A silver lining for working life during corona

Stein Bakken owns two Bunnpris corner shops in Oslo and has felt the consequences of the corona pandemic. He has 16 staff across the two sites. Four of them were in quarantine at one time, but nobody got ill.  

“The biggest challenge has been to manage the flow of customers. There have been far more of them since so many have been working from home. 

“They don’t come just once a day, some are here two to three times. Meanwhile we must clean the premises, make sure there is enough hand sanitiser and stack shelves in what is a very small shop.”

Stein immediately offered to deliver food to customers who could not or dared not come to the shop.    

“Many older people live in the area where the shop is situated, and we wanted to extend a helping hand. Delivering food boxes is a very personal thing to do, you enter people’s flats. 

“We deliver for free with no lower limit for how much you must buy. But when one customer ordered three beers before lunch and three beers in the afternoon I had to tell him it would be good if he ordered six beers at the same time.”

Stein has tried to follow all official demands. He has installed plexiglass on the tills, social distancing warning signs and put hand sanitiser by the entrance. Since the shop is so small, queues have been forming since there is a limit to how many are allowed in at any one time. But despite the increase in turnover, few goods have sold out.

Have you and the staff been treated any differently than before?

“We have had a lot of praise and that feels good.”

Other shops have had different experiences, however. When we speak to another shop of similar size in the city centre, they tell us the number of customers there has fallen dramatically because everyone is working from home.