Los Angeles Restaurant Closes Amid Conflicts With Customers Over Face Mask

A popular Los Angeles restaurant is forced to close both its stores at the San Fernando Valley and Atwater Village temporarily because their customers won't follow safety protocols.

Hugo's Tacos announced in a Twitter post, Sunday (June 28), that they will be shutting down because their workers have been "exhausted by the constant conflicts" among their customers who don't like to wear a face mask. Their staff has also been bullied and attacked for enforcing a state-mandated face mask order.

The arguments over the face mask have turned into screaming matches in the last month. The store's mostly Latino workers were also told to "go back to where you came from," according to CNN.

Apparently, the owners of Hugo's Tacos kept track of the incidents with the customers and realized that their workers were attacked every hour. Thus, they decided to temporarily close their two locations for the sake of their workers' health.

This comes as COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles continue to climb, with 101,000 confirmed positive cases and 3,300 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that wearing a face cover will significantly reduce virus transmissions. Yet this has become a political issue for some people who believe that mandatory wearing of face masks violate their civil liberties.

"It's a mistake to think of this problem as defined by red or blue," Hugo's Tacos CEO Bill Kohne said. "We're shades of grey. It's general defiance, a 'you can't tell me what to do' and 'this is my personal choice.'"

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Tuesday (June 30) that he will tighten the restrictions in California yet again, especially with the coming Fourth of July celebrations.

"We’ll be making some additional announcements on efforts to use that dimmer switch that we’ve referred to, and begin to toggle back on our stay-at-home order and tighten things up," Newsom said, without going into the specifics as these will be revealed on July 1. "The framework for us is this: if you’re not going to stay home and you’re not going to wear masks in public, we have to enforce, and we will."