Rising potential

Today in the Journal the main long story branching off the front page catalogs issues companies throughout America are having training new employees after the post-pandemic hiring frenzy. In the short run it is negatively impacting productivity. In the long run it represents purest potential.

Yesterday I had an instructive interchange on the phone. I had asked Walgreens via its app to send me a prescription in the mail because I was going to be on the West Coast, but it was never delivered. Then the scrip disappeared from my Walgreens app. I was running low on the med, so I called up Walgreens and bullied my way through to a pharmacist at my store and asked what was up. She looked up my record and told me "We no longer have the scrip, it's been forwarded to 'Healthcare Solutions'." "What's that?" I asked. She said she didn't know, but gave me an 800 number. When I called that number, I got through quickly. Turned out it was a Walgreens business unit, the woman straightened everything out quickly and competently and promised to overnight me the med and that Walgreens would eat the cost of overnighting it. In short, great customer service.

The first instance, the confused pharmacist at my local branch, was probably just a new person there. That store had restricted pharmacy hours due to a staffing shortage and in fact is still running somewhat restricted hours. So we're really dealing with a labor market issue here.

But if we can just stay patient and let people learn to do their jobs and continue to migrate to higher value-adding functions, things will get better. Aggregate total factor productivity will rise. We just need to stay patient and be thankful for the things we have.