Support your favorite restaurants — as long as they’re abiding by the rules on masks
The next time you go into a restaurant, take a good look around. Peek in the kitchen if you can.
Are all workers wearing masks? They should be, unless they always are six feet away from others. But anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows a six-foot rule is tough to maintain, which makes masks imperative.
Four times in the last month, when my husband and I picked up take-out meals at various restaurants in Des Plaines, a northwest suburb a stone’s throw from O’Hare Airport, workers in crowded kitchens wore no facial coverings. Some servers also weren’t wearing them.
Like a lot of you, I think it’s important to support local businesses during this pandemic. I don’t want to see restaurants shut down and livelihoods go down the drain.
But restaurants have to do their part. That means all workers must wear masks to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“It’s required for servers, but you don’t have to wear them in the kitchen,” a cashier at an Italian restaurant incorrectly told my husband when he expressed concern that four workers were huddled in the kitchen without coverings over their mouths and noses.
My husband declined our food order. The state’s guidelines make no distinction between kitchen workers and servers. The guidelines state: “Employees should wear face coverings over their nose and mouth when within 6-ft. of others (cloth masks preferred). Exceptions may be made where accommodations are appropriate.”
An infectious disease expert at UChicago Medicine underscored in a phone interview the need for all restaurant staff to wear masks.
By wearing a mask, “you’re keeping your own germs contained in a mask,” Dr. Allison Bartlett said.
For one, that helps dodge person-to-person spread. It lessens the chance of an outbreak at a restaurant, which could lead to a temporary closure.
“If your whole kitchen staff has to go in quarantine, who’s going to work in the kitchen?” Bartlett asked rhetorically.
Based on what scientists know at this point, the virus doesn’t live long on food, Bartlett said. But it can spread in restaurants if an infected person’s respiratory droplets land on the surfaces we touch — counters, tables, chairs, doors, door knobs and plates. That’s why hand-washing and keeping our hands away from our faces also are vital. Both keep the virus away from our mucous membranes.
I sympathize with kitchen workers who get hot while wearing facial coverings, especially as stoves and ovens heat up their work areas. But that doesn’t necessarily qualify for an exemption from the mask order.
My husband and I have seen too many maskless restaurant workers to count.
At our favorite taco joint, neither the kitchen staff nor the servers wore masks. The place is pretty small. They were all easily within six feet of each other and, of course, their customers.
At a pizza place, the cashier, manager and server were maskless.
Finally, at our favorite burger place, there was a worker with no mask slicing gyro meat near his co-workers.
We’ll probably give the burger joint another try, but we won’t visit the other offending restaurants anytime soon because of the number of workers without facial coverings.
Masks work. A CDC report published this month drives home the point. Contact tracing showed that two hairstylists in Springfield, Missouri, who were infected with the coronavirus and worked for eight days with symptoms did not pass the illness to clients. The hairstylists and customers had all worn facial coverings.
Businesses that don’t abide by the rules to keep you and their workers safe aren’t worthy of your time and money. Stick with those that value safety.
“If the staff are wearing masks, cleaning tables, washing their hands and being careful, then they are less likely to be sick and, subsequently, you are less likely to get sick after eating there,” UChicago Medicine says in a website post attributed to Dr. Emily Landon, the hospital’s chief infectious disease epidemiologist.
“Plus, you will be spending your money on a business that protects and values its workers, and that’s very important!”