To Our Wonderful Customers,
The past six weeks have been difficult for us all. Accustoming ourselves to a time of social distancing, stay-at-home orders, and "lock downs" while simultaneously trying to navigate unemployment claims, reduced incomes, and new working and educational situations has not been easy. Our friends and neighbors have been traversing entirely new and sometimes perilous terrains all the while hearing about how important it is to "open the state for business"
Since Weller Book Works closed our doors to the public on March 28, Weller family members have been working uncompensated behind the scenes to fill ecommerce orders via shipping and to provide safe curbside pick up. We've been heartened, and at times overwhelmed, by the orders and the encouragement we've received from you. You've kept our business from collapsing.
The experience has made clear to us, more than ever, why we love bookselling and what makes a bookstore a bookstore. It is, in a word, community. We could fill ecommerce orders all day long, in fact we have recently. But without you physically present, our space feels like an attractive warehouse. We miss your conversation, our events, the chance meetings that happen with an open shop.
That's why we want to open our doors to you again. BUT, we don't want to open them yet because we're not convinced it's safe. The number of COVID-19 cases in Salt Lake County and the state are not steadily declining yet. We are watching the numbers, listening to health experts, and engaging in conversations with our landlords. All of this is so we can open our doors to you as soon as is prudent.
Below is a letter -- a manifesto -- we wrote collaboratively with the Kings English and Ken Sanders. It expresses the pain we've all felt during our closures and the trepidation we feel now. It was sent to Governor Herbert and Mayors Wilson and Mendenhal this morning.
A Manifesto: Three Salt Lake City Booksellers Weigh in on the May 1 Reopening of Our Businesses
Dear Governor Herbert, Mayors Mendenhall and Wilson,
For the safety of our customers, our booksellers, and our community we oppose tomorrow’s premature lifting of restrictions that have helped slow the onslaught of the coronavirus in Utah. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Salt Lake County has risen steadily this week from April 26 with 35 cases; April 27 showing 44 cases; and April 28, 66 diagnosed cases.
Along with the victims of COVID-19, we, our colleagues in books, in retail, in restaurants and in services, are fighting for not only our lives but our economic survival—and that of our staff.
Our businesses are suffering, our sales are disappearing, and our very futures are at stake.
We, proud members of the culture and community of Salt Lake City, are terrified for our own futures and yours.
Over the past weeks we have taken every step we conceivably could to keep our customers in books yet out of harm’s way—from curb-side pickup to local delivery to virtual storytimes. We will continue to do so, and all three of us want to thank our devoted customers for their big-hearted and unswerving support as we developed these strategies to avoid direct physical contact.
Much as we would love to throw open our doors to the public for business as usual on May 1
st
, we believe we would risk our lives along with those of our employees and customers by doing so.
For small businesses such as ours, even reliable access to necessary cleaning and disinfecting supplies is still out of reach!
For small businesses such as ours, where the face-to face connection of bookseller and customer is a vital but intimate piece of the bookselling magic for which we are known, the infection with coronavirus of a single employee who has been forced to work openly with the public could bring on the very destruction we have fought so hard to avoid, forcing us to send our few employees home to quarantine and leaving no one to run our stores—even in the marginal ways we now do.
For small businesses such as ours, the infection with coronavirus of a single customer whose safety we could not guarantee, however effectively we mask and sanitize, is unthinkable.
To suppose we can totally reopen our economy while COVID-19 cases are rampant in our state is magical thinking at best—and an idea we suspect our mayors view with misgivings.
As responsible employers we resist the idea of putting our booksellers (or our customers) at risk, however much we long for the return to a normal world.
Respectfully,
Ken Sanders
Betsy Burton and Anne Holman
Catherine and Tony Weller
.
