Driving down the streets you can’t help but notice all of the ‘Now Hiring’ signs hung up in the windows of every business. But there seems to be an abundant amount of people that can work so why is this the case? Emily Olsen, the manager at Logan’s Papa Murphys says it has been harder to find people to work but says so many places have it worse. 

Emily Olsen has been a manager at Papa Murphy’s for over 4 years but has worked at one for almost 7. As we approach the busiest time of year for a pizza shop, she’s been trying to hire as many people as possible. Her ideal amount of workers would be a total of 15, right now they have 12 with a couple of people leaving soon.

Most of her employees leave in the summer when most of the change is happening in people’s lives. For several weeks they only had 10 people working at a place that is open 7 days a week, 8 hours each day. While a lot of people apply, not everyone is ready to work.

Emily gets around 4 applicants each week, only half she will hire and another half or more of those go on to work at different locations in the valley. She tries to improve these low numbers but she often loses people to other businesses in the valley, gets ghosted, and or they are too busy to actually work.

Several people at the Logan location can only work 1-2 days a week. When hiring people, Emily tries to avoid people that say they can only work 1-2 days. But she is willing to work out schedules once people have been there for a while. One of the main reasons she’s against hiring people that aren’t available is that they will never learn how to do everything. She says that they will just forget everything they learned one day by the time they are scheduled to work again. When it already takes about a month to train people who are there working 3-4 days a week, it would take too long to train those who aren’t there.

Low availability usually coincides with teenagers in high school. However, these are the people that Emily loves to hire the most. She believes that Papa Murphy’s is the perfect first job. While she prefers to have people with previous food experience, she knows how amazing of an establishment Papa Murphy’s is for first time workers. She loves watching all of her employees really get to know each other and become more than just coworkers. And because no food is actually cooked at the store, it’s one of the better places to work in food service. She also believes that the good environment that is there comes from the good cultured and caring customers.

Many teenagers don’t have a job because they are too busy and aren’t ready for the commitment. However, there are several people that get jobs during the summer. When school starts up, most of those kids have to leave. With after school activities and sports, it’s hard to fit a job that requires at least 10 hours of work each week into their schedules. This is why Emily and many other managers struggle to find workers and keep their business fully staffed.