A protester holds a sign at an Amazon building during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in the Staten Island borough of New York City, March 30, 2020. (Jeenah Moon/Reuters)

A pandemic hasn’t completely suspended the operation of economics in the labor market. Quite the opposite.

It takes only one bad experience with a business to sour a potential customer forever. One attempt at buying something online from Lowe’s was enough, and I do not expect to try again. General Motors is dead to me. “We know that you have a choice when you fly!”— oh, if I had a real choice, it wouldn’t be you, American Airlines.

It is easy to blow it. One of the easiest ways to blow it is by hiring the wrong people, and the easiest way to do that is by losing the right ones.

That fact has to be on the minds of a great many corporate managers right now, especially managers of retail businesses and home-delivery services whose customers are very much emotionally primed to receive a lasting impression of Instacart, Amazon, and a few other firms that suddenly find themselves serving as critical outlets in a largely shuttered economy. This is an important time for many of those businesses — and the employees know it.

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