No one wants weekend work

[LastOrdersMaura]

My friend has a cafe. It's in a central location with a good bus route, cycle route and ten mins walk from a huge university campus.
Despite the jobs being on Indeed and advertised on a local job site, no one is applying. Or they apply but say 'is there any negotiation on the days?' Why doesn't anyone want weekend work anymore? I would have thought there would have been college students, Uni students, mums/ dads who can only work when partners are home, retired people who are bored. Why is it so difficult to recruit?

I used to do this sort of thing as a teen but wouldn’t want to give up both days of a weekend. Advertise for people to split the days. Also gives the benefit that the other might well cover for the other when they need days off etc.

Because everyone is looking for the perfect job that fits their exact circumstances and then moans when they are unemployed, as its significantly easier than making some sacrifices for a long term gain.

I came on expecting this to be the other way round. My DD is looking for a 'Saturday job' as we used to call it. All of the part-time jobs round here seem to be either very late hours (eg Tesco 2 x 19:30-23:00 per week) or a minimum of 15 hours, which she can't manage alongside schoolwork and any social life at all.

Screwing up your whole weekend for 12 hours of min wage isn’t happening

And two days travel costs. Its the bare minimum cost to the chain owner for maximum hassle for the employee.

All these people work for little over minimum wage, most work antisocial hours, do they not deserve more?

Yes they do. The prevailing assumption that employers can have subsidised labour at a price which doesn't sustain living and has to be topped up by the tax payer is a broken model.

Students are currently doing exams so won’t have started looking for summer work get and most college students would prefer weekday work in the summer. Weekend work is obviously better in termtime but that doesn’t carry over to this time of year.

I worked weekends in hospitality and there was no bonus pay. Businesses vary on rates of pay, incentives etc. But they are invariably operating on cut throat margins and staffing costs are always the big chunk on earnings. The thing was although many youngsters were brought in (hit and miss with quality as you would expect), recruiting more experienced members of staff was a nightmare. Anyone with kids/home life is not going to want to sacrifice every Sunday. I wish the employers understood this and simply rotated the experienced staff members around to cover the unpopular shifts. Anyway, I wanted to come on and say it's always been thus, nothing new,

Yes they do. The prevailing assumption that employers can have subsidised labour at a price which doesn't sustain living and has to be topped up by the tax payer is a broken model.

A thousand times this. In-work benefits are dressed up as welfare to individuals but are in fact a massive subsidy to business so that they get one of their major inputs (labour) below the cost of provision (the cost of living).

It's a huge confidence trick that this is in the welfare budget rather than the 'tax cuts for business' budget.

C8H10N4O2 completely agree. Why isn’t there more outrage that the prevailing labour model is for the state to top up?

@JassyRadlett

Yes they do. The prevailing assumption that employers can have subsidised labour at a price which doesn't sustain living and has to be topped up by the tax payer is a broken model.

A thousand times this. In-work benefits are dressed up as welfare to individuals but are in fact a massive subsidy to business so that they get one of their major inputs (labour) below the cost of provision (the cost of living).

It's a huge confidence trick that this is in the welfare budget rather than the 'tax cuts for business' budget.

Exactly this - demonise the workers while the employers pay the least they can get away with

Forget job boards and put a job ad up in the local college refectory.

Think about how 16yo can get to you safely at start & end of shift. Be clear that if they do six months with you, they will get a good reference in customer service.

@Egghead81 so who exactly do you think should be doing this job? The idea that you start your working life doing something low paid and work up to bigger jobs is still the model that most sectors work on. No one comes out of higher education and straight into their dream job. Even doctors start doing the crap stuff and work until they can be more picky.

@JassyRadlett

Yes they do. The prevailing assumption that employers can have subsidised labour at a price which doesn't sustain living and has to be topped up by the tax payer is a broken model.

A thousand times this. In-work benefits are dressed up as welfare to individuals but are in fact a massive subsidy to business so that they get one of their major inputs (labour) below the cost of provision (the cost of living).

It's a huge confidence trick that this is in the welfare budget rather than the 'tax cuts for business' budget.

Completely agree with this.

The CEOs, etc have got much wealthier while most of the rest of the population has got poorer.

It does depend on the exact hours and location. My DSD wanted to get a job at the supermarket where I work but I told her not to.
Verbal abuse, being threatened, screamed at, no support from management on less than £5 an hour (which is what she'd get at her age). isn't worth it. It's not worth it on what I get but I have a thick enough skin not to care when I get treated like dirt.
Other retailers might be better but I doubt it.

I too left hospitality after two decades, last year. Final straw was being verbally abused by my boss’s shitty customers. Wouldn’t go back, it’s a terrible industry-awful conditions, vile customers, poverty wages, there’s nothing to like, and people are realising that. Business owners will have to raise their game if they want decent staff.
I’d consider going back to hospitality if the place had air conditioning, customers were not allowed to abuse staff, and I got at least £12 an hour, and a pension. Anything less is just not worth the shitness of the industry.

My teen daughter, along with other teens I know doesnt want to work weekends as they want to paaaaaarty, can’t say I blame them!

@BusterGonad

I'd never want to work weekends again, anyone with a family or any kind of social life just don't want to be getting up early at the weekends and missing time with their family and friends.

This

@Snakeprint so what are they going to live on and how does this replicate real life?

Where is she advertising?

This is the sort of stuff I did on top of full time to make extra.

@Hollyhead

I used to do this sort of thing as a teen but wouldn’t want to give up both days of a weekend. Advertise for people to split the days. Also gives the benefit that the other might well cover for the other when they need days off etc.

Good idea.

My daughter not 16 yet would love a job. I work mid weeks like my downtime at wends. Hard say. Maybe money isnt worth it?

What city? Daughter is as Uni looking for a weekend job!

It’s probably a bit early for the students and school leavers who would be attracted to this work as they haven’t had exams yet. I agree with other posters that more locally targeted advertising would probably work better but I expect timing is playing a big part in this.

Plenty of people want weekend work, the people replying on here about how they’d hate to work all weekend are not those people.

Are parents really forbidding healthy 18 year olds from getting part time jobs in hospitality until they’re vaccinated? That seems like it probably doesn’t apply to many people.

@LastOrdersMaura

But she's not asking for experience. What are all the teenagers doing for jobs these days? I'm sorry but you cannot be an eighteen year old with no experience and expect to get more than MW. I'm on 50p more than that and I am responsible for peoples lives (care work.)

Because it's a choice. If they have to take the shit pay they can take it when it suits them, it's important to have a work life balance and socialising tends to be done at the weekend. Clearly they don't need to work 🤷🏽‍♀️

I'm sure in a normal year, plenty of students would apply. Most Uni students are not on campus at the moment, they are living at their family homes and studying remotely. Plus most students have not had vaccines yet so may be nervous about taking customer-facing roles.

There's so many more ways to earn money now without leaving home
This is the crux of the matter. When I was a teenager the easiest way to make money was in a cafe or bar. But nowadays there are loads of other ways to make money over the internet - freelancing online, call centre work from home, making and selling on Etsy, selling yourself on OnlyFans. Working from home is much more preferable to having fixed hours in a cafe. Plus even when I was a teenager I wouldn’t have signed up to work both days every weekend.