On May 1, 2020, Calvin Munerlyn was working as a security guard at Family Dollar in Flint, Michigan. Sometime during his shift, he refused service to a woman who became combative after Munerlyn said her daughter needed to wear a mask while she shopped. A statewide order requiring facial coverings in enclosed public spaces had gone into effect just a few days earlier.

The mother and daughter left, but about 20 minutes later, the woman’s husband and son arrived and entered the store. After a short confrontation, the son allegedly shot Munerlyn in the back of the head. The 43-year-old father of nine died at a local hospital the same day.

In July, a Trader Joe’s worker in New York City was taken to the hospital after being “[hit] … over the head with a wooden paddle” by one of two men who were asked to leave because of their refusal to wear masks.

A similar incident happened at a California Target in May, when one of two male customers suddenly “turned and punched a store employee” as they were being escorted out. A Target worker’s arm was broken during the ensuing scuffle, and the suspects were later arrested for felony battery. (Although Target didn’t announce a company-wide mask policy until mid-July, Los Angeles was under an emergency order at the time that required people to wear face coverings in places like grocery stores.)

Several polls have found that a majority of Americans support a national mask mandate, and a long list of stores and restaurants created their own mask requirements over the summer. Yet the employees assigned to enforce those rules — often entry-level workers who are paid low wages, despite their jobs being deemed “essential” during the pandemic — are increasingly subject to verbal abuse and violence from the very people they’re trying to protect.

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At the very least, some are being sent to do a job with inadequate training and support from their employers, making those so-called mandates little more than empty platitudes — and actual enforcement, in most cases, impossible to do safely.

Just ask Christopher Vanderpool, a former “health ambassador” for the country’s largest private employer: Walmart. Though Walmart’s announcement of its mask requirement stated that health ambassadors would get “special training to help make the process as smooth as possible for customers,” Vanderpool did not.

“The manager walked me outside and simply told me that I was to ask a customer to put on a mask, and if they didn’t have one or didn’t want to wear one, let them inside without a face covering,” Vanderpool told Vox. Despite Walmart promising that health ambassadors would be trained to “work with customers who show up at a store without a face covering to try and find a solution,” a two-minute Walmart training video specifies that associates “should simply allow the maskless customer inside and alert a member of management to determine the next steps, which are not detailed,” Bloomberg reported in July.

Vanderpool was never shown the video, and he told Vox he never saw evidence of further enforcement after letting an unmasked customer into the store. Moreover, his attempts to enforce the rule were harrowing.

“My time standing outside the store … is where I received the most threats and encountered the angriest customers, who would yell expletives at me as I tried to do my job to protect public health,” he said.

Vanderpool’s story illustrates the disparities between what some companies say publicly and what they do privately. Other chains, including CVS, Walgreens, and Lowe’s, have also admitted that they won’t enforce their own rules, citing safety concerns.

If companies “are not requiring customers to wear a mask within their store, then they never had a requirement,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, told CNN in July. “All they had was a public relations stunt.”

Here’s Vanderpool, in his own words, about what it was really like on the front lines of the mask debate, and why he’s stepping up to advocate for other workers who are still there.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I wanted to work at a grocery store after hearing on the news in March that they were experiencing an increase in traffic and demand because of the coronavirus. I wanted to step up for my community by doing essential work. Walmart called me back first and hired me as a cashier at $11 per hour, pre-tax. (I was not employed prior to Walmart. I was in high school, so I volunteered in my community through Key Club and built advocacy skills through speech and debate.)

What often happens at Walmart is that someone needs a break, and a manager will find someone to take their spot. There isn’t a choice, mainly because our store was chronically short-staffed. This was the case when I became a health ambassador. I’d learned about the position the day before, when I was assigned to count the people who entered and exited the store.