I had a bit of trouble photographing this area since it's wide open (and I kept running into one of the employees who had yelled at me earlier, though I'm pretty sure they never saw me taking pictures again), but I did get this picture when I was just about to check out. Off to the left, what you're seeing on the far wall is a giant LED advertising screen -- I don't mind these sort of big video boards in general, but I'm not a fan when they're just used for ads, and this one seems way too big for the space. The hexagon lighting fixture is rather odd -- a bit too stripped down, I think.
What caught my attention here are the pharmacy's hours. It looks like they are open until 9pm seven days a week. That's pretty remarkable I think compared to the supermarket pharmacies here in Houston at least which keep shorter hours, especially on the weekends. I'm not sure if maybe there are local laws about pharmacy hours or maybe the pharmacy staffing rules are different there which makes things cheaper to keep the pharmacy open late. Maybe they just feel that it is necessary to keep up with the competing stores. Also, it has been said that it is hard for US supermarkets to run their pharmacies profitably due to the nature of prescription insurance here, but maybe things are different there. It is hard to say!
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1990s here in my part of Houston, Kroger Signature stores and Randall's were in a bit of a customer service arms race and the two had stores close to me at the same intersection. Both decided to keep their pharmacies open 24 hours a day for a while even though the stores themselves were not 24 hour operations (at least Randall's wasn't, maybe the Kroger was open 24 hours at that time). It is hard to imagine something like that happening now though!
Yeah, the entire Canadian health care system isn't the disaster it is in the US these days. It seems like pharmacies of all kinds are barely staying afloat in the US, let alone keeping long hours like this. 24-hour pharmacies were a relatively brief fad, and as far as I know there aren't any left in the Seattle area -- I never saw a grocery store with a 24-hour pharmacy even back then!
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