Last week my wife and I were in a recently-opened dollar store here in West Virginia. We were wearing masks, as civilized people do (my wife has severe asthma and will die if she gets Covid — full stop). No one else in the store was wearing a mask, except for the employees, who were using theirs as bandanas. We waited in line with a bunch of maskless idiots and, when we finally reached the counter, the woman working there pointedly walked away from it. After a couple of minutes one of the other employees asked if we needed checked out. He started to ring us up, meanwhile talking to another one of the workers about “liberals who wear masks instead of getting right with Jesus”.
“Are you a Bible-reading man?” I asked him. He indicated he was. “Then you must be familiar with Matthew 4, when Jesus was tempted by Satan. Satan took Jesus to the top of the temple and said, ‘Why don’t you throw yourself off the building? It is written that God will save you if you do.’ Jesus responded, ‘It is also written that you should not test God. Get thee behind me, Satan.’
“Right now, Satan is telling you, ‘Don’t wear a mask. Don’t get vaccinated. It is written that God will save you.’ But it is also written that you should not test God. According to the words of Jesus, you need to tell Satan ‘Get thee behind me’, get vaccinated, and wear a mask.”
I don’t think I convinced him, but at least he shut up and checked out our items. My wife forbade me to ask for the manager (or to call corporate) to share my displeasure with their service, because she didn’t want to be a “Karen”, but needless to add we won’t be shopping there again.