A San Francisco florist desperate for staff put up a sign saying it’s ‘hiring anyone that

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A San Francisco florist whose store is understaffed says he will hire “anyone that shows up.”
The owner of French Tulip Flowers told KGO-TV that he and his girlfriend are its only employees.
Companies desperate to hire have been lowering their criteria to make more job seekers eligible.

The owner of a flower store in San Francisco says he will hire “anyone that shows up” as businesses across the US continue to struggle finding staff.

Andrei Abramov, who owns French Tulip Flowers in Noe Valley, told KGO-TV that he and his girlfriend are currently the store’s only employees and that they work all day, every day.

Abramov said that the shop previously had two other employees who recently left: One retired and the other opened his own shop.

Abramov stuck a sign up in the store’s window that says: “We are hiring anyone that shows up.”

“Right now we’ll take anyone who are willing to learn and stay with us,” Abramov told KGO-TV. He didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on how much French Tulip Flowers paid its staff.

The US is suffering from a labor shortage amid record quit rates and a drop in job applicants. Americans say the pandemic has given them the opportunity to think about what they want from their workplace and they’re now looking for roles with better wages, benefits, and working conditions.

Retail workers have also cited rude customers and fears of catching COVID-19 as reasons for quitting their jobs or switching industries.

Companies say they’re desperate to hire, and many are lowering their employment criteria to make more job seekers eligible.

Some, like French Tulip Flowers, have said they’ll take on anyone to plug their staffing shortages.

“We will literally hire anyone,” a pizzeria in Alabama said in a Facebook post in August. “If you’re on unemployment and can’t find a job, call us; we’ll hire you.”

A restaurant manager in Virginia said she was so desperate for staff that she had to employ rude people, who she said ultimately scared off customers.

Companies have also been hiring workers with little or no experience, including the owner of a construction company in Arkansas who said he’d pay up to $20 an hour to workers who have “no idea” how to do the job. Some are hiring younger workers, too, like a Canadian Subway and Wing’n It franchisee who said he’d resorted to hiring workers as young as 14 years old because they were the only ones applying for jobs.

As of May 2020, around 24,780 Americans were employed as floral designers, per data from the Bureau for Labor Statistics. Median hourly wages were $13.73 and median annual wages were $28,560, per the BLS data.

Got a story about the labor shortage? Email this reporter at gdean@insider.com.