No mask? No service. Please leave now.

     "We encourage customers who are prevented from wearing a mask due to a health consideration to reconsider travel."

                Delta Airlines

The customer is not always right.  Sometimes they scare off other customers.

A guest post today from a man trying to stay alive in a pandemic.


Calling BS on mask scofflaws. The airlines dealt with a problem. Crowded airplanes spread an airborne virus. Everyone wearing a good mask would make everyone safer, which would mean more passengers would be willing to fly. Some customers were refusing a mask and claiming a medical exemption. United and Delta are cracking down with stringent enforcement of a new policy that makes customers claiming a medical exemption jump through hoops that take an hour and involve a consultation with a medical professional. The process takes an hour. People miss planes.

Prior to this it was the honor system. Airline crews were instructed not to confront passengers who refused to wear masks claiming an excuse. This policy created its own problem; fellow passengers protested being seated near passengers without masks. Customers applauded when crews forced scofflaws to leave the plane.

We accept the implicit authority of people in charge of airplanes and ships, and TSA has conditioned Americans to perceive fellow passengers as potential threats. A mask-less passenger is statistically a far greater risk to others than that they are planning a terrorist takeover of the plane. A virus spreader might infect dozens of passengers and and kill one  or more of them. 

Yet many Americans consider mask wearing an infringement of their freedom and won't do it. President Trump and Republican governors in Florida and Georgia say explicitly that wearing a mask in public is an affront to freedom. Governments might recommend masks, but shouldn't require them.

Airlines can do what retail stores cannot. Stores essentially work on the honor system. Many states currently require mask-wearing in public, but few stores are set up to do actual enforcement, both at entry and while customers wander the store. 

That puts the onus onto customers. They have two tools. One is confronting and shaming mask scofflaws. My own experience, and the experience of Art Baden, the author of the Guest Post below, is not good. Mask scofflaws feel entitled, and are not shamed into compliance by the comments of a fellow customer.

If enforcement is going to happen it will require the store to do it, and I expect they will only accept this burden for the same reason that airlines did: because they will lose business from cautious customers if they do not.  

What to do? Complain to the scofflaw, then tell the store manager you need to shop elsewhere. And tell your friends.

Art Baden is not trying to be a cop. He is trying to stay alive. He is in his mid 60's and has had pneumonia three times in the past. If he were to catch the virus and be hospitalized and die, he would be reported to have two "co-morbidities," age and prior lung condition, and some people would consider his death unsurprising, somehow his fault and not that of the virus. Baden is a retired insurance broker, living in Ashland, Oregon, a pleasant, upscale college town. Market of Choice is a supermarket with a rich selection of organic foods, more in the style of a Whole Foods market than a Safeway or Publix.

Guest Post by Art Baden

Art Baden

So I was in Market of Choice grocery store last night here in Ashland around 8 p.m. and was so pleased that everyone I saw was wearing a mask, pursuant to the sign on the door - No Mask No Entry.

Except for one seemingly healthy and able young man in his early 20’s shopping mask-less in the store.

He got in the checkout line behind me, so I asked the wonderful young woman checking me out “Isn’t everyone supposed to be masked?” She rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders, as if to say “I know, but what can I do.”  I couldn’t see a store manager around, so I walked up to the young man and said “you know you are supposed to be wearing a mask, do you have a mask?” He replied ”I have a medical condition.”  I asked, “I’m curious, what sort of medical condition prevents you from wearing a mask?”  He replied “I’m not required to tell you, but wearing a mask gives me anxiety.”

I told him “ Seeing you in here not wearing a mask gives ME anxiety, why don’t you deal with your anxiety?”  He replied, “Why don’t you deal with your rudeness.”

In retrospect I wish I had been more artful in my approach, and used my compassionate communications skills, and invited him to consider that he could be an asymptomatic spreader of the contagious virus, or invited him to consider  how anxious he’d be in an ICU bed with a tube down his throat on a ventilator, but alas, I wasn’t thinking fast enough. 

Folks, there are very effective therapeutic preventative medications that treat anxiety.  They are covered by Health insurance or Medicaid, for those with lesser means.   There are no such meds available for COVID-19.

This young man’s behavior brings to the fore the dynamic tension in a democracy between the rights of the individual and the protection of society as a whole. But in the case of a global pandemic, the calculus seems pretty clear:  People don’t end up in an ICU with anxiety.  If someone is that anxious, see a medical provider and get meds, or use the shopping services at the Food Coop or other groceries and stay home.  

It was difficult for me to confront this young man.  Who wants to create a scene, or potentially trigger another person?  I sure didn’t, but as no one in authority would, and none of the younger hale and hardy patrons stepped up, it was this slight of build 67 year old man who did. . I’m glad I did, and I hope others will do so as well. 

If this young man needs to be shamed into wearing a mask to protect himself and others, so be it.

I’ve had 3 family members lucky enough to survive this scourge.  I know it’s real.

Silence is complicity.  If you see something, say something.