see what was out there in terms of HR staffing. I think that when people think of HR they think of a cubical at an office remotely placed somewhere. This is not the case. HR has many settings whether it is the corner store or the corporate office. Through this exercise I saw firsthand what HR was all about. It is about setting the example and staying motivated for the staff. I also discovered that money is not everything. In any job the money can’t be everything, you have to find rewards through other avenues; avenues such watching employees move up or customers leaving with a smile. HR gives you great flexibility and has many different settings to work in. I choose to interview a store manager because I am hoping to get to that position in the near future. This was a great experience for me and I learned a lot through this activity.