I posted a few days ago about an incident where I was asked to leave a grocery store for not wearing a mask. Post here.
The TL;DR version is this:
I go into a grocery store, shop for a 20 minutes. Every single employee at that point had been super nice and said absolutely nothing mask-related. In an empty aisle, the "store manager" walks up to me and asks if I'm aware that I have to wear a facial covering while in the store. I tell her I have a medical exemption. She says, "I don't care, it doesn't matter. The CDC says you still have to wear one." I knew she was completely wrong and arguing was of no use. So before I left, I made sure to ask her if this store's corporate policy was to NOT honor medical exemptions. She said, "Yeah". I asked her name and calmly left. I came home and felt pretty awful about the incident. Did not expect to ever have it affect me in such a way. I wrote corporate an email as a last resort but expected nothing to come of it.
Anyway, I have an update. I don't why I'm so surprised because I knew I was right, but it turns out this grocery DOES, in fact, honor medical exemptions. I wrote them back again because I wanted them to clarify some things and I wanted to make absolute sure I wouldn't be hassled again. They again replied and told me their management teams would be informed so "everyone is on the same page" and that I was good to go.
I know this is probably not a big deal to most of you but I hate confrontation and do everything I can to avoid it. All of the mandates and restrictions have affected me in ways I never thought possible. I pretty much hate going anywhere now due to the anxiety of whether I'm going to get humiliated and kicked out of a store over their stupid masks.
This one feels good, man. Feels like the little guy finally won one lol. Still have never worn a mask and never will. God bless America.
In my country, there are many reasons for being exempted from wearing a mask. One of them is anxiety. ow, they maybe thinking claustrophobia or something, but I'll tell you; I've never felt as much consistent anxiety as I have because of being forced/required/expected/coerced into wearing a mask or feeling rotten because I'm being asked to do something I consider unethical.
So that's my reason. Anxiety. Justified. And it's NOT legal for a store or anyone to ask me for PROOF, etc.
At this point, I realize that in reality, they cannot justify these demands, but that they will continue until everyone starts pushing back.
If people want to wear a mask, that's their choice. But not mine.
The only caution I would put here is to not give them a reason to point at a mental condition. In my country, they would mark that down and use it against you. This is how they tried to limit combat veterans from purchasing firearms.