Hello. I work for Walgreens. Every year we get a review on our job performance. Around June we all fill out a self-reflecting survey on our own job performance, and we rank ourselves out of 5 in 3 categories. The store/assistant manager then writes their own review and gives us our own ranking over the summer. Then around October we sit down with our managers where they give us our review, basically reading to us what they wrote with some commentary thrown in as well.
To get a raise, you need to get a 3 in each category. Now, it is impossible to get a 5, I’ve even heard them admit that. I’ve never seen anyone get a 4 in any category but it is possible, albeit extremely difficult. Generally people get 2s and 3s. Problem is that just one 2 means no raise. So it’s common to get at least one 2 to prevent you from getting a raise. I know there’s corporate meddling going on with these reviews considering that store managers generally aren’t this hard in their employees, hence why it takes several months to get to our review, which conveniently is 2 months before Jan 1, when most states bump their minimum wage if they enacted a law to do so. Basically if you do get a raise (which will generally be 50¢ or less), it’s negated in 2 months anyway.
Is this unique to Walgreens, or at least something uncommon? People generally say that they get slight COL/inflation adjustments in addition to merit-based performance. But having ONLY merit-based means you can go years without a single raise outside of what the government raises the minimum to. And they generally don’t give anyone a raise aside from the employees who go above and beyond.
Luckily this year the review is irrelevant since the company is raising everyone to $15 soon, but next year they’re going to continue the cycle. This company needs a union but retail unions generally suck. This company is going to die at some point in our lives anyway. I can’t imagine CVS is much better.