Starbucks Will Now Require All Customers To Wear Masks Inside Cafes
Starbucks requires all customers to wear masks
In a move that’s sure to send maskless Karens into a tizzy, Starbucks just announced that starting Wednesday, July 15, 2020, you better be wearing a mask if you want to step inside a Starbucks store. Proving they’ve listened to the research and the CDC’s guidelines, Starbucks wants to protect the health of their employees and customers but doing the very simple thing of requiring masks or face coverings to enter their store.
Starbucks announced the news last week but sent an email blast to customers on Tuesday announcing the new mask mandate along with a reminder of all the new procedures they’ve already enacted to slow the spread of COVID-19, like increasing their “sanitizing protocols” and limiting the number of individuals inside the store at one time.
“Wearing facial coverings in public spaces is one of the simplest and most effective things we can do to take care of one another,” Starbucks said in a statement. “Please join us in slowing the spread of COVID-19 and wear a facial covering when you visit us.”
For the customers who still refuse to wear a mask, Starbucks says some locations will let them use the drive-thru, while ordering through the app for curbside pickup or delivery through Starbucks Delivers is still always available. Even with all those concessions, people are still mad about it.
One Twitter user also pointed out that when (and it’s a when, not if) people try to enter a Starbucks without a mask, the employees are now also going to be burdened with the task of being security guards as they have to manage irate customers who refuse to wear a mask, and last I checked, was not in a baristas job description.
Seeing as the federal government won’t enact a countrywide mask mandate and the President has been seen with a mask on only once, it seems like private companies are going to have to enforce mask wearing for everyone. With major retailers like Starbucks enacting mask rules and places like Disney World withholding certain experiences if you aren’t wearing a mask, this is as close as we’re gonna get to convince people to mask up.
While we’re on the topic, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — the county’s leading authority on all health-related matters — issued a recommendation in April that all Americans wear a cloth mask when out in public to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and now new research shows that not only do masks prevent infected carriers from spreading the virus, but they can also provide a certain amount of protection to the wearer, so really, why are people still refusing to wear them?
