Public buildings have occupancy limits. Fire and police departments are empowered to enforce such limits. Grocery stores and other commercial establishments are well aware of what they need to do to abide by such limits. Just because you or I, Average Consumer, cannot walk into a store and take a look around and estimate the occupancy percentage with any reasonable degree of accuracy does not mean that the store does not know what its occupancy limit is and how to monitor it.
I don't know much about legal occupancy limits, but when I think of the limits that probably concern fire departments about overcrowding in the event of an urgent evacuation of a building on fire, or limits that concern building departments about potential structural collapse of an overloaded dance floor, let's say, on an above-ground floor of a building, I am inclined to guess that the occupancy limits are (a) very well defined on a usable square footage basis and (b) greater than what we might think of as just "crowded like the Wednesday before Thanksgiving" when we look at how many people we see in a grocery store.
Whether grocery stores and other types of stores in Illinois are bothering to comply with the pandemic-related reduced occupancy limits, I have no idea. I have noticed that lately the Menards and Walmart near me always seems to have someone at the entrance monitoring inflow, and we can safely say that the checkout lanes are automatically monitoring outflow. No one who shops at Costco will disagree that they are counting every person in and every person out. I wouldn't be surprised if some stores have motion-sensor-type monitoring at their in- and out-doors. You can dispute how much stores are actually bothering to monitor occupancy or how much they are displaying their ability to monitor occupancy or how much they are bothering to enforce reduced occupancy limits, but I suspect they are more capable of and responsible for monitoring it than you may be aware.
Similarly, I suspect the governor's emergency powers to restrict occupancy limits may be broader and more enforceable than some here realize.
Last edited by
Katie on November 25th, 2020, 12:30 am, edited 7 times in total.
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