Streeter: The face mask ban at MOM’s Organic Market is an affront to public health

Several months ago, a coworker asked me if she’d seen me running in Canton that morning. “I thought it was you,” she said, “but you always have a mask on at work.”

It really was me, but she could have been forgiven for not recognizing the bottom half of my face. I do indeed mask every day I am in the newsroom. It feels like it keeps me and others safe.

So it’s a good thing I don’t work at the Rockville-based MOM’s Organic Market chain, which has banned its employees from wearing masks or face coverings while they work under the guise of “delivering the best possible customer experience.” The only exemption is for those who have a doctor’s note affirming they have disabilities or illnesses requiring them to wear one.

I think this is a travesty. What are we even doing? COVID is still surging, no matter how many elected officials bully the scientists who kept us alive in the scary thick of it. And those same officials are trying to roll back vaccine protections that are already in place. There’s no way in hell I’m taking my mask off now.

Local dietitian Mark Rifkin, who was a team member at the MOM’s in Hampden for 20 months and left just before the ban became official, said the store used to provide masks to employees if requested, and that at least one assistant manager wore one 95% of the time.

“They pretty much let the employees do whatever they thought was best, so in that sense, it’s surprising,” said Rifkin, who was a MOM’s customer for a decade before he worked there. “But overall, no, it’s not, because I generally think that the company is duplicitous and created this homey, natural, progressive image, where the only difference between them and Jeff Bezos [owner of Whole Foods] is a couple of zeroes.”

He thinks MOM’s mission to sell organic food is real, but that doesn’t translate into the climate for employees.

Requiring anyone to forgo a mask for customer service reasons sounds like an effort to deny the reality of what we went through, of how many people died and how frightening and dire it was. Many are caught in a shared delusion that the past never happened, and I’m not going to participate.

I mask at work because I don’t want to get sick in the one place where I spend multiple consecutive hours around other humans who are not in my close family and friend group on a regular basis. I don’t want to have to prove that getting sick might exacerbate some condition I already have. Shouldn’t I have the right to avoid any condition as much as possible?

When I first started at The Banner, I was living with my 70-something mother and my 9-year-old child, so I was extra vigilant about not bringing germs home to them, as they were both in sensitive age groups. So I started masking in the office — and four years later, I still do. If my employers created an official policy that forbade me from protecting myself in the best way I can, I could not work there anymore.

Requests for comment from MOM’s, multiple union officials that represent MOM’s workers, as well as several respiratory and virus experts, were not returned.

But MOM’s is not the first company to try banning face covers. In 2023, In-N-Out Burger denied employees in five states the right to wear masks so that customers could see their smiles. Would you like a cough with your fries?

I think the banning of masks is generally a bad idea, but here’s what’s most egregious — I would expect a company like MOM’s, with the word “organic” in its name, to be more vigilant about health. Its mission statement includes a focus on the environment, lifting up others and mindfulness.

MOM … girl, I’m trying to be mindful of trying not to die. And so are your employees.

Live up to your name. It’s what a mother would do. A good one, anyway.