‘It’s a horrible, horrible situation’
Businesses grapple with mask enforcement and unruly scofflaws
Kristin Callow is considering closing her business for the time being after a Sunday confrontation with a man who refused to wear a mask in her laundromat.
The man came into Wash King, 313 E. Main St., in Edmore, with a woman. Neither were wearing masks. She asked them to put masks on. She did. He opted for a different path.
“I don’t have to wear a mask in here,” she recalled him saying.
Callow supports wear- ing masks and has since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. But, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s executive order requiring that businesses turn away unmasked customers has put her in a very tough spot.
“The whole thing is unfair,” she said. “We’re not law enforcement people.”
The executive order has turned her from a business owner trying to do the right thing into the frontline enforcer of making people wear masks.
“That’s how it is structured to work,” said Brian Calley, who runs the Small Business Association of Michigan, on Twitter. “The role of police is secondary to frontline business staff.
“When a person refuses to leave it is trespassing. (The executive order) is meant to avoid police enforcement except for trespassing complaints. But it
relies on businesses calling police on customers.”
On Monday, the Gratiot County Sheriff’s Office posted as much in a Monday Facebook post. Mt. Pleasant Police Department spokeswoman Autume Balcom confirmed Monday that they will also handle mask issues as trespassing complaints. So did Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main, who expressed frustration with the governor’s executive orders in general.
“The orders have been ambiguous at times and contradictory from one to next,” he said in an email. “It is difficult to enforce something that is not clear, for example most of the issues are being addressed in the frequently asked questions and answers of the (executive orders).”
People on both sides of the issue have deluged his office with demands that he either start enforcing mask requirements or threatening lawsuits if they do, he said. Walking the line between the two is a delicate balancing act.
Callow called to report the man who refused to put on a mask and was put in touch with a trooper with the Michigan State Police. The trooper had her put their conversation on speaker phone with the man present.
“If the business owner asks you to leave, you need to leave,” Callow recalled the trooper telling the man. The man tried arguing with the trooper and grabbing Callow’s phone.
She told him to back up. The trooper said he was headed to Wash King, but Callow said she doesn’t know if the unmasked man heard that.
He did leave, after ordering the woman he was with to remove their laundry from the washers. They left a puddle of water all over her business floor, which she mopped up before allowing her other customers, who were sitting in their cars, back into the laundromat.
“I’m so dumbfounded by the whole thing,” she said.
She posted it to Facebook to raise awareness about the need for people to be considerate. It went viral, and she now regrets the post.
“I am so stressed out,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been called.”
Someone called her a
Nazi, she said. Other people have called her names she doesn’t care to repeat.
Name calling is one thing. Losing customers is something else. After the trooper arrived at Wash King, the man was identified and a trespassing complaint was filed against him.
He won’t be back as a customer, Callow said. There might be others who avoid her laundromat because the incident became public.
“We need every bit of business we can get,” she said. It might be smarter and cause less harm to shut down the laundromat for the time being. In addition to owning Wash King, Callow co-owns an appliance repair business with her husband that is operated from their home.
“I just don’t know,” she said. “It’s a horrible, horrible situation.”
Isabella County Sheriff Main addressed that in his email.
“I would ask all our residents to respect each other’s opinion regarding this issue,” he said. “No matter what side you agree with, please do not attempt to become argumentative or engage another person that feels the opposite way. We as a society need to get to a place of understanding and respect for everyone’s opinion.”