The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Do You Handle A Customer Who Won't Wear A Mask?

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

A hump day potpourri special! Lots of stuff for your Wednesday.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily it's hump day hump day we love hump day wednesday of week 30. now normally as, as you know, on Wednesdays, we do the Race Next Door. Not this Wednesday, because the debate is tonight, the vice presidential debate, and Bruce and I won't talk about that, so we'll talk about it tomorrow. So the Race Next Door this week will be on Thursday, not today, on Wednesday. Should be an interesting debate. You know, I'm not a big fan of Mike Pence. I think he's been a toady for four years.

And if he stands up there and does the, oh, because of the great direction of President Donald J. Trump, we have done blah, blah, blah, blah, which has been basically the stand he's taken for the last three and a half years on anything. If he does that tonight, I think people will laugh him right out of the debate. But it is an opportunity for him to be his own guy.

He's not a stupid guy. He was a successful senator, governor as well, I think. He debated well the last time around when he debated Senator Kaine, who was the vice presidential candidate for Hillary Clinton. But Kamala Harris, that could be a whole different question. It would be very interesting to watch this debate tonight. So, then people will start making judgments.

And I can predict now, already now, the tweets that will come out of Trump tonight. Even before it's over, he'll be tweeting about how great his vice president was, how he destroyed Kamala Harris, how it's a whole new game now because Mike Pence has shown the way, how different it will be next week if he gets to debate Joe Biden again. Well, we'll see. I see Biden saying, prove to me you don't have coronavirus, and we may debate.

But if he can't, we won't. And if I was Joe Biden, and if I was Joe Biden's people, I would find, I mean, this is a pretty legitimate reason not to debate. The guy's got COVID. I'd want to see a couple of weeks quarantining after the doctors, such as they are, say he's past the danger point. But if I was Joe Biden's people, I'd be trying to figure out a way

that the one debate they had is the last debate they'll have, because that will be the lasting impression of the debates. It's hard to imagine he could do worse than last week's debate, Trump, I mean. You never know, but the odds are he'd probably do better. And if you're Joe Biden, why would you want to take a chance on that? Anyway, enough about the debates.

Watch tonight, we'll talk about it tomorrow. Now, a lot of nice reaction to last night's podcast, which was saying goodbye to John Turner. But it was interesting. I went into Toronto on Monday night, had dinner with Will, my son, who's at U of T and also working at the same time. And we had, we did takeout, you know, one of those delivery services like Uber Eats or Skip the Dishes or whatever they're called.

But we had sushi. And, you know, we've tried to support the takeout industry through these last six or seven months. And we had a great supper. It arrived in a plastic bag with plastic cutlery. Some of the dishes were that kind of black plastic stuff. And if the government of Canada has its way, we're not going to be able to do that too many more times

on those kind of plastic cutlery dishes, bags, because they announced today a pretty strict program that is going to lead towards the end of certain kinds of plastics in Canada. I'm not going to dwell on this, but I think it's interesting because it is a further indication that the government wants to get us out of plastics in that sense, single-use plastics, because of the problems they create. Not good for the plastics industry

and the petrochemical industry. Let's apply plastics. But here's the list. I think there's kind of six areas. Plastic grocery checkout bags. That's it. Their history. As of next year.

So you'll be, you know, bring your own bag. A little hard for takeout, but that but that i guess will be then paper bags but at grocery stores you bring your own bag already many people doing that already straws plastic straws no stir sticks plastic stir. Six-pack rings, you know those things that hold cans together? I could buy a six-pack of ginger ale or beer or whatever, and those plastic things, and you hear some horrible stories about where those end up. Plastic cutlery and take-out containers made from hard-to-recycle plastics. And those are the kind of black stuff is considered hard-to-recycle plastic.

Some of the food the other night that we had was in that. So that's all changing. Single-use plastics in those six areas. And they try to, they claim, to pick plastics where there are already environmentally friendly alternatives. Because the challenge for some small businesses is what are we going to do how are we going to move ahead the government claims that in these areas this initial area of banning plastics single-use plastics there are environmentally friendly alternatives

and they've given time to make those changes. That was kind of the headline today out of Ottawa. Still some depressing numbers on COVID new cases across the country, especially in Quebec and Ontario. So we're into it. We're into the second wave and it uh how deep it will be how difficult it will be how devastating it will be will be determined by how we act in these next weeks and months we've proven before we can flatten the curve we we've got to prove it again.

And we should be able to do it even better than last time because we're used to this now. Many of us are used to wearing masks and believe in wearing masks. Many of us believe in social and physical distancing. Stay apart. Avoid big crowds. Wash your hands. Those are the basics. But we've got to follow them. We've got to be You know, I was talking to one of my daughters today about, she's in the banking business. She works for one of the big five. And she was talking about, she's held management positions in the bank. She's working now in kind of the mortgage section.

But she was telling me today how difficult it has been for a lot of her friends at the branch level, especially managers, who are getting kind of burned out. And I'm sure this is happening in all kinds of businesses. But here's the problem. In banks and local branches, you know, most customers do online banking now and have been encouraged to do more of it as a result of COVID so they don't have

to leave their homes, they don't have to go to another part of town to get to their bank. And especially for elder customers, that's important. But some elderly customers are not into online, don't want to be into online. And as a result, they are still going to the branch. And some of them, a small percentage, but enough to cause problems at banks,

are not interested in following certain protocol rules, and the main one being masks, as getting ugly. You've probably seen some of this in different places you've been shopping. But there are some people who are just not interested in wearing a mask. You know, they either believe it's, you know, a conspiracy. They believe in this, you know, pandemic.

And they don't want to do it. And they argue. And sometimes, as I said, it gets ugly. And for certain managers and assistant managers in various banks in the country, they're just, they are burned out from having to deal with this. It's the minority of the customers, but it takes up a majority of their time. And as a result, you know,

those who are trained to manage a branch and deal with management issues in the branch are finding themselves almost becoming security officers, working the line, dealing with these customers who refuse to wear masks, refuse to be six feet apart from other customers. You know, it's a free country. I don't have to do this.

Well, you know, it is a free country. And we respect and admire our freedoms that we fought for. And one of them is to be healthy and allow others to be healthy as well. Anyway. You know, I was checking today on how we're doing in our little small town on a couple of areas. Food banks and the unemployment rate. Well, we're a pretty good little small town.

30,000, 33,000 people. Stratford, Ontario. And we're a giving community. People support the local United Way and they give money and there are the food banks, they give food. And right now, apparently, from the check I did today is the food banks are okay. Unemployment's doubled where it was a year ago. Unemployment in this town is around 4% a year ago. It's up 8, 9% now. And it's been pretty much that way throughout the pandemic so far. So that's hard.

That's hard on the community. It's hard on your neighbors. I was looking at the numbers in the states, especially when it gets to food banks. I was looking at a piece in the Washington Post today. Or not today, a couple of days ago now. Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, projects a $6 billion to $8 billion meal shortfall in the next 12 months, a deficit that may be magnified with federal food assistance programs set to expire in the coming weeks and months.

The Feeding America analysis estimates the total need for charitable food over the next year will reach 17 billion pounds, more than three times last year's distribution. Six to eight billion meal shortfall. You know, Catherine D'Amato told the Post. She's the president of the Greater Boston Food Bank. It used to be 1 million pounds out the door every week.

Now it's 2 to 2.5 million pounds a week. We're doing more in a month than we did in a year, 20 years ago. Food insecurity has gone from one in 13 people to one in eight in eastern Massachusetts. That's a pretty, you know, well-to-do area. It's even higher for families with children. Those are shocking numbers. So I'll do a little, some of you who are involved in different food banks across the country

have written over the last six months and I'd love to hear from you again if you've got stories you can tell on the food bank front. A couple of interesting stories today on climate change. Politico. That's a magazine online in the States. Politico reports that members of the Rockefeller family, I know the Rockefellers,

I think they used to be the richest family in the U.S. They've long been surpassed by others, but they're still a pretty heavy-duty family. Members of the Rockefeller family are leveraging their fortune and network of wealthy friends to pressure major U.S. banks to stop investing in fossil fuels that are driving climate change. Their view is shaped by the prediction that financial regulations addressing climate change, which are beginning to take root in Europe,

are destined to come to the U.S. and that climate change will fundamentally reshape markets and devalue fossil fuel assets. Now, a lot of that we've known for the last few years in the sort of divest, get out of fossil fuel investments. Many universities are pressured by their students to do that. And many companies are pressured to do that. But now the Rockefellers are joining that group.

Here's the other one. Some people may find this surprising. The Financial Times reporting that Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, right, Bojo, is expected to unveil a multi-billion pound raft of green energy policies to help the UK meet its ambitious climate targets, including hydrogen fuel, carbon capture and storage, more wind farms. That'll drive Trump crazy.

He doesn't like wind farms because they cause cancer, he says. Which is interesting because if you've ever been to his golf courses in Scotland, they're lined, the water just off the golf course is lined with wind farms. Those big fans that are generating power through wind. And they're right off. You're going to be golfing on his course and you can see them. So if Trump's true, if what he's saying is true, which is a stretch always, right?

And he's the only one who seems to think that wind farms cause cancer. But nevertheless, if that would be correct, that means if you play Trump's golf course, you're going to get cancer. Because the wind farms are right there. You can see them. You can reach out and touch them. Anyway, back to Bojo. All those things bringing forward the ban on the sale of new petrol cars as well. The UK government announced in 2017

that it would ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars as well as hybrids from the year 2040 and launched a consultation on whether to move that target year earlier by five or ten years. And an announcement is now said to be imminent that that's what they're going to do. So Boris Johnson has become a climate change believer. Here's your mask story for today.

Underscoring the importance of masks in a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, researchers placed hamsters with the coronavirus in cages next to those without the virus. When surgical masks were placed between the cages, infections fell by more than half. The BBC reports that a team of scientists in India has developed an inexpensive paper-based test for coronavirus that could give fast results similar to a pregnancy test process with 96% sensitivity and 98% specificity for the coronavirus. The accuracy of a test is based on these two proportions. A test that's highly sensitive will detect almost everyone who has the disease. And a test that has high specificity will correctly rule out almost everyone who doesn't have the disease. So there you go. Two interesting developments

on testing and on the mask study. I love that mask study. Two cages of hamsters with a sheet of masks or mask material between the two. Well, I guess we'll all have to get our own little cages. You know, some of you laughed a few months ago

when I had to admit I'd never heard of Etsy, E-T-S-Y. People couldn't believe I hadn't heard of Etsy. Well, I haven't. I'm an old guy. Not quite up to speed with all these things. So here's your Etsy story for today. And it comes from Bloomberg Business. Bloomberg shares that Etsy,

the online marketplace for handmade, vintage, and other creative goods, which joined the S&P 500 index last month, is the best performing stock in that group year to date. The company attributed its sales growth in part to the 12 million new shoppers that came to its marketplace during the pandemic period, helping fuel its 146% increase in gross merchandise sales in the second quarter. Etsy's also been a way for sellers to quickly sew and sell fabric masks and other homemade PPE. So there you go. Etsy. I guess we were ahead of the curve when we started talking about it a few months ago.

To the point of actually finding out what it was. Well, it's a hit on the stock market, at least at the moment. I mean, all these hits as a result of the pandemic, I mean, it is going to end someday. And what will happen to all these hits then? Or will they be ingrained into our lifestyles by then? Now, you know what's coming up? What's coming up in the next few days, actually,

is Amazon's October Prime Day. So there's a lot of kind of analyzing going on about Amazon and its Prime Day and the impact it's going to have. Forbes magazine cites research conducted in August which found that 75% of Prime members said they were likely to purchase some of their holiday presents on Prime Day, and 73% said they were likely to spend some of the money they save for Black Friday on Prime Day. This means that Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales will suffer. So, more money for Amazon, if that prediction is true. Because that's what Amazon needs.

That struggling little company. Whose share price, and I was looking through stocks today, I looked on the share price for Amazon. It's something like $3,200 a share. Why didn't we buy Amazon when it was like $10? Well, we didn't, did we? But, hey, you can get a deal at $3,200 a share now. All right.

I never really flagged this podcast today as a potpourri, but it looks like that's what it turned out to be, right? A little bit of everything in there. Tomorrow night, the race next door. Bruce Anderson joins us from Ottawa. We will deconstruct tonight's vice presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence. I'm looking forward to it.

It'll be very different, I'm sure, than that bizarre night a week ago. A week and a day ago. Everything about tonight will be different, including the staging of it, because there's going to be plexiglass between the two candidates. Mike Pence has been tested many times, but hey, sometimes these things take a while before it's clear whether or not you've picked up the infection or not. And he did spend time with Donald Trump last week. And the questions still are out there about

when and where did Donald Trump get it? All he will say is when he tested positive. Or even, to be exact, all he's saying is he was tested positive last Thursday. He won't say when his last negative test was. And let's face it, there really can only be two reasons why he won. Well, probably three. But the two main reasons why he, when he may have had the last negative

test, I mean, either he tested negative on last Wednesday and carried on his duties because he tested negative. And it wasn't until Thursday that he tested positive. Or I guess it could have been on Tuesday before the debate. Although he didn't have the prescribed test on Tuesday before his debate because he got there late, without enough time to have a test. The implication was they said, the Republicans, that he'd been tested in Washington. But nobody's ever actually confirmed that or nailed that down. Now maybe it's been a while since he was tested,

because it's hard to believe anything this White House says. And when they won't say anything, then you're left to think, well, what could it have been? Well, I heard somebody suggest yesterday that it might have been weeks ago, months ago, that he was last tested. And then when they stuck that thing up his nose, he said, I don't want to ever do that again.

And hasn't done that again. He's taken some of these speed tests with their 50% accuracy rating, but apparently the only test where there's, the scientists, the researchers say you can be convinced of its outcome 95% of the time is the one where they have to go up your nose.

Anyway, who knows? Pence is being tested regularly. So is Harris. They both continue to test negative. And that's why this debate is going ahead tonight. So watch it. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Bruce will join us on the race next door,

the podcast within a podcast. And then Friday, the regular weekend special. Your thoughts and questions and comments. Don't be shy. Send them in to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. I've got one other thing to mention to you. Well, two, actually, they're kind of related.

You can always go to my website, thepetermansbridge.com, and you can always, on that website, find past podcasts right back to the first ones a year ago. You can always pull them up that way. You can also see a very brief preview and a pre-order section for my new book, which is coming out,

co-authored with my great colleague, Mark Bulgich. It's called Extraordinary Canadians. And I think it's a really good book. They call it Stories from the Heart of a Nation. And they're stories about some extraordinary people, most of whom you've probably never heard of before. But when you read their stories, you're going to swell with pride. And it's the kind of book that already some reviewers are saying,

this is what Canada needs right now, given what we've been going through. As a sense of not only who we are, but some of the really good things that are being done by special people. Extraordinary people. And as I said, these aren't people you've heard of before. Almost all of them are what we normally call ordinary Canadians, right? Well, these are extraordinary Canadians. Anyway, you can find out about that.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that, and I'm told I should be doing this all the time. I don't, but I will occasionally start doing it. Apparently it's important. If you're enjoying the podcast, rate it. You know, you can rate the podcast through your provider. Say you go through Apple Podcasts to get The Bridge Daily. Well, there's a section there that allows you to rate it. Say you go through Apple Podcasts to get The Bridge Daily.

Well, there's a section there that allows you to rate it. You know, the star system. Please rate it. It's important. If you want to leave a comment, you can leave a comment. But if you're a fan of the podcast, Rate the podcast. All right. That should do her for today. Hump Day, Week 30.

Looking forward to talking to you again tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening, and we will talk to you again in 24 hours.