The pharmacist's hours are the store's hours

A medical store pays somewhere between four and fourteen people. The proprietor is usually a registered pharmacist himself. Around him work one or two more pharmacists if the store keeps long hours, three or four assistants who know which rack holds which brand, a billing person on the machine, a packing hand who receives cartons from the wholesaler and runs the expiry check, and one or two delivery boys on two-wheelers. Pharmacists, assistants and the billing person draw a monthly salary. Delivery boys and relief pharmacists are paid for days worked.

The store opens at nine and the first hour is quiet enough for one pharmacist to hold it alone. The wholesaler's van reaches around half past eleven, and whoever receives it is off the aisle for the next forty minutes, matching invoice lines against cartons and getting the cold items into the refrigerator before anything else.

From half past six the queue doubles back on itself and stays that way till nine. That is the window where a customer asks something only a pharmacist may answer. A store on a busy road runs a night window until midnight, staffed by one assistant with a pharmacist reachable. The last person out cashes up, pulls the grille and carries the day's collection to the proprietor.

Split the trading day before you add a single person. A store open from nine to midnight is two shifts, and each wants its own start time and its own grace. Load your closure days next, so the salary run does not read a national holiday as absence. Then assign every pharmacist, assistant and delivery boy to the store and hand out login codes. Say at the morning huddle that the punch happens before the grille goes up. Expect a fortnight of missed evening check-outs, and correct those from the console.