Aggressive anti-mask customers are forcing some restaurants to shut dining rooms to protect employees from abuse

https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-mask-customers-force-some-restaurants-re-close-dining-rooms-2020-7


Kate Taylor
July 5, 2020


As restaurants contemplate reopening dining rooms across the US, some are facing a new concern — how aggressive anti-mask customers might treat employees.

Numerous restaurants across the US have decided to close dining rooms after reopening or shut down entirely due to anti-mask customers' treatment of workers.

Hugo's Taco closed both of its locations in Los Angeles in late June due to combative customers who refused to wear masks.

"Staff have been harassed, called names, and had objects and liquids thrown at them," Hugo's Tacos said in a statement posted on social media. "A mask isn't symbolic of anything other than our desire to keep our staff healthy."

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While rude customers are nothing new, some conflicts linked to masks have put employees in dangerous situations. In May, a customer shot an employee at a Waffle House in Aurora, Colorado, after being turned away for not wearing a mask. This week, a McDonald's employee from Oakland, California, was hospitalized after being assaulted by a customer who refused to wear a mask, she told Business Insider.

"In 30-plus years of studying retail and crisis situations, we have never seen a situation of customers being so rude to hourly employees," Larry Barton, a professor of crisis management and public safety at the University of Central Florida, told Business Insider's Mary Hanbury in May.