My brother is a one man operation and, be necessity, he has to leave his bike shop to pick parts up, mkae deliveries etc, all the normal stuff. I guess its a resilience thing. The more staff you have, the more you have to back you up if something needs doing. It doesn;t take much to screw it up if there are only a handful of people. One on leave, one goes sick, one on a delivery etc. Obviously, there is good and bad practice but, with mobile phones etc, no-one should be left hanging around for hours not knowing what is what.