Job Responsibilities
My major responsibilities include managing all the money in the
store, overseeing the cosmetics, photo, and front cashier
personel of the store, checking vendors in and out, managing the
stock room, and processing some of the stores daily paperwork.
These responsibilities are usually shared with other managers
unless I am the only manager on duty. This is most often the
case at night and most of the weekend. Overseeing the money in
the store includes regualar cash counts to make sure the cash
registers are accurate, making sure the safe is accurate at the
beginning and end of my shift, and making sure the cash and
check deposites are correct at the end of the night. This is
something done off and on throughout the day and a total of
about three hours a day is spent on it. Overseeing the personel
in the store is usually quite easy. Everyone tends to know the
routine and what is expected of them. The main responsibility
during a shift as to the management of the employees is making
sure they all get their breaks. During the day this is very easy
because there are enough employees on that they can cover for
each other. At night there are not as many employees working so
I often have to cover for the person on break until everyone has
had their breaks. During the day I may spend ten minutes making
sure everyone has had their breaks, at night it is often more
like one and a half hours. Checking vendors in and out is easy
as well. They tend to know the routine and when they get to the
store they hand me paperwork telling me what I am recieving. I
check to make sure everything the store is being charged for is
actually being delivered and then sign the paperwork and the
vendor is on their way. Some days we will get one or two vendors
and they will take twenty minutes of my time, other days we will
get five or six and they will take an hour of my time. Managing
the stock room is a responsibility shared by the entire
management staff. When our major weekly shipment of goods is
delivered, we put all the boxes into designated areas and work
everything onto the shelves that will fit. Anything left over is
kept in the stockroom and put into certain areas, called bays,
that each manager is resonsible for. During the week I make sure
everything in my bays that can fit on the shelves out in the
store are put there. This is to clear room in my part of the
stockroom and make sure shelves in the store are fully stocked.
Working on the stock room is one of those things that is never
finished, I spend about five hours working on the stockroom
every day. Processing daily paperwork is one of the easiest
parts of the job. This generally includes data entry, as in
putting invoices into the computer system. I also do cash
reports to make sure all money coming in and out of the store is
accurate. If everything looks correct I send it off to
corporate, if not I try to find the error and fix it. At the
most I will spend an hour working on paperwork and this is not a
daily responsibility. I usually work on the paperwork about
three times a week.
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Job Requirements
Walgreens does not require a college degree to be hired as an
assistant manager. If you do have a college degree it does
greatly increase your chance of being hired because unless you
happen to have a lot of experience in retail management, the
company prefers to hire people with degrees. The particular
degree you have does not really matter. I happen to have a
business degree, and the other managers at the store have
degrees ranging from psychology to liberal studies. At
Walgreens, the application is on a computer. It makes no
difference if you go to a store and apply on their computer or
do it online. Both ways the application ends up in the same
database. If you go to a store and apply there, you do get the
chance to introduce yourself to the store manager and make a
good impression. After applying in a store, I was interviewed at
the district office by one individual responsible for hireing
all assistant managers in my district. Most of the questions
were, "What would you do in this situation....". The situation
generally involved employees I am responsible for breaking
company policy or doing something unethical. When applying for
an assistant management position, you have to take a test on the
computer where basic skills like counting change to a customer
and adding and subtracting are tested. These skills are tested
at basic levels, for example, you will be told someone payed
$5.99 for an item with a $10 bill, you have to enter what their
change would be. One final thing about the hiring process is
that you have to take a drug test and pass a criminal history
check. The drug test is a urine sample and you must take it
within 48 hours of accepting employment with the company. As an
assistant manager, you can expect to make your way to executive
assistant in about two years if you do a great job and are a
quick learner. Many executive assistants become store managers
within about two years. The district managers I know of were
store managers for around eight to ten years before they were
promoted.
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Uppers
The uppers for Walgreens is that they pay more than most retail companies. Your
pay varies by district but in all parts of the country the company pays better
than the vast majority of their competition. The benifits for Walgreens are very
good as well. Employees are eligible for health care after ninety days and dental
after a year. The company also has great 401k and stock option plans. Walgrrens
makes a strong effort to keep its assistant managers happy with regards to pay
and benefits. Because Walgreens is such a large and growing company, if a person
decides to move to another part of the country, they can usually find a store to
transfer to.
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Downers
The only real downer about working as an assistant manager at
Walgreens is the hours. The company is open 365 days a year and
a manger is always there. This means assistant managers have to
work holidays, nights, weekends, all the time. This tends to be
par for the retail industry but it is still a downer. It's not
too fun to be working on Christmas with impatient stressed out
shoppers giving you a hard time when your friends and family are
at home enjoying the holidays without you. Being an assistant
manager is also very stressful at times. I believe the company
intentionally gives assistant managers more work than they can
do in the attempt to make sure they are working non-stop and
with great urgency. After a while, this tends to wear on people
as assistant managers and it becomes easy to suffer from burn
out.
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Lifestyle
Assistant managers work 44 hour weeks. The good thing is that you end up with 8
hours of overtime on each paycheck. Most of the time assistant managers will work
8 1/2 hour to 10 hour shifts. They work 10 days per two week pay period. Often
days off are spread out and at the beginning of one week, then the end of the
next. Because of this it is very common to work 10 days in a row. About twice a
week, an assistant manager can expect to close one night and open the next
morning. At stores that close at 10:00 pm and open at 8:00 AM, this means very
little sleep, especially considering assistant managers are at work until about
an hour after closing time if they work an evening shift. As an assistant manager
there is almost no business travel. Once every three or four months you may have
to go to a meeting at the district office or go help at another store, but that
is about it. In some districts assistant mangers are moved around quite often,
this can mean being transferred to two or three different stores in your district
a year. For assistant managers, Walgreens does not have any kind of social
events. The company has a rather strict dress code. Males are expected to wear
black shoes with black shoestrings, and black socks. They also must wear dress
pants, dress shirts, and a dress tie. Finally, they must wear a company provided
smock over their shirt. Women must wear the same outfit except they are not
required to wear a tie. Walgreens is a very diverse company. At every store I
have been to and throught all levels of the company I have seen a wide mix of
people from many ethnicities and backgrounds. In general the company has an
upbeat and competitive attitude which mainly is a result of its current stong
growth and profits.
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Compensation
All assistant managers get paid the same amount in each region.
The amount is calculated based on cost of living in that region.
In October of 2004 my pay was $15.85 and hour. In March of 2005
it went up to $16.35 and hour. This is in the Southern
California district which has one of, if not the highest pay
rates in the country. Assistant managers do not get bonuses.
They are the highest ranking people in the company who do not
get them. Walgreens 401k and stock option plans are outstanding
and Walgreens gives the ability to greatly personalize them.
They are not available until having worked for the company for
one year. The company also offers a wide range of health care
plans that are very good. These plans are offered after 90 days.
The dental plans are offered after a year and are not great.
Dental is the one area of company benefits that I believe is
poor. Walgreens is not unionized and tries very hard to keep
employees happy so they don't try to become so. On a final note,
as an employee of Walgreens, you get a 15% discount on all goods
except dairy, tobacco, beer, and wine.
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Advice to Jobseekers
People considering this field need to think long and hard about
the hours. Fourty four hours a week is not too much, but they
need to think about when the hours occur that they will be
working. People will often work nights, weekends, and holidays.
They will also work many days in a row or early shifts after
late shifts and get little sleep. Potential employees must
consider if the money is worth the hours demanded of them. In
the future, the outlook for this job at Walgreens is very good.
The company is strong and growing and assistant managers do have
the opportunity to advance. For those straight out of college it
is a good place to start if you want to add retail management
experience to your resume after a year or two. The pay is good
as well.
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