Note: We care about our members and our community. We value human lives and we understand the severity of COVID-19. However, we also need to be able to operate our business in some capacity. There are so many businesses that can operate right now without ever coming in 6 feet of the patron and can follow every “Safe Start” reopening guideline, but they cannot because our government has assumptions in how every business in that category operates. This is the letter we sent to Governor Inslee’s office.
If you don’t have a horse in this race, you might consider this read. Owning a business right now is not how it’s portrayed in the media. This is not a vacation, there is not enough aid available to supplement our revenue, we are losing traction in the market, and we don’t want unemployment.
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Dear Governor Inslee,
We have fallen through the cracks.
We are STILL not allowed to open our business. Benton country is in phase 1.5 but we are not allowed to have one masked business owner stand six feet away from a masked client, and instruct them on properly using a sanitized tool in their own 300 square foot space.
Right now, I can have an unmasked lunch at an outdoor restaurant with 5 friends, sit in a newly constructed beer garden with an appetizer, take swim lessons in a public pool, spend hours walking and touching items throughout the shopping mall, lay naked in a tanning bed, and be close enough to another person to get a massage or wax, but I am not trusted to follow those same “Safe Start” operation guidelines in order to conduct business in any capacity because I file my business under the category, “gym”. I own a gym, but can follow all of the phase 1.5 guidelines and have more control over my environment than retail chains deemed essential.
The generalization of business types in the “Safe Start Reopening Plan” does not consider the smallest of the small businesses. It lazily ignores the business owners who have complete control over capacity and cleanliness, regardless of the nature of the business. It allows for gym owners, photographers, small walk-through-only museums, and countless other sole proprietors and contract workers to fall through the cracks.
Any business that can meet the COVID-19 operational guidelines should be allowed to operate alongside our neighboring restaurants, bars, public pools, hair salons, and shopping malls. We have more control, less variable, and interact with a smaller, more regular clientele than any eatery or retail store.
We have been closed since March 26th, and are of the few businesses that still cannot operate in any capacity. Our bottles of medical grade cleaners, mask-requirement signs, COVID-19 Safe Start Operational Plan, cleaning guidelines, and touch-less thermometer have been set in place since June and are now collecting dust. We met all employer/business requirements to reopen within two days after the Safe Start Plan went public and yet we are denied to operate with the same restrictions as a personal service (hair salons, nail shops, tattoo parlors, physical therapy, chiropractic care, massage services, etc.). According to the Safe Start plan, we will be able to safely talk to 3 other clients in our building at the same time restaurants are approved to increase operations at 50% capacity, and bowling teams can share the same equipment. This is the problem in categorizing business by type, without any exception for the small businesses that can meet all reopening guidelines.
Have you been to every gym? Our gym is not the TV version of a fitness center.
For eight years we have operated a small-group, instructional strength training program. Ironically, the COVID-19 restrictions are not very different from how we have always operated. We are asking that in our 1200 square feet of space, we you allow for our one and only coach (and co-owner) to be able to work with three regularly-attending members at one time. Our trainees are stationed on individual platforms, 8 feet away from another person on every side. Both the coach and the trainee would be masked, the equipment would be sanitized before and after use.
We are different, and perfectly capable of conducting business in this way if allowed. Our members physically cannot perform within 8 feet of one another as the individual platforms are that far away by design. We personally anchored those platforms inches into the concrete and they cannot be moved to accommodate more people. We knew we would always provide quality coaching with limited membership. A clean, spacious, instructional environment is apart of our business model— even though we are a gym.
We specialize in barbells. Our only equipment is iron and steel, and a couple vinyl benches that have always been regularly disinfected. We don’t have a lobby or waiting room. We don’t have showers, changing rooms, any shared floor space for ground work, or seated machines. We don’t have racks of dumbbells, kettle bells, or medicine balls that share hands. We’ve never allowed tank tops that would expose skin to the bars, and encourage long socks or leggings to be worn that prevent textured bars from grabbing the skin while deadlifting. We provide chalk that acts as a barrier between hands and equipment. We discontinued the use of our limited cardio equipment at the start of the COVID outbreaks, before closures were required.
We were already taking precautions and following guidelines, and we can continue to follow them better than Walmart. Our members can make appointments, take their temperatures at home before and upon arriving, limit the use of our restroom, wait in their cars until our capacity allows them to enter the facility, and receive coaching on their own platform without ever being touched or coming within 6 feet of the coach or another member. Tim, my husband, co-owner and the only coach, will continue disinfecting everything before and after each person. As we are the only owners and we do not have employees, we have absolute control over these procedures and we follow them because we care about our member’s health and our liability risk is higher than any LLC or corporation.
Our county’s original “Phase 2 Safe Start Guide for Fitness Businesses” started with, “The COVID-19 virus is more easily transmitted through indoor physical fitness, so there are extended requirements.” This has never been proven. This is based on the assumption that all gyms are dirty, sweaty, places where human bodies must be in close quarters, where people will inevitably be exhaling and salivating on one another.
We are a gym, so we must be squatting, benching, pressing, and deadlifting closer to each other than two people across from one another at an outdoor table, sharing an appetizer. The nature of our business must require us to be closer to one another than a nail salon using shower curtains to separate guests seated one foot apart. We must be closer in proximity to someone training, strengthening their own muscles, bones and ligaments to prevent or treat back pain, than a chiropractor performing manual adjustments. This could not be further from the truth. When you train with an educated and experienced coach, not only do you rarely if ever need a spotter, but you also don’t need to be physically manipulated to understand what is being asked of you. As an introvert, this must have been one of the motivators behind Tim obtaining his master’s degree, university-required coaching certification, and continuing to invest $3,200 per year in continued education.
The businesses currently open are not any safer or allow for more distance.
We drive by the shoulder-to-shoulder lines outside retail stores and gardening centers, our shopping cart still gets bumped by what feels like overcrowding in the grocery store, and we watch neighboring taverns serve unmasked individuals under pop up tents in parking lots. We watch city-owned spaces hold social events that are masked but well over the gathering limit.
We read the “safe start reopening” emails - now swim lessons are allowed, salons can operate at limited capacity, and you can meet with 5 people for a social gathering outside of your home. We read the news- large fitness centers have changed their names from “club” to “clinic”, or “fitness” to “wellness”, and instead of personal training, they now offer “functional health” as “medical alternatives”. They get the green light to reopen. Now those personal trainers can work with up to five clients at one time, providing the same service they were before. You, our government, have allowed them to offer “functional health as a medical alternative”, once approved by an individual’s physician. How is this different from receiving strength training from an educated and experienced strength coach?
We commend the creativity of these business and their ability to “pivot”. We respect and fully understand the business currently operating. We are concisely supporting locally owned restaurants and retailers. This is not to question those practices, but bring attention to the socioeconomic inequality. It needs to be recognized that the businesses with more money or connections, or those willing to take on more debt, can take “pivoting” risks that many of us cannot. For a sole proprietor or freelancer, it means using grocery money to take a gamble on a new business license, insurance policy, outdoor structure that will need disbanded in the winter, and even a lawyer, just to offer the same service we were before to a now declining demand. The categorization of business and allowance for these loop holes disproportionately effects small business generating lower-revenue and the lower-income individuals who must now pay increased prices for a “medical service” and have access to a physician. Our business provides a similar high quality service, in a more controlled environment with less variables, and does not require medical insurance or a costly physician’s visit.
Considering the health trends of our county, we should be essential. Right now in Benton and Franklin Counties, 30% of our youth are obese by the 11th grade and 13% of adults do not have a primary doctor. Strength training is the only proven means of physically increasing bone density, and our population is becoming more sedentary than ever. Considering the statistics of our country, strength training should be widely recognized as a health benefit and medical alternative by everyone and any gym that uphold strict reopening guidelines should be valued. They can offer a critical service right now that large-capacity fitness center cannot.
Our service cannot be provided online.
You cannot receive in-person coaching with expensive, high-quality strength training equipment anymore than you can receive an online pedicure, haircut, or massage. Online, in-home training was it’s own market before COVID, and would mean entering an entirely new market that has recently exploded with competition. Asking us to go online, is asking us to create a new business and marketing to an entirely new audience. We would have to cross our fingers in hopes that we make back any of those new costs in special software, platform, and marketing fees. It is just not that simple. If you can say, “you should offer this online- I’ve so many people doing that...”, you’ve proven my point. It’s highly competitive, not our business model, and a much more complex service to provide than it seems.
Walking and hiking has its limits.
If you’re not in Eastern Washington right now, heat exhaustion and stroke are legitimate risks as many days are over 90 degrees. In addition, these activities cannot mimic barbell training. You will not be able to maintain the cardiovascular conditioning or muscular strength you once obtained from regular strength training by riding a bike or hiking a trail. There is nothing else that can progressively load the spine and strengthen the entire body. This has been proven. The data is available, and all of our members are experiencing it.
Many of our members are nurses, laborers, teachers, and federal or city employees. They are essential workers who rely on regular strength training to not only maintain their physical strength and mental health, but to simply support the physical requirements of their jobs. Since closing, these individuals have experienced de-training which results in aches, pains and injuries by performing minor everyday tasks. They are now forced to seek medical aid because the alternative/preventive measure they were taking with us is not available.
Many of our members are individuals who moved here for work. They don’t have local family or friends. They are now working from home and experiencing isolation. Since closing, communications with us and the world in general have become sparse. Many of our members also struggle with body image and weight issues. Since closing they have either gained weight, lost weight, picked up poor eating habits, or lost the progress they made in mental health and body dysmorphia.
There is not enough aid to keep us closed.
We applied for an exception. We stated our unique service offering, ability to control all variables, and the value we provide to essential workers. We were denied. Our copy and pasted email response simply stated, “you are a gym and can reopen when it states in the plan.”
We applied for two grants, never asking for more than our commercial rent. We did not make the cut along with hundreds of other businesses. Less than 6% of the business in Benton County that applied for the first CARES Act aid were granted funding. We did better in the first quarter of this year than last year, so we didn’t display a large “decrease in revenue” that is asked for on many forms. That was months ago, and is no longer the case.
The media talks about quick grants, but those are limited, require certain qualifications or spending limitation, and are sometimes granted based on a lottery system. While a random drawing seems the like a fair solution to distributing aid- there is a limit in available dollars and it doesn’t consider the level of need. For example, a business can request up to $10,000. This is fight or flight for business owners- are folks to blame if they request the maximum amount, rather than what they need to scape by? If they applied in June, they not receive aid for July, August, and the any months that pass until they can open.
This is not just a financial fight.
No one is talking about how it feels to be called “non-essential”. No one is talking about the mental, emotional, and financial struggle many business owners are experiencing as we attempt to regain momentum. The hardest part was opening and gaining attraction, hoping that enough people hear about you and find enough value in your offering that you can pay the bills required to stay open, let alone provide for your family. Many of us are experiencing that again.
The term “non-essential” will have lasting effects on small businesses and the self-employed far beyond the immediate COVID-19 classifications.
Mortgage applications now require all self-employed individuals to provide answers to a slew of new questions. One requirement is providing a collection of news articles and economic projections proving that their business has sustainability. Meanwhile, our business is to remain closed until the next phase and our county’s application to move into the next phase is on hold indefinitely.
For eight years we have paid taxes and made charitable contributions to our community. We have provided our community with the same service now being called a “medical alternative”, but we must remain closed because we lack the resources to jump hoops. We have put our life savings into something that had finally began to pays our monthly bills. OUR INCOME IS ESSENTIAL to our living. The PUD, our private student loan lender, county treasurer, commercial insurance broker, and our landlord consider our payments essential. You cannot guarantee enough aid to pay those essential bills, but we can, if allowed to conduct business. Our revenue directly impacts us, married business owners, but it also impacts our community. It allows us to continue to be charitable, collect and pay taxes, and stay out of food banks.
Every business waiting for phase 2 who (and I say “who” because it’s often one or two people, not a company with a staff) is small enough to have complete control over their space and procedures. They are feeling left out, not trusted, and valued less than the garden center at a home improvement chain. We are hardworking, tax-paying, community-minded Americans and we’re sitting in the cracks, just wanting to earn income for our work. We just want to be safe, help people, keep our investment alive, and earn enough to make our own way without debt or government assistance.
We started this business because we were different. We have been and will always be different. We refuse to break laws, manipulate guidelines, or deviate from what we believe is a fair and ethical exchange of service for payment. We will continue to pay taxes, be charitable, and talk to our members anyway we can.
Do not confuse this letter with a general plead for sympathy and don’t assume we don’t care about people’s lives. We understand the severity of the virus and want to take every precaution to reduce transmission, just as we do when we buy groceries, go the doctor’s office, or support any other business that is currently open. This is a request to review your gross oversight that is determining which businesses can and cannot be in operation based on business type. This is a request to review the practice of making exceptions for businesses with more employees, more resources, or more economic impact on a global scale.
Any business that can operate with the current guidelines in place should be allowed. Any business that can provide 300 square feet of space per patron, utilize masks, reduce or eliminate shared materials, limit time inside the space, and maintain the government-approved cleaning procedures should be allowed to operate.
Our income is essential to our lives, our son’s life, our loyal members, local community, and the future of the business we have invested in and value more than our own home or any other personal belongings. It is your privileged duty and obligation to consider the thousands of small business owners being forced to close or take on debt because of this generalization-based policy, and provide a fair set-standard for businesses to be in operation.
Regards,
Amanda Young
428 E Columbia Drive
Kennewick, WA. 99337
