If you’ve been to our neighborhood QFC recently, you no doubt would have noticed the absence of fresh fish and, possibly, meat at the respective counters. This comes as a blow to many shoppers who are probably hoping to get all their shopping done at one time and in one place, including the purchase of some meat and/or fish. To be fair, the QFC is not totally bereft of these items. There is plenty of pre-packaged meat available (as always), and apparently, a worker from another store has been coming by to cut up fish and shrink wrap it for sale in smaller quantities.
A reader wrote to us on December 31 to say:
I spoke to the QFC manager who told me he is actively trying to recruit. It seems that the permit to be a fish handler is separate from the permit to be a meat handler … He thought at that time (2 weeks ago) that he had a candidate he would be interviewing in a few days time. Guess it didn’t work out. Earlier this past week my wife saw someone in the fish area cutting up fish and making up packets for the refrigerated case. He told her he was just there temporarily and needed to go back to his store as soon as he had stocked the case.
One wonders if QFC has systemic issues that contribute to their hiring problems. Other area stores seem to have folks staffing their counters. (I’ll cite Whole Foods which had several people running around behind the meat and fish counters when I was there right before Christmas.) Comments, readers?
As to when we may see an end to all this, our reader followed up a few hours later to add:
I spoke to Matt the Asst. Manager at QFC this afternoon. He has one fish person in training and one more onboarding, to begin training next week. He thinks things will be back to normal in about 10 days.
Something is fishy, for sure.