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The opening order that takes effect after Easter can bring new problems in the life of the stores. Professional organizations support any deal that can open stores that have been closed for weeks, writes the World Economy.
Monitoring the number of customers may cause additional work compared to the previous rules, but it is still better than the limited opening hours, György Vámos, secretary general of the National Trade Association (OKSZ), told Prime Minister Viktor Orbán that the government supports the Hungarian Trade and Industry Association. The Chamber of Commerce and Economic Agents proposed changes.
Under the modified rules, stores can be open from five in the morning until ten thirty, but only one customer for every ten square meters can be in their area. Gergely Gulyás, head of the Prime Minister’s Office, later clarified that all stores could open as soon as the number of vaccinated people reached 2.5 million.
Based on the vaccination rate, this is expected to occur in the days after Easter. The general secretary of the OKSZ indicated that the longer opening hours are a relief mainly for grocery stores, where congestion usually develops between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Opening hours based on square meters increase security, if customers are better distributed, a crowd cannot form. It’s much safer to line up in front of a store than in a confined space at the checkout counter.
The transition to a system based on square meters is a good rule of thumb and understandable, but implementation will not be as easy as neither stores nor employees have the right to prevent a customer from entering the store despite the ban. This can be a source of tension, giving stores time to prepare, said Zoltán Karsai, president of the Trade Employees Union (KASZ).
He added that in many places there are digital customer counters in hypermarkets that measure both the number of exits and incoming, and in other places it is the custodian’s job to track the traffic. The real problem will be in the smaller stores, where two or three people work, and one or two of them sit at the checkout. Additional labor may be required at these locations as there is no capacity to do so. That is why KASZ recommends that stores employ a hired security guard. This is an additional cost, but if we assume the store was previously closed and there was no turnover, it is still the best option.
He estimates that for the largest hypermarkets with an area of 6,000 square meters, there may be between 200 and 250 people in the retail space at a time.
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