Here’s a template for a letter, email or message you can use to provide feedback to a business with masked staff.
Dear XX
I visited [name of establishment] in [location] on [date] and I wanted to give you some feedback.
I was very disappointed to find that your staff were wearing face coverings, which I find intimidating. It immediately made me feel unwelcome and treated like a dangerous biohazard.
Masks rob us of the basic but fundamental ability to connect properly with fellow human beings. Your staff could have been welcoming me with a smile but I have no idea. The face coverings also meant that I struggled to communicate with your staff, having to ask them to repeat what they were saying several times. One in five UK adults are hard of hearing and masks make what were once normal interactions sometimes impossible. Why are you discriminating against people with disabilities in this way?
Far from being reassuring, for many people masks will prolong anxieties around returning to normal life. They act as a crude reminder that danger is supposedly all around when it is not. And even if it was, the evidence on whether masks actually reduce transmission of respiratory viruses is uncertain at best.
If your staff really want to wear a mask, that’s their personal choice but I would urge you not to impose any requirement or encouragement for them to do so. We have all suffered enough over the last 18 months, what we urgently need now is to get back to normality. If not now, when?
Yours sincerely,
XXX
