At the Starbucks where she works, Elizabeth and her coworkers are doing everything they can to protect against the coronavirus. They take their temperatures at the beginning of every shift, wash their hands every 30 minutes, wear masks at all times, and do their best to stay 6 feet apart from each other while preparing lattes and frappuccinos. But they can’t control their customers.
“Among ourselves, we feel safe,” Elizabeth said about herself and her coworkers. “But we don’t know if the customers are washing their hands.” (Elizabeth and the other workers interviewed for this story asked to be referred to by pseudonyms to protect them against retaliation from their employers.)
Mike Van Dyke, an occupational health professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, told The Goods customers should be “respectful” by wearing masks and “maintaining distance as much as possible” while shopping. “It gets hard in terms of different places across the country,” he said. “Some places have required mask ordinances in place and some places don’t.”