San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Unmasked rudeness during time of crisis
Owners of restaurants and bars in San Diego were walking on eggshells when they reopened for in-house service in recent weeks.
They had to adhere to many new sanitation, distancing and capacity regulations while hoping to attract patrons to their businesses that had been unmistakably altered by the coronavirus pandemic.
Staying afloat in this new world would be a big challenge, maybe impossible for some. What they didn’t need, and many apparently didn’t expect, were rude, sometimes threatening customers refusing to wear masks. Never mind that the masks are required by the state and strongly recommended by health experts, business leaders and politicians across the spectrum.
To be sure, most people seemed glad the establishments were opening up and game to comply with the inconveniences in order to have a meal or a couple of beers outside the house.
But some of the encounters were so ugly that proprietors began questioning why they were even open for business and subjecting their staffs to such abuse.
Here they were, bending over backward to follow strict new codes, hoping to at least break even — let alone eke out a small profit — while trying to re-create a welcoming atmosphere. Instead, they found themselves in the middle of a cultural battlefield.
Their stories are disheartening.
“We re-opened for dine/ drink-in for nearly two weeks and ultimately became exhausted by many guests who treated our staff like (expletive) and made them feel unsafe,” North Park Beer Co. founder Kelsey Mcnair told West Coaster San Diego, an online magazine featuring beer and beverage news, which posted his comments on Facebook.
“... On a couple occasions, patrons tried to pick fights with managers over not wanting to wear their masks. We saw several progressive meetups where over the course of hours people would come and go from tables, all in all just very irresponsible behavior.”
(The regulations didn’t allow customers to stand around drinking and talking. They had to be seated.)
Mcnair emphasized that many others acted just the opposite, but added it didn’t take much to undermine responsible behavior.
“There were plenty of good customers too, who would diligently abide by our house rules,” he said, “but when one person doesn’t follow the rules, the damage is already done.
“We ultimately felt overrun and my staff completely demoralized.”
Even before the state
and county stepped in to shut down in-house restaurant and tavern operations again last week, Mcnair said North Park Beer Co. would be reverting back to takeout and shipping service only.
Kris Buchanan, owner of the Goodonya organic restaurant in Encinitas, had a similar story.
She had closed the restaurant in late June after an employee tested positive for the coronavirus and didn't plan to reopen until the place was thoroughly sanitized and other employees were tested, according a report by Paul Sisson of The San Diego Union-tribune.
When the restaurant did restart, Buchanan said in a Facebook video, it would only be for take-out, not dine-in because of disruptions over face masks. (Again this was before the county shutdown last week.)
“We have people coming into our restaurant screaming, yelling, making our staff cry,” she said, adding that some employees are high school students.
“So I'm no longer willing to put my staff in that position where they're getting berated,” she said. “There's been people who have threatened to sue us.”
Let all that sink in for a moment: Bringing working high school students to tears. Threatening to sue a business because of a statewide requirement. At an organic restaurant.
This is a good place to reiterate that most people generally followed the government-imposed rules at these and other eating and drinking establishments.
As for the others, we're left asking, what's wrong with those people?
Nobody likes wearing a mask, but the experts say doing so is for the greater good by helping stem the spread of the coronavirus. Granted, health officials gave mixed messages early on about whether masks help, but now they almost uniformly say they do.
Even if you disagree with that, or don't care, bullying a restaurant server is irrational. It's like chewing out a cashier because the state raised the sales tax.
Besides, there are all sorts of other things required in order to go to most bars and restaurants. “No shirt, no shoes, no service” has been the standard for a long time — and it is a very rare person who gets torqued up about that these days.
Yet that's not a life-anddeath matter. COVID-19 is. Given that, it doesn't seem much to ask to put on a mask to walk into someone's business and enjoy their fare — or just don't go. And remember, the mask wasn't their idea. So the notion that they are going to break the rules and jeopardize their business makes no sense.
Then again, it didn't make sense in Michigan when a Family Dollar store security guard was shot and killed in early May for doing his job and insisting customers wear masks. Nor did it in Los Angeles about two weeks later when a security guard at a Target suffered a broken arm in a fight with mask-resisters.
In a flip of that script, just last week another Los Angeles security guard was charged with murder for fatally shooting a person after fighting with the victim, who refused to wear a mask.
Some other employees who stood up to people refusing to wear masks ended up in a much better place, even being feted on social media.
Then there's the San Diego Starbucks barista, Lenin Gutierrez, who was the target of an attempted social media shaming by a customer who refused to wear a mask. That backfired on the customer, became national news and led to $100,000 being raised for the barista through a Gofundme page set up by an admirer who didn't know Gutierrez.
The support, and the donations, are encouraging, but those employees shouldn't be put in that position to begin with.
In between the good and the very bad cases, there have been less dramatic situations that still added pressure to the job.
“I was more of a babysitter than anything,” San Diego bartender Marie Sanudo told Joshua Emerson Smith of the Uniontribune. “‘Sir, put your mask on. No dancing. You cannot join that group. Six feet.'”
Drinking establishments are for adults. When they reopen again, it would be nice if everybody acted like one.
Tweet of the Week
Goes to Frank Luntz (@Frankluntz), consultant, pollster and commentator who often works for Republican causes.
“In 1777, George Washington ordered the massinoculation of troops against smallpox, writing ‘we should have more to dread from it than from the sword of the enemy.' At the time, 90% of deaths in the Continental Army were from disease.”