Many small businesses have had to close their doors for these past few months due to the spread of COVID-19, but not all have.  Home Cleaning Centers of America is a small residential and commercial cleaning company that has stayed open this whole time.

Safety for both the customers and the workers has been the top priority. Workers have been taking many safety precautions, making the customers feel a little bit safer when they walk through the door.

“When we enter a home we wash our hands, we wear a mask and gloves. Before we leave the home, we wash our hands again,” Employee Tracy Clinton said. “When we get out of a home we sanitize all the equipment down before we put it into the car so it’s sanitized for the next house.”

Most customers have been thankful for HCCA staying open and making sure they have a clean space especially during a time like this. Some customers have had to cancel for now but plan to come back after the virus has passed and some have just continued to support the people working there.

“We’ve had customers that postponed their service but continued to pay the bill so they can support the employees financially,” Operations manager Sarah Smith said. “We’ve had a few customers that didn’t understand that we were an essential service. So we explained that to them.”

Even the employees have had their doubts about working due to the fear and shock of the pandemic growing right in front of them. Workers have taken weeks off to process and think about if they should keep working. 

“For the week I did stay home, I just felt like sitting here was bringing me down more,” Clinton said. “So I was like, I need to go back to work. I can’t deal with this anymore, I needed some kind of normality.”

As the world changes, this is starting to become the new normal. If the rules are being followed, some of the only interaction people get outside of the house are with essential workers. Most people are even social distancing away from their family, making real life interaction hard.

“Society’s new normal is changing. I think clients are starting to understand that this may be our new normal and they’re craving the relationships with our staff that they built over time,” Smith said.

But even though everyone’s further apart, many are closer from the experience. Whether at home or in the work space people are caring and looking out for each other and waiting for all this to be a distant memory.

“Everybody in the office who works there has been a team and has been a whole, they look out for everybody. Not to say they didn’t before, but I think everybody is like, oh my god, life changed, the world is going to be different,” Clinton said. “Everybody’s just more lenient, more willing to help and more willing to, you know, be one and not against each other.”