Essentially, they're non-essentials

The future generations must be viewing this as a biggest psychological experiment, worst case scenario and the inhumane practice to save humanity and much more. This is COVID-19 lockdown.

Lockdown was imposed on March 25^th 2020. Being a social animal, we went through a lot. The ill effects of lockdown ranges from anxiety induced due to potential job loss - historic unemployment rate, potential downturn of investments in coming years, struggling to keep up with daily work-from-home with it’s own challenges.

These being the overt disadvantages of lockdown, there were few decisions that were considered/taken for survival of industry/corporate instead of prioritizing the customers.

Essentials & Non-Essentials

The lockdown stretches from 25^th March to 30^th June. These were comes with different levels of restrictions. Among them is suspension of non-essential goods sales over e-commerce. This doesn’t look bad in first look, but devil is in the details. What were labelled as essentials? The baby care items and grocery items. What about the office essentials? They were labelled as non-essentials. What’s wrong with it, not everyone needs the office supplies, so its not an essential component. Justified.

However, we were migrating the office workers in massive scale from office environment to home environment, which was a dream for many till then. Not all the homes are equipped to support a work environment. There was huge need from power supply extension to faulty laptop components which were available in e-Commerce site for a cheaper price than a store. Also, with the lockdown rules being imposed, stepping into a store and searching for a replacement accessories was not at all practical. The sale of “non-essentials” resumed in lockdown 4.0, after 40+ days.

My phone bricked in the middle of lockdown, I was using my dad’s mobile as I need to have few apps to access my work environment. Is it a big deal? Of course, alongside the fear of jobloss forced by recession, imagine you can’t work because you have a faulty laptop charger, that for sure adds to your anxiety. Thanks to lobbying by the retail traders.

Well for some, traders were preferred over the Customer’s comfort.