“We are hiring anyone that shows up.”
This sign can be seen in French Tulip Flowers in the Noe Valley neighborhood, San Francisco, ABC7 reported.
Business owner Andrei Abramov said: “Right now we’ll take anyone who are willing to learn and stay with us.”
Presently, Abramov and his girlfriend only man their shop every day, from opening to closing hours.
He placed a sign on the front window a few weeks ago to get some workers to help.
“We had two employees and one of our employees retired, and one employee just opened his own shop,” he said.
The struggle of getting workers is not only felt by the French Tulip Flowers, but by other stores as well.
Such a problem is now prevalent, many businesses in Noe Valley complained.
The business of Jose Rodriguez at Casa Mexicana is not spared, as his team still needs extra hands for the work.
The new omicron variant of the COVID-19 is something that he also fears could worsen the situation.
“Very worried about it. There’s a lot of people who don’t want to get the vaccine,” he said.
ZipRecruiter’s chief economist Julia Pollak said that the concern has been impacting businesses nationwide.
According to her, the effect of the health crisis on the labor sector is prevalent, but small and medium-sized businesses are more burdened by the problem.
“They just don’t have the financial cushion to compete on pay and benefits to the same degree. And, two, you know, they don’t have entire departments devoted to human resources analytics,” she said.
Abramov, hopeful that they can hire someone who will show up every day, said they will hang in working with just themselves at the moment.
“We were lucky in the past and we’ll just create a nice atmosphere so people like to work here.”