Me: “Welcome! May I offer you a free mask?”
Visitor: [looks around incredulously] “But why? There’s no one else here.”
Me: “...well...there’s me?”
Visitor: [laughs] “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
I work in two different service jobs, one high-brow and one low-brow, and I’m growing increasingly believing in a future where masks are the indication of the lower class.
I don’t actually believe in some kind of apocalypse where only the poor wear face coverings, but when you’re in a building where every service employee is masked and washing up every 15 minutes, and every “visitor” is maskless and under no obligation to follow any rules of sanitation, and making jokes about the mask on their servers...... vaguely terrifying.
And it’s a PRIVILEGE that they don’t have to wear masks. They are able to do it with relative safety BECAUSE the employees are scrubbing their hands like they’re going into surgery. The employees are maintaining patterns and setups that prevent groups and force social distancing. The visitor will not come into contact with any other guests except those they arrived with, and will likely be very safe. Meanwhile the employee is touching and dirty items the customers are finished with (abandoned trash, plates and silverware they’ve eaten with, etc.) and cleaning surfaces including bathrooms after visitor use, and interacting with dozens if not hundreds of people over the course of their shift.
Visitors don’t have to wear masks because the retail and service workers of the world are working to make them safe while putting themselves at risk of daily exposure.
