Phoenix14News: November 3rd Thursday Update

Greensboro business hiring, sees unmotivated applicant pool

By Sophie Nielsen-Kolding

North Carolina is one of eight states that has lost more than a quarter-million jobs since September of 2007 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The tar heel state lost 290,200 jobs since the beginning of the Great Recession.  Amidst the high rates of unemployment, one business in Greensboro is hiring. Nazareth Bread is a restaurant, bakery and wholesale bakery that just opened on Oct. 21, and business is heating up.

“Since we been open, every night I’m going home 1:00. Every day I’m working from six to one, six to one,” said Mazen Said, who owns the business with his family. He said he still has a few positions to fill, which is proving harder than he thought, especially with unemployment in the Triad at 10.2 percent.

“I found a few people that want to work but most people just want to sit around and count the hour,” Said said. He said that he’s found that people in training aren’t willing to do the jobs he needs to get done, like sweeping, wiping tables and running the cash register.

He said there’s one way to describe it: “Lazy, lets put it this way.”

One of his new employees, who is still in training, said she’s one of the hard workers. She just started working at the new business, but spent more than six months looking for a good job.

“It was like, if you haven’t had a job already we don’t really want to hire you because you don’t know what you’re doing. That kind of thing,” Montgomery said. She knows the job market is tough right now, and said that there are more people out there like her who are willing to put in the effort it takes to keep a job.

Said is trying to be optimistic and will continue to look to hire new employees.

“I mean we need the worker. We need people to work, there’s no question about that.”