Tough love gatekeepers

Outside Store A, there is a prominent sign: “No mask. No service.”

Mask on, I advance to the door.  As there is no sink outside, I am unable to engage in the mandatory pre-entry anti-covid19 hand-washing ritual.

I touch the germ-infested door handle and open the door.

“Sanitiser!” the shopkeeper exclaims as I enter.

In the age of covid, especially with the "second wave" now sweeping TT, gruff commands, masks, sanitisers and temperature-testing guns are often given priority over warm salutations and ‘valued customer’ interactions.

“Sanitiser!” the shopkeeper repeats, pointing to a plastic bottle in a dark corner to my left.

"Oh, I didn’t see it," I say, adding that it should be placed where it can be seen easily.

Some stores seem quite militant in their customer-sanitisation efforts. At Store B, for example, a small establishment with an outdoor sink affixed to a wall, out of sight of management, I encountered a woman at the door checking hands. Once they were wet, she allowed entry...quite like admitting patrons with wristbands into an exclusive nightclub.

However, wet hands are not necessarily properly washed ones. I have seen some men simply turn on the tap and shove their hands under the water for a few seconds. No soap, no rubbing...but wet.

At Store C, I approach the guard to inform her that the outdoor tap is not working.

“Wash your hands!” she commands, her quickness to instruct seemingly impairing her ability to process what I have said.

“I can’t. That’s why I’m telling you the tap isn’t working.”

She marches over to the sink to investigate and eventually figures out the problem. Water jets out. I wash my hands and proceed to the door, where she stops me.

“Stand up. Temperature!”

I expose my wrists so that she can point her "gun" there rather than at my forehead.

Normal temperature. She points her finger to my eyes, then to a printed sign behind me which indicates that shades cannot be worn in the store.

“Take off your shades... unless they’re tested.”

Shades off, entry is permitted.

Minutes later, as I enter another building, a man in black steps out of nowhere, pointing a gun at me. Thankfully it is only a temperature gun.

“Temperature,” he says in a monotone.

I extend one wrist. He "shoots" me, then examines the reading.

Dissatisfied, he says “Again,” and shoots once more.

Wordlessly, he waves his hand with authoritarian flair, indicating that I am fever-free and can move on. It is like a scene from a sci-fi movie.

Once in public, we citizens are subjected multiple times daily to behaviour and appearances once reserved for criminals only: faces hidden behind masks, guns pointed and fired at heads and other body parts.

While I personally do not feel fear because of all that is happening, I see and sense how scared many people are for a variety of reasons: loss of income and/or abode, others’ frequent displays of irresponsibility (eg breaking quarantine to go travelling to Tobago, making contact with hordes of people along the way),daily media updates on rising covid cases and deaths,an increasingly overwhelmed system...

Recently, before the restriction of in-house dining, I was lunching at a restaurant. For the duration of my stay, an employee was dutifully sanitising surfaces and mopping.

“I can see that this means much more work,” I said as she mopped close by.

“Yes,” she replied. “But I have to do it to keep us safe. And I have children to go home to.”

While abrupt tones and pointed guns/fingers come across as poor customer service and we wish that we could be treated more courteously at entry points, there is another possible reality. Some/many "gatekeepers" are vulnerable human beings with no choice but to stand at the door for hours, exposed to multiple humans/potential viral hosts because they have rent to pay, children to feed, dreams to work towards.

What if that gruff attitude is really a form of tough love from someone who understands that not everyone in T T cares enough to do "the required thing"...so, to be safe, they muster all of the authoritarianism they can find within themselves to command even those who "obey the rules"?

“Mask! Wash your hands! Sanitise! Temperature!”