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Department of Oral History

University Libraries

University of South Carolina

 

COVID-19 Oral History Project

 

Cheryl McCann Oral History Interview

 

Interviewee: Cheryl McCann                                                         

Interviewer: Riley Sutherland                                                            Date: May 13, 2020

 

Cheryl McCann grew up in Kansas City and Iowa in the 1970s and 1980s, before settling in Liberty, Missouri (a suburb of Kansas City). The interview discusses Cheryl’s childhood and family, as well as her early educational experiences. While taking care of her ill grandmother as a teenager, Cheryl began working at a nearby bank and soon after decided to pursue a career in accounting. After receiving degrees in accounting from Kansas City Kansas Community College and Caldwell College, Cheryl opened her own small business as an accountant in Liberty. In this interview, Cheryl reflects upon the coronavirus’s impacts on small business owners, the challenges businesses face reopening after lockdowns, and difficulties confronting her clients as they apply for federal loans and unemployment. The interview also discusses partisanship during the coronavirus pandemic and the pandemic’s impact upon education, social interactions, historical research, and human-environment interactions.

 

Keywords: Coronavirus | Small Businesses | Economics | Education | Sustainability | Technology | Social Interaction | Family History Research | Midwest

 

Riley Sutherland: Good morning. This is an oral history interview for the COVID-19 Oral History Project, which is a part of the coursework for the South Carolina Honors College’s SCHC 326, which is documenting the perspectives and experiences of those who have been impacted in a variety of ways by the current global pandemic. This is Riley Sutherland. The date is May 13, 2020, and today I am interviewing Cheryl McCann remotely. I’m in Kansas City, Missouri, and Cheryl is in Liberty, Missouri. So, Cheryl, to start off, could you please give me your full name and spell it, including your maiden name?

 

Cheryl McCann: Yes. Cheryl Lee Gordon McCann.

 

RS: All right. And, just to confirm the spelling, do we have C-H-E-R-Y-L, for Cheryl?

 

CM: Yes.

 

RS:  L-E-E G-O-R-D-O-N and then M-C-C-A-N-N?

 

CM: Yes.

 

RS: Perfect. And we previously talked—that you grew up here in Kansas City. What was it like to be a kid growing up in Kansas City?

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CM: Well, Kansas City has always been kind of spread out, so—typical Midwest town. We have lots of room, so we use all of it. I grew up on both sides of the state line: Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. We moved around a lot, but we were always pretty much in this area. I did spend five years of my childhood in Iowa, so that was a little bit different, because any time there was a holiday or any reason, really, we came back to Kansas City. We always considered it our home base, even though I didn’t necessarily have one house that I considered home, because we moved around a lot. But I guess Kansas City in general was home. We rarely went to downtown Kansas City, Missouri. There seemed to be a lot of crime and that sort of thing at that time, but that has been all revitalized now and there’s so much new things to do and it doesn’t seem as scary as it used to be when I was a kid. It was always touted as being a scary place, but I don’t really see that now at all, so I think that’s a good change.

 

RS: Whenever you were coming back and returning to Kansas City from Iowa, do you remember seeing changes even then in Kansas City, as you came back for trips, or are those changes that happened later on?

 

CM: It seemed like those changes happened later on. Of course, I was from fourth grade to eighth grade, so I probably wasn’t paying a lot of attention to that, but when we were here we were only here for a few days, and we were always seeing extended family. We were pretty isolated as far as major changes in the city were concerned. It was always, “who’s having a baby?” or “who’s getting married?” Those were the kind of family changes I would notice, you know, “who’s growing up?” or whatever, but not really changes in the city itself, because I wasn’t really paying any attention to that. Nobody seemed to talk about it. My family wasn’t super civic-minded at that point either. They were just focused on what was happening with themselves. (unintelligible at 3:54).

 

RS: I am so sorry, I lost your audio for the last bit of that, right after you were describing your family not having the most civic-orientation. Do you feel like that would be pretty characteristic of most families at that time in Kansas City?

 

CM: I guess I don’t know. I had a really isolated view of life growing up, because my parents chose that. They made a conscious decision—my parents both grew up in very troubled houses, and they made a conscious decision to isolate us from the world, almost in a cult-like way. That’s not something that most people who know me now know. They attended a very small, religious church. So, it was hard for me to know what the outside world was really, probably like. I wasn’t allowed to listen to secular radio stations, or cable TV was not available. So knowing about the outside world really wasn’t something I was privy to, so it’s hard for me to answer that question in any other way besides that limited view.

 

RS: Would you say there was a period in your life you remember starting to become more, maybe, aware or accustomed to those broader, outside civic happenings—or, is there a point in your life you feel like you first started to take that in?

 

CM: Yeah. I met my husband when I was a young adult, and I would say things to him, and he would look at me like, “no! Don’t you know that this is what’s happening, or this is what’s going on?” and so he really broadened my view of the world. That basically was what the breaking point was, was I always knew there was more out there, but I didn’t know how to get to it, and I was fearful of getting to it. When he was like, “the outside world is not scary—you don’t have to only listen to what people tell you, you can make up your own mind,” that’s all it took. Then there was no holding back. I sometimes wonder if he regrets that decision.

​

 (laughter)

 

RS: So, cycling back to your parents and your family, what do you remember your parents and grandparents being like whenever you were growing up? I know you’ve already mentioned your parents, but looking at your grandparents, what were your relationships with them like?

 

CM: My relationships with my grandparents were fine. I always kind of kept a couple of them a little bit at bay, because I’d heard that my parents didn’t grow up in great households, yet they still had relationships with their parents, so I always thought that was kind of an odd thing, you know, “oh, so-and-so beat you, but you still talk to them.” That seemed odd to me, so it was a good way to learn unconditional love, I can tell you that, that you love somebody because you love somebody, regardless of what they do. But it was also very—I don’t know that it was necessarily a healthy relationship between my parents and their parents. I did learn—I had a great relationship with my grandparents. My grandmother was—my maternal grandmother—I was very close to her, all growing up. Even as a small child, I was always very close to her. She would make these—I know I didn’t put this in the notes, but she was funny—she grew up in the Depression and she grew up on a farm, so she saved everything that she could possibly use. You hear stories of people saving tinfoil and twist ties and things like that, and she always saved those things. She would save these little berry baskets all year long, any time she would buy berries, and she had lots and lots of grandchildren, as you would imagine, with eleven kids. She would make these little Easter baskets out of these little berry baskets and pipe cleaners, or whatever, and she would always put a couple extra pieces of candy in mine and say, “don’t tell anyone, you’re my favorite!”

 

(laughter)

 

She would always do that. But I was also the one sitting there and making baskets with her every time, too. I was also the one who would take her to the grocery store with my mom. I was always the one who was there every weekend. So, I think it was kind of funny that she would do things like that all of the time—“don’t tell anyone, you’re my favorite.” She was funny. I have very few family heirlooms. You know how people pass things down: dishes and, I don’t know, tablecloths and furniture and things like that. We never had that, maybe because there were so many kids, maybe because they were very poor and didn’t have anything to pass down—they used everything up. I have very few things, but the few things I have are from my grandmother. I have a couple things that were hers, and they’re just knick-knacky little things that don’t mean anything, really, but the only person I have pretty much anything from that’s been passed down would be from her. My other grandmother was light years different. My paternal grandmother, she was very independent, very feisty, argumentative, and she just recently died a couple years ago, and she was that way until the day she died. She was very strong willed, and not always in a good way. She worked in the trucking industry, so she worked with strong men all the time, and she always had that guard up. In her later years, I could get her to let that guard down a little bit and ask her questions, like you’re asking me, and have her tell me things. She was in her nineties. But she always had that tough person guard up, to protect herself. I think she had suffered a lot, you know, just bad behavior working in a man’s world and also just her childhood, growing up, wasn’t great either. She grew up in the Great Depression. Her dad was a bootlegger, so he was always getting arrested or whatever drama was going on at the time—always stories like that. So I’m sure that was traumatic as a child, to always be living on the edge. And you could tell, as she grew up, that she was always on the edge for the rest of her life. I had a good relationship with her, but she didn’t always get along with everyone else (laughs). I didn’t have any problems with her.

 

RS: Whenever you talk about her interacting with…

 

CM: I lost you!

 

RS: I am so sorry; can you hear it now?

 

CM: Yes, it was me, I pushed a button. We’re good!

 

RS: All right! So, whenever you talk about her interacting with everybody else, do you remember having any family traditions or gatherings growing up?

 

CM: Yes; when I was a kid, we always had so many aunts and uncles, even to the point where I had a hard time keeping a couple of them straight—like, there were two of my mom’s brothers, even to this day, (unintelligible at 13:17). We always met at my Aunt Helen and Uncle Willy’s house, because they always had a place. We had picnics; every holiday was there. It was always a huge dinner with lots of family recipes and that sort of thing. As far as other traditions, it was always so big that we didn’t really do much on our own except for the five years we were in Iowa. Those were tough, but we came back as often as possible. So, big family picnics and dinners and things like that. That’s mostly what I would remember as far as traditions would go. We didn’t do anything other than that. That was enough. It was a lot of people.

 

RS: Out of all of those people, would you say that you had one role model in your family who really impacted you?

 

CM: Probably my Grandma Butcher—my maternal grandmother. She was kind of the matriarch of all of that. We mostly hung out with my mom’s family, so she was the one who gave birth to all those kids, and then all their kids and their kids. So, she was the head of that household. Her oldest daughter—it was her house that we met at all the time. So, once my Aunt Helen’s house became the place to be, then grandma would kind of take a back seat, and sit there and let Aunt Helen run the whole show. That was kind of how that went. But she was my role model

 

RS: All right. And we had previously talked about you attending Oak Grove Baptist School. What do you remember it being like to attend school there?

 

CM: Well, it was very small. I had ten people in my class, nine of which were girls, so not a lot of dating choices there. No one wanted to date him anyway; he was kind of a goober. It was just really small, and I feel like my parents chose to put us in that situation to protect us from the outside world. Even as a small child, like I said, we didn’t have a lot of money. We were living in an area where the public school wasn’t the best. Now, as a parent, looking back, I see that. But as a child, it was very awkward to go to a school that nobody else was going to. On the flipside, though, it didn’t matter where we moved in the metro area, I got to stay at the same school. So, there was that. That was a good thing, I guess. It was very small. I don’t know how accredited the teachers were. We had one Bunsen burner for the whole school to share. We never got to touch it. The teacher did all the experiments, if they did any. There weren’t any advanced classes. I was really good at math, but I took all the math classes they offered, and the highest one was Algebra II. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing to do. We had limited sports activities. Basically, if you tried out for a team, you made it, because they needed the bodies. We did things, and we made the best of our little world, but it was very exclusive and very little: very closed-minded but also very closed physically, because there weren’t that many of us. The class ahead of me—I think they had twenty-three, so that was the big class. The class behind me didn’t have very many, either. So, yeah, twenty-three. You guys look at that and think “what?!”  I had ten.

 

(laughter)

 

RS:  How, if at all, do you think going to a school and being in that environment impacted your plans for what you wanted to do after graduating from school there?

 

CM: Well, in that environment, they mostly looked at women—I know it’s a very old-fashioned way, and we think that it didn’t happen in the eighties and nineties, but it did—they looked at women as a very traditional, female role. And nobody really encouraged us to go to college, unless you were going to find a husband. And then, it was “go to a Christian college,” and I didn’t know what else to do. I felt like I had to do that, because what else do you do? You can’t live with your parents forever, and obviously we didn’t have a lot of dating experience. So, you just didn’t know what to do. It happened to be at that time that my grandmother got sick and moved in and lived with us, so I ended up being basically her caretaker. Now, my mom, on the other hand—which I didn’t put in the notes—my mom is a very strong willed person, and in those five years we went to Iowa, she and my father decided to go to school in Iowa, at a Christian college, and my mom became a school teacher. So, my mom did have a career. But I knew that I was not cut out to be a schoolteacher. People wanted me to be a schoolteacher and follow in her footsteps, but that was the last thing I was interested in. Now, I can see where I probably would have been okay with that, but I just was at a stage where I didn’t want anything to do with any of them telling me what to do anymore. At that time, my grandmother got very sick and lived with us, and so I worked at a bank, and it was pretty much down the road from where we lived, so I could come home and check on her, and so I would come in and check on her on my breaks, and then I was her primary caregiver when I wasn’t at work. I just chose to go to the local community college after that, because I knew I was good at numbers, and I needed to do something with numbers, so that’s kind of how that worked.

 

RS: What was it like trying to balance working at the bank with caring for your grandmother?

 

CM: I was eighteen and nineteen years old. My first job was at a Dairy Queen, and then I was a nanny, and then I worked at the bank, so I didn’t have a lot of working experience, and I don’t know. It seems like now that that would be a lot to put on an eighteen or nineteen-year-old person, but I always seemed to end up taking on responsibilities like that. I was the oldest of two children, which isn’t a lot, but I was the oldest, so I was always left home alone. When my parents went to college, I was always in charge and home alone. I was cooking dinner every night when I was in fourth grade. That was just part of my responsibilities. You are just told to do it. It sounds like a lot now, but it didn’t seem like a lot then, it just seemed like that is how it was. I didn’t have any real friends or no dating prospects, so what else was I going to do? I’m a person who likes to be busy, so that kept me pretty busy, those two things and going to school. Really, that was basically the gist of it. There was nothing else to do. Someone had to do it. The other thing was, we were always kind of living hand-to-mouth, hoping to pay the bills every month, and so everyone just did their part. That was just what you did. We were three generations living in one house, and you’d just do it. Everyone has to pay the bills, so that’s what you do. I don’t know. It seems odd. I would not put my kids in that position now, but it just seemed like at the time, that was just what you did. So, I don’t know. It does seem odd now that I’m a parent and I have kids that age. I wouldn’t do that, because I want them to have their own life. I almost feel like part of my childhood wasn’t really a childhood. Does that make sense?

 

RS: Yes. I can’t imagine trying to take care of all of that at one time.

 

CM: But I didn’t know any different. That was the thing. I wasn’t exposed to people having a different life. So I didn’t feel like I was missing—I guess I did feel like I was missing something, but I didn’t know what I was missing, so it didn’t hurt as bad, I guess. I don’t know.

 

RS: You mentioned your mom being a schoolteacher and that that was kind of…a little bit special considering that women were expected to grow up and raise families and focus on that. Do you feel like you faced any opposition to forging ahead and establishing a career in accounting, given that environment?

 

CM: I knew that I was probably going to have to take care of myself. Growing up poor, in that situation, I did not want to have to rely on somebody, because I saw that there is trouble with that, if you are always having to rely on somebody. It was kind of like a way out. I guess, if I got into a marital situation, I had a way out. Does that make sense?

 

RS: Yes.

 

CM: And I don’t know how much of that was conscious and how much of that was subconscious, but I knew I didn’t want to be in that religious situation anymore, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. (unintelligible at 24:36).

 

RS: I am so sorry; I think I just lost your audio.

 

CM: Education was maybe the only way out of it. Yeah, I think we froze for a second.

 

RS: We’re back now!

 

CM: Okay. Where did you lose me?

 

RS: I lost you when—I did catch, “education was the only way out of it.”

 

CM: Yeah, I think an education was probably the only way out of it, and I don’t know how much of that was conscious and how much of that was subconscious. My mom becoming a teacher and choosing to go to college as an adult with children—education became very stressed at our house; it was, “you need to get an education.” Both of my parents were the first in their families to ever get a college degree. So, they really took big risks. My parents were big risk takers. They broke away from troubling family things and overdid it by protecting us, but oftentimes when you take a big risk, you don’t know how far to go. So, they did overdo it, but they were just trying to completely make a change in how our family had been all those generations. Every parent makes mistakes. Mine made them way on one end, whereas their parents made them on the other, and somehow, I got the benefit of being somewhere in the middle, I think. I hope. So, education was very stressed, but I don’t think they realized that I was going to take it and rebel against them with it. In their eyes, that’s what I did. They’re proud of me now, but at the time, they had ideas in their head of what they wanted from me, and I basically said “no, that’s not what I’m going to do” or “I’m going to do some of that, but not all of that.” It was pretty stressful for a while, between my parents and I.

 

RS: How long did it take for them to start accepting that new position as an accountant and raising your own family while working with your own business?

 

CM: I don’t know. Do you think they’ve accepted that now? I don’t know.

 

(laughter)

 

When my grandmother died, my parents decided to—so, I was nineteen—my parents decided to, maybe a year or two after that, that they needed to move on with their life and do what they wanted to do, so my dad took a position in Colorado, and they up and moved. At that time, I had just started really dating, seriously, my husband, who I met at the bank. He was a customer. They were not in favor of that, because he was a different religion than I was raised, and they didn’t like that at all. It sounds very archaic to say that now, but at the time that was a very real thing. It was a real issue. People were very discriminatory about all kinds of things in the eighties and nineties, and that’s what it was like. I think they were afraid of all the risk that they had taken to break us away from things, that I was just going right back into it. I think they were just very fearful. They did not really accept him, and I think they have learned—well, I know they have, because they have apologized, and they’ve told me that they’re sorry for all of that and the stress that they put be through. I was also their firstborn, and I never rocked the boat. I never got in trouble. My brother was always in trouble. I never really pushed the lines, and then all of a sudden, I meet one person, and I pushed all of the lines. I think it scared them. I kind of understand that, too, as a parent now, that I was going through a complete personality change. But I think a lot of that rebellion was there and just couldn’t…I just didn’t feel like I could express it, because I was a pleaser. I wanted to make them happy all the time, and there was always so much other drama going on, that I just didn’t add to it. I do think that they want to accept my husband now, but he is very weary of getting close to them, and this is after twenty-eight years. They moved away to Colorado, we got married, so we have never lived in the same town as my parents, so that kind of helps keep the drama down, but it also doesn’t help them get close together and work their problems out. I don’t know how long it took them to figure out that this was a real thing and not a phase, but this is how it was going to be. I don’t know how long it took them to figure that out, but eventually they came around, I guess (unintelligible at 30:46) and decided that they wanted to have a relationship with their daughter.

 

RS: I am so sorry; I think I might have lost your audio.

 

CM: That’s all right. We’re just going to have to deal with technology here.

 

(laughter)

 

RS: So, the last I caught is that they said they still wanted to have a relationship with you, and so they started kind of accepting your husband?

 

CM: Yeah, eventually, I think they realized they wanted a relationship with me and my children, so they did accept him as part of the deal.

 

RS: All right. I am going to start shifting gears to focus on what your life is like now and the coronavirus, but before we start getting into those questions, is there anything else about your family that you would like to describe or that we didn’t discuss?

 

CM: No, I’m good.

 

RS: So now, looking at your life now, during the coronavirus pandemic, how do you think the coronavirus has impacted the way you go about your daily routines?

 

CM: My daily routine hasn’t changed that much, because I work at home already, so I just walk back and forth between the office and the house. I also have hated going to the grocery store for the last several years, so I tend to order and have it delivered as much as possible, so that didn’t change too much. My kids are home from school. My husband still goes to work. He is still considered an essential worker, even though you wouldn’t think he would be, so he’s still been going to work. So, our daily life hasn’t changed that much, as far as our routine. Whenever we go out, I wear a mask, and I just try not to go out very often, and I would send the kids out. My kids have decided that they are less at risk than I am. Plus, I think they’re bored. So they choose to volunteer to go run errands, like the grocery store or the bank. So, really, my husband and I…we haven’t really been out anywhere. We don’t eat out a lot, so that’s never been an issue, because we just don’t. Financially and health-wise, it’s just not something we do very often. So, that hasn’t bothered us at all. Movies are too expensive, so we don’t go there. So, really, that didn’t change that much for us.

 

RS: How has work looked different for you and your husband now?

 

CM: Work has looked very different for me and my husband as well, I’m sure. My husband is a tool and die machinist, and he works in the plastic industry. He makes little plastic parts for things; he doesn’t sometimes know where they go into in the final product. One day in March, they had been making these little plastic pieces, and they have a place where the plastic comes into the mold, and it was leaving what they call a goober on the piece. They needed to get that off, so he took the mold apart and started remaking the mold to make it work better, and he was asked, “when are you going to get finished with that mold?” and he was like, “I don’t know, in a couple days?” And they said, “well, you really need to get that done, because those are pieces that go in ventilators.” This was in March. So, that’s when they got a letter that they have to carry around in their car that says they’re an essential worker, in case they get stopped. They used to get an order of five hundred or so pieces every couple of months. On Thursday, they got an order for five thousand pieces. On Friday, they got another order for seven thousand pieces. By Monday, before he could get the thing fixed, they got an order for one hundred thousand pieces, and he still didn’t have it fixed. So, he got it fixed, and then he had nothing to do, because the entire place of twelve or fifteen people are doing nothing but making these pieces. They’re not taking any other orders for anything, because the economy is basically shut down. All they’re doing is making these pieces, but he has to be there in case the mold breaks, so he can fix it, because he’s the only one who knows how to fix it. So, he’s been in the back room counting pieces and shipping and doing those kinds of jobs, because he’s got to do something, and he’s got to be there. My job changed dramatically, because it was right in the middle of tax season, when all of this started to hit, right around March 12. Corporate tax returns are due March 15, so that’s always a stressful week anyway. Then, you’ve got everyone running around like their hair is on fire. Their tax returns had sat in my office for two or three weeks, and they hadn’t… I called them to pick it up and this and that, and they’re all coming on the same day. Everyone had to run in here on the same day, because they were afraid. The stock market was crashing. They were afraid that we were going into a lockdown. They wanted to get their tax refunds, everybody all of a sudden, and I’m trying to pay attention to what is happening. (unintelligible at 38:41). Are you there?

 

RS: Yes.

 

CM: Okay; we got a little warning about the internet again.

 

(laughter)

 

I was very, very stressed out that first week for sure. Then, the next couple weeks happened, and my small business people are starting to shut down, and they have no payroll, and if they don’t have payroll, I can’t bill them for that service that I’m not providing. They extended the tax season; everybody was asking me about how to apply for unemployment, how to apply for these loans that the SBA [Small Business Administration] was giving out, how to get their tax refunds, because they were afraid they would not have a job, and they wanted to make sure that was coming to them, and how long was that going to take with the government shutting down? And I didn’t have answers to those things, because all of our systems that are in place and the normal answers you would give people were all changing, and they were changing immediately. They would get on the news and say one thing, and by the afternoon, they were saying something else. It was very scary and frustrating all at once. You didn’t have time to process your feelings about it. You just went on to the next phone call, the next customer, the next task, the next email, and did the best you could. I sent out a letter one Friday. I sent out a letter saying that the IRS had extended the tax deadline to July 15 but that the state of Missouri had not. By the time we got the letters done and to the mail, Missouri had extended. Those letters were just a big waste. It was a waste of my time, it was a waste of my energy, and all I was doing was trying to communicate with my customers. Then, we had to send another letter out later and answer a bunch of phone calls, because by the time they got the letter, they had heard something different on the news. Everything was in real time. Everything was being processed in…I don’t know…a fast pace, but then there were things that weren’t being fast enough at the same time. So, it was frustrating. It was very frustrating. It’s still frustrating. But, we’ve kind of processed our feelings about it a little more now, and I can tackle things a little more logically now. People are more understanding when you just say, “well, I just don’t know.” They’re a little more understanding about that now than they were a few weeks ago.

 

RS: When you mentioned trying to help your customers apply for things and answer their questions about paycheck protection and things like that, what kind of challenges have you all faced in actually applying for those or are you facing in trying to help your clients try to reach out to those programs?

 

CM: For one, I have a couple clients who struggled mightily. I have other clients who, if they had a previous relationship with a good-sized bank, where they had a line of credit, or a loan or something like that already established, and the lending officers at the bank already knew them— and having a background in banking, that helped, because I could actually understand what the bankers were asking for, whereas the customer didn’t understand those terms. That did help. I would have the customer—"just have your banker call me directly, and I’ll get him what he needs.” Every bank was asking for different things. That was frustrating. Or they wanted it in a different format. That was also frustrating, because I can print reports from the software and send them directly over to them in a PDF format, and that was great for some people. Other people wanted me to export that into an Excel spreadsheet—a specific Excel spreadsheet that they would send to me—and then do all these calculations and then send it to them. It’s the same damn numbers! Just take the numbers! I’m one person! So, knowing what every particular person wanted or needed was difficult. Then, I had one customer who, his bank was giving him the run-around, so we went to two other banks. Finally, after amending tax returns, articles of organization, doing all these different changes, which are going to have lasting effects on his financials, they’re going to approve him now. But I don’t think he’s seen the money yet. He still hasn’t seen the money yet. Some of them have been approved and not seen the money, some of them haven’t been approved, some of them are approved, have the money and are fine. But now we have to do all of this tracking of where they’re spending the money in order for it to be forgiven or if they have to pay it back. That’s an extra thing we have to do now. Of course, I can’t charge them for the service, because they can’t pay the bill anyway. They don’t have any money! So, I am just chalking it up to “this is customer service,” and trying to keep these customers in business so that I can stay in business. It just seems like a lot of extra work just to keep the status quo. And I probably won’t keep that either. I am sure there will be some who go out. I’m sure of it. They were struggling to begin with, and this certainly didn’t help. If they are older or reluctant with technology, then it is difficult for them to shift their business model to be more online. Right now, I can work remotely no problem. I just did a tax return for somebody in Colorado. We took payment by PayPal or credit card. I can send his documents to him with DocuSign. I’ve never met the person. And it was fine. Some of these businesses are service oriented in a way that they have to be on-site at a customer’s home, like carpet cleaning or something of that nature. You can’t really pivot that. That’s not a service you can pivot. If you have a storefront, are you able to sell online? Yes, but only if you have your website set up to do that. That takes time, energy, money, and expertise, and sometimes they don’t have all of those elements to make it work. You know from the museum’s point of view; look at that as a business model.[1] That was not already set up that way, so trying to set it up that way and advertising that it’s available is consuming and difficult.

 

RS: When you mention that the service industry, that there are people like your carpet cleaners who just aren’t able to make that shift to technology because of the format of what they do—do you anticipate that the format of shifting to a more technologically based format will create a more permanent gulf between those service oriented businesses and those businesses which can go online more easily?

 

CM: There will be a lot of changes in this world and in our personal lives. I didn’t used to shop for groceries from HyVee Smiles Online, but I found out “hey, this isn’t bad!” I think there are people out there who would like to book a carpet cleaner and go on their website and use the “book an appointment” option and are more likely to do that now, whereas if you don’t have that “book an appointment” option on your website, you’re going to be falling behind. I think people are getting forced into using things that they’re not used to using, and I think they’re going to find that they like it. I also think that businesses that have large office desks and utilities and rent are going to find that cash flow is going to be key, and why are they going to spend money on that when half their workforce can work from home effectively? That’s just a better business model financially. So, as long as everyone is productive, I think that will be fine. I think businesses have been reluctant to do that because people tend not to be productive. They’re easily distracted, but you’re easily distracted in an office, too. Every time someone walks by your door and wants to chit-chat, then you go to the water cooler, then you’re on Facebook on your phone. It’s the same thing. As long as you’re getting your work done, it’s not a problem. But I don’t know (unintelligible at 48:40).

 

RS: So, in addition to the challenges that you’ve seen people…

 

CM: (unintelligible at 48:48).

 

RS: I am so sorry…

 

CM: The customer has realized how important small business—did I lose you?

 

RS: I think you just came back.

 

CM: Okay; where did you leave off?

 

RS: So, we left off—you were talking about how you think people are going to like this and start shifting to it and talking about how distractibility is something you would have seen in person as well.

 

CM: Yes. I think the consumer also is going to realize how important it is dealing with small businesses versus the big businesses, because look at how all of our big businesses and our big systems have just shut down. Dealing with the DMV was already an issue, and now dealing with the DMV when they’re all backed up with all this coronavirus and no employees and the site’s broken and all that…whereas if you can just go talk to one person, a small business owner, and get your problem resolved, there’s something to be said about that. I also think they realized these are the same people who donate to your school functions. These are the same people in your kids’ class. These are your neighbors. These are supposed to be your friends, and if you don’t support their businesses, who’s going to? I hope that there has been a resurgence, in the customer’s mind, about small, local businesses. We’ll have to see. As time goes on, people tend to forget, so we’ll have to see how that goes. But let’s hope. Let’s hope that they give back to that. We’re also a global society now, whereas if you compare that to back—the pandemic or the Great Depression in the twenties, that was not the case, so we’re a global society. So, like I said, I can do someone’s tax return from Colorado no problem. He’s still supporting a small business, even though it’s not in his local place. I feel the same way when I purchase something online from a small, local farmer or artisan. It may not be in my locality, but it is spurring the economy of another small locality. I feel like if you can’t buy it locally from a small [business] person, if you can buy it from another small business, that’s the next step.

 

RS: Absolutely. As you’ve been trying to support small businesses, as well as continue operating your own, what challenges do you see small business owners dealing with in trying to do things like applying for funding or running their businesses that are unique to small business owners?

 

CM: Dealing with banks is an issue. That is a problem. Communicating to your customers. If you are not—as a small business owner, many of them sometimes are wearing a lot of different hats, is what I call it. So you’ve got your parent hat, you’ve got your business-owner hat, you’ve got your advertising person hat, you’ve got your IT person hat, you’ve got, you know, you’re wearing all these hats at once, and now you’re scared. Now you’re frustrated. Now you have all these emotions going on, as well as trying to juggle all these things at once. They come into my office and they just sit here and cry for about twenty minutes and tell me that the business that they’ve spent all these years trying to do, and it’s just gone, and how do you not feel for that person (cries). Because I also feel that way. Although, I feel like I’m able to shift a little bit easier. And so all I can do is listen to them and try to help them and give them ideas I’ve heard other customers use, saying “okay, have you tried this place? Have you tried calling this place? Get online, here’s the website. Here’s how you walk through this thing.” And sometimes they just need someone to help them get started or to help them focus on one task at a time. Because there’s so many things they have to do, and they can’t do one without the first one, and they can’t do this one without that one, and I can’t do this without this document. And so just trying to get organized, organize their thoughts, organize their activities, organize all those things, and try to coordinate that—sometimes you just have to be a coordinator. Or they have to calm down enough so that they can do it for themselves. And that has been a real issue. That has been a real issue, because they’re scared. And, they’ve got their—some of them have their kids at home, running around, supposed to be trying to do school, and I cannot imagine trying to do all of that with little kids. I raised two kids while working at home, and I know how difficult that is, and I was not homeschooling them. So, I don’t know what it would be like to add that element on top. That’s got to be difficult. And, I imagine, you feel like every day is the same, and every day you get nothing done (laughs). And that’s got to be adding to their frustration. Even though you are getting things done, it just doesn’t feel that way. I imagine that has got to be adding to their frustration. And here’s the other thing about small business owners. You don’t want to go out online, in a public forum, and share your dirty laundry, basically. You don’t want to go out there and say, “we’re struggling” and cry, and, you know, you don’t want to do that because you’ve been told to put up this professional business image all the time. So, I’ll send you something that you can use in your notes. I went on—there are some Facebook pages that have been developed to help small businesses in the Liberty area, and one of them, it started off being about supporting your local restaurants, and it was put out there by the Chamber of Commerce. Now, this was early on, like the end of March or something. It seems like it’s been a long time, but it’s really only been a couple months. So, this was put out in the end of March by the Chamber of Commerce as supporting local restaurants. And I went on that page and I wrote a big, long post about, “it’s not just restaurants! It’s all of us. A retailer. The lady who cleans your house. The person who tutors your kids. Or their coach, if it’s a sporting something or other.” All of these people who I see bringing that kind of income in here and claiming it on their tax returns have no income now. Some of them haven’t been paid since March first. Some of them haven’t gotten unemployment, because at that time, business owners were not allowed to get unemployment. Most of the time they’re not. And they changed that rule recently and allowed these people—but the system is messed up, and it’s not able to process those claims very easily, and it’s a big struggle. But I went and put on this post—and said “I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about,” and I listed all these industries of people who are clients of mine, and they changed the Facebook page based off of that post and made it open to all small business industries online. And so, I still see mostly people posting about restaurants and how they’re supporting restaurants, and I will sometimes get on a kick and go on there and say something about that: “please remember to support, blah blah blah.” And I don’t list anybody by name. But I thought, “I can go out there, and I’m going to go out there, and I’m going to be vulnerable for my clients who don’t feel they can go out there and be vulnerable. I’m going to go out there and say this for them.” Because nobody understands it. And they don’t understand it because they don’t live it like we do. And it’s not a slam against them. That’s not their fault. They just need to have their eyes opened a little bit, that there’s more out there than just restaurant folks. And my daughter works at a restaurant, so I get that. I understand that. But I also know—and restaurant business is a hard business to make money in. It really is. But it’s more than that. And I don’t think they’re going to understand that all of these little shops are not going to be there one day if they don’t support them. And that’s been the case before coronavirus, but it’s really the case now. That’s something that I was able to do that I hope can open some people’s eyes to the bigger picture, if you would.

 

RS: Right. And how have you seen movements to open their eyes to that bigger picture move beyond the restaurant industry into other industries nationally? Have you seen anything similar?

 

CM: Nationally? I do see—I try not to watch the news as much as I was, because it was really having an effect on me, so I limit my news exposure and my cell phone exposure now, which I was not doing before, and that was a problem, because I wasn’t sleeping. But I was trying to be on top of all these different changes so I could answer all these different questions. Well, that’s kind of calmed down or slowed down a little bit now, and I can push that part away, and it helps me be more centered, but I have seen some movement on some newscasts about that, mostly when they’re talking about the PPP [Paycheck Protection Program] loan and how many people were not able to get it because it ran out of money so fast. And the people who were not able to get it were mostly people of color, or of lower economic status, or did not have accessibility to a large enough bank to have that. If you live in a really small town in rural Idaho, or whatever, Wyoming, your bank might not be big enough to process these things. Rural America, people of color, people of lower economic status—and, ironically, women. Women-owned businesses. Because women, oftentimes, don’t have the collateral to have a banking relationship in a lending capacity, and so they are often denied loans unless they have a spouse that will put up their income, or the house, or whatever, and so, ironically, that old chestnut has come back around, and here we are again. So, I have seen people talking about that on the news. I don’t know how much of a national impact it’s having. I imagine it’s more a grassroots type thing, similar to that Facebook page or local groups. We do have a Women’s Chamber of Commerce here in Kansas City, if you wanted to check that out.  I bet you will see some things there. We have a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, I bet, if you to want to check that out—and we do have an African American Chamber of Commerce here in Kansas City. Actually, Kansas City is a very entrepreneurial place. We have the Kauffman Center and a lot of support for entrepreneurs in Kansas City that not a lot of other places have, and I did not realize that until I started dealing with so many small businesses and comparing them to other locations. So, if people in this location are struggling getting these loans, I can’t imagine how difficult it is in other places that don’t have the same resources already built into their structure. So, I hope there’s a national push, but I haven’t seen it, and I’ll have to go look for it now that you’ve asked me that, because I’ll have to go look for it now.

 

RS: Whenever you’re looking forward into the future, how can you see the challenges you’ve described impacting women, and people of different races and ethnicities, and businesses in rural areas? Moving forward, how do you see these challenges impacting them in five years or ten years—do you think it will lead to more of an awareness of their challenges, or do you think it will just continue creating a divide for them to overcome?

 

CM: I hope it will—I hope that there will be more support, but I am afraid that there may not. I’m afraid that it will start off with good intentions and become very cumbersome and difficult and get dropped as people lose awareness, as with most things that have happened in that traditional vein. Our country is super divided right now, and everything becomes political now. Everything. Everything! A PPP loan became political. Applying for unemployment—wearing a mask has become political! I mean, it astonishes me; when I go out to the grocery store for the couple items I can’t get delivered, and I wear a mask, and I have people look at me and laugh and say, “that’s ridiculous.” And it’s happened twice! It’s not a one-off. It’s happened more than once. And I’m like, “I’m not trying to be political; I’m just trying to get milk!” Everything is political now, and unfortunately, I think when it comes to finances and business, it’s going to get political, and that’s unfortunate, because I think people are just trying to make a living. And sometimes corporate America is not for you. Maybe you’re really good at fixing cars, so you open a business fixing cars, you know? Not everyone is meant to go to college and work in a big office. Some people are really good at working with their hands or really good with dealing with customers, or really good at other things, and they feel that it’s best for them to do this on their own, and we have to support that, because how else—they’re not going to thrive in those other environments. You’d be surprised how many small businesspeople have learning disabilities. Because they didn’t fit into these traditional molds, they had to find a way to make a life for themselves, and they found something they were good at, and now they just need help structuring that to where they can make a profit, and that’s where I come in. I can help them do that, and other people, like a lawyer, or an advertising person, or an IT person—whatever they need—those services are available. So, when you add on a racial element, or a religious element, or some other kind of element, it just makes it even more difficult. There’s a whole other set of customers that you’re not ever going to get, even though you could be a great source for them, they’re just never going to hire you because of whatever their issue is, whether your color, or your race, or your ethnicity, or your—I don’t know. Whatever their issue is. I don’t think people realize how much those biases affect the world around them until it is thrown in your face in a situation. I have people come in here and want to talk political all the time, because “oh, the tax law changed, and so-and-so this, and Congress that,” and I have to hold my feelings back, whatever they are, and just let them talk, and say “well, I can interpret the tax law this way; I can do this for you this way, but we’re not able to do this any longer.” I just have to stick to the facts. I can’t engage in all that. And, unfortunately, I don’t see that going on any time soon. I do see fewer small businesses opening up in the next five to ten years. I see that there will be a lot fewer. Some of them that exist now won’t make it, and I think the challenges of opening a new business are in everyone’s foresight, and so people are less likely to take that risk. They want that safety net, and I don’t blame them. I don’t blame them, especially if you are young and have kids or a mortgage, or whatever. That’s going to be tough. It’s going to be tough. I see fewer customers in that pool to draw from in the future, and I’ve got fifteen years before I can retire, so I’ve got to make a living somehow, and so I’m going to have to really work at finding new customers, and that’s going to be difficult; however, like I said, I have the option of working remotely, so that’s an option for me. May not be an option for some of my customers, but I’ll do whatever I can to help them. That’s all I can do.

 

RS: And when you talk about the challenges of facing that partisan divide, moving forward, now that we’re seeing the lockdown orders and restrictions being lifted, what challenges in terms of politics and political division do you see as we’re trying to reopen the businesses?

 

CM: Well, business owners who are choosing not to open yet for a variety of reasons—here’s another thing I don’t think people realize—some of these businesses, after 9/11, when your business was impacted—even places here in the Midwest, their businesses were impacted by 9/11, because when you have a big event like that, your insurance rates go up, because they spread it out amongst everybody regardless. We live not that far from, in Kansas City, we live not that far from an Air Force base, so that was a target for a while, in the early 2000s—I’m sure you do not remember (laughs)—so everyone’s insurance rates went up. Our homeowner’s insurance rates went up, our car insurance rates went up—what? And when we called, they’d say, “because of 9/11.” 9/11 had nothing to do with us here, necessarily, like as a direct impact, but they spread that risk out across everyone in terms of insurance. So, back then, some people—business owners—chose…and everyone went into kind of a holding pattern, not as much as they are now, but they all kind of hunkered down, because we were scared. And so, some businesses lost revenue. Business owners, especially in New York City, but also elsewhere, would buy what they call—what do they call that?—stop-loss, I think, is what they call that. Stop-loss insurance policies. So, regardless of what happened, regardless of any national emergency, natural disaster, whatever, if I lose revenue, I’m going to file an insurance claim and get my revenue back. Well, now we have this, so people are calling in those insurance policies—business owners, especially in New York. And the insurance policies are like, “no; pandemic wasn’t listed. We’re not paying out.” So, now there’s lawsuits about it. So now there’s lawsuits about that. Some businesses are worried that they’re going to get sued by customers or employees if they open too soon. So, if a business opens and someone gets sick, can they be sued? Do we have insurance to cover that? We don’t know. Those are all things that are being discussed now amongst my business clients: whether they can go back to work or not back to work, how they go back to work, how they don’t. Well, as you’ve seen with some of those protests around, people want to patronize these businesses, these restaurants, these stores, movie theaters, that sort of thing, and they’re demanding that people open. So, now all these business owners are in a conflict. You have customers who want to come, we desperately need them, we want to keep them happy, we’re scared we’re going to be sued. We’re scared we’re going to get sick. We’re scared something’s going to happen. And, of course, this has come down to a political thing. The lines are seeming to draw out politically. So, I see business owners who are cautiously trying to work in there to keep a portion of their clientele happy but also keep the other side of the clientele happy, because we have to service everyone, regardless of their political beliefs are. Well, I saw online that there was a restaurant in Colorado that put up a sign that says, “we’re opening for Mother’s Day. You don’t need a mask. We’re exercising our rights, our freedoms,” and it was packed. Nobody was social distancing. Nobody was wearing a mask. Nobody. One person took a video of it, because they had ordered take-out curbside, and they showed up to pick it up, and they had a mask on, and the place was a free for all. There’s pictures and video of it online. The Health Department had to come in and shut them down. For some reason, people have to wear their politics on their sleeve at the moment. Putting up those signs—“and if you’re afraid of coronavirus, don’t come in,” is what the sign said—come on. It can’t be one way or the other. My daughter works at a restaurant. They’re still choosing to do curbside. They have called back some employees. They’re allowing them to do partial unemployment and partial work. We don’t know exactly how that’s going to impact her unemployment—what she’s been getting versus what she will get, but she wears a mask, they have to disinfect, they’re still doing curbside, so it’s a challenge. It’s a real challenge, because you don’t want to be sued, and you don’t want to get sick, but you want to do what you can. And I don’t know if you saw this, but the—I don’t think it was the CDC—but it…I can’t remember what agency put it out. It’s not the CDC, but it’s a federal agency that has Des Moines, and Omaha, and Nashville, and Kansas City, and Denver, and some other places—maybe Memphis, I don’t know—and several places that they are expecting a surge in the Midwest. So, how does that impact these people who are already trying to balance this razor’s edge situation, and now you have that come out in the last couple of days. What do you do with that information? Do you stay shut down? Do you not? That’s tough. And every industry’s different, too. I have some people who do housecleaning. Normally, they have ten or twelve ladies who go out in groups and clean houses. Well, with everybody home, they don’t want people in their house, they can’t have people cleaning around their kids, all this stuff, so they’re down to three people, and they only clean for people who are allowing them in. Everyone else is on unemployment. They’re offering sanitation services for offices, like “if you’re trying to come back into your office, we’ll come in and sanitize it for you, all the carpets, the desks, the phones, the light switches, all those things,” so they’re trying to pivot that way. I have two ladies who are customers of mine. They run businesses in St. Louis. So, as you know from Missouri history, Kansas City and St. Louis have always been on opposite ends of the state and opposite ends of the spectrum (laughs). So, they run businesses where they do in home health care for elderly [people]. Oh my gosh. Talk about being impacted. They have one person per elderly person that is their dedicated caregiver. That person is not allowed to associate with anybody else, except for their immediate family that they live with and the patient. Well, that patient obviously isn’t leaving the house. So, this person, they have been doing group shopping at the grocery store for all of their patients, bringing it to a warehouse, sanitizing it, and then you go and get your patient’s food. They’ve also been doing a lot more Meals on Wheels and that type of thing for their patients, to limit their caregivers going out, because now we’re dealing with not just anybody being exposed—we’re dealing with the most vulnerable being exposed, and could that company be held liable if the caregiver brings coronavirus in to that elderly patient? Will their families sue them? There’s waivers being signed, there’s contracts being drawn up, all with lawyers who are working from home. It’s a mess. It’s a big mess, and every industry is dealing with something specific to them, and it’s hard to keep up with it all. And it’s hard to think of everything, and what if you miss something, and now you’re liable? So, I don’t know if you’ve been out at all, but over the last several weeks, have you noticed more precautions in stores? More sneeze guards, more things on the floor, limited capacity of people in the building? And now those restrictions are being eased, and I have a hunch they’re going to be coming back as the cases rise. I don’t know; we’re just going to have to see how it goes. I don’t think we’re ever going to go back into a complete lockdown again, because of the protests, basically, but I think that we’re going to see more cases into the fall, and I don’t know how it’s going to affect you guys going back to school. I don’t have any idea what schools are going to do. I’m sure they’re on the phone with their lawyers on a regular basis, trying to figure out how to keep you guys safe and open school again. Especially colleges.

 

RS: Looking at reopening schools, you mentioned you have clients taking care of younger kids while trying to run their businesses, so how are they looking ahead to potential challenges if their kids’ schools remain closed, but they have to continue running businesses?

 

CM: Well, I’m sure they’ll figure it out as they go. I did (laughs). I wasn’t homeschooling them, but every summer, they were here when I was working, and every time school was closed—snow days are a particular challenge for me, because it was always during tax season. I think that our kids will be more resilient in the long run, and maybe a bit more independent in the long run, and that’s not a bad thing, but socially awkward, because they’re not learning those social skills as young kids: how to stand in line, how to wait your time, how to not touch the person in front of you, how to not talk when someone else is talking. Parents are very distracted right now, so it’s harder to teach those things when there’s only two people in the room versus twenty-seven people in the room anyway, and now they’re very distracted. So, I think teachers are going to have some real social issues, especially with elementary kids, but maybe more with older kids, too. I don’t know. I don’t know. I think parents who have been worried about their kids spending a lot of time online are now going, “well, throw caution to the wind. We’ve got to do school. They’ve got to be online all of the time.” So, the parenting roles have changed. You can only worry about so many things at one time, and as long as the kids are quiet, I think they’re going to take a back seat. And that’s unfortunate.

 

RS: How have you seen the impacts of online schooling, or how do you think that’s impacted the way they learn?

 

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