It’s 8:45 a.m. on a recent weekday. I’ve taken a half hour run (minus random walking minutes mandated by my canine running companion), showered, elbow-bumped my husband, and driven to my office in Seattle – and washed my hands eight times. Health professionals would applaud all my activities, except the part where I go to work. But that’s the plight of many small business owners.
A litigation-based law practice is constrained by statutes, common law, and court rules that dictate how we operate. Some courts have electronic filing capability; many do not. Jurisdiction is almost exclusively obtained by physical service of process. Many legal procedures require notices through the U.S. mail. The operational side of our business is dependent on processing mail, receiving and depositing payments from clients (most of whom pay in the form of checks), allowing legal messengers access to our office, and interacting with building maintenance vendors.
I’m weary of the “just stay at home” rants by people who have the luxury to isolate themselves. Wealth, power, technology-based employment, and retirement facilitate self-quarantining decision making. Going to the office or working from home are binary alternatives, but complex issues factor into that choice. Mathematical analytics, if they were available, might provide helpful algorithms that would supply logical and quantitative answers; they could take into account the ability to work remotely, the sustainability of the business if you do so, the age and health status of employees, state safety mandates, the dependence on personal interactions, and other factors.
For our little law practice, we do not have the luxury of shuttering our doors without essentially closing the business. Our financial model, like many professional service companies, is dependent on allocating administrative and legal tasks along an established hierarchy of skill sets, which clients scrutinize with sophistication. It’s not defiance on my part to sit at my business desk every day instead of at my home office; it’s a sobering recognition that the buck stops with me.
As the firm’s founder and senior partner, I have the privilege of choosing where I work from. But that decision cannot be based solely on personal desire; I have the health, welfare, and financial needs of 15 people to evaluate. Unless I have a disqualifying health condition, if I seclude myself at home, I am demonstrating a belief that I am more valuable than others and that I fall somewhere else on the expendability continuum than they do. The ethics of asking someone to come to the workplace while I earn a living in the comforting confines of my home troubles me.
My request is that my critics appreciate the meticulous and judicious decisions that business owners make during these troubling times. Going to the office, while practicing social distancing, reduced staffing, internet connectivity, and obsessive hand washing, is not akin to partying at the beach with dozens of friends.
In the angst of anxious times, it is easy to retreat to popular and recognized safety dictates without considering the prudent and exacting deliberations that moral leadership demands. My objective, and my obligation, is to continually assess the risks and imperatives that align the path of responsibility. I ask for your support and understanding while I do so. In return, I promise that if I see you on the street, I will maintain a respectfully safe distance from you.