Starting to head inside, you can get your first glimpse of the new Urban Mix decor this store got. It didn't turn out great, but I mainly took this picture for the sign to the right of the door, which says (in more corporate-friendly words) that they're short on staff and to
please not be a jerk to the employees. The fancy script "please" in the middle, playing on QFC's current graphic design style, seems to imply that this isn't just something this individual store threw together, which is pretty surprising -- I believe QFC is still the only major chain I've seen with signs like this, though I suspect that Safeway's more legalese-worded "don't harass the staff" signs we were just discussing are a reaction to the same sort of issue.
I have not seen signs like this at our supermarkets. Certainly I can't recall seeing it at our Kroger stores, but it's possible that I missed something. I think the people here who want to be jerks aren't going to be deterred by a sign so perhaps the retailers figure there is no point even putting up signs.
ReplyDeleteEven with the labor problems Kroger has had in Houston, I never got the sense that Kroger stores here were understaffed over the last couple of years. I think whatever understaffing there is, usually at the checkouts, is down to Kroger just not wanting to staff those areas rather than Kroger's inability to hire staff. Even before the pandemic, I got the sense that Kroger was trying to push people to use the self-checkouts. Of course, the situation might well be different in other parts of the country.
I definitely agree these seem a bit pointless -- I suspect they were just put up to make people feel better. I imagine the staffing shortages they're referring to are the general post-pandemic staffing issues, which seem to have hit retail and other low-paying industries (which were already having trouble due to the high cost of living around here) very hard. Signs like this may be uncommon, but almost every grocery store I've visited in recent months has had prominent hiring signs posted!
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