A California woman was dubbed a “Karen” after a viral video circulated of her calling 911 after being thrown out of a pet store for not wearing a mask. The woman claimed a “religious exemption right and God-given right” to not wear a mask that are protected under the Civil Rights Act.
Video Of Pet Store ‘Karen’ Who Calls 911 Over Mask Goes Viral
Aidan Bearpaw, who works at Bones-N-Scones in Palm Springs, California recorded what went down and posted the footage to Facebook, writing, “I’ve never had to deal with a karen calling 911 on me before all because I asked her to please wear a mask in the store.”
Bearpaw can be seen in the video telling the woman that she must wear a mask in the store, or he’ll give her a “reasonable accommodation”.
This does not sit well with the woman, who threatens to call the police and claims to have a health condition that makes it so that she can’t wear face coverings, adding that Bearpaw was “technically discriminating” against her.
“I’ll have a panic attack, I will freak out, I will have an anxiety attack,” she explains before asking Bearpaw to “accommodate me by giving me an hour at the end of every day, an hour at the beginning of the day.”
“There is no one in the store,” she continues.
“There’s me in the store,” Bearpaw fires back, with the woman replying, “So you stand 7,000 feet away from me.”
“Ma’am, I’m just trying to do my job,” he tries to say, but the woman was not having any of it.
“And I’m trying to make sure that I have rights,” she tells him. “You’ll make sure to hear that in the end you’re the one who will be cited, not me.”
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Pet Store ‘Karen’ Quotes Civil Rights Act
Things only go downhill from there, with the woman calling 911 on speaker and telling the dispatcher, “As per the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I cannot be discriminated against. I do have a right to be able to breathe O2, not CO2, and I’m being discriminated against right now at a store.”
“I’m being told I need to wear a mask even though I have a religious exemption right and a God-given right to be able to breathe O2 and not CO … medical exemption too,” she continues.
The dispatcher tries to explain to the woman that in Palm Springs, there is a city ordinance mandating face coverings inside stores, which means that the pet shop has the “right to refuse service.”
However, the dispatcher added that she would send in an officer, but the woman responded that she was “leaving.”
She insisted that she had been in the “right” all along before finally heading to her car.
You can watch the viral video of the woman’s 911 call from the California pet store below.
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Police Dispatched To Resolve Pet Store Mask Complaint
The California “Karen” wasn’t done there. According to the New York Post, Bearpaw said that the woman was so angry about the incident and resulting viral video that she sent police to the pet store the next day.
“She was feeling the public backlash and dispatched police on me again,” he explained. “My bosses were initially furious. It was very possible I was going to be fired. My co-workers were all very supportive and made it clear there would be consequences if I was terminated.”
The consulting manager of Bones-N-Scones expressed support for Bearpaw in an interview.
“I’m biased, but it’s a shining example of how just doing what’s right,” the manager said. “Standing your ground overcomes all of those things. Aidan won for us that day, he didn’t just want it for Bone-N-Scones. He won for the city of Palm Springs, but United States and for humanity in general.”
Given the fact that the California woman in the viral pet store video was a middle aged white female, she has been dubbed “Karen.”
This has become a derogatory term for white women of a certain age who call the police on people for reasons that society has deemed to be unacceptable.
This just goes to show that after months of wearing masks amidst the coronavirus pandemic, an increasing number of Americans are tired of it, which has just cause tensions to rise even more.
As long as these mask ordinances continue, we can expect many more of these types of videos in the future.
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