I still have them firmly on the red list over the way they treated their staff. Also on there are Wetherspoons, Dyson and a couple of local places to me who had parties against lockdown rules.
They won't miss my trade but at least I'm not a hypocrite by slagging them off and then returning (not saying anyone is here btw).
At the time I didn't think taking a bit of a temporary pay cut (loan), to keep their jobs was as much of a big deal as some were making out, especially as a lot of the staff had been getting paid in full to not be at work for a lot of the year. For the owners to pay back the loan, very quickly and with a 20% bonus was overall a fair result for everyone I think.
I've been on the side of being fired, being made redundant from a low pay role, not being able to get a similar job and running a couple of businesses and I'd more than happily take a temporary pay cut/ loan over redundancy, especially in those circumstances, when other businesses were being closed. If I had been expected to work for the entire year, for less money, with other businesses and opportunities booming, then I would have looked at it differently and left.
Also, being a company owner I know how bad things can be when there's a short term cashflow problem, and usually wages are a companies main outgoing, but rent and finance payments never stop either.
I don't think it was ideal, far from it, but neither was the situation, but think the otherwise good businesses in that industry or any industry forced to close should have been supported much better by the government, especially if they had been paying large amounts of tax into the system. I think support should have been in line with tax/ PAYE paid in/ company size, rather than the blanket 10k handout or whatever it was, which is loads to a tiny company, and next to zero for a large one.
I think what Wetherspoons did was worse, and James Dyson is a d*ck.