Flowers insolita Blog

We are located in Long Island, the Island of Lindsay Lohan and spoiled brats.

I was talking to the owner of a nursery the other day.  He was complaining how difficult it is to find “decent young people” to work in his establishment.  I often hear the same story from many small retail-business owners here; young people in Long Island do not want to work in their stores. 

Come to think of it, in the last three years, we have hired about two dozen young local people (all of them are female); only two lasted more than three months.  One lasted only 3 hours, which is the current record of the shortest tenure of our past employees.

Take a look at any fast-food restaurants in Long Island.  Do we see any young Long Islanders working there?  I don’t think so.  Flipping burgers is not a kind of job that princes and princesses in Long Island would take.  Too much of a work for too little pay, just like a job in a flower shop or nursery for that matter.

I often go to a local supermarket (STOP & SHOP) to buy fresh fruits used for fruit baskets.  There are a couple of young people “working” there.  By “working”, I mean a) chatting with friends and b) text-messaging, while paying absolutely no attention to customers.

The other day, I was in the self-service checkout.  One of my items didn’t go through.  I dared to press “Help” button, which I shouldn’t have.  After several minutes, a young lady reluctantly showed up.  I explained the situation to her.  Annoyed by this unexpected extra work, she sighed to my face.  If one of our sales associates ever sighed to our customer asking for help, I guarantee you that she would be fired on the spot. I’m usually pretty quiet, not complaing about anything.  But I wasn’t having a good day on that particular day, so I told her, “But you are paid, right?”  To which she replied “You’re mean!”  The Princess spoke and I humbly accepted my defeat.

I sighed… I wonder if the manager of STOP & SHOP knows this.  Whoever the manager is, my guess is that s/he probably knows about it, but can’t do anything about it.  That’s because, if s/he complains, these kids would simply quit, creating a vacancy that s/he would have to fill again with, what, the same kind of kids.  There’s no realistic chance that the next one would be better.  Worse yet, their parents might sue the shop or manager for whatever reasons they come up with.  Not worth the fight.