For a certain
personality-type, character, or mentality, it is easy to blame other people
while remaining silent on one’s own mistakes (and mentality). This approach can
be particularly harmful during a pandemic, for one’s own mistakes could be
passing on the infectious illness. Such mistakes include refusing to maintain a
physical distance from other people in public places and retail stores. As
noxious as the blaming is, a more significant anthropological point may be that
as a social and habitual animal, the human being may not be mentally advanced
enough to keep a distance from other such animals even for self-preservation. I
don’t think the instinctual urge for socializing exhausts the explanation, for
the failure (and even refusal) to respect others enough to keep at a distance
even when they ask surely involves weakness that manifests psychologically
beyond merely having a bad attitude. Not even the artificial
organizational-management systems our species has established are a match for
the toxicity of a weakness that is even just passively aggressive toward other people. I contend that American management is susceptible to an even more severe weakness; one that foists organizational power as a club even on customers.
In mid-April, 2020, in the
midst of the coronavirus pandemic, “some worker experts, union leaders and
small grocery store owners” were claiming that it had “become too dangerous to
let customers browse aisles, coming into close range with workers.”[1]
The president of the United Food and Commercial Workers’ union pointed to “careless
customers” as “probably the biggest threat” to the workers.[2]
According to that union, “85% of its grocery store member workers reported that
customers” were not literally going even a bit out of their way to maintain a
physical distance from other shoppers and employees.[3] With supermarkets struggling to convince customers to wear masks, the union's president also said that he was urging grocery stores to make masks mandatory not only for employees, but also customers. "Everyone must wear masks," he insisted. [4] Too many customers were endangering lives. Wearing a surgical or handmade mask could not prevent the virus from being inhaled; rather, such a mask prevents the mask wearer from sneezing or coughing near another person, increasing the likelihood of infecting him or her (infection could also result from breathing regardless of whether masks are being worn). In other words, wearing a mask protects other people, so not wearing one does not indicate a weakened motive of self-preservation, but, rather, a lack of consideration and even empathy for other people. It is quite selfish, as is walking or standing by another person.
From my own experience in several Albertsons, Kroger, Target, and Sprouts stores in Phoenix, Arizona, I saw the vast majority of customers—perhaps all of them—fitting within the union’s statistic on the lack of physical distancing.
This customer headed directly toward me. I asked him to maintain a distance and reminded him that the aisle is one-way due to the pandemic. He showed disgust, but turned around. Disgust at me, rather than recognition that he was in the wrong. Presumptuousness on top of not being responsible.
In fact, I encountered a few customers who verbally lashed out at me for asking them to keep a distance due to the pandemic as they were about to closely approach me and thus blatantly dismiss the two-carts-apart policy of the stores. In one case, the Albertsons (Safeway) store
manager was very near and yet in spite of having witnessed the violation, he refused to chastise the customer not only for violating the
store’s policy of “social” distancing, but also being verbally aggressive toward me. “I think
we should just let it go,” the manager told me as I looked at him in utter astonishment.
At another Safeway store, a customer headed directly at me and refused to back up, even to let me back to the products where I had been. Then he assaulted me by slamming my cart until it blocked the aisle. The sordid Phoenix police, whom I asked be called, turned it on me. I had assaulted the customer by blocking the aisle! The contrarian attitude of the seven or eight police who responded to my initiated call was as obvious as their confrontational postures toward the victim--me!
In fact, I had not seen one
employee or manager of a grocery store bother to enforce the policy of “social”
distancing since the U.S. Center of Disease Control issued guidelines and the Arizona government issued an order to maintain a physical distance of six feet from other people unless necessary. With regard to the masks, and I submit on the distancing too, stores generally were "reluctant to antagonize customers by turning them away."[5] According to a Wegman's spokesperson, the chain wanted to minimize "the likelihood of conflicts in our stores" and would "not put our people in the position of having to deny entry to our stores," even in states where masks in public settings are required.[6] In other words, the company's management was not even willing to conform to government orders. I saw the same refusal at Albertsons, Kroger, and Sprouts stores in Arizona. In Los Angeles in neighboring California, customers had to wear masks or coverings in stores, but Kroger (Ralphs) was not enforcing the government order. In fact, a store manager reprimanded an employee for having asked a customer to wear a mask. "I was told that it was none of my business and that I was not the mask police," the employee later reported.[7] She was being quite reasonable in wanting to protect herself.
At the time, New Jersey, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Hawaii, Miami (Florida) Austin (Texas), Washington, D.C. and some others had orders mandating that grocery shoppers wear face coverings or masks in the stores, yet no penalties go to noncomplying customers or stores. Only a handful of smaller grocers in the U.S. were requiring customers to wear masks. The medium and large companies, however, were putting expediency on revenue before the safety of two major stakeholders: the employees and customers.
Such stakeholder management is unethical because it prioritizes company gain even at a time when the business was good before the very lives of others. Yes, even employees can be thought of as others to a company's management that is oriented to the company's profits and executive bonuses. Utilitarianism is violated because the greatest good is not provided to the greatest number (of people). Even were a major chain to risk going out of business by enforcing physical distance and mask-wearing on customers, the industry was too important during the pandemic not to get money from the U.S. Government. So the executives' mindset was one of selfish enrichment over consideration and even empathy for others who could suffer greatly and even die as a result. Hume's theory of moral sentiment has it that the sentiment of moral disapprobation that people would naturally feel looking at the sordid refusals to enforce even government orders is the moral judgment against the companies. Kant would point out that the executives (and store managers) were not treating those put at risk as not just means, but also as ends in themselves (for they are rational beings worthy of intrinsic value).
To be sure, I had seen plenty of employees and even store managers violating their own company's policy on physical distancing both between themselves and as inflicted on customers through callious disregard. Such behavior is also unethical.
For example, a store manager of a
Sprouts store, whose nitch was supposedly still healthy foods, stood just behind an employee who could not wait a few seconds until I would emerge
from the narrow hallway from the bathrooms to enter without passing me at close
range. “He tried,” the manager said when I asked the manager why he was not
enforcing his store policy (and CDC guideline) on his own employees. As I
pivoted to exit the store, I glanced around to see another employee come up
right behind me to grab something, with of course her manager looking on.
The
next week, while I was waiting outside far to the left of the entry to the same
store, I asked an oncoming employee to keep a distance as she passed by. She
did not alter her course. She even hurled insults at me, including, “Maybe you should bring a
ruler.” She then said to a customer, who also thought my request had been
unreasonable, “There is something wrong with customers who ask me to keep a
distance. I get thirty customers everyday asking me to keep a distance.” One
implication is that she had not been maintaining physical distance much at all in the
store, which implies that the store manager was not enforcing the policy on
his employees. This inference is consistent with my observations by then of employees at several Kroger (Frys) and Albertsons (Safeway) grocery stores in Phoenix, Arizona.
This Kroger (Frys) store manager was not even maintaining a distance from an employee even in just talking. How could it be expected that the manager was enforcing the policy on his employees given that he was not enforcing it on himself?
This Albertsons (Safeway) department head and employee walked close by me twice without a thought between them on the risk they were posing to a customer.
This Kroger (Frys) employee, who worked at the self-check-out stations (and thus close to customers), lied to me that she had tried to keep a distance from me in an aisle. Walking on the other side of the pillar at the end of the aisle would have counted as trying.
The Albertsons (Safeway) employee on the left had been even closer to the other employee's face in passing close by before stopping to talk. Two-cart-lengths distance was the store policy and Arizona's guideline.
Not once did I see an employee even move to the other side of
an aisle in passing a customer. Not once did I see an employee bother to move
out of the way to give a customer some distance. “I’m trying,” one employee
told me even though she had not even bothered to move from the center of an
aisle when she passed me. I, however, was hugging the other side. I held back
from replying, “You’re not trying enough.” I don’t think she was trying at all.
She was lying. In general, I had the sense that employees thought it was rude
for customers to ask that the store policy be followed. At the very least,
employees didn’t want to follow the policy, and their managers were not
enforcing it. Even cashiers managed to evade the clear plastic screen between them and the customers checking out. I was speechless when a cashier moved her head around the plastic to hear me better at close range. Apparently she didn't think there was a pandemic going around. Perhaps her store manager had believed that scant training was sufficient for the employees.
The upper sign asks customers not to talk to employees around the edges of the plastic that covers most of the desk area.
The plastic screens at Kroger (Frys) grocery check-out stations are too narrow because the plastic does not cover the area where customers pay even though the distance from the cashier is close. Also, the area at which customers spend considerable time unloading carts and waiting is also too close to the cashier to be unprotected by the plastic.
This video demonstrates that the plastic screens at check-out are insufficiently narrow because they do not cover the area between the cashier and customer during the payment phase. Even though I told the cashier that she was too close to me, she did not back off while I was paying. Instead, she chastized me for pushing a wrong button on the keypad. "We could be infecting eachother right now," I said. "I know," she replied.
Even so, as I was taking a photo of the sign ironically just behind her station, the cashier backed away from the next customer as she paid. The cashier was staring at me to present the illusion that she was following the guideline of "social" distancing. I wish she had been less social with me.
Therefore, it would be one-sided
to conclude that employees needed more protection from customers because customers also needed protection even though managers and even employees themselves in some cases felt free to inflict on customers asking for such protection. Even more so than refusing to enforce policies and even government orders, aggressively blaming the victim is not a viable long-term strategy for retaining good customers and minimizing the number of bad employees.
The thought of Friedrich
Nietzsche, a nineteenth-century European moral
philosopher, anthropologist, and philologist, is useful in providing a deeper explanation. He would say that both the employees and customers were
behaving like herd animals too weak to master their base instinctual urges, including selfishness, greed, and the desire to aggressively lash out at other people. Selfishness out of weakness is not necessarily in line with furthering self-preservation; ignoring the physical-distancing
policies and guidelines ran contrary to the egoist urge of self-preservation.
The industry needed ethical leaders willing to go beyond what is convenient and expedient for the companies. Even the head of at least one major labor union sought to blame customers while looking the other way on the sordid lack of regard that at least some members were displaying for customers. Only a child would say, "I won't step out of my way in the least," and then, if caught, lie, "I tried" as the lack of effort had somehow not been noticeable.
Nor were any of the store managers in the stores that I surveyed leaders, for they were not strong enough to enforce the health guideline and store policy even on employees. Nietzsche would explain those managers as herd animals with an extended urge to dominate without the requisite strength.[8] The indictment, therefore, exposed during the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, is that retail-level managers may not be strong enough to manage stores. Generalizing so from my unscientific sample can of course only be taken as a rough-draft yet to be verified. That I saw the same pattern in every store gives me confidence that I am correct, but here I am on more solid ground in relating my observations to Nietzsche's psychological-anthropological theory.
According to that theory, the herd animals who cannot resist their urges to dominate even without being strong enough compensate through aggression, including intending to be cruel. In contrast, a strong conqueror does not intend to be cruel, but is instead oriented to overcoming both external and internal obstacles.
So I was not completely surprised when an assistant manager with an employee of a Kroger (Frys) store in Phoenix, Arizona stalked me around the store because I had photographed the store manager talking at close distance with one of his employees, an employee who had refused to keep a distance from me, and a customer who had mindlessly come up to me like a herd animal moving on to the next clump of grass. These people, even the manager, violated the store policy (and CDC and state guidelines) on maintaining a physical distance from other people. Neither man was wearing a mask. Had they been more clever, they might have combined their two infractions by walking up to me and sneezing or coughing.
The (assistant) manager not only felt the need to be confrontational and insulting toward me in a way that indicated that he really wanted to attack a customer, but also missed an opportunity to hear from a customer with proof that the store's employees were serially violating the store's policy on physical distancing--even violating a governmental guideline or order on "social distancing." In other words, the head of a large union was wrong in blaming only the customers!
A self-confident, strong assistant manager (which may be an oxymoron) in the store would have asked me at the time why I had taken pictures instead of accusing me even though he still didn't know for sure and the management had not posted signs prohibiting photography. I would have explained that I had photographed only some infractions in which I was being but in harm's way, and that the company stood to benefit. Several days later, I had chance, impromptu meeting in the parking lot of an Albertsons (Safeway) store with a woman who works with the county's Environmental Services department. I learned that her department had no clue that the stores were not enforcing the government guidelines on physical distancing. Referring to my earlier experience at Krogers (Frys), she said my photography was justified. "You were collecting evidence!" I had also been holding my phone up as a possible deterrent (i.e., another customer or employee approaching very near would presumably not want to be photographed).
And yet, the (asst) manager had been accusatory, and in this sense confrontational as if he had already made up his mind that I was guilty. He and his young sidekick employee were in a hunting mode, so I did not feel comfortable bringing my earlier complaints to them.
The two men left me, or so I first thought, but the sidekick was keeping an eye on me. Both men waited to pounce on me just after I had paid for the groceries. The assistant manager walked fast to me in an aggressive manner and shouted insults at me as if he were a policeman. "I heard from a customer and employee!" he said in a loud, threatening voice without bothering to even consider that the complainers might have been retaliating against me for getting evidence of their wrong-doing. Instead, he was an extension of their self-righteous fury.
He even shouted at me to leave the store even though I was already outside! That he was motivated to make the demand even when I was walking away, outside the building, suggested to me that he was motivated to lash out at me for its own sake--for the pleasure that comes from even positional power. Tellingly, even though I was pushing the cart into the parking lot, the manager threatened me, "You need to leave or I'm calling the police!" There was at the time a local law against calling the police for frivolous reasons. "But he was already leaving," the police would have told him.
Because I was obviously leaving, Nietzsche would say that the man (and his sidekick) was weak which is to say, sick. A strong person would have let the matter go when I was paying for the food and leaving the store rather than act out of resentment and an urge to subdue. A strong manager makes a point and then moves on; a weak manager cannot let go--cannot master--his or her pressing institual urges. Such mastery is the richest source of the pleasure than comes from power--far richer than acting out against a customer already leaving the store.
The (asst) manager's young sidekick had not kept at a physical distance from me twice when we were inside of the store. That he violated the store policy even as he was questioning me as if he were a detective demonstrates weakness primping itself into dominating inspite of itself. In fact, the seccond time he had come close, I positioned my cart between him and myself (two cart-lengths was the policy, as per the recurring announcement that he presumably had heard often enough). He was stunned that I would protect myself, such was his feeling of entitlement.
Major cracks in Kroger's human resources and store management occasion smaller cracks in customer's "loyalty" cards.
Nietzsche urges the strong to keep a distance, a pathos of distance, from the weak. If you go to a hospital, you risk getting infected by the sick. So don't hang out in hospitals. Unfortunately, I did not practice enough social distancing from the weak yet aggressive birds of prey at a Kroger Frys store in Phoenix even though the pandemic there had rendered the weakness suddenly blatantly transparent. It is tempting to engage with the birds of prey, but it is a trap, for they lure stronger people in, perhaps out of resentment for the inner weakness that the weak sense, in order not to conquer but instead to inflict. Such invisible birds of prey are infectious in that even the healthy can be beguiled into going down to the birds' acrimonious level. Nietzsche's writing style, which I am reflecting in this paragraph, certainly does not mince words; both the herd animals and those from within who dominate the herd and beguile the strong to dominate them too are sick.
Physical distancing can thus be distinguished from social distancing; the former is advisable during an infectious pandemic and both kinds of distancing are recommended for a person who is confronted by weak, confrontational (and even aggressive) retail employees and managers.
To be sure, not all retail employees and managers are weak, but that restless birds of prey survive in retail stores reflects badly on retail companies, including their internal accountability. Put another way, without empirical studies in the stores, it is not possible to know the percentage of workers and managers who have been infected or are innately sick--the weak cannot be but weak, and the strong cannot be other than strong. Yet the severity of the sickness suggests that the company or even the industry is unduly susceptible to the weakness and its being able to even beguile the strong into being dominated in fear. Put another way, the behavior can violate customer service so deeply that the presence of a kind of brain sickness can be inferred.
The sheer extreme to which the Kroger (asst) store manager and his young sidekick allowed themselves to go in verbally attacking me as I walking toward the main door and even outside of the store, without instead asking why I had used my phone to record the lack of physical distancing in the store by customers, employees, and even a manager, demonstrated to me at least that something was wrong with the two men. They wanted to go beyond insults to be cruel in their aggressive walking after me, scolding me, and threatening me.
The young sidekick's bizarre behavior was also a red flag concerning his underlying sickness (and mentality). Outside of the store, as I was heading into the parking area, he loudly threatened me, "Taking pictures on private property is Very illegal!" Then he immediately (and fakely) repeatedly thanked me for shopping there! Did he then think he had exercised good customer service?
He obviously thought he knew the law, as did his boss, even though the company had posted no signs prohibiting photography and I had not used my phone-camera after the two men had initially accosted me in the store (they lied that a customer had complained, hiding that an employee had also complained). Also, as the employee of the county's Environmental Services department later told me, I was not breaking any law recording evidence. Of course, the sidekick would doubtlessly have declared that such taping is illegal! Perhaps I should have called his bluff. In hindsight, I wish I had taped the (asst) manager and his sidekick shouting at me from the check-out area to the parking area. Evidence! Perhaps it was out of fear of this that the manager threatened that he would call the police even though I was leaving anyway. At the time, I didn't want to trigger the aggressive birds beaming down from their perches. In actuality, the customers should be on perches!
It is interesting that an employee and customer who were violating the store policy (and government guidelines) on physical distancing decided to retaliate against me by reporting on me rather than cease their problematic, and perhaps even dangerous, inconsiderate conduct. I held my phone up in part to dissuade them from continuing to proceed so closely to me (I also asked them, but they refused), but to no avail. They were oblivious to what they were doing, but not to what I was doing. I submit that they felt resentment--ressentiment--rather than remorse; they lashed out, rather than offered even just an apology. They would thus be likely to continue their risky behavior.
I contend that the mentality was by 2020 so ingrained in Arizona that the government's guidelines on physical distancing were insufficient, given the people there. Even an order would have had to be enforced by law enforcement, especially as the stores were not willing to enforce even their own policies on wearing masks because doing so could compromise earnings.
The mentality was so prevalent among the general public (notably in the middle and lower economic classes) in at least Tucson and the Phoenix metropolitan area that aggressiveness toward strangers was very apparent to people new to Arizona. "The people here are mean as rattlesnakes," one person told me. The people native to Arizona have blamed people coming in from other U.S. states, but even such convenient deflection is actually part of the culture in the state where cacti prick. In fact, culture-shock in moving to a major city in Arizona includes adjusting to the obvious "police state" mentality, wherein security guards and the police easily partake of the excess aggression. Overly, and I suspect intentionally visible security guards even standing next to an off-duty police employee were not uncommon at Albertsons (Frys) stores in Phoenix. As this was not the case at other grocery chains there, I submit that desire to intimidate customers is a revealing part of Albertsons' corporate culture in Arizona. That is, the company's culture there reflected the societal culture.
A security guard stands in a confrontational stance at an Albertsons (Frys) store in Phoenix, Arizona.
The (assistant) manager and his sidekick were clearly at home in such a societal and corporate culture. At the store level at least, it was permissible to intimidate customers by an excessive show of even police force on a routine basis and verbally and physically harass customers. It is not the sort of company culture that would be conducive to managers and employees mastering their sordid instinctual urge of aggression. The instinct to be considerate towards other people, on the other hand, would not receive its due respect.
In being so motivated to be unnecessarily aggressive toward me because an employee had complained, the (asst) manager was enabling the employee's sick game. Two birds of a feather fly together, Nietzsche would say. The healthy cannot be blamed for cutting up their store cards in order to maintain a pathos of distance from the sick. Strength can only be frustrated by weakness. This is the epitomy of the sickness that Nietzsche describes in his texts.
So in proclaiming the law as if he could not be wrong about it and assuming that customers should know that the company prohibits photography without being told or seeing any signs posted, the sidekick not only demonstrated his ignorance, but also lashed out at me. At the very least, this anadote strongly suggests that retail is susceptible to weakness wanting to dominate even the people to be served. In fact, the managerial role itself may be susceptible as control is so salient.[9]
In the Kroger store, two birds of prey flied too close to me, literally circling me and hovering within the store and pursuing me as if I were their prey outside, as they smelled an opportunity to eke out a bit of pleasure from inflicting repressed ire (sourced in self-resentment, which is deeper than the resentment against the strong) on a customer. Customers conveniently look weaker to faint, greedy eyes from the birds' soiled perches. I regret not having photographed the birds so you too could be astonished at the severity of the sickness of the weak, but I promise the manager and his sidekick were nothing to look at.
