Stood outside a busy supermarket, 19-year-old Sainsbury’s worker Tina was counting customers in and out when she spotted one not wearing a face mask. When she asked him whether he’d like one, the customer—incorrectly—replied, ‘You shouldn’t be asking me that.’ After berating her, he left, called up the shop, and claimed that Tina had assaulted him.

Tina was upset, but not surprised. It was the second time in twelve months that a customer had tried to get her fired for implementing the law on masks. For Tina and her colleagues—others of whom have been hit with trollies, labelled ‘stupid’ and ‘incompetent’, and routinely told to ‘fuck off’—the very measures introduced to protect the public during Covid-19 are the ones that have led to their abuse.

That’s why now, as people in England are once again required by law to wear face coverings in certain places—including on public transport and in shops and hairdressers—retailers including Tesco, Aldi, Lidl, Iceland, and Co-op have said they will not ask staff to police the measure. ‘The enforcement of social distancing rules has been a flashpoint for enormous levels of violence and abuse against my colleagues,’ said Co-op policy director Paul Gerrard, ‘and we will not put our colleagues at risk.’

Violence against retail workers was on a sharp rise prior to the pandemic, with the proportion facing abuse increasing from just over half to more than two thirds between 2017 and 2019. But the nature of that abuse has changed as Covid has grown and spread. The 2020 annual survey of violence and abuse against retail staff carried out by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) found that the three main triggers for violence were Covid-specific: enforcing social distancing, queueing to get in-store, and face coverings.

One factor underlying this escalation in abuse is that the transformation of retail workers into de facto public health marshals—responsible for restricting customer numbers, maintaining two-metre distancing, overseeing queue control both at tills and outside stores, and managing panic buying and supply disruptions—is incompatible with the traditional expectations customers have of staff. For customers accustomed to the (often highly gendered) emotional labour of ‘service with a smile’, or the deference exemplified by the attitude that ‘the customer is always right’, suddenly being told what they can and can’t do by low-paid service workers is perceived as an affront—a disruption of the agreed social order.

Tina’s experience chimes with my own time as an essential worker in a food shop during lockdown. At one point, I served a maskless customer who swiftly masked up when they realised a different customer in the shop was their friend; another told me to remove my mask if I planned on serving him. These kinds of interactions—not necessarily aggressive, but nonetheless grindingly unpleasant—were not exceptions. They occurred regularly.

And although there are commonalities in the way the pandemic transformed the reality of life for retail workers, it’s important to be attentive to how experiences of abuse differ between different types of business. As Andrew Kersley has documented, there are conditions that make corner shop employees particularly vulnerable. Relatively few employees contributes to a perceived lack of staff power, for example. They also tend to have less sophisticated CCTV and security systems. And then there’s the racism towards the South Asian community, who run large numbers of corner shops.

The lack of safety and support in the workplace for retail staff is evident, but how to go about tackling it is less obvious. At large, industry bodies, trade unions, and politicians have so far favoured a criminal justice response. USDAW have asked for ‘stiffer penalties for those who assault workers’; last week the Home Office proposed an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would consider assaults committed against those providing a public service as an aggravating factor, building on Labour MP Alex Norris’ proposed Assaults on Retail Workers (Offences) Bill. In Scotland, the passage of the Protection of Workers (Retail and Age-restricted Goods and Services) Bill in February has made it a specific criminal offence to assault, threaten, abuse, or obstruct retail workers.

But abuse is also driven by complicated factors outside of the police’s control. For instance, what constitutes a reasonable amount of time to wait for service or a product has been radically altered by traditional retail’s attempt to compete with the rates set by fulfilment centre staff at companies like Amazon working under immense strain. Likewise, with the disappearance of communal spaces such as community centres, libraries, and Sure Start centres, shops have become one of the only spaces where people can be guaranteed a face-to-face interaction. As such, some shop workers find themselves performing a role akin to a social worker or mental health supporter, but without the additional training, funding, or support to do so.

Then there’s the huge inconsistency of government guidance, which to some makes the rules seem pointless—and those who enforce them seem a nuisance. For example, in a decision that Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has called ‘outrageous’, hospitality is one of the only areas in the public arena where facemasks have not yet been made compulsory. Unite, which is calling for facemasks to be compulsory in all public spaces, has pointed out that hospitality’s exclusion leaves those who work in the industry—low-paid and disproportionately young, female, and migrant workers—at increased risk of infection. But in addition to that risk, the consequent perceived futility of mandatory mask-wearing in other spaces like supermarkets or tube carriages makes it harder for workers there to ensure compliance.

This problem is not helped by the social messaging sent out by those who create the rules. Rishi Sunak and Jacob Rees-Mogg have both refused to wear masks in the House of Commons, for example, while the Christmas party scandal has further eroded the public’s willingness to uphold the collective endeavour of Covid compliance. Face coverings have remained mandatory in Wales and Scotland, but stopped being so in England in July. As Paddy Lillis, Usdaw’s general secretary, put it, ‘This flip-flopping on basic and sensible Covid measures and the different rules across the UK creates confusion, reduces compliance, and can lead to conflict.’

Tina points out that she sees ‘more people in one day than my GP does,’ but things like chronic low pay or ineligibility for early vaccination on the basis of employment signal to the public that retail staff are not in the same category of key worker as others on the frontline. For Tina, the £50 Covid bonus she received at the end of last year isn’t enough to compensate for the ‘major impact on my mental health’ or the ‘drain’ of coming face-to-face with a hostile public daily. ‘Retail staff deserve far more credit than we’ve been given,’ she says.

The festive season in retail, with its endless Christmas music and constantly harried shoppers, is miserable. As already stressed workers protect themselves from germs, they shouldn’t also have to protect themselves from the public.