I was talking to my wife about working in retail, when I was younger. If I had had one bad encounter with a customer, usually you'd get a write up and the basis for it was that bad exchanges cause customers not to come back, we'll lose money, blah blah blah, people are going to tell people and our customers will dwindle over ONE negative transaction. It's how they hold it over your head to feel important.

It must have been. Because now, some shopkeepers running little mom and pop shops in my town feel super comfortable about getting confrontational with people coming in to spend money in their store, making them uncomfortable and telling them to leave if they won't mask up. Hello, shopkeeper, you don't think negative transactions pass by word of mouth anymore? How many people do you think you can eject like that and still HAVE a business to kick people out of?