How the Small Businesses Operate During the Lockdown in Greece

We are still on lockdown in Greece and things are tough especially for the businesses. To tell you the truth a lot of people don't actually care about the measures and thus they don't follow them.

On the other hand, they are sick and tired of the government's new measures and regulations that actually make no sense. For example, you can't go for a drink or to eat at a restaurant but you can use the train and busses which are way too crowded.

Many small businesses have already declared bankruptcy and many people have lost their jobs. Greece is a country that lives off tourism and as you can guess we are screwed. I guess though that during the summer they will mostly open up everything like they did last year.

And then tourists will come, many people will work and in the winter we gonna go again on a lockdown because everyone will be infected. Anyways, i was curious about how some small businesses survive these days.

There are 2 main things that they are doing in order to survive. The first one is that mostly anyone created a website and e-shop to sell their stuff. It's hard to gain traffic though, especially when you got big companies that pay a lot of money in ads.

I will explain the other thing shortly with a personal experience of mine that happened yesterday. I wanted to buy a small gift for a friend and found a shop nearby my home. It was 20 minutes by foot so i reached out to them via Facebook.

I asked whether they have the item that i want and when they said yes i asked if they can keep it and if i can come over tomorrow to take it and pay. They replied positive and so the next day i went over the store.

Note that the stores are supposed to be close. So i went there, the owner told me that she will come out just in case anyone sees us and so she gave me what i bought. She also, made me a better price if i was ok not to receive a receipt ;)

Now everyone was happy because she sold something in a day without paying extra taxes and without paying the delivery/courier. I was happy because i bought it cheaper and received it in a day. I didn't have to wait for the courier for example that given their full working schedule i may had to wait over a week.

Now, this thing is something that's happening quite often. I had heard many shop owners that if you call them, you may go inside the shop specific dates but ofc they need to know your name. In a way, it's like you book an appointment.

I don't know whether that is right or wrong, but i know that people are tired of this situation. I would say that the average person should still be patient but the store owners need to work or else their life is ruined.

The amount of money they receive from the government is basically nothing and honestly speaking they can't live with that money. They may only cover some minor expenses or at the best, they can pay their rent. Nothing more.