The California-based burger chain plans to ban face masks on employees in five of the seven states in which it operates, citing the importance of staff "smiles" for customers.
  • Jay212127@lemmy.world
    162·
    2 years ago

    Mandatory No-Mask is such a weird stance, it violates both Health&Safety and Personal Choice/Freedom.

    • pizza_rolls@kbin.social
      20·
      2 years ago

      The type of people who ban masks are also the type of people that think you should be forced to work when sick 🤮

    • Izzgo@kbin.social
      11·
      2 years ago

      That’s an interesting and even plausible sounding statistic. I wonder if you have a source?

    • roguetrick@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      What do you base that off of? Most food poisoning is due to bad storage of food resulting in bacterial toxins even after it’s cooked. Only Norovirus has an oral route that I can think of (and that’s usually based around projectile vomiting that then ends up on hands).

        • roguetrick@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          ? That just says salmonella and norovirus and encourages hand hygiene. Masks wouldn’t help there. To be clear, I want safe food handling, I’m just also a nurse and prefer reasonable approaches over theater. Foodborn illness generally doesn’t benefit from droplet projections.

          • takeda@kbin.social
            1·
            2 years ago

            Yeah parent poster added the masks into the comment, but the study did not mention them, but as the study says, the improper hand hygiene is responsible for large number of food poisonings.

            Why the study doesn’t talk about masks? Likely because it was done before pandemic so no one wore masks in that setting. Second thing is that generally they are concerned about serious diseases and if somebody would report catching a cold from eating at restaurant will simply be ignored. People are also less likely to report because it’s harder to be sure where cold came from.

            Though if diseases transferred via dirty hands caused 41% of outbreaks, then I believe it’s safe to say that air borne disease is more likely to transfer that way, it’s just a kind of diseases that no one cared about until we had covid, and only in 2020.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      To be fair, if you’re getting food poisoning from someone preparing your food it’s probably not the end covered by the mask that’s the problem.

      • ashok36@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 years ago

        For real. One of the most disappointing experiences of my life was the first time I tried In N Out. I took a couple bites, sat back, and just thought, “That’s it? That’s what everyone thinks is a great burger? What the fuck is wrong with everyone?”

        • ivanafterall@kbin.social
          1·
          2 years ago

          Yep. It had been built-up as this unmissable Western-U.S. experience. In California for the first time, THERE IT IS. Man, so underwhelming.

  • Odelay42@lemmy.world
    71·
    2 years ago

    This is an absolutely ludicrous policy.

    Imagine a company banning their employees from washing their hands or wearing hair nets?

    The only possible reason they could have to do this is an attempt to appeal to moronic conservatives.

    Do they realize that workers in food factories have been wearing masks for decades?

  • QHC@lemmy.world
    55·
    2 years ago

    Me in summer through winter of 2020: “Well, silver lining about COVID is that we all learned how to wear masks once this all blows over.”

    Conservative family: “Agree!”

    Me during the unending apocalypse in summer 2023: “We should wear masks with the air quality so poor [unsaid: due to the now present and undeniable human-caused climate change.”

    Exact same conservative family: “That sounds like socialism and fascism to me”

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
    34·
    2 years ago

    I had no idea the company was run by such huge assholes. I don’t think I’ve ever been to an In-n-Out, and now I know to avoid them.

  • Arotrios@kbin.social
    34·
    2 years ago

    I’m not terribly surprised, given as they print bible verses on their packaging. Sad to see another relatively decent Christian business go down the alt-right rabbit hole, but their burgers aren’t good enough for me to risk the plague because they can’t follow basic safety guidelines.

    • takeda@kbin.social
      14·
      2 years ago

      It’s messed up. Imagine the memo said, that in-n-out bans hairnets, gloves and washing hands unless the offender has a medical note.

      I don’t argue for mandating it, as it is very hot in the kitchen, and mask would make it even worse experience, but pandemic or not this makes sense when working on food, it makes it more sanitary, and if employees wants to wear masks all power to them, they should not be penalized.

  • Ashyr@sh.itjust.works
    31·
    2 years ago

    This policy is obviously insane and, I hope, legally challengeable. That everyone is acting like this will cause all the customers to die is alao absurd. I live in a pretty liberal area of the country and basically no one is wearing masks anywhere.

    I went to in-n-out yesterday and literally no one there had masks, customers or employees.

    My wife and I ate in the car as per usual, but I know full well that we’re some of the last holdouts.

    • DonnieNarco@lemmy.world
      3·
      2 years ago

      Curious, why are you still a holdout? Seems nearly everyone has accepted this isn’t as bad as it once was and will never go away…

      • Ashyr@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        2 years ago

        A variety of reasons really:

        I got it very early, back in March 2020 and had severe long covid from it. I had trouble just breathing for the following year and moderate aphasia for nearly three years. I still have mild aphasia and, as a professional communicator, it’s been emotionally devastating.

        I know the current strains don’t cross the blood brain barrier as easily as the earliest strains, but the idea of going back down that road doesn’t sound terribly appealing.

        My wife was recently diagnosed with a congenital condition and covid could give her a permanent disability or even kill her. We’re consulting with doctors, but we’re still very much in the uncertainty phase.

        Finally, a friend of ours, who’s been nearly as cautious as we are, recently got pressured into unmasking at a corporate retreat, got covid and now has (permanent?) heart damage. We all know it’s a fluke and just very bad luck, but it’s no less traumatizing for her or her family.

        There will almost certainly be a time in the near future where we no longer mask for basic activities. We watch things like excess deaths, wastewater analysis and hospitalizations as closely as possible and the situation is clearly improving.

        That said, every war has a final victim, and we have no intention of being that person. For now, masking is physically easy, we have a social circle that we trust and honestly don’t miss a lot of the excesses we’ve stepped away from.

        • BagelEmbezzler@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 years ago

          Where do you find those metrics you’re following? I’m also hesitant to drop all precautions as I don’t think my mental health could take an extended bout of brain fog. I’m a bit of a hermit anyway, and like you said, masking is easy.

          I hardly see masks in public at all anymore, though, so I’m feeling unsure about how to tell if everybody’s just acting like it’s over when it isn’t, or if I’m holding out way longer than necessary.

        • DonnieNarco@lemmy.world
          1·
          2 years ago

          I am very sorry to hear that about your family and friends…I know of a couple people who ad Long Form COVID and it was similar. I hope the best for you and your family moving forward! Thank you for sharing.

      • TheKingBee@lemmy.world
        8·
        2 years ago

        With the composition of the supreme Court right now that doesn’t matter. Just say you’re a devout Christian and that they’re impinging your rights, doesn’t matter if you have to lie about the essential facts of the case even they will side with you.

  • Etterra@lemmy.world
    16·
    2 years ago

    Tell us you’re an insane conservative without telling us you’re an insane conservative.

  • exohuman@kbin.social
    10·
    2 years ago

    Okay, so what if the employee is protecting the customers from themselves? If the employee had a sniffle or whatever I would much prefer they wore a mask.

  • Lieuwe2019@lemmy.world
    1·
    2 years ago

    Medical studies have shown that social distancing is as effective, if not more effective than wearing a mask.