There’s a very long way between a multinational corporation’s published policy and the practice at street-level, even if yesterday is the only report (so far). Is this a franchise? What authority does the store have contractually, or in practice? Is the policy enforced? Is there a history of enforcement? Was this a rogue employee, maybe a recent hire, with a political motivation?

This just further proves my point though, you didn't actually verify anything. Not only do we not know any of this for certain because the source didn't provide anything, but people here haven't even bothered to check the authenticity of the story.

The O'Hare website lists the restaurants at the airport and provides their website. The website provided for this restaurant is the HMSHost website. On there, they have a tab that lists their brands, and when you click on this cafe, it lists it's locations. This suggests that the company directly operates their venues. However, their Wikipedia page says that company does manage franchises, but no source was provided for this claim. Based on the available evidence, it's best to assume that the restaurant is directly run by the company. If that's the case then their policies on their website are the ones that apply to the restaurants, and they don't appear to have any sort of ban on masks.

In the thread you linked, this person claims that an employee demanded that she takes off her mask. She later in the thread mentioned to another user that the employee said repeatedly that "it's the policy". However, I haven't been able to find such policies anywhere. If you can find then I would greatly appreciate a source. She provides no further details or context. Based on the available information, there are possibilities:

1. There's actually a mask ban somewhere in the restaurants policies, but that seems unlikely
2. There's a rogue employee with an agenda, but I also find this unlikely considering how this is resturant in an international airport in a very liberal city
3. This story is simply made up

I personally think is most likely to be the case. That doesn't mean that 1 and 2 can't happen or didn't, I'm just pointing out that the probability of this story being true is rather low unless we're presented with concrete evidence that prove otherwise.

Did you check the original thread https://x.com/AmmahStarr/status/1804608613916328334 for the context of the discussion? Did you check the account for a history of “rage-bait” before dismissing this woman’s experience?

Did you follow your own advice? Because her account does indeed have a very long history rage bait type content and her thread provides little substance. She claims it happened but didn't provide any details besides two very vague remarks about an employee and a picture of the resturant. This all could've happened, but the only thing we have is her word and based on her account history, her word is not that credible.

Skepticism is important, but caping for corps is seldom necessary. They pay people for that.

Raging over stories that have a high likelyhood of being false just because you hate corporations isn't a virtue. Criticism still needs to be based on something real in order for it to be valid.

I think a big issue with Lemmy is that I think there's a lot of people who become disillusioned with it, just like how a lot of users became disillusioned with Reddit. When users join this site, they'll immediately notice that there's nothing outside of extremist politics, privacy focused tech talk, and shitposting. Unless they're interested in those topics specifically, a lot of people would rather either just go back to Reddit where there are active communities outside of these topics or find another, more active platform. A lot of people thought that Voat was going to rival Reddit when launched, but it ended up being a niche hub for extremist politics, tech talk, and shitposting until it shutdown. Now Lemmy is definitely better than Voat in every aspect, but I'm not sure how it can over come that big hump that will allow to appeal to general public

I mean Lemmy shares a lot of the same issues as Reddit even if it's decentralized. I think Lemmy as a technology is better than Reddit because it's more privacy focused, but most people don't care about any of this. People put up with Reddit's shortcomings because it has a massive community that is always active and fills every niche. Reddit's daily active userbase is over 73 million. That's hard to replicate in general, but I don't see Lemmy getting anywhere near that mainstream. I see it as a more stable and active version of Voat, but still a niche platform nonetheless.

That's kind of the point that I was making. This platform has little to offer outside a outside of politics, tech, and shitposting. Most of the active users are here for these specific topics, which is fine, but this places Lemmy as a niche platform not one that appeals the masses. A few dedicated people can't foster a genuine community out of sheer enthusiasm. If that was the case then Lemmy would've regressed after the influx of last summer. You could be right, maybe people like you will lead this platform to grow into something more in a few years. I just don't personally see that happening.

The whole point of social media is to interact with others... I don't understand what you're point is here. You just seem mad because I said something you don't like.