TUPPER LAKE — Stewart’s Shops is making more COVID-19-precautionary changes to its 336 stores, including cutting maximum occupancy in half, adding clear plastic shields between cashiers and customers, putting hand sanitizer stations to all stores, and placing 6-foot social distancing markers on the floors.

The changes were prompted partly by a request from Tupper Lake Mayor Paul Maroun for smaller crowds in the village’s shop, which is one of the convenience store chain’s smallest, according to Stewart’s Shops Public Relations Specialist Erica Komoroske.

“I think (Maroun) definitely helped bring it to our attention,” Komoroske said. “The conversation with the mayor definitely did prompt us to look at those smaller stores in the (North Country) a little bit further.”

Maroun said he had received several complaints about the store, and he had some himself after being cut off several times while trying to be socially distant in the checkout line and seeing few customers abiding the mask policy.

“The other night I was in there, and there were … around 32 people,” Maroun said. “Five of them had masks on.”

Komoroske said the Tri-Lakes area’s Stewart’s Shops usually have a maximum occupancy of 30. This is now being split in half, to 15. She said that maximum occupancy includes employees, too.

A Saturday night incident

Tupper Lake village Trustee Ron LaScala said he brought one of the complaints to Maroun after a incident Saturday night, when he took it upon himself to kick several people out of the store for not wearing masks.

He said was waiting for a food delivery when the store got crowded with around a dozen customers, and few of them were wearing masks. LaScala said he asked one woman to put on a mask, and she went out to her car to grab one.

When a group of four men came in not wearing masks, he said he told them to put one on or leave. Two went out to grab masks, but he said it got contentious with one of them. The man did not want to go, but LaScala was persistent. He said they blocked each other’s path before the man left.

“They didn’t have to listen to me,” LaScala said.

He said he didn’t have a legal right to stop the man from shopping without a mask but wasn’t going to let him go unchallenged. LaScala said he wasn’t acting as a village trustee but as someone concerned about public health.

“I’m doing this because I care,” LaScala said, “not because I want to be a power-hungry person.”

He said he’s not picking on Stewart’s but thinks all convenience stores should be enforcing mask policies.

“It’s as simple as putting a hat on to go outside when it’s cold,” LaScala said.

He said since it is hard to social distance in the store, everyone should wear a mask. He suggested a policy of “no shoes, no shirt, no mask, no service.”

More changes

Komoroske said the state’s mask policy is posted on the entrance doors at every Stewart’s Shop. Staff are required to wear them, but she said if a customer does not want to wear a mask, the store won’t stop that person.

“We cannot police the customers,” Komoroske said.

She said Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policy includes exemptions for people with health conditions such as asthma whose breathing would be hindered by a mask.

She said employees can’t ask about customers’ health conditions, so they can’t enforce a mask requirement.

Maroun said other companies are limiting occupancy and requiring masks in their stores. He said he is considering making an emergency order requiring masks wearing in all commercial stores, enforced by the village police. He said convenience stores are tight spaces and dangerous places for spreading the virus.

“I don’t want to be Clint Eastwood or anything, but I don’t think this is over yet, and I’m trying to keep Tupper Lake safe,” Maroun said. “If it really doesn’t get better, I’m strongly considering it.”

He said the village has enough masks at its office for every person in Tupper Lake and that people should have them with them wherever they go.

“If you go into a liquor store and you touch a bottle of Jack Daniels, and somebody else just picked that up and decided they didn’t want to pay for it, but they sneezed on it — they’re not going to get it, you’re going to get it,” Maroun said. “I know people think it’s stupid. I know what people are saying. I was born and bred here; I know how people think. But if you want to be serious and quelch this … just wear the masks.

“I want to say that I’ve done all I can do to make people safe in Tupper Lake.”