Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Everywhere I go in town there are HUGE help wanted signs. The local Burger King has HUGE banners in front of the store. They put advertisements begging people to apply on every door and paper ads telling customers they need staff are given with every food order. I asked the manager about it and he almost begged me to get my kids to apply for the many job openings he has.
It seems like nearly every retail or fast food place I go to is heavily advertising that they have job openings. They seem desperate for people to apply.
I know these jobs don't pay well but I bet there are lots of people out there who would want a job today, any job.
Any fast food or retail workers or managers who can tell me what the employment situation is where they work?
I work for, what I call, a fairly 'isolated' Walmart. By "isolated" I mean it's the only one within a 50-100 mi. radius and it is BUSY all the time. It seems like we are hiring new people every day. I am a trainer for the cashiers and I've been training several every week as has the other trainer. All the other departments get new employees often as well. We are also training people in other departments to be cash register proficient because we sometimes have a lot of "Code C" calls and they come up front when needed. They also use the registers in their own departments.
We do have some turnover. We have quite a few high school and college kids working there, or they JUST graduated and are working till they leave for college. They are mostly all part time. They are usually scheduled for the busiest times of day and their shifts can be anywhere from 4 to 8 hours. Some can only work certain hours. We also have people retiring...enough of them to make ME jealous!...people out on sick leave, family leave, vacations, PTO and, of course, the notorious no call/no show. Or they do call in. They still need to be replaced for the day but usually aren't unless it's by front end management.
Starting pay could always be better but it's $9 hour at the lowest and can be more depending on the job and department. In Jan. starting pay will go to $10 hour. Cashiers start out at $9.50 hour now. A lot don't stay around long enough to get raises but the rest of us get raises every year, based on our evaluations, etc.. I'll be getting my sixth raise in five years next month. People who have been there for years and years are doing VERY well there and will likely retire from there. Small town, not a lot of good options for jobs so people do tend to stay longer once they are 'rooted' there. It's mostly the kids who are in and out.
Walmart is not the 'evil empire' people try to make it out to be. Or maybe it is, but I can say that they have been really good to me, I have very few 'differences' with them and I really like my job. It's quite possible to make a career of retail with Walmart and I see it happening all the time in my store. People advance fairly fast sometimes, if they have any ambition at all. If an opening comes up and they want to go for it all they have to do is apply and go through the necessary training, if chosen.
I worked in fast food and restaurants while in high school and college. One thing I learned about this industry is that it is incredibly hard to find reliable employees. When I say reliable that means people who show up for their shift, on time, and stay until quitting time.
To a lesser extent there were issues with stealing and drug use on the job. Theft was usually minimal, but once in a while we'd get a big one. Such as the register coming up $100 short, or the night deposit not making its way to the bank. (night deposit scam happened more than once at different restaurants) I don't know why people keep thinking this is a good scam.
Ironically, IMO the teenagers were better behaved and more reliable than most of the adults I worked with. This industry also seems to attract the biggest egomaniacs I've ever met. Far worse than any lawyers I've worked with and that bunch doesn't have a good reputation to say the least.
It was mostly true as well that corporate owned stores where run better than franchise owned stores. It is basically true that the only cost a franchisee can control is wages. They can somewhat control food cost a little but only by controlling food waste.
For example, as a franchisee I don't want to risk throwing away 10 hamburgers that I can't sell, so I'm going to make them as the orders come in, instead of making them ahead of time. Making burgers ahead of time was standard practice (not sure if it is now) to reduce wait times for customers. If anyone remembers places like McDonalds would have metal tags with numbers on them next to the hamburgers. If the number said "3" it could only be sold until 15 minutes after the hour because 3 on a clock is 15 minutes. If the burgers were not sold by then they would go into the garbage.
Knowing what I know about costs when I see the commercials that we all have seen such as "five dollar foot long" and/or "2 BK Kings for $5" I'm left wondering where they cut the costs to get those prices down. There was very little profit when a foot long costs $5.99 let alone $5. I can only assume they cut wages, food costs, and/or increased the franchisee fee(s). No way is the mother corporation going to take a loss. Subway is actually privately owned, so their financials are not available to the public.
Another thing I have noticed is anyone who has a franchise nowadays owns more than one. It's not possible to earn a living on a single franchise like before unless you got in at the low end and held all these years. I think this started changing about 1995.
IF you are really interested about the restaurant business (not necessarily fast food) read Anthony Bordain's "Kitchen Confidential" it is an excellent insiders look into the industry.
FWIW, I wouldn't work in the industry again even if I was the boss.
You couldn't pay me enough to deal with customers all day...
These folks probably deserve a little more respect and pay. I would expect positions of this nature to be difficult to fill... Particularly when the government pays you more to stay home.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,585 posts, read 81,206,701 times
Reputation: 57821
Quote:
Originally Posted by keepingquiet
Was this publicized? Where was this? I constantly hear people complaining about illegal immigrants and would like to think the complainers in that community would not patronize a business known for giving away American jobs to non citizens.
It was in Redmond, WA, a fairly upscale city, home to Microsoft, several years ago. It was in the paper and TV news.
Yesterday I stopped at a local McD as my daughter wanted something to eat, and their help wanted sign said:
I was in a 12,000 person town in rural southern Indiana Saturday night and they were also hiring staff $10/hr. I was really surprised to see that in a town I thought would be depressed.
I worked fast food off and on between age 19 and 23 and then retail until age 27
Finding a GOOD worker is pretty hard - someone who actually does it competently - can work every station without supervision. Those people tend to move into management pretty quickly or find new jobs.
Retail, similar. People put into the job as much care as they perceive the management puts in, so they call in notoriously, sometimes just call in sick one day and never come back. Dealing with customers is hard, especially when your pay is so low. I witnessed one worker just take his smock off and walk out when a customer berated him; actually I came very close to doing the same thing.
I even told a customer who got insulting with me once "if you continue this, I'm going to walk out the door and not come back; they don't pay me enough to deal with people like you. If I do that, you won't get helped for another 30 minutes at least while the manager tries to fill in or call in someone else to fill in for me."
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
