Businesses continue to adjust to mask requirement, but compliance is up overall

GRANT COUNTY — Days after a state order took effect requiring customers to wear face masks when going into businesses, health officials are already reporting a marked increase in compliance compared to an earlier order from the health district.

“We quickly saw masking increasing over the weekend and into the early part of the week,” said Grant County Health District Administrator Theresa Adkinson at a Thursday press briefing. “We do continue to hear concerns about non-residents coming into our community without masks, and I think the statewide order may be helping with that.”

Adkinson noted that there had been some complaints in the last week from residents concerned about businesses not enforcing the requirement, as well as some businesses complaining that they were following the rules while others weren’t.

Adkinson urged residents who still weren’t wearing masks to do so, and noted that there were a number of avenues for low-income residents to acquire masks for free through service clubs or state programs.

“There are many more masks available throughout the community, so access should not be an issue for individuals,” Adkinson said.

Some businesses, such as Moses Lake’s Grocery Outlet, hoping to ease the transition into the new requirement, have offered free masks at the door for those who forgot them.

“We gave away masks this first full week, but we can’t afford to do it forever,” said Paul Emerson, a local owner of the Moses Lake Grocery Outlet.

Emerson estimated that about 30 percent of his customers weren’t wearing masks before the requirement took effect, which has decreased to about 5 or 10 percent in recent days.

“Some are just testing it with a mask in their pocket ready to go,” Emerson said, before turning away to ask a customer to put on a mask the customer was carrying. “Then there are a few that have refused to, and you have to turn them away.”

At the Red Door Cafe, co-owner Rick Boorman said that fewer people have been coming into his shop since the face covering requirement was announced last week.

“I don’t know if I’d say (the requirement) is a good thing. It’s a bad thing for us,” Boorman said. “A lot of people I think are just staying home.”

Of those customers that are coming in, Boorman said most are being compliant with the mask order.

“There’s still some that aren’t, but I think most people are following the mandates to their ability,” Boorman said. “Otherwise, we assume they must have some sort of medical condition that they’re not. We don’t ask them about that.”

Other business owners have seen customers get combative with their employees, such as Russ Cazier, who owns three Subway restaurants in Grant County and a number of other establishments across the state and in Oregon. Though Cazier said he hasn’t heard of conflict in his Grant County restaurants over the requirement, he has in Benton County.

“We have grown adults that just blister our young employees,” Cazier said. “Had two yesterday that were blistered by grown men that said. ‘It’s my constitutional rights and I don’t want to wear it.’”

Cazier is quick to add that he also doesn’t agree with a lot of the requirements he has seen passed down from the governor, and noted that, not including abysmal sales numbers in March, he’s currently down to about 80 percent of the sales he would typically be making this time of year.

The masks have also been hard on his staff, who have been wearing them for months, he said, because they get hot and have a harder time communicating with customers.

But Cazier said that his employees had no choice but to comply with the rules or he risks losing his business licenses.

“It’s our young employees who face these customers, the adults who aren’t grown up enough to realize that it’s not their fault,” Cazier said.

While he said his businesses are complying with current restrictions, Cazier noted that both he and his clientele were looking forward to the day when they could end.

“I heard a nurse come in with her coworker the other day, and the coworker said, ‘I just can’t wait until I can sit down at a restaurant and eat.’ Right?” Cazier said. “People want to see things return to normal.”