My latest mask incident was at Costco.
Yes, yes, they were on my lifetime ban list, but I needed that pork belly to smoke!
So I walked in, and told the lady at the gate I needed to get a new card, since I cut the old one up when they came out with their mask policy.
She directed me to the customer service counter, but on the way there, an older greeter nearly spiked himself when I walked there unmasked.
He said, “Sir, do you have a face covering?”
I responded (as I have everywhere, with deliberate contempt, since this mask foolishness began), “Medical,” and kept on walking.
He yelled after me, “Wait, you need a red tag!” (Apparently, Costco began a yellow Star of David program for medical exemptions; not sure if that is a shaming procedure to deter the medical exemption people, or if they want you to know a dangerous subversive is approaching, so you can gasp and clear a path.
I replied (without looking back at him, as I kept walking away/in, “I don’t need one.”
He said with a gravely serious voice like a father to a resistant child, “Oh yes you do.”
I responded very loudly, “No I don’t,” and walked in.
I expected at any moment to be accosted by mask nαzιs, so made a beeline straight for my pork belly, and then made for the cash register (secretly wondering if there was an APB on me, or whether they would sell to me without a mask, or since I did not have a membership card, whether they would refuse to look it up.
But the brown shirts never came, and if they had refused to sell to me, I was going to leave a $20 bill in the register and walk out with my meat.
As I was leaving, the receipt checker was the same guy I blew past on the way in. Our eyes locked for 4-5 seconds, and I could tell he was royally pissed that I had put the whole store in grave danger of death.
But he said nothing, and I walked out without further trouble.
I guess they go back on the ban list now, but I got to rub their noses in one last unmasked old-fashioned American shopping experience.
It’s the little joys in life...