On mental health & reopening

We’re almost to the halfway point of 2020, which is wild to think about. I feel like we’ve gone through a whole decade by this point. Some things that have happened in the last two weeks for me:

I opted to include a heavy dose of e-commerce and digital communication articles in this issue. Everyone could benefit from a great email newsletter and interesting blog posts (but hopefully, not to the detriment of your energy!).

It took a while to figure out what I was going to write for this issue. At 4:45 pm Pacific time today, I locked in on something: the mental health angle of reopening. It’s something I want to reflect on, so stay with me here.

I am not a cafe owner, I don’t have employees, nor do I have much of an overhead for operations. I do know that cafes and roasters operate on slim margins and that every bit helps. As reopens continue, I imagine it’s a lot of red tape, loan worries, and safety put in place not to mention the constant disinfecting that needs to happen throughout a shift. It’s a lot. 

Two posts on Instagram prompted this piece. I’m putting the images of them below in addition to the original post links.

Tried & True Coffee had an upset customer who maced the cafe. They were shaken for good reason and posted about the incident for their customers.

Mama Mocha’s has had verbally abusive customers for every shift. Cooped-up customers taking out their unhappiness on service workers is nothing new but pandemic-influenced unhappiness? That’s a new level. 

Tipped service workers are at higher risk for depression, sleep issues, and stress when compared to non-tipped employees. It also impacts women more than men which is significant as women make up 67% of all tipped workers. This study was published in pre-pandemic 2018.

On top of tipped wages and the associated customer service related mental health issues, there are also cross-sections of race, gender, gender identity and expression, and far more to consider. 

It goes to reason that between all of this, it’s difficult to work in a cafe and/or operate one. There are many ways to alleviate some of the stress but that unfortunately still takes time and groundwork. 

I’ve listed some ideas below and I imagine a little role playing of scenarios, especially if some aren’t feeling confident in speaking out against a customer, could be useful.

And lastly, make sure you’re taking care of yourself. If you scroll down this issue, you’ll find a link about mental health concerns for business owners. I have to constantly remind myself that we are in a pandemic and that productivity should not be a goal. Rather, I try to take one day at a time and take a deep breath for the next day.

Facebook added the Shops feature for Instagram & Facebook and Messenger Rooms (like Zoom) for Groups & events. It clarified its guidelines to avoid copyright infringement during Live broadcasts. It’s testing: skippable mid-roll ads, and new engagement alerts for group admins. Facebook also released a report on the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses.

Twitter is testing reply limits so people can restrict who can reply to their tweets. Could a future portion of Twitter involve audio tweets?

Instagram added: desktop commenting on IG Live, saving IG Live to IGTV, and Guides option on the profile that are kind of like a curated story (here’s a guide to Guides).

Feedback, questions, or fist bumps 👊 – send them my way by hitting the reply button. Also happy with the 👍 at the end. Or find me on the social networks @thejennchen.