Dear Brick and Mortar Establishment
I am an impulse buyer; one of your favorite customers. Every year, I wait until Thanksgiving to start my Christmas shopping. I don’t buy things in advance because my family tends to buy what they want all year long until December, which is off limits!
For the year 2020, as we all know, things changed. It wasn’t the same in every city or every state, but the basic requirement was the same. Wear a mask or don’t come inside.
Many people refused to wear a mask while others simply complied in order to purchase what they needed and get back home. There were some who could not wear a mask for medical reasons, and some were faced with intimidation which sent them home in fear.
Citizens around the globe have worn or not worn masks based on their own circumstances. From my standpoint, wearing a mask was and is detrimental to my health and causes great anxiety and other consequences. Going into a store has been a challenge and how I’ve dealt with it has been, in some cases, to simply not go.
In the past, I’ve been able to plan my shopping but loved to pop into a store and grab whatever I happened to see. From small gifts for the tree to items for the stockings to big ticket gifts I didn’t even know I was going to buy. I’ll tell myself I’m only going to spend a certain amount per person and often that doubles.
Why? Because I’m an impulse buyer; not just a shopper… an actual buyer!
Perhaps my few hundreds of dollars don’t matter much to your bottom line but there are millions of people just like me and I’m genuinely curious how much money you lost by refusing to let people shop without fear of retaliation for NOT wearing a mask.
Just like others, I ended up buying online. That said, it was at least a quarter of what I normally spend for the holidays and impulse buying does not exist for me online. I purchased from a well-known local store and a local small business affected adversely by the lockdowns, a company I would not have normally patronized but wanted to support.
When I go shopping now, I go inside, get what I want and leave. I don’t stop to have conversations or smile at people or hardly make eye contact. I put my best “don’t bother talking to me because I’m in a foul mood” face on and quickly and systematically try to accomplish my goal; buy some toilet paper. I don’t buy extra stuff, I don’t take the time to browse, I don’t impulse buy even after the holidays.
Citizens are starting to make a stand across the country by refusing to do business with those companies who are making them feel unwelcome. They are also refusing to purchase online from them which, quite frankly, will prove a bigger hit to their corporate overlord pocketbooks.
Businesses now need to make a stand against these mandates and let the customers decide for themselves whether or not they want to wear a mask. They need to make it known that no one is to be harassed in their establishment and make all feel welcome through their doors.
So, to every business, every establishment, every store, every retailer that wants to stay open and make a profit, stop forcing your customers into compliance. Let them be as they’ve always been; FREE to do as they’ve always done… give you their money.
Sincerely,
Someone else’s customer.
This post was originally seen on Alexandria (aleksandreia.com).
