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Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

If your store closed for a few hours would that really be a disaster? Would you manager actually fire you if you refuse to work that much overtime? You're not obligated to work yourself into a mental breakdown.

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A lot of stores could close temporarily without any real impact to society. At least for long enough to get over rona

...provided their employees were still being paid.

And that the business is still making money to pay the employees. A lot of restaurants are saddled with debt and can't just pay employees when they aren't generating work.

Or the pay is coming from the government.

Unfortunately I don't think there is anymore will power in either party to continue extending the covid pay.

I agree. My point was that this would be a requirement for the stores to close without any real impact on society.

The cost of childcare overshadows the earning power of these employers. It’s a loose loose situation

For a store that's true, but it's also happening in residential care facilities where it can be a matter of neglecting care or even life or death when they are severely under-staffed, and the staff who do come in have more work, longer hours, and more patients per nurse than they can handle. Should an infected but asymptomatic person come to work and risk spreading it to their patients? Is that worse than the patient getting neglected and at risk or dying because of a staffing shortage? I don't know the answer.

A surprising number of stores (and restaurants - maybe especially restaurants) operate on razor thin margins.

Plus contrary to some romanticized images of the successful small business owner driving Porsches, most store/restaurant owners probably barely make enough to make ends meet.

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