Lawyer here. Here’s the deal, and here’s what their lawyers know: these mandates are illegal. Enforcement of a mask mandate is a police function and the state cannot turn grocery employees into a police force or in any way force a business to become an enforcement arm for the state. That’s if the state even bothered to pass a law. If it’s a mandate by executive fiat, then it’s even more illegal. The state is counting on voluntary cooperation because they cannot enforce it and if they go to court over it they’ll lose.

So they can issue their little ‘fines’ but the business will never pay and if the state tries to collect they’ll lose in court. The state doesn’t want to take it that far because a loss in court will signal to everyone else that they can tell governor blackface to go fuck himself.