Since mid March the change in the day to day flow of life has been altered. Daily routines have dramatically changed for the average American. The direct result of this has been felt in many different ways. (Let me preface this by stating that overall our stores have been blessed and continued to operate). The operations have seen challenges ranging from staffing levels, to new required safety precautions, to the overall buying patterns of the customer. Since we are a guest driven business and our first guest is always our employee, lets begin there.
In my primary market the closures occurred March 16th 2020. Our industry was hit with forced closings and general guidance that restricted the type of service we could offer. For the employee the most pressing thing was safety. Is it safe to work, is it safe to travel to work, if I go to work and something else changes will I be able to get back home? These questions were compounded for people sharing a living space with older family members, young children, people in a higher risk category…
Children were pulled from school so childcare became an issue. The information was coming in by the minute and the punch in the gut that was dealt highlighted many things. One was our vulnerability as an organism, another was our interdependence on each other, yet another was our prioritization of “things” and the disappearance of ambiguity between wants and needs. There were millions of doubts raised and the main ones stemmed from confronting the illusion of safety and the thin veil of normalcy that we treated as our northern star. Now it was dark and foggy, yet we felt the innate need to keep moving, keep breathing, keep thriving, and keep hoping. These very human reactions, feelings, and questions were the ones we needed to address before we thought about the economic reactions and repercussions to come.
How do you address safety for your coworkers when you aren’t sure you can ensure it for yourself and your immediate family? What are the mundane guidelines of the law, more importantly what are the humane responsibilities we must meet to help stabilize this ever changing situation? So many question marks so far on this page and not nearly representative of the millions of questions racing through all of our minds at all times.
Finally how to deal with it? Like everything else in life, put yourself first in their shoes. See through their eyes. Most importantly live it with them and dont ask for anything you’re not willing do yourself. As far as safety at work, we followed all of the changing recommendations the doctors on TV told us to follow. We wore masks and did not allow people to come in to work that felt sick. To discourage the decisions to be money driven by the team member we authorized paid time off. We did not want to risk contamination because someone wanted to get some extra hours in at the J.O.B. After this we tackled the transportation issue. While most people had a vehicle , there were a great number of people that did not. Sitting in a crowded bus seemed less safe. It was less safe. To tackle this, being a delivery concept, we brought in a driver an hour earlier to every shift with the sole responsibility of becoming our own private taxi service for that shift’s crew that traveled by bus. This helped make their lives a lot easier and allowed them to be more at ease than before. As far as people with at risk roomies, we added so much disinfectant to our stores, gloves, masks, soap, and precautions that we wanted to be the last place people would fear contracting the virus. Again, the paid time off was available and only a few people abused this privilege. The ones that did will have to account for it on their own some day because chasing the bad and disregarding the good is not what I consider time well spent.
Now the paying guest. This was a little less tricky than dealing with our internal guest. These guests ranged from the unbothered to the unaproachable. We did not allow any guests to come into our stores and provided delivery and curbside only. We encouraged people to pay online and provided “contactless” options since day one. All safety precautions were strictly enforced and we even added a pick up window to the front of our building overnight one day when we saw the need. The inside of the store became an efficient processing center for our orders to get from the kitchen, checked, double checked, and to the door. We implemented a human chain that resembled the old fire brigades, instead of water to put out a blaze, we provided fajitas and ritas to deal with the stress and uncertainty.
Setting this tone with our coworkers and reacting quickly to serve our guests saved us headache and heartache that was well spent on other issues. This event continues to prove that if you make decisions with good intentions the results will always be positive. They might not be exactly what you want but the goodness of the intent shines through and provides you the goodwill with both your team members and your customers. We are not superhuman. We are not perfect, in fact being imperfect and owning our mistakes is endearing, its relatable, and it gets you in their shoes. Perspective is key in everything and was definitely key here.