Thousands of businesses throughout the province will have to close their doors on Sunday when Alberta’s newest COVID-19 restrictions take effect.
Announced on Dec. 8, the new public health measures mean some businesses will be required to shut down as of Dec. 13, while others will have to reduce capacity or limit their in-person access.
Barbershops, hair salons, beauty businesses and spas throughout the province are among the businesses required to close — right in the midst of the busy holiday season.
As the shutdown deadline approaches, many of them have extended their operating hours to try to see as many clients as possible before they’re forced to cease operations.
In Calgary, Influence Salon owner Wendy Belanger said phones have been ringing off the hook with clients asking to bump up their appointments.
“The phones are definitely blowing up for sure,” Belanger said. “People are getting a lot of private messages like, ‘Please, can you put me in?’ And we’re just putting everyone to our main phone lines to make sure they get in.”
“We’re getting as many guests as we can in rights now.”
“We have two shifts,” Belanger said. “We have our morning shift and we have our afternoon shift. Morning was 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and (afternoon) was 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., so what we’ve done is we’ve just extended on either side of that.”
“Friday night, it’s a late-night and Saturday, it’s an all-nighter. But you know what? Everybody wants to do it. And we’re going to take it to the very end.”
The province said the new restrictions will be in place for at least four weeks, until Jan. 12, 2021.
Belanger said while news of another shutdown wasn’t unexpected, she wasn’t anticipating it would last a full month.
“We saw that it was coming. I think we always had an idea that it was going to come. We’ve always been trying to be one step ahead,” she said. “I thought maybe two (weeks) but four weeks was … wow.”
“We’ve always in the back of our minds been thinking, ‘OK, what are we going to do if this happens?’ We had our COVID-19 plan.”
“When the first lockdown happened, we laid everybody off. We kept paying everybody’s benefits because we wanted to make sure that everyone’s mental health was still OK. That’s something that I did as an owner. We had Zoom meetings once a week to make sure everyone was okay and stayed focus — and that’s what we’re going to do again.”
“There’s no sense being angry right now. We’re in the thick of it and we can be angry and make this more difficult or we can just push through it.”
Belanger is by no means the only business owner faced with potentially laying off employees right before Christmas.
“I literally haven’t slept,” said Robbie Crosswhite, owner of Ruby Gorgeous Salon in Edmonton. “It was four hours of sleep… it’s tiring.
“People started texting me: ‘Can I change my appointment?’ and then I started messaging people that were booked later on to see if I could get them in and then eventually you have to sleep at some time so the schedule is full and we can’t get anybody else in.”
While the late boom in business will help, Crosswhite says it won’t cover costs during the closure.
“It’s super crazy to not be able to make money. Your bills don’t stop. You have to pay everything still.”
In Calgary, Soma Hammam and Spa director Lourdes Juan said that while the restrictions are needed, the timing is unfortunate because December is the spa’s busiest month.
“To not end the year with that is going to be really, really tough for my staff,” Juan said. “I feel for every small business that has to close their doors at a really critical time.”
“A spa closing at the busiest time, my service staff (are) a lot of single moms, a lot of single-income households — and they’re really scrambling before Christmas. And we have to think of not only the entrepreneurs that pour their heart and soul into their business but also the staff that work there and how it affects them.”
“Our financials are going to look wonky this year anyway, and so if we have to empty out bank accounts and give bonuses so that people can put food on their table, at the end of the day, that’s what we’re going to do.”
Juan said she too has decided to extend her business hours to accommodate more clients before the shutdown starts.
“The phones have been going off all day so the staff are working around the clock.”
“With the extended hours, we’ll be able to accommodate more people from now until then, but really we’re just moving appointments that were supposed to be next week to this week and then trying to facilitate (the sale of) as many gift certificates as possible before the Christmas season and before we close.”
Pretty in the City in Edmonton offers cosmetic services like eyelash extensions and eyebrow treatments.
“Within an hour that we had 50 phone calls of people wanting to rebook and schedule their appointment earlier before we close,” owner Jennifer Andrews said.
“We are devastated that it is happening at our busiest time of year but we also want everyone to be safe and want ourselves to be safe.”
– With files from Sarah Offin and Chris Chacon, Global News
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