Monday, November 16, 2020

Montgomery County restaurants begin complying with new diner contact information requirement


Part of the new coronavirus restrictions on restaurants put into effect last week by the Montgomery County Council was a new mandate to collect the contact information of diners. I can confirm that at least some businesses are complying with this. 

At the Starbucks at 7700 Norfolk Avenue, staff are collecting names and phone numbers of customers who dine on the premises, including outdoors. This Starbucks has been very proactive in implementing Covid-19 protocols since the arrival of the virus in the county.

There has so far been no public evidence of contact tracing being done by the County, with the exception of the initial retirement community case and a couple of County liquor store positive test announcements, but contact tracing is the stated purpose of the new information requirement.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was at the diner recently. Firstly, no issue whatsoever eating inside at a restaurant. They had a pad of paper asking patrons to give name and number. I was told by the owner that many of their customers don't like that at all and the older folks (yes, older people are eating out) really don't like it because they see this as an invasion. A good question to ask is, what do they do with that information? That's private information that you're just giving to a restaurant. Hmmm!

Cinco de Mayo said...

Got to start somewhere.

Anonymous said...

Great way to get hot girls names and numbers

SocialNorm said...

5:29 AM - Are you old enough to remember what a telephone book was?

Anonymous said...

What do you think they are going to do with it? I mean come on it's the government you can absolutely trust them with your information. What could go wrong?

Brad said...

Right, wasn't a published directory of names and phone numbers a legal requirement at some point? Or still is?

Do people really think their names and numbers aren't already readily accessible to government, companies, and individuals?

What exactly are people worried about?

Anonymous said...

We are just frogs in the pot.... as the water temperature keeps rising.... and we're being told to just relax and comply.