Now, the company's pandemic stances have landed it in hot water again, as a tweet from Dr. Lucky Tran, a molecular biologist who frequently writes about public health issues for The Guardian and other outlets, alleges that In-N-Out is banning its employees from wearing masks. Tran's tweet includes an apparent internal memo from In-N-Out executives stating, "No masks shall be worn in the Store or Support facility unless an Associate has a valid medical note."
The statement goes on to explain that medical notes can only be accepted if the employee has a specific medical condition that requires them to wear a mask and that the note must also state the expected duration of that condition if that can be determined. If employees present such a note, they will be permitted to wear a mask; however, they are required to use N-95 masks provided by the company.
What is the reasoning behind In-N-Out's purported mask ban? According to the memo, the mandate is intended to "emphasize the importance of customer service and the ability to show our Associates' smiles and other facial features." Also of note is the fact that the memo is addressed to employees in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Texas, and Utah. That leaves two states where In-N-Out operates — California and Oregon — that are apparently exempt from the mandate.
I don't need to see someone's smile, I literally don't give a fuck, AHHHHHHHHH 
Anyways, I don't know if this has been verified, but I think it's probably legit if the company hasn't come out and denied it. And like, even if someone does get an exception, the medical note must state how long their condition is going to last? Fuck that. Are they gonna be 
when they learn that some people are chronically ill? And fuck having to wear a mask provided by the company--a company-issued mask isn't necessarily going to fit every employee's face.
I've been worried that banning masks in public spaces, if not criminalizing them (see: dipshit Eric Adam's comments from earlier this year using the pretext of "crime" to crack down on masks) was going to eventually happen, so this might lead other companies to adopt similar policies in short order. Which is just going to exclude medically vulnerable people from society even more.
Can't have people thinking we're still in a pandemic by having vibe-killing employees wearing masks! 
culture is truly a scourge and needs to be destroyed.
The "N95 masks provided by the company" are a dead giveaway - they want to make sure their employees still work while contagiously sick. Otherwise (including immunocompromised employees trying not to die) they demand masklessness in their chud-state restaurants
I don't doubt they have some sinister angle but any kind of n95 would be an improvement over the vast majority of masks that I see the few remaining maskers wearing.
It is, but they provide them exclusively in the case that you have a doctor's note and ban you from wearing them otherwise. Considering how cruelly inaccessible medicine can be in the US, the kinds of doctors notes that are most available to fast food workers in chud states are just for acute sickness
I don't think it would be easy to get a Texan urgent-care doc (or more often nurse practitioner) to write you a note for chronic illness, but tons of employers require a doctor's note for unpaid off-time to prove that you're really sick. I'll be shocked if they don't start taking a lot of those notes as "you still have to come in if you don't want to be fired, but you get to wear a mask for a week."
Edit for context: chronic illness diagnoses in particular are notoriously hard to get, partially because they're part of the means-testing process for our anemic welfare system. There's also a tremendous amount of medical discrimination that results in non-white and non-cishet-male patients being dismissed as "hypochondriacs" or "seeking painkillers"