Business Owners Prepare For Relaxed Mandate On Friday

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) — Businesses are preparing to greet their customers after public health officials relaxed the mandate allowing fully vaccinated patrons can enter Los Angeles County businesses without wearing a mask beginning Friday. 

Unvaccinated customers are still welcome to patronize their favorite businesses with a negative test, however, they will need to keep their masks on.

"The whole mask rule is a little crazy, cause you don't know whether to put it on or take it off," said Mardi Tuesday co-owner Keith Adams.

Adams said the new mandate puts his staff in an awkward position to try and enforce the new policy put forth by the Los Angeles County Public Health Department.

"No one wants to police anybody," he said. "It causes confrontation and embarrassment."

Adams said that the process of verifying someone's vaccination status scares away customers.

"So you end up losing customers a lot of times," he said.

However, customers are excited that officials have eased the rules.

"I think it's pretty safe now," said customer and medical oncologist Kay Anand. "We have one of the highest vaccination rates in the country and I feel fairly safe if you're vaccinated and the rate is down. You should be able to take your mask off."

However, some are still skeptical of the new mandate, opting to keep their mask mandates in place.

"You don't have to wear it outside but in here you got to wear it," said assistant manager of 2nd Street Clothing Douglas Davis.

Davis and other managers will continue to require customers to wear masks while inside their store.

"I think it's a good idea that everybody wears their mask being that COVID is still around," said Davis. "It still being existence, with L.A. being a place where everybody comes to and being in different states. People have the right to wear it or not but here we still enforce masks.