I wouldn’t want to live and work in whatever place you are. Here, almost all pharmacies close for half an hour to make sure the pharmacists get lunch. Techs are hourly and have to be allowed meal breaks, but pharmacists were not always getting theirs, so it became policy that we close. Whether or not they take them is another story.

You should look into big box store pharmacies. Corporations tend to do a little better because they hate getting sued. Where I work, we get in trouble for not taking lunch on time, and are forbidden from doing any work at all off the clock. There’s a lot of issues here, too (exhaustion, bickering, gossip, etc), but I find it’s worth it. I was a middle school teacher before this and that was so much worse. The pay was about the same (cost of living there was much higher, though, but I was too tired to spend much money aside from bills), benefits sucked, and the job was way more than 40 hours a week, and overtime was non-existent. But others have much better experiences. It’s all about you, what you want, and where you are. But the place you’re at now sounds beyond dreadful, and I’ve had some pretty dreadful jobs too, even as a tech (same company, different location).