Front-line workers in restaurants, retail stores and public transit are finding themselves once again tasked with enforcing a mask mandate and taking the brunt of criticism from those who don’t comply.
Summit County Commissioner Elisabeth Lawrence said she’s heard from many who are concerned about seeing a lack of compliance at big-box stores and was shocked herself to see more than half of people in one such store without a mask.
“We are not trying to put front-line workers in a confrontational situation,” Lawrence said. “I think a lot of them have a lot of trauma from the last year and a half of that sort of thing, and that was not our intention. We’re hoping to gain compliance through education.”
Tim Jones is a bus driver with Breck Free Ride, and while public transit has required masking throughout the pandemic, he said he ended up in an altercation with a rider who refused to put on a mask after being asked multiple times.
Jones said the rider threatened him after he repeatedly asked the rider to put on a mask. Jones said that while he was reporting the incident over his radio, the rider came up and shoved him, and the police were called.
