Back in the grim days of The Great Recession, companies large and small laid off workers while discouraging new hires with a wealth of “no hiring” signs.

Train In Vain

Historic Pullman, a former company town dating from the 1880s, is today one of Chicago’s 77 defined community areas. Though the South Side district has been a National Historic Landmark Site since 1969, renovation and rehabilitation of its buildings – including the former Pullman Clock Tower and Administration Building (now the Pullman National Monument Visitor Center) above – is an ongoing process, one that requires laborers… sometimes.

Construction work is typically one of the go-to manual labor options when times are tough. We’re assuming such jobs in the Pullman Historic District were snapped up quickly during late-2007 to mid-2009, when the above photos by Flickr members Bart Heird, crowbert, and Lynn Josse were taken.

Just Say No-No

They thought “no hiring” was so nice, they had to say it twice! Well, not really, but you can’t blame English-speakers for just seeing the “NOT HIRING – NO” part and tuning out “Se contrata a nadie” (“Nobody is hired”). Flickr member Indiana Public Media/WFIU captured the above sign posted in front of a construction project in April of 2009.

Peak Helplessness

“NO HELP WANTED”, reads the sign posted at Summit Industries in September of 2007, to which Flickr member and photographer bluefishtuesday replied, “especially not yours” and “recession, much?” Times were tough all over back in The Great Recession but Chicago seems to have been hit especially hard – this photo was snapped on W Lawrence Ave in the Far North Side.

Take Your Talents Elsewhere

More construction, this time in Miami, FL where workers hopeful of employment were greeted by “NOT HIRING” and “No nececitamos trabatatores” (“We do not need workers”). Times must have been tough indeed: the company couldn’t even afford a pre-printed no-hiring sign… and you can bet somebody was charged for the orange spray paint. Flickr member R. Maas captured the above labor-unfriendly scene in March of 2009.

Pay-Away Plan

How to save money when hiring staff, Exhibit #42… brought to you by The Brick, a chain of Canadian furniture and home appliance stores. In 2007, Flickr member Alex Indigo snapped this sign that appears to tell prospective hires they won’t receive any financial compensation ’til 2009. We don’t know how many workers this store ended up hiring but we wouldn’t be surprised if at least one was fired.

Garage Banned

“Too many people looking for work. Don’t bother asking here,” stated Flickr member Kyle Harr about Ron’s Garage in Pewamo, MI. The eponymous “Ron” must have had unemployed workers pestering him day and night for a job, any job, even the thankless task of hanging “NOT HIRING” signs on multiple windows to deter job-seekers approaching from any direction.

Speaking of signs of negativity, note that Ron’s also posts “NO PARKING”, “NO SOLICITING”, “Authorized STUDEBAKER Service” and “Approved PACKARD Service” signs. That might help to explain why the garage apparently conducts NO BUSINESS and thus, needs no staff.

OW My Bank Balance

Flickr member Pak Gwei snapped this trio of fence-mounted signs in Washington D.C.’s Franklin McPherson Square back in March of 2007, mere weeks before the Subprime Mortgage Crisis sparked what would turn out to be the worst global economic contraction since the 1930s. Hope may always spring eternal but in the spring of ’07, the stage was being set for an epic fall. Note to the anonymous wiseguy who made an “adjustment” to the handmade “No Hiring” sign: much pain is about to ensue; you should have erased the “N” after adding the “W”.

This eclectic selection of “We’re Hiring” signs illustrate some of the unusual ways companies offer jobs in a booming economy with low unemployment.

“We’re still hiring humans”, declares this billboard ad for Carnegie Robotics in “The City of Bridges” (presumably Pittsburgh, PA), and that’s good news, right? Right?? Indeed, there’s something more than a little sinister about this pitch and the image of a vaguely Bender-ish robot doesn’t help. At least they didn’t give him a goatee. Flickr member Nick Amoscato snapped a couple shots of the jumbo hiring ad in June of 2018.

Hirers Gonna Hire

OK, maybe you could write off this hiring banner for Sears as a “vintage” photo but according to Flickr member and photographer Random Retail, the image dates from 2013 and was taken at a newly closed Sears store in Pennsdale, PA. Like Sears hasn’t trolled its remaining workers enough; does it really have to jerk the chains of potential employees as well?

Proofreader Wanted

Now we know why there’s no “I” in “team”… it’s found a new home on this bizarre hiring ad. While one might excuse a typo on a hand-written sign, this appears to be a manufactured or at least, a bulk-printed piece. That means there must be many more out there, barring any flashes of comprehension by the staff members charged with deploying them. Normally we’d mask some or all of the phone number to avoid embarrassing the proprietor but in this case, Flickr member Domenico Bettinelli‘s image has been posted for almost 12 years. Also, they deserve to be shamed.

Eat Mor Pengwin

Is this a hiring billboard or a lost cat, er, penguin poster? Why not both? “Tux” the penguin is the official brand character of the Linux brand so, umm, where is he… and what’s with that ‘gator’s evil, lip-smackin’ grin? Who designed this ad anyway, Admiral Ackbar? Flickr member Michael Coghlan snapped the fearsome hiring billboard in Austin, TX (wherever you are) in January of 2012.

Hiring In Plain Site

Yes, “site”, as in a plain site situated in plain sight. Bet it looks even plainer on the inside due to the apparent lack of windows, not to mention a door. Wouldn’t the latter make the whole “inquire within” thing somewhat of a challenge, to say the least? Maybe they’re interviewing pole vaulters. Flickr member joepopp captured this enigmatic example of hiring-inside-the-box back in March of 2007.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Worker Be 10 Were Hiring Signs Of The Times

Workers of the world, relax! The Zuev Workers’ Club building in downtown Moscow was the epitome of Constructivist cool when it opened way back in 1929.

Hipster-sky Hangout

And it’s still plenty chill right now! Indeed, this well-preserved and still fully-functional relic of the Soviet Union’s heady early years would still invoke double-takes – in a good way – should an architectural clone be unveiled today.

Credit Russian architect Ilya Golosov (1883–1945) with penning the Zuev Workers’ Club’s timeless design. By the mid-1920s Golosov was at the height of his fame, and had been hailed by fellow architects as the leading light of Constructionism. The Zuev Workers’ Club not only cemented Golosov’s place in the annals of Soviet architecture, the building itself (shown above in the early 1930s) has outlived its designer by over 70 years and counting!

Glass Struggle

The Zuev Workers’ Club is located at 18 Lesnaya Street in Moscow’s Central Administrative Okrug – a prime location at the time of its building, and even more so today. Kudos to Moscow city authorities for recognizing the structure’s historical value and for resisting the urge to replace it with a more modern development that could never match the Zuev Workers’ Club’s intrinsic character.

Lenin Tower

Golosov’s original design approved in 1926 was conceived in response to tenders for “proletarian leisure centers”. The basic concept of these clubs was rooted in Marxist-Leninist theories that glorified the working class and sought to reward industrial workers “used and abused” by the capitalist bourgeoisie in the Czarist era. Though Stalinism and the pressures of the Great Patriotic War (aka World War II) would conspire to take the bloom off that rose, the decade following the October Revolution offered a brief window through which some of communism’s more esoteric dreams could become reality.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Constructivist Cool Moscows Zuev Workers Club

We all want to make a good first impression then leave a mark when we’re done, particularly when it comes to a labor of love, and what better way than with this custom-designed hammer?

This device turned an off-the-shelf hammer into a lovely gift for that special someone by “using the industrial mold-making technique of electro-erosion (EDM),” explains its creator, Dog Ganchrov (images by Moti Fishbain).

The “steel hammering head has been reshaped into a heart, and the hammer has been transformed into a tool for leaving a mark” when you’re hard (or heart?) at work.

“Anything struck by it will now have a signature ‘heart’ shape indented on it,” he explains, “be it a tree, wall or hood of an ex-lovers car. The hammer is a tool for constructing but it can also destroy.”

And anyone who has worked with a hammer knows that even the best and most experienced folks can mess up from time to time, missing the mark or slipping off the head of a nail — but it usually just leaves a semi-circle.

This so-called Love/Hate Thing evolved from the idle musings of its maker: “Is the urge to leave a mark a curse or blessing? How much of a mark? How much of [our] selves? How much of a mark on the ecological system, cultural trend, design students, human well-being?” It is on display at the Periscope Gallery in Tel-Aviv.

In Soviet Russia, accident prevent you! That’s the message rendered in classic commie-propaganda style via these thirty soviet accident prevention posters.

Graphic workplace accident prevention posters are nothing new, neither are they the purview of any one nation. That said, this selection of vintage Soviet accident prevention posters reflects a period in Russian history that was drenched in blood, sorrow, violence and loss – and not only on the factory floor.

Oleg Atbashian, a former citizen of the Soviet Union who moved to the United States in 1994, doesn’t recall ever seeing these horrifying-to-the-point-of-being-comical posters. Atbashian worked as a metal worker apprentice at a large Ukrainian factory when he was a teenager and later, as a visual agitprop (agitation and propaganda) artist specializing in posters directed at construction workers. Atbashian was in the right place; just at the wrong time.

Indeed, Atbashian’s USSR of the 1970s was quite a different place from the fledgling “communist paradise” of Lenin and Stalin. “They (the posters) reflect the zeitgeist of a completely different, less sensitive generation of Soviet citizens,” explains Atbashian, “who were so used to being disciplined, humiliated, and terrorized by the authorities that the least of their concerns would be to question some silly presumptive posters that described them as a herd of bumbling idiots being gored by machinery.” Geez Oleg, tell us what you really think!

Just as the communist system of government represented a clean break from the Czarist regimes which preceded it, graphic art in the nascent Soviet Union aspired to blaze a new trail in lockstep with the policies and philosophies of the Red Revolution.

Next Page - Click Below to Read More:
Blood Red 30 Vintage Soviet Accident Prevention Posters