Some people seem to think it’s all going to be OK out there if we sit tight for another couple of weeks. They think that everything is going to suddenly be just fine. We will have ridden out the storm and before we know it, we’ll be back to normal.
Let me pass on a deeply personal experience, because this is surely being replicated tens of thousands strong all over the country.
I will be factual and unemotional, and won’t attack the government, though with each passing day, my desperation becomes deeper.
I am a small business owner. I’m in retail. We’ve been in the current business for 15 years and like any retailer, we’ve seen our ups and downs. It was hard work during the GFC but unlike some others, we managed things carefully and we made it.
The business provides work for five people, all on well above the minimum wage. Wages and rent are by far our largest expense. The nature of our business makes it impossible to operate profitably on line. People like to physically see, touch and feel our products.
I don’t know for sure, but I’m reasonably confident that we’re probably pretty much representative of many average New Zealand small businesses.
Well before the government closed the country down completely, we implemented a protocol of social distancing between staff and customers. We put a sign up asking people not to come in if they had been overseas recently or if they were feeling in any way unwell. We didn’t need to do anything about customer to customer distancing because even on our busiest days, we seldom have more than two or three “groups” in at one time and there’s heaps of room for people to move around as they look and stay well apart. The social distancing takes care of itself but a gentle reminder from staff to all customers as they came in ensured they were aware of what was required, and like all civilized people, they were happy to comply.
We used sanitiser on all surfaces regularly and washed hands between customers. None of us (to our knowledge) has had the virus or has felt unwell in any way and to our knowledge, none of our customers have tested positive for it – EVER.
Suddenly, on literally a few hours notice, the government closed us down. Granted, they provided a contribution to wages and asked that we pay staff at least 80% of their regular wages. Their contribution is a flat and arbitrary $585.80 per employee working more than 20 hours a week, which includes all of our staff.
In round figures leaving out things like Kiwisaver contributions and other incidentals: say an employee is earning $950 a week. 80% of that is $760 leaving us to top it up by $174.20. But the whole purpose of this is to keep staff engaged and keep them at the ready for when things return to normal. They have commitments too and it’s not very fair to just suddenly chop them off at the knees and reduce their salaries by 20%. I made a decision to maintain full salaries for as long as I could. That means my business is topping up salaries to the tune of $7,284 per month so after 6 weeks of lock-down, I will have paid out $10,926 in wages with zero turnover and zero income. Even when we’re back to full trading, it will take months to get back to profitability.
I get that it’s my choice but in the spirit of “kindness” and “we’re in this together” I have done what I think is right. I calculated that for one month I could do this and advised my staff accordingly.
I didn’t think the full lock-down was necessary. Simply enforcing the kind of protocol we already had in place across the board and closing the border would have sufficed. The fact that supermarkets have produced ZERO infections before and during the lockdown speaks for itself. But OK, for one month, I was willing to tough it out.
Now it’s a month and five key trading days over a long weekend which our Prime Minister insists is 2 days. Go figure. And then, I’m still not allowed to open my doors for a further two weeks. Again, go figure how that all works.
Can I be bothered with the continued stress and the headaches?
If I fold because of this, 5 people will disappear from the economy and become welfare statistics. Our suppliers will lose the turnover we provide them and they too will have to lay off staff (because we won’t be the only ones).
Those who supply our suppliers with raw materials will do the same.
All of these people will have no disposable incomes to spend at supermarkets and other retailers and takeaways etc. and you don’t have to be a genius to work out that this, multiplied by tens of thousands is the future.
So if you are or were one of those people that think for one moment that once this initial storm has been weathered, we’ll just get on with life: Please think again.
If you enjoyed this BFD article please consider sharing it with your friends.
