Starting today, masks will be mandatory in grocery stores in my country and I'm not looking forward to it.

As the title says, starting Saturday, the 11th of July, masks will be mandatory for people to wear in grocery stores, and I hate it. I hate wearing those stupid face masks. I already have some minor respiratory issues and breathing through those masks feels like I'm breathing into a paper bag. Plus, they get all damp and gross after a while. It sucks.

In the past couple weeks I could count the amount of people I see in the store with a face mask on two hands, only one of you're just counting the people wearing it correctly, and zero of those people are staff. Now all of a sudden they make it mandatory if you want to go shopping, and its going to be a disaster. Our profits have already been dropping since COVID, then they allowed restaurants to reopen so they got even lower, now face masks are mandatory and I'm expecting an even bigger crash.

The store I work at also is one of those smaller stores, most of our customers are regulars and small talk and positive customer interactions are two big factors in how we keep customers coming back. Now with these face masks, it'll be infinitely more difficult not only to hear what the customer is saying and for the customer to hear what I'm saying (since I speak fairly quietly by default), but I won't be able to read their emotions, and they won't be able to read mine. I've already noticed with the few customers that already wore masks before they became mandatory the interactions were always so cold and emotionless.

So yeah. That's not gonna be fun. Not going to deny any of the actual health benefits that wearing masks gives you, this is all just me whining like a child about how I don't wanna eat my veggies. Rant over.