One of the most unsettling issues facing retail stores is how to address customers who refuse to wear masks while shopping—despite prominent signs at entrances saying that they must. Security guards are relieving some of the enforcement pressures that would otherwise rest with store employees.

Mask Wearing Compliance Remains A Challenge. A Pew Research study  conducted June 4 – 10, found that 65 percent of Americans whore masks in stores all or most of the time. Unfortunately, another 15 percent said they wear masks only some of the time and another 16 percent said they wear face covering hardly ever or never (another 4 percent said they don’t go to retail stores).

This means as many as 36 percent of people entering stores don’t wear masks. Without security guards enforcing facemask wearing store policies and city, county and state mandates, the burden to handle those customers not in compliance falls on store employees. Many are afraid of the consequences, and rightly so. Too many have been yelled at, spit on and physically attacked after simply requesting a customer to follow mask-wearing rules.

Security Guards Step In To Help. Store employees are not typically trained in the type of customer relations needed in today’s environment. Security guards go through rigorous training on how to defuse volatile situations and to handle poorly behaving/belligerent individuals. Their goal is to settle a situation calmly and without incident. If it escalates, guards are trained to efficiently remove the individual from the store.

Monitoring who enters a store can go a long way to avoiding confrontations inside. Security guards are stationed at entrances to prevent mask-less customers from entering. They often offer free masks to patrons and use the interaction to remind people to follow store and government rules.

To request a security quote for store security guard services in California and Arizona, give Access Control Security a call at (877) 482-7324 or go to https://accesscontrolsecurity.com/quote-request to get a quote.