Job Anywhere?

No, because no one is hiring

Alecia Scott, Staff Writer

“Now Hiring.” We are in a labor shortage crisis. People either can’t or won’t get jobs. Depending on who you ask it is more one than the other.

Here is the truth: employers are adapting to training their current staff into handling a short staff job instead of hiring new people. It takes up a lot of resources to train and hire new people.

Now you may say, “What about the places that actually are hiring?” Another hard truth is that after the pandemic people are more wary of going into the workforce, especially customer service. Following the pandemic, people’s communication skills had proven to not be efficient to be out in public, and I am not talking about the workers. It is hard to do a job that doesn’t pay enough for food and rent while being yelled at because Karen wanted extra pickles but didn’t want to pay for it. Employees are realizing their worth or they are realizing that getting a workfrom-home job is easier than ever.

If employers want good workers, they are going to have to pay more than $7.25 an hour. They also need to treat their employees like humans. The employees they have now are likely high functioning workers that have worked there for a longer period of time. They know how to do their job, and they know how to do it well. These are the workers that are so used to being severely understaffed that they just adapted to deal with it. They hate going to work because it is exhausting and they do not feel as though they are seen nor heard. These employees either are somehow tied to the store in some way (a spouse, a sibling, a best pretty good pay. They have benefits too, right? Yes they do; they help with college tuition and free Spotify Premium. Let me tell you why people don’t want to work there. People are the worst. Just look up “Starbucks Barista Horror Stories” on Google. I would think twice about getting a job there after reading those. A lot of employees you ask me. friend, etc.), or they have one foot out of the door ready to take the leap when a better opportunity arises. Those opportunities never seem to rise because it feels like every store is the same as this. It is even harder when they are so burnt out from their current job that they don’t even want to be in the same field anymore. For example: Starbucks is the most popular coffee shop in the country. They pay $17 an hour; that’s pretty good right? I would say that is complain of the super customizable menu. That is rough, but that is what they signed up for. What they did not sign up for is people throwing drinks through their drive through windows or at the pick-up area. There are multiple stories when people do not get their way, so in return they chuck a hot coffee at the barista. That is absolutely unacceptable. The employee would quit their jobs, and never return to do a job like that ever again, rightfully so if

Getting a job is about money, but it doesn’t mean that employers have to treat them as though they are cash cows. Employees are people. People who need to be respected. People who should be treated with kindness. That is the least that they deserve.

Employers will talk about wanting quality workers, but what about the workers? They want quality jobs with good management. It is hard to find a worker who will deal with people who can be cruel when they only get paid minimum wage and don’t have management to back them up when things go south. People don’t feel protected for their jobs, so they go somewhere else where they might be treated just an ounce better than the other place. It is hard to make people work when it is simply the thing they are doing to get by. There is no family, no rapport created in these stores. In school we learn about friendship and communication, but is all of that forgotten when we get put behind a food counter or a corporate desk? We need more, from the employers and from the people we are supposed to help. People are people no matter what job they have. They need to be treated as such.