Georgia restaurateur sells car to pay her employees amid coronavirus shutdown: report
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A Georgia restaurant owner sold her car in order to keep paying her employees amid the coronavirus shutdown that closed her doors, according to a local report.
Charity Salyers, who owns Vittles Restaurant in Smyrna, sold the Ford Mustang she’d bought just a few months ago for enough cash to cover her bills and pay her employees for about a month, she told Fox 5.
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"I was kind of stuck against a wall, so I prayed about it and then went and sold my car," Salyers said. "It was a Mustang GT 5.0, a very nice candy apple red."
The owner of Vittles Restaurant in Smyrna, Ga., sold the Mustang she’d bought just a few months ago for enough cash to cover her bills and pay her employees for about a month. (Charity Salyers)
She would normally have 10 to 12 people working on a given day, she told the outlet.
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But with business starkly dropping off and limited to curbside pickup amid the COVID-19 shutdown, she cut back to two employees and herself.
They’re not receiving what they’d normally make, but they’re receiving something.
"When she came back after selling her car I think I cried, and she didn't,” said Stacy Wingard, one of those employees. “She said 'Stacy I had to. I have to make sure everybody is good.’”
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Vittles Restaurant, like other restaurants around the country, has been limite to serving to-go orders only amid the coronavirus pandemic. (Charity Salyers)
Georgia had more than 17,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus as of Friday afternoon, and at least 650 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Countrywide, there were more than 680,000 confirmed cases and over 34,000 deaths.
To slow the contagion’s spread, officials at different levels of government across the country are turning to social isolation guidelines or stay-at-home orders and widespread closures of nonessential businesses -- which have in turn left a staggering number of Americans out of work.
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Americans are being urged to avoid close contact with one another, maintain good hand-washing hygiene and avoid leaving their homes as much as possible.
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Symptoms can include fever, cough and shortness of breath, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and they can range in severity from mild to deadly.
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But there are signs that the social distancing guidelines are helping, according to President Trump, and federal and state officials have announced plans to look into how and when they can reopen the economy.