Is our company really dying in this month-long lock down order and other updates?

Toan Tien as a housing company, we preserve 80% of revenue compared to the casual months. We are with our residents and the residents are with us. In stand out circumstances somehow, we do get some of the short term stay guests. 

We have to track the rules closely as we operate in several districts where rules are adopted in a few  levels of restrictions. We have to interpret and conform to the rules as a company, while we have to explain what can be done as a resident in this time to our residents. So, it has been quite a roller coaster.

Quite everything revolves around travel pass documents. Many checkpoints have been set up to examine whether people are leaving home with a credible excuse. And the credible excuses were also moving goal posts for the office workers and our room services workers. 

The public policy goals are having the paper issued, checked without causing a freaking long waiting crowd, therefore jeopardizing the social distancing rules. Secondly is to minimize the fraud, as any work can be claimed essential while it actually isn’t.

After the first few days, our company issued travel passes became mostly useless, at best our guys successfully reasoned with the checkpoint staff. Therefore the last peeps in our office work from home.  

We swiftly housed our room service maids in our vacant apartments in Kim Ma, Dao Tan so they can continue their work as normal. We had to scale back the room service in Hoan Kiem and Tay Ho as rules there were stricter. So our residents had to clean and do laundry by themselves. 

Luckily we did not have to scramble into an overcrowded fiasco that happened last weekend as some districts’ ward government offices issued working travel passes. The City ended that practice by Tuesday, and the company issued travel passes work again.

Our key to clutch through this period is to get our residents to feel not stranded in the empty city. Speaking more broadly, it’s about looking after each other, and cheering each other up. That’s also a key to receiving a great attachment rate from our long term residents.

The maids receive our utmost respect and care, when some of them have to cease working, lots of well wishes coming in from our residents, and promises to water the plants, along with demanding our company to keep them paid. From us, those who are in contact with the residents were ready to address the confusions and deploy support if necessary. Our repair team of seven is there to mobilize if the fix is important enough.

Working from home means more electricity use in this sweltering summer. Preemptively, we slashed the electricity bill for the months that have a lockdown.

The customer service team had a meeting online, and turned out, it’s not only about us answering the incoming questions, the better practice is to be more active checking on the wellbeing of everyone - the residents you know, the guards, maids you work with, even checking on the residents who just moved out. We shall check whether they are okay, and connect on some small talks. No matter the quality of the conversation, we may come out more sane, and heartwarming. So to our residents reading this, are you doing alright?

The guards are the only people left stationed at the buildings of Toan Tien on a daily basis, they have no problem at all in crossing the checkpoints. The customer service team has to rely on them even more to connect with the residents, and be there to remind people of social distancing. Quite some of them have fought through war, they will preserve.

We have to answer the vaccine questions, we have no choice but to wait for our turn, as of Aug 10th, Vietnam has received nearly 10 millions doses from global COVAX, far from enough, and is trying to start producing vaccines domestically. Our only way to get through this pandemic, best wishes.