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Jun. 26th, 2020 03:33 pm Work is . . . an interesting experience.
The store has been good about insisting on masks - and the customers have, for the most part, been good about wearing them. I've had to ask a few people if they had one (mostly, they do, just in their purse or in their car . . . ) and luckily, we have a small supply of disposable masks to offer if they don't. Only one guy decided to leave instead of taking a mask.
Sanitation is done regularly, and we're keeping one set of doors locked, so we can have better awareness of whether customers are entering with masks or not, and if we were to approach our reduced capacity limits we would notice in time to act on that (we haven't yet. The store is actually quite large, so even before Covid stuff, we never really got close to capacity).
Still -- there's a feeling of uncertainty, of impermanence. Everyone is just . . . waiting to see what happens next.
We're planning on resuming buys (where we buy used books and media from the public) in a week or two, though in an altered way, by appointments and during limited hours, and before that happens we'll have beefed up the staff some - right now it's pretty much a skeleton crew, even for the reduced hours we're operating on.
I was furloughed for three months, almost exactly.
Other than the store manager and the assistant manager, who stayed on from the beginning to fulfill online orders, there's one other shift leader who came back as soon as they okayed curbside pickups, and two booksellers who came back with shorter hours when the state okayed limited capacity open hours. That's all of us, right now. There's one more guy still furloughed, who may or may not be called back next week.
The whole rest of the staff, a dozen people, were laid off.
So when we hire again, (which we need to do if we're to resume buying from the public, which we need to do if we're to restock the shelves, which we need to do to continue to sell things and thus exist as a store) we'll be trying to pull back in some of that laid off staff - who may or may not have found other work, who may or may not be willing to come back - and I have no idea how the lay-off will impact availability of benefits or starting pay. If they can't, or won't come back, then we'd need to hire new people - and with this skeleton crew, I really don't see how to properly train anybody new.
The whole thing just feels . . . unstable.
And that's not even addressing the part where there'll very likely need to be another lockdown at some point this year.
So . . .
It's interesting. In a way. Not terrible. Not great. We'll see.
The store has been good about insisting on masks - and the customers have, for the most part, been good about wearing them. I've had to ask a few people if they had one (mostly, they do, just in their purse or in their car . . . ) and luckily, we have a small supply of disposable masks to offer if they don't. Only one guy decided to leave instead of taking a mask.
Sanitation is done regularly, and we're keeping one set of doors locked, so we can have better awareness of whether customers are entering with masks or not, and if we were to approach our reduced capacity limits we would notice in time to act on that (we haven't yet. The store is actually quite large, so even before Covid stuff, we never really got close to capacity).
Still -- there's a feeling of uncertainty, of impermanence. Everyone is just . . . waiting to see what happens next.
We're planning on resuming buys (where we buy used books and media from the public) in a week or two, though in an altered way, by appointments and during limited hours, and before that happens we'll have beefed up the staff some - right now it's pretty much a skeleton crew, even for the reduced hours we're operating on.
I was furloughed for three months, almost exactly.
Other than the store manager and the assistant manager, who stayed on from the beginning to fulfill online orders, there's one other shift leader who came back as soon as they okayed curbside pickups, and two booksellers who came back with shorter hours when the state okayed limited capacity open hours. That's all of us, right now. There's one more guy still furloughed, who may or may not be called back next week.
The whole rest of the staff, a dozen people, were laid off.
So when we hire again, (which we need to do if we're to resume buying from the public, which we need to do if we're to restock the shelves, which we need to do to continue to sell things and thus exist as a store) we'll be trying to pull back in some of that laid off staff - who may or may not have found other work, who may or may not be willing to come back - and I have no idea how the lay-off will impact availability of benefits or starting pay. If they can't, or won't come back, then we'd need to hire new people - and with this skeleton crew, I really don't see how to properly train anybody new.
The whole thing just feels . . . unstable.
And that's not even addressing the part where there'll very likely need to be another lockdown at some point this year.
So . . .
It's interesting. In a way. Not terrible. Not great. We'll see.
