Counting On People = Disaster

My husband has COPD, so we have been very very careful during this health crisis. We’ve been in isolation for fifty-seven days now. He’s been really wanting a particular fast food restaurant’s fish sandwiches, so today, we decided to order through their app and go through the drive-thru, figuring it would be minimal risk.

When he pulled up to the window to receive his bag, the woman was wearing a mask, so he rolled down his window. She then pulled her mask off her face, down around her neck like a necklace, leaned out the window, and started talking to him. I don’t know what she was saying, because at that point I was shouting at her to put her mask back on, that my husband has COPD, and that she could kill him.

She seemed surprised and puzzled at my reaction more than anything else.

After I got home and calmed down, I called and spoke to the manager. When I started with, “I was just there at the drive-thru and I have a major complaint,” he responded, “Was she wearing her mask under her nose again?”

This tells me that this is an ongoing problem. He said he would “sit down and have a very serious talk with her.”

But since she’s obviously not taking mask-wearing seriously, she should not be interacting with the public.

I sent an email detailing all of this through the restaurant’s corporate contact form and received a long email from a do-not-reply address explaining how they value customers’ safety and are doing everything to ensure that, blah, blah, blah.

A few days later, I got a call from another manager at the local restaurant; apparently, the person I spoke with on the day that the incident happened was just a manager of the day. This one sounded older and very, very concerned. He said he checked the camera footage, identified the girl who we dealt with, and had a very long talk with her. He explained to her that if she couldn’t follow the rules, then she wouldn’t be working there anymore.

He sounded very sincere, so I think the issue is being dealt with. I asked him if she said why she’d done it, and he kind of sighed and said with exasperation, “Well, she’s young.” I knew exactly what he meant; when we’re young, we are invulnerable. Until we’re not.

Now, we just have to wait another twelve days to see if she infected my hubby. It doesn’t seem likely — not everybody is transmitting the bug — but “not likely” isn’t much comfort.