6 feet of personal space? Not for SC barbers, nurses and pizza delivery drivers

The coronavirus has changed the way business is conducted and forced many into becoming homebodies.

But for many workers, leaving home is required. Their jobs might not allow the flexibility of working remotely or they must be physically present to complete their duties. They are delivering meals, giving hair cuts, policing neighborhoods, treating patients, strengthening muscles and shuttling pedestrians.

These workers must consider the risks inherent to their lines of work — like the close interaction at the heart of many of their jobs — and the financial difficulty that would result if they don’t show up to work or if they became ill. They have to find ways to protect themselves and their loved ones while still providing vital services to the public.

The food delivery driver

The story of coronavirus in Kershaw County, South Carolina has been rapidly evolving over the past week and a half. The small town of Camden has been the epicenter of coronavirus in the state with 25 confirmed cases as of March 19.

It’s hard for Tommy Broadway, 34, to envision what business in his hometown will look like in a few weeks.

“It’s almost like before a hurricane, like it’s just uncertainty,” he said.

Broadway is a delivery driver for Domino’s Pizza, and he’s still going out, taking food to locals. One regular customer is Kershaw Health Medical Center, the main hospital in the county, Broadway said. But drivers have been more nervous to deliver at the hospital. Instead of entering the buildings, drivers have been handing over the pizzas outside, he said.

The good part, Broadway said, is that delivery is the core of his job, so his workplace is not facing the major changes some other restaurants have had to make since Gov. Henry McMaster ordered an end to dine-in service on March 17.

Business goes on as usual, if a bit slower and more cautious. Broadway said he’s been asked to leave pizzas on customers’ doorsteps to avoid face-to-face interaction — and the possibility of transmitting coronavirus through airborne droplets.

He is also taking precautions, only leaving home for work and essential errands, being mindful to wash his hands frequently and not touching his face, per health officials’ guidelines. Broadway’s father and grandmother are both in “high-risk” age ranges, he said, so he is trying to stay healthy for their sakes, too.

His 95-year-old grandmother lives at home in Camden and doesn’t go out much, but the family is limiting who and what can enter her house, too.

“I’m afraid to go see her,” Broadway said, because if she gets the coronavirus, “it could be a death sentence.”

The barber

Rick Boone was the only employee inside Carolina Barber shop in Five Points on Thursday.

Nearby, his sons, Anderson, 11 and Landon, 7, went back and forth between doing their homework and being bored, taking pictures with dad’s camera and playing with phones.

The shop normally stays quite busy, Boone said. They have one full-time and one part-time barber, plus a barber who works one day a week.

Barber shops in general have strict sanitation rules, regardless of the situation, Boone said. It slows down the operation a bit, but Carolina Barber employees have been cleaning the front door and chairs after every appointment.

Boone is trying to limit breathing in someone else’s air, although his job requires proximity and interacting closely with several people everyday.

“The scary thing about it is in this business, we don’t know who’s got it and who’s contagious,” he said.

He figures he will learn in the next day or two if the shop can stay open. As of Friday morning, South Carolina had not shut down barber shops or hair salons. That has left shop owners to make up their own minds about whether it’s responsible to keep the businesses open.

“It’s a scary thing,” Boone said. “I would feel horrible if someone got it through our shop or I got it and took it home to my family.”

The infection preventionist

Shanetta P. Williams has a front-row seat to the coronavirus, as an infection preventionist at Prisma Health in Columbia.

Her job is to keep patients from getting infections. In the case of the novel coronavirus, that has meant keeping up with a constant stream of new information and guidelines from state and federal officials.

As health workers and hospital administrators work to ensure COVID-19 does not spread, Williams is tasked with being centered and guiding her team.

“We are the voice, we are the calm in the storm,” she said.

That means long, demanding hours for Williams.

“Even when I’m not at work, I’m still working,” she said. “Lots of phone calls, lots of emails, lots of text messages in order to maintain the calm here.”

The police lieutenant

Before he was a Lexington Police Department lieutenant, Carrol Bledsoe worked in EMS for a decade. That medical training has come in handy lately, when determining how best to guard himself and his officers against the coronavirus. But his extensive experience in high-pressure situations has also enabled him to stay level-headed amid the uncertainty, he said.

“I’ve probably seen and been exposed to everything you can be exposed to out there,” Bledsoe, 50, said. “I’m laid back about it. That’s my personality anyway.”

At work, Bledsoe has helped the agency prepare just-in-case plans such as if an officer is exposed to the coronavirus or if that officer exposes others to the virus. Lexington Police Department also slightly altered work schedules so officers don’t cross paths during shift changes, avoiding unnecessary opportunities for exposure to COVID-19, he said.

It’s a departure from the usual closeness in the department, but Bledsoe is just glad he can still report to work as lieutenant of the patrol division.

“It’s what we do. And we’re gonna keep doing it no matter what, whether there’s a crisis going on with some virus or whether people don’t like us. We’re just going to keep doing what we do,” he said.

At home, Bledsoe’s daughters, ages 14 and 20, are in school remotely. They are old enough that he doesn’t worry about some things parents of younger students are dealing with. His wife, a manager of a medical office, started working from home on Thursday. The pantry is stocked.

Just two questions linger for Bledsoe: how long this new way of operating will continue and what it will mean for the economy. But for workers like him, who are effectively on the front lines of the labor force, the best course of action is to prepare and keep panic at bay, he said.

“Take precautions, but what’s gonna happen is gonna happen,” he said.

The personal trainer

By nature of his work, personal trainer Christian Kloot has depended on his clients keeping a consistent routine. The coronavirus pandemic has destroyed regular schedules for many, including Kloot’s regulars, who are staying home.

“I’ve lost about 50% of my clients at this point,” he said. “They’re obviously still loyal to me and will keep training but right now, they are social distancing themselves.”

His gym, Personally Fit, only employs three personal trainers so no more than 10 people are typically in the building at a time, Kloot said. Trainers use medical-grade disinfectant and natural antimicrobial sprays to clean machines after clients use them. But Kloot gets why his clients are worried, especially the ones most at-risk.

“I have a lot of older clients so I would be devastated if one of them got sick,” he said.

Kloot is still training — the government has not shut down exercise facilities yet — but he’s been devising other ways to make a living since before the coronavirus was declared a pandemic. He plans to launch a web-based personal trainer service by next week, so clients can do customized workouts at home and consult with him over the phone or web.

He plans to charge $250 per month for up to four workouts a week. He charges $50 per hour for in-person training.

“Working in this business, it’s not a great way to make money because you’re trading hours for money,” he said. “A way to scale up for trainers is doing online training ... I can provide value to more people this way.”

If this public health emergency takes a turn for the worst, Kloot is prepared for gyms to be shut down: he made a “huge batch” of sauerkraut and bought 100 pounds of grass-fed beef last week.

The one-man show

Many enterprises have a single or handful of specialties. When an unprecedented problem like the coronavirus comes through, it threatens to wipe out people’s entire livelihoods. Michael Kelley of Columbia knows that, and it makes him even more thankful for his job.

Kelley is Captain Telegram, and the owner of a business by the same name. Since he became known for his 50,000 singing telegrams and stints on the local radio, Kelley has expanded his one-man-show business to include shuttling services, hot air balloon rides and a medley of other work.

Events have come to a screeching halt and cut into the trolley service, which was a large part of his work, Kelley said. But he’s not worried about the viability of his work.

“I’m gonna be fine,” he said. “I’ve been making it up as I go for years. I have fun being disruptive. I get paid for being a moron. I have fun and this isn’t gonna last forever. My concern is for my little neighbor lady across the street who’s scared to death.”

Kelley plans to use the downtime to “look for morel mushrooms” in South Carolina forests, do some work on his home, spend time with his dogs and dream up new projects that can uplift others.

Maybe he’ll construct a small bandshell, hitch it to a trailer and perform an “eight-track concert tour,” singing into a megaphone in neighbors’ yards, he said. Maybe those in isolation will want to send singing telegrams to their family members or friends. He can show up with a bouquet of flowers and sing from the yard, he thought.

Kelley is still figuring it out.

“If nothing else, I have fun doing it,” he said.

After much silence on Wednesday morning, Kelley’s phone rings. It’s someone looking to book a hot air balloon ride — in some ways, the ultimate form of social distancing.