Staff shortages

We've been lucky with the staff we've had during our (nearly) two years here, but it looks as though our luck has temporarily run out. We were already looking for a barperson to do 16 hours or so, but with little success (see previous postings both here and here ).

On Sunday night we had six people staying and at ten o'clock I'd set up for breakfast, got the laundry under control and settled down in the bar with a pint of frothy ale, at which point eight Brazilians turned up looking for accommodation. So suddenly we had 14 staying and all five rooms occupied.

On Monday morning after breakfast (the Brazilians devoured everything in sight!) one of our two remaining bar/cleaning staff turned up, told us she couldn't work for us anymore (personal reasons and not a complete surprise to us) and left.
That left us five rooms to strip,reset and clean followed by eleven hours in the bar. Oh Joy!
There was less cleaning yesterday, but we still had to do the whole 11 hours in the bar.

Until recently we had a more or less permanent advertisement in the job centre and a few weeks ago they called to ask if we had taken on any of the ten people who had applied for the job.

No-one had contacted us.

That's not entirely surprising since it's a condition of receiving unemployment benefit that you have to apply for any suitable jobs that come up. Of the ones who do contact us, very few bother to turn up for interview. Even weirder is the one or two who have shown up for interview, been given the job and not turned up on the day.

One of our ex employees has offered to do the occasional shift to help out. And Shirley who does the cleaning at weekends has offered to do cleaning through the week as well.

So where are all those friendly Eastern Europeans when you need them?