Several states have eased lockdown restrictions, including Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Now, businesses are deciding whether to reopen, and, if so, reorganize in order to keep staff and customers safe.
Laura Rea Dickey, CEO of family-owned Dickey's Barbecue Pit, told Cheddar on Monday that the chain's restaurants are slowly reopening their dining rooms to customers and have taken steps to implement social distancing rules in seating arrangements.
"Our dining rooms, we are reconfiguring them. The tables are set, but we're pulling away those excess chairs, making sure seating is six feet apart. When you come into a restaurant you'll see hand sanitizer by the door, you'll see the pit crew in face masks and gloves, and then you'll see everything set up to just help that social distancing," Dickey said.
While customers who arrive together will be able to sit together, there will not be large communal tables like they had before.
During the first few days of the lockdown, the barbecue chain saw dining room traffic drop to less than 9 percent according to the CEO. But, because of their digital services, it was able to recover some of the lost revenue.
"Our sales, thankfully, because we had a very strong online ordering, very strong delivery, very strong curbside, and we've always been caterers -- barbecue lends itself to that -- that we were set up," she said. "It certainly took us six weeks to replace dining room traffic to digital traffic, one to one, but we hit that on Thursday."
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
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Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
