Did the pandemic of coronavirus affect your business?

[Heatman]

COVID was a big problem in 2019/2020 when it broke out. So many businesses was shutdown and staffs in big numbers lost their jobs. It would appear that the pandemic have been contained but there were some businesses which couldn't recover.

Was your own business or work affected by COVID? Are you still suffering effects of COVID in your business or workplace today?

 

[Dead2009]

I worked in retail during this and the amount of people who thought it was the end of times was insane. People were running to the toilet paper and paper towel aisle and buying 5-6 at a time.

 

[DrLeftover]

Between me, my wife, and my brother (who ended up living with us for a couple of months).... we lost FIVE jobs.

Two full time, two part time, and one casual-seasonal (part time).

But we also cleaned up on unemployment and the "stimulus".

And my wife's home business, repackaging from bulk and selling smaller amounts of crafting material and mailing it directly to people, went through the roof! It took all three of us to keep up, and every day we had a BUNCH of packages for both the Post Office and more to take over to the UPS drop off which is about a mile away.

So it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

 

[Kyng]

Not really: we serve housing associations, and homes obviously didn't go away during the pandemic!

With that being said, I still work from home four days a week... only go into the office once a week. I quite like it like that: gives me an occasional change of scenery (and contact with co-workers), but involves nowhere near as much commuting.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

For me no, life was pretty much the same.

 

[MrDawn]

It affected my workplace pretty bad. No one bought anything. Not much went on for most of the entire year. The first 4 months of the lockdown was total bliss.

 

[Nebulous's iconNebulous]

It affected my workplace pretty bad. No one bought anything. Not much went on for most of the entire year. The first 4 months of the lockdown was total bliss.

Glad they didn't lay you off.

 

[MrDawn]

Glad they didn't lay you off.

I was given the option to go home for 4 months on reduced pay. However, I stayed on instead and carried on as usual. For the reason I had just gotten divorced. I was depressed and didn't want to be alone at the apartment for weeks on end. Any company was better than no company during that time for me.

My brother on the other hand stayed home for the first 5 months and then quit showing up altogether. He was on salary. He ended up quitting in early 2023 and moving on to a different career. He was sick of selling cars and tired of being a captive audience for people coming in off of the street wanting to kill time who would never buy anything.

I can empathize with him on that. Salesman want to sale cars. Salesman want to make money. They don't want people coming in who just want to talk, shoot the breeze, and don't buy anything. Because of that, my brother wasn't selling as much as he wanted to. He lost interest in it. He wasn't a bad salesman. As much as I don't like my brother, I have to admit that he was very good at his job. It just got to the point for him where it was just agonizing for him to come in and put up with people calling or coming in just to visit. He didn't want to talk to those people. He didn't want to put up with them. Neither do I.

It's a complete waste of time and a huge turn off. There's a lot of bs that comes with that job. Most salesman get paid by commission. The salesman don't like people wasting their time. It's rude of someone to come in and not make their intentions clear up front whether they want to buy. We even have lonely elderly men come in and just want to talk all day because they're retired, they're alone, and they have nothing to look forward to. It causes some of guys to leave or go lock themself in a bathroom for 2 hours and watch something on their phone until that person leaves. I had stated a long time ago about kicking people out if they weren't going to buy cars, parts, or use our auto services. It's honestly why I quit selling cars in 2007. A lot of people just want to come in and waste your time all day.