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Comment by noduerme | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who's ever had to pick up a prescription at a Walgreens will tell you that 3% doesn't begin to make up for the incredible shit you have to endure there. It's like being placed on hold indefinitely, only you have to keep standing in one spot while people sneeze on you, all while guys with backpacks come in and steal everything that isn't locked up. And if there's something you want like antacids or razor blades, it probably is locked up too, so spend another 15 minutes finding an extremely miserable employee to unlock those cabinets, then wait another hour in line to check out.

I remember visiting the Soviet Union as a kid and it's weird to watch Americans adopt the same passive, drained and resigned faces standing in lines at a Walgreens as Soviet citizens did waiting to cash bread tickets.

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I don't know where you live but the Walgreens near me is nothing like that.

Same. I think GP may be somewhere like SF.

Portland. It's not like this in the rest of the country?

It’s very location-dependent. I live in a very dense area with many Walgreens and competitors and they’re all about the same. When you drive out into the far suburbs or country, they’re not as bad.

Good independent pharmacies are the only way to go, IMO.

In my area of Portland, all other Walgreens shut down and all the CVS and Rite Aids shut down in the past few years - post Covid - because the shoplifting and almost weekly armed robberies were so rampant. It's frankly amazing that there's still one Walgreens open, but going there is kind of like walking into an insane asylum. Not that it's dangerous, just incredibly dystopian. The workers are traumatized and miserable. Every single item worth more than $5 is locked up, and even so, there are thieves with backpacks strapped to their chests roaming the aisles, literally every time I go in there, grabbing anything, while the employees just ignore them. Recently I went in to buy Mucinex. I found it in a locked plexiglass cabinet, in front of which was a junkie who was sitting on the floor with no shoes, his nose pressed to the glass, studying the boxes of Mucinex. I had to spend 10 minutes finding a worker to open the cabinet while gently moving the junkie out of the way.

This quarter of the city (inner Southeast) is down to basically 5 pharmacies serving a very densely populated 10 square miles, four of which are in supermarkets (Safeway or Fred Meyer... both terrible). Only one Walgreens is left.

There is a locally owned, independent pharmacy that's owner-operated, about 3 miles away from me, and I've started driving to it. It's the only one in Southeast. The Walgreens is only 5 blocks away from my house, easy to walk to, but I've decided it's worth getting in my car and sitting in traffic to get to the independent one.

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