JULY 2020

Coping With COVID:
Businesses and Professionals Face Uneven Impact
BY PAUL NATINSKY
The coronavirus crisis ushered
in a crazy quilt of regulations,
ever-shifting medical science
and chaos of different degrees for
businesses.
In Michigan, experiences under
quarantine and reopening are as varied
as the myriad theories about how
COVID-19 is transmitted.
Mike Sarafa is part owner of a
company that operates almost 400
SuperCuts salons in seven states, including
80 stores in Michigan. The
late March government-imposed
lockdown temporarily shuttered
Michigan operations and forced the
company to furlough thousands of
employees companywide.
SuperCuts provided health insurance
benefits to its 98 percent
female workforce—many of them
moms—during the shutdown. The
company also provided a small bonus
in March and paid a similar returnto-work
bonus June 22, when employees
returned to work. Sarafa said
90 percent of his Michigan workforce
was expected back, a similar return
rate to Ohio, where 85 percent
of employees were back on the job in
late May.
“We have spent a lot of time and
resources building the culture that
we’re proud of,” says Sarafa.
The company drew on a combination
of credit lines and PPP (Paycheck
Protection Program) loans to
weather the crisis. Still, with reduced
capacity to accommodate social distancing,
the cost of personal protective
equipment and zero revenue
during the shutdown, Sarafa says the
company has suffered.
“If we’re lucky and business goes
as we hope, we think we can dig out
of it in the next 12 months. It’s a
huge hole, about 30 percent of our
revenue for the year,” he explained.
Enduring changes attributable
to COVID include eliminating the
waiting area and banning cash payments.
Customers wait for their appointments
in cars and can only use
plastic in the store to avoid using
germ-laden currency.
“This thing is real,” Sarafa said of
the coronavirus. “I don’t want (the
Ashley Audisho (left) and Lindsey Wydick on the front lines at Beaumont Hospital
Chaldean community) to be too cavalier
about it. A lot of people think
that there was something not exactly
true about what was going on, and
I think that’s a mistake. There’s too
many scientists and too many medical
professionals on the frontlines of
this stuff that understand very clearly
what we’re up against and we should
listen to them.”
Sarafa said Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
was right to respect the seriousness
of the pandemic, but wishes she
had been better about transparency
and communication.
“It was very unclear and very hard
to know in Michigan what we were
up against, what kind of timelines we
were talking about, what they were
measuring for, what they were looking
for,” he said. He pointed out that
dental offices and dozens of other
personal contact businesses reopened
weeks before hair salons.
Sarafa said Ohio, where the company
also does business, was more
clear about what was expected, resulting
in a quarter of the deaths
and half the infections occurring in
Michigan, and enabling businesses to
reopen weeks earlier.
Double Whammy
Ashley Audisho works as a medical/
surgical nurse at Beaumont Hospital
in Royal Oak. In addition to being
a frontline worker, she has scheduled
a wedding for September in front of,
originally, 700 guests. The guest list
is now 300. Families will sit together
and hand sanitizer passed around to
accommodate COVID concerns. A
June 2021 backup date provides her
peace of mind against unpredictable
changes in the course of the pandemic.
Audisho works on the only floor
in the hospital that is a non-COVID
floor. Still, she has been pressed into
service on coronavirus areas four or
five times. In addition to the stress of
risking infection, she says it takes five
minutes to gear up for COVID patient
contact and another five minutes
to safely gear down and dispose
of contaminated PPE. And that is
every time a nurse leaves and enters
a COVID patient’s room.
“People now kind of see what you
do. A nurse’s job is hard as it is before
COVID, but I think now because of
everything that is going on, people
have a better appreciation for nurses,”
she says. “But also UPS workers,
people who work in grocery stores.
You appreciate people so much more
because they don’t have a choice,
they don’t have the ability to stay
home and work from home.”
As nice as it is to be considered a
hero, Audisho says healthcare workers
often receive tentative reactions
when they are in public and sometimes
feel obligated to notify those in
contact with them that they work in
healthcare.
Mixed Bag
Real estate was completely shut
down from mid-March through May
7, said Tammy Jonna, a real estate
agent with DOBI Real Estate.
Jonna has been in residential real
estate for a little more than five years.
“When my three boys were getting
older and in school full-time, it felt
like a natural path for me with a background
in sales and customer service.”
“Initially, we had several restrictions
such as PPE requirements and
limited people at each showing—no
more than four people in a property
at one time,” she said. “We were not
allowed to hold any open houses.
People were still very nervous to
allow showings or to go see other
homes. The restrictions were lifted
in early June. We are now allowed to
conduct open houses and the number
of people at a showing is no longer
limited.”
Still, business is not as usual. “I
take every necessary precaution when
it comes to social distancing,” said
Jonna. “It is critically important that I
set a good example for my clients, and
that they see that I take their health
and wellbeing seriously. My brokerage,
DOBI Real Estate has provided
24 CHALDEAN NEWS JULY 2020