In another victory for brutishness, Walmart and other stores are declining to enforce their mask rules to protect coronavirus, because they are afraid selfish and science-proof customers will get rough with their staff:
Walmart (WMT), Home Depot (HD), Lowe’s (LOW), Walgreens (WBA), CVS (CVS) and others say they still won’t prohibit customers who refuse to wear a mask from shopping in stores. The issue, they say, is they want to avoid confrontations between angry customers and employees.
…”Either security or management needs to tell people that they must wear a face mask in order to be served. It’s no different than wearing shoes or a shirt,” said Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. If companies “are not requiring customers to wear a mask within their store, then they never had a requirement. All they had was a public relations stunt” [Nathaniel Meyersohn, “Walmart and Others Will Still Serve Customers Who Refuse to Wear Masks, Despite New Rules,” CNN, 2020.07.26].
I had hopes that the big-box stores’ mask mandates would normalize this simple and sensible pandemic protection plan and get everyone used to wearing masks before we crowd our kids back into the schools this fall. But I should have known that we can’t count on the free market to solve the pandemic. When there’s profit to be made, the customer is always right… even when the customer is dead wrong.
In their failure of courage, the big-box stores are sending a message exactly opposite to what kids need to hear: Be mean enough, threaten to start a fight, and we’ll let you be as selfish and stupid as you want.
Maybe a 10% surcharge for being maskless ??
Nah: just hire the bouncers from the bars. Or hire the big football players whose fall season has been delayed.
More reasons for on line shopping! It works great and you get it right to your doorstep. The tax still goes to South Dakota..BTW, how much have we earned on the Wayfair deal? You would think that sharp dressed Marty would be blowing his horn on this one. It’s been almost two years since decided, surely there must be some money…or did it go for fireworks at Rushmore?
I don’t know about other Walmart locations but I was at the Rapid City East side Walmart yesterday and 2 or 3 other times in the last couple weeks and on each visit it appeared to me that 100% of the employees and customers I saw were wearing masks. This is in contrast to recent visits to several other Rapid City stores, along with trips to Spearfish, Keystone and Hill City, among other places, where I would venture that less than 5% of people seemed to be masked. Even if Walmart’s enforcement is not perfect that store sure seems safer due to masking than most other West River locations I have visited within the last month or so.
The bully’s are promoting estate sales!
Essential workers are like infantrymen, they are cannon fodder only meant to draw fire to feed the industrial complex of either commerce or military. Bully’s are no different than Charlie in the wire, they are a clear and present danger.
The owners of the store are endangering their employees because they do not have any solidarity to them. The employees are expendable and will not be missed as there will be someone to take their place that is equally as hungry and desperate as they were..
I went to Walmart on Louise Avenue yesterday in Sioux Falls. I witnessed two guys in their mid-twenties try to walk into Walmart without masks. The doorkeeper there confronted them, and then the two guys played dumb saying they thought masks could be provided to them by Walmart before entering the store. In response to that affirmative defense, the doorkeeper then let them in and told them to go directly to the pharmacy area to purchase masks after they had also asked if they could purchase masks at Walmart once inside.
To begin with, masks should have been required at Walmart since mid-March, but that’s now water under the bridge, however. But since the Walton family is worth more than $191 billion dollars, I think Walmart can and should be offering free masks to those who don’t show up with one at one of their stores.
These two guys, I might also mention, obviously weren’t opposed to the mask idea, so such encounters should be quickly facilitated by Walmart for the safety of all of its customers and employees by providing free masks to those not in full compliance. Because, Walmart can afford it, but our health might not be able to.
Walmart said today they would not enforce mask policy to cut down on shopper/employee confrontations.
Walmart in Spencer iowa gave out masks to those who needed them in the entrance. Mine broke after I started shopping so I went out to the only entry point and got a new mask.
I asked an employee in the store where I could buy a mask and she had no clews.
Delta Airlines knows how to take charge.
https://simpleflying.com/delta-flight-returns-to-origin-masks/
https://www.afar.com/magazine/face-masks-now-required-provided-on-these-us-airlines