Zoe Fritz saw customers being thrown out of the store for refusing to wear masks.
“It’s been really crazy! You have the people who throw fits that have had to been put out of the mall,” Fritz said. “It’s frustrating to deal with people because they feel like ‘why do I have to do this’.”
Twelve Oaks Mall opened up May 28 after closing because of COVID-19. The mall then updated its rules for shoppers on July 13 from allowing the stores to choose whether they allowed masks, to requiring masks in every store. These rules require stores like Finish Line, where Zoe Fritz works as a sales associate, to sanitize everything even if it wasn’t touched. And masks are now required to enter the mall and in every store.
“It took for a global pandemic for us to say, ‘hey, we should wipe down stuff after it is used’,” Fritz said. “We probably should have been doing that.”
Tempur-Pedic was one store that made separate restrictions on top of the updated rules set by the mall.
“We have a clean shop promise, so we are only allowing two separate guests in the store at a time with a maximum of eight people,” Tempur-Pedic store manager Tamara Barnett said.
Sarah Poulos is a student at Pace University, and a resident of Northville. She makes constant visits to Twelve Oaks Mall to update her wardrobe and doesn’t feel any different shopping now than before.
When she learned that the mall requires a mask in every store, she said she doesn’t mind and it shouldn’t affect anyone’s overall shopping experience.
“I’ll do it [wear a mask] out of respect for other people,” Poulos said. “I have no problem wearing a mask.”