A business owner frustrated with bad workers placed a brutally honest help-wanted ad in an Edmonton-area newspaper this week.

"If you … can come to work on time, not steal from us, not show up drunk, then come in and see us today," reads the ad written by Charmaine Rose, owner of high-end lingerie stores La Belle Femme in Edmonton and Sherwood Park.

The help-wanted ad is seeking staff who won't steal or show up drunk to work.
(CBC)

Rose said she wrote the full-page ad out of sheer frustration after she had employees steal from her and swear at customers.
 
"I've had 50-year-olds coming to work drunk and missing shifts after payday, and basically saying to me, 'I know what the job market is like and I can basically pick up 10 positions in a half-hour,'" she told CBC News.

"We've actually had complaints from clients that [employees] were actually accosting them for money while in change rooms. We've seen it all."

Offering a wage of $15 to $20 per hour, Rose said it wasn't about the money but the calibre of people who were showing up.

"It's [a human resource] crisis," Paul McElhone with the University of Alberta School of Retailing, said of Alberta's labour shortage.

"Everyone is looking for good people. I would certainly think it is one of the issues that keeps them awake at night for sure."

Rose said she stewed about the situation for six months before taking out the ad, which also reads: "Finding caring, honest people is like finding a needle in a haystack."

Jennifer Noones, one of Rose's new employees, applauded the unique move.

"I thought it was about damn time that somebody came out and actually said what every other employer out there is thinking at this moment," she said.

Rose said she has been receiving "awesome" feedback from the ad, and found the staff she needed by Wednesday.