Papa Murphy’s ‘Karen’ without mask rants at employee for refusing her pizza: ‘I have a right to see your lips’
A video of an unmasked woman, dubbed a "Karen", is going viral on social media after she was filmed having a meltdown at a Papa Murphy's pizza restaurant in Kennewick, Washington. The woman in the clip can be seen blasting the employees who refused her service. The eatery's employees reportedly had insisted that she wear a face covering and wait outside for her turn. 'Karen' has become a popular moniker to refer to demanding, racist, and entitled White middle-aged women.
The woman, who has not been identified, however, slammed the staff of the pizza joint and insisted that the founding fathers would back her on her right to not wear a face mask amid a pandemic. The woman reportedly stressed her "Constitutional right" for pizza and said that she could roam without a mask citing the "American Disability Act." The woman in the video can be heard demanding the staff give her pizza as other customers, who appear to be maintaining social distance at the store, ask her to wear a face mask.
The woman, at one point, also suggests that she is hard of hearing, indicating that she wanted the staff to remove their masks too. "I have a right to speak my mind, and I have a right to see your lips," she can be heard saying in the video.
As she engages in a spat with one of the customers filming the video, the store's cashier stands her ground, refusing her service unless she wears a mask. We have the right to refuse service to any person for any reason... If you don't leave we're calling the police," the cashier tells the woman.
The man filming the incident, who is not White, also loses his patience, and says: "Why don't you just call the police? If I was screaming at you like that I think the police would be here."
The woman eventually retreats after an employee of the store offers to bring the pizza out to her truck, where her husband was waiting. Her husband, in turn, rants about their First Amendment rights to the employee.
"I have a first amendment right. And I am doing my first amendment right," the husband can be heard in the video. "You want to hide behind it, you hide behind it. Show me the law--show me the law, not a statement--show me the law that says I have to. Show me the law. You can't."
The video was reportedly first posted on YouTube by one of the employees, stating that before the woman's outburst, her husband had come into the store first. However, the employees explained their mandatory mask policy to him, causing him to storm out of the store before they could inform him that the store also had a procedure for unmasked customers. The procedure involved the staff bringing the order out to the customer's vehicles.
Multiple recent videos have emerged where customers in several stores in the United States have refused to wear masks amid the coronavirus pandemic despite store policies. In a recent incident, a shopper in a Florida Walmart, who was roaming without a face mask and pushing a wheelchair, pulled a gun on another customer in front of a child during a dispute over face coverings. The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office said the incident was caught on surveillance video at Walmart's store in Royal Palm Beach last week on Sunday, July 12.