A sign on a Wilkesboro hair salon’s front door has both Wilkes residents and the internet as a whole divided, and the salon’s owner understands why some people might be mad at him right now. But he also hopes those people understand his side of it, too.
“I just hope they understand it was to try and help deter the spread for COVID-19 that’s present right now in this community,” Bob Hartley said on the phone Tuesday.
Hartley owns Smartcuts hair salon in Wilkesboro, and until June 8, no one who works at the Tyson poultry plant in town can come get a haircut at his store. That’s because 570 of the more than 2,200 employees at the Wilkes County Tyson facility have tested positive for COVID-19. Not everyone who works at Tyson lives in Wilkes County.
As a whole, there have been 482 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Wilkes County, according to the health department there.
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“With that information we were just scared and we felt like to protect our employees and the Wilkes County community at large we had to do this,” Hartley said. “We felt like this time the safety of people was a little more important.”
Not everyone agrees, apparently. After posting a notice on the door of his Wilkesboro location, — Hartley owns 11 salons total across western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee — it began making the rounds on the internet, appearing in news stories from the Huffington Post and The News & Observer of Raleigh. Eventually, Hartley has made it onto all the local TV stations too. As a result of his temporary no-Tyson policy, Hartley said he’s received lots of backlash online and is feeling more “infamous than famous” right now.
“Maybe it could have been done differently,” he said. “Obviously, this brings things under a microscope or a new light.”
Hartley said Tyson employees, if anything, are deserving of thanks and gratitude right now.
Starting June 8, which is 14 days — the same length as the recommended isolation period — after the Wilkesboro location reopened, all Tyson employees who do come for haircuts will get a $3, or a 25% discount.
And while some people are mad at him for turning away Tyson employees, he said business is still good.
“So many people are wanting their hair cut so we’re doing every time slot we have,” Hartley said. “We’re normally a walk-in business but we’ve been converted to an appointment business.”
