Covid19: Click to Shop, the Harsh Reality

For all of you that don't know, Greece is still on lockdown. I think we are 2-3 months already but now slowly they start opening schools and stuff.

We can move out for a walk, job or to buy groceries and pharmaceutical products from 5 in the morning to 9 in the night. ofc to do all that we need to send an SMS and there are restrictions still. For example, i can't go for a walk from the west part of Athens to the north one.

Anyway, a couple of days ago they opened the primary schools and now they have plans to open all the others as well. At the same time, they announced the click tp shop option in which you can go to the store you want and buy clothes or whatever you need to.

The stores should follow some health rules, like masks, a certain distance between the clients or the number of clients inside the store. That was something many small businesses waited for so long in Greece.

You see as i have mentioned before the small businesses are at a huge disadvantage compared to the big ones. Except for the fact that the bigger ones can sell at better prices, they also spend way more money on marketing than a small business can afford.

That means that during the pandemic it was quite easy for them to gain massive profits through their site, SEO and google ads! So now with the click to shop, everyone was happy and wanted to sell as much stock as they could!

The Harsh Reality

So the people took advantage of a loophole and that loophole was that they could go anywhere to shop, meaning that i could go from the west part of Athens to the center of Greece or wherever i want to with the "excuse" of shopping.

The vast majority took advantage of this and gathered with friends! Also, they took that chance and went straight to places in which a lot of people is gathered. Check the picture below to see what happened on a very well know street in the center of Athens.

Now check the lines that formed outside of some stores!

Now aside from that let me tell you what is happening in my area and more specifically in the "shopping district". I had to go to the shops today to change the size of some clothes, my family and friends gifted me during New Year's Eve.

Except for the fact that the full area was crowded like we had an event or Jesus showed up, mostly nobody followed the rules. That means that they had a lot of people getting in the store, some didn't even have masks on and the majority of them didn't wear the mask the correct way, meaning the nose was outside :P

I talked with 3 store owners, the 2 of them are people that i have bought clothes a bunch of times, so i know them and the other one is my cousin :P and ask them wtf is going on.

They told all told me that they gathered one day, all the store owners in the area i mean, or the majority of them (it's impossible to have everyone gathered i think) and they decided to "bend" the rules a little bit.

They did that because they lost so much money with the lockdown and stuff and they all afraid that they will sooner or later take back the click to shop option due to the high cases of Covid19. Thus they need to sell as fast their stock and make money.

For that, they also agreed that nobody will "tell the police" in the form of a complaint because the mini-war will erupt between them and at the end of the day everybody will lose.

From what i guess though they may, for example, be ok with more than the permitted limit getting in the shop but nobody agreed that they shouldn't wear masks per se. I get that those people are badly hurt, economically speaking so they need money and fast as the government doesn't help at all but i forsee a not-so-good future for as all.

They may not get it but they help to spread the virus faster and that will mean more lockdown, strict regulations again and at the of the day they will keep on losing money. I wish i am wrong though...