Businesses Begin Shopping for Holiday Workers : Employment: In Orange County, where few are without jobs, employers are trying unconventional ways to attract help during the post-Thanksgiving sales boom.

The heck with sugarplums.

Visions of employees are dancing in the heads of merchants now that the holiday shopping season is about to begin.

With an unemployment rate that consistently hovers around 3%--or what amounts to full employment in the county--the search for workers here has never been easy sledding. But with merchants facing the annual jingle of cash registers, the problem becomes even more acute.

“It’s really tough,” said Garden Grove-based Tom Fulmer, Radio Shack’s regional employment manager for the area stretching from North Orange County to Bakersfield.

After all, the day after Thanksgiving, “all hell breaks lose in most retail businesses,” Fulmer noted. So virtually everyone in retail needs more warm bodies to wait on customers, wrap packages and watch over inventory.

And hanging a help-wanted sign or running an advertisement often isn’t enough. “I’ve run display ads that have cost several thousand dollars just to get 50 people to come in. Of them, I’ll probably hire eight to 10 people--if I’m lucky.”

To beat the tight market for seasonal workers, employers are resorting to everything from more advertising to hiring customers to handing out gift certificates for perfect attendance during the Christmas season.

Ross Stores Inc. in Costa Mesa has eased the crunch by adding high school students who are already enrolled in programs that teach them the retail business.

The students--typically 16 or 17-- receive credits for the training program, explained Greg Roberts, store manager. But come holiday break, “I hire them and they get paid” for those two weeks.

In Anaheim Plaza, Mervyn’s this year is adding almost 100 seasonal workers to bolster the permanent employee staff of 140. To help fill its chainwide needs, the Hayward, Calif.-based company this season began radio advertising. The chain is also reaching out to a largely untapped pool of workers--the handicapped--and offering special incentives.

At the Anaheim store, one disabled worker has been hired who was referred through a state-sponsored program, said Sheryl Coler, operations manager at the store.

The store also is offering employees a $100 gift certificate for perfect attendance from Nov. 20 through Dec. 31. The certificate “gives them them more reason to come in and be on time,” Coler explained. “Plus, it’s a good selling point for hiring.”

Several upscale retailers--including Tiffany & Co. at South Coast Plaza and Neiman Marcus in Newport Beach--rely on a resource much closer to home: their customers who welcome the chance to get behind the counter of a favorite store for just a while.

With Tiffany’s prestige and the cachet of its name, “it’s not as difficult as it might be for other retailers,” said Jo Ellen Qualls, vice president at Tiffany in Costa Mesa. Tiffany already has added six to its Costa Mesa store but plans to bring in another two or three people, Qualls said.

“I still have children at home so I can’t have a full-time career, but I wanted to do something,” said one holiday worker who asked that her name not be used.

One perk is that as a regular store customer-turned-part-time employee, she gets a 30% discount on purchases. And in a store such as Tiffany, “it’s not frantic, so there’s time to spend with the customer,” she said. “It’s the one store I would work for.”

At Neiman Marcus at Newport Center/Fashion Island, temporary salespeople have been known to pull up in a Mercedes, said the store’s personnel coordinator.

This year, Neiman Marcus at Fashion Island plans to add about 130 full- and part-timers for the Christmas season--more than double its usual staff of 240. With people from past years returning, most of the Newport Beach store’s holiday sales-staffers already have been hired, although the store still needs gift wrappers, boxers and stockroom clerks.

But for those that aren’t as lucky, the search for help can be long and bleak.

At the Pottery Barn at Newport Center/Fashion Island, management has been looking for holiday help for weeks. “We’ve had (help wanted) signs out since just before Halloween, and we’re just starting to get applications now,” said Elin Pittman, manager at the Pottery Barn.

One problem in finding them is that Fashion Island is a newly renovated center, with lots of new merchants--all of whom are competing for the same limited pool of employees.

Moreover--unlike many of the larger department and specialty stores surrounding it--the Pottery Barn does not pay commission to its seasonal workers, who get $5 to $6 per hour. To offset the difference, Pittman tells applicants that they have a 40% discount available for merchandise. And employees do not work in the “dog-eat-dog” environment that often exists in stores where employees’ pay is based on their sales, she said.

And what happens for those businesses who don’t get enough applicants coming through the door?

Well, there’s always the tried-and-true solution of merchants everywhere: “I just work a lot of hours myself,” said Sharon Park, manager of Fanfares, a shoe store at South Coast Plaza. “I put in about 70 hours a week or more” and have several (employees) who work a lot of overtime, she said.