'Bedazzled' bachelorette partygoer coughs on employee and stomps out after restaurant enforces COVID-19 orders

A Tennessee restaurant owner wants charges filed against a customer who purposefully coughed on an employee who asked her to wear a mask.

A group of 10 women stomped out of the Mockingbird restaurant Saturday after they were not allowed to pull their tables together to celebrate a bachelorette party, and one of the women endangered the assistant manager in a dispute over face coverings required in public spaces, reported WKRN-TV.

“I never thought that would happen here in Nashville," said restaurant co-owner Mikey Corona. "I never thought that, let alone in our establishment.”

The woman, who came with the group from Mobile, Alabama, coughed three times while directing the path of any spray toward the employee.

“She is now going to be quarantined, she’s got to get tested, she can’t be around her family," Corona said. "As a business, we are having to pay for her not to be here, as well, and so it’s just a struggle all around and it’s not necessary."

Corona compared the action to spitting or slapping someone, especially in the midst of a deadly viral pandemic.

"You know we are all about fun in this town, but when you come in with your bedazzled cowboy boots and you stomp on us like we are a mat that’s not okay," Corona said. "That’s where you have to draw the line because we are also human and you should respect that first and foremost."