After an employee tested positive 
for Covid-19 on August 23, Left Bank Books in St. Louis, Mo., has suspended its curbside pick-up service until September 5. Co-owners Kris Kleindienst and Jarek Steele and their team are all working from home and are continuing to offer online shopping, phone shopping and contactless local delivery.
In the meantime, the store has been professionally cleaned and disinfected, and Kleindienst and Steele have required their entire staff to be tested. They've also pledged to cover any costs associated with those tests.
Prior to the bookseller testing positive, Left Bank Books was offering curbside pick-up but had not reopened for browsing. Staff members were wearing masks at all times while working in the store, workstations were spaced far enough apart to allow for social distancing and surfaces were routinely disinfected. These safety protocols will be continued when in-store operations resume in September.
Steele said the past few days have been "unlike any others that we've experienced," and noted that several changes the store made in the past have helped them handle this shift. Even though they no longer have two stores, Left Bank still has the phone system that allows staff to answer calls from their own cell phones. They installed GoToMyPC on the store's computers a few years ago because they're "workaholics," and the technology allowing them to dial in from home and look at their POS is invaluable now. They've been using Square for years, and at the start of the pandemic Steele and Kleindienst integrated their POS system with the store's website.
At the same time, Steele continued, they were not prepared for the "emotional toll this has taken on everyone who works at our store." In addition to missing the store and their tight-knit group of coworkers, "every person on staff without exception is afraid for their health and the health of their families," and that stress has been "exhausting."
Since they made the announcement earlier this week, the store's customers have been fantastic, they said. Customers have been extremely supportive throughout the whole pandemic, Steele added, and he thinks they "feel safer and understand that we are making decisions based on the ongoing relationship we want to have with them rather than the $12.50 we can make from them today." The response this week has been "overwhelmingly great" and the store has received a host of encouraging, supportive and understanding comments from customers.
Left Bank has also received an outpouring of support from other independent bookstores, including The Novel Neighbor. Located in Webster Grove, Mo., Novel Neighbor is just a seven-mile drive from Left Bank Books and is one of the store's competitors. Nevertheless, owner Holland Saltsman reached out immediately to help.
She offered to sell Left Bank's Independent Bookstore Day merchandise this Saturday and give Kleindienst and Steele not only the proceeds from that merchandise but also from Novel Neighbor's own IBD merchandise. They declined Saltsman's offer, thanking her profusely and saying she should "reap the benefits of her own significant labor."
Steele wrote: "This moment in time for all of us is revealing who we are and what we're made of, and what she's revealed here is extraordinary."