Faced with Covid-19, this protection was imposed in companies on September 1, 2020. The health protocol - reference document in the face of the virus - which "disappears" on Monday, provided that it should be worn "systematically within companies in the closed collective places".

In view of the decline on the health front, Prime Minister Jean Castex announced at the beginning of March the “end of the wearing of a compulsory mask in all places where it is still” applied, from March 14, including workplaces.

Employers, worried about seeing their liability engaged, may however continue to impose the mask if they believe that there is "a specific risk due to the activity", according to social law lawyers interviewed by AFP.

Thus, lawyer Déborah David judges that its maintenance for "a reasonable period" would be "legitimate".

Still, for companies, the end of the obligation included in the protocol is a relief.

In the La Défense district of Paris, where there are many office buildings, on October 16, 2020, during the coronavirus epidemic Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP / Archives

"It's really a huge expectation of people's impatience. They can't take it anymore! We feel that it's really suffering", assures Benoit Serre, vice-president of the National Association of HRDs.

He himself, "arrived at L'Oréal less than a year ago", has never seen the full faces of certain colleagues.

"Remove the Pandemic"

He believes that as a corollary "this will help to revive conviviality".

The mask being "a real symbol", removing it can even be likened to "removing the pandemic", he says... while slipping that he hopes not to see it return in three months.

Regarding vulnerable employees who could thus become more visible, Benoit Serre assures that it will be an “individual” management: “the mask was compulsory for everyone, we are not saying: the + without mask + is compulsory for everyone the world".

For Corentin Boulanger, in charge of occupational health and safety prevention in the agri-food industry in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, wearing a mask for two years in the office, "it was complicated".

Difficulty in "expressing oneself, making oneself understood", it was something "relatively unpleasant", he says, "frankly" happy that it stops.

The mask being "a real symbol", the more having to wear it in the workplace can even be assimilated to "removing the pandemic" Ina FASSBENDER AFP / Archives

This is the tone of many messages on social networks: "Finally the end of the mask at work, it was hell", "The return of freedom", another says he is impatient to "finish this damn story".

But Paul, an automotive consultant in Paris, considers it "not possible" to lift the obligation in view of the health situation and deplores a "purely political" decision.

“It risks starting again,” fears this fifty-year-old.

"We will miss him?"

As for the possibility of keeping the mask, he underlines that it "is useless if the person in front does not wear one".

Messages on social networks thus deem its withdrawal “selfish” or denounce “a middle finger” to the immunocompromised.

Offices in La Défense, a business district near Paris, on October 7, 2020, during one of the peaks of the Covid-19 pandemic Christophe ARCHAMBAULT AFP / Archives

Internet users have more prosaic concerns: knowing how to hide their "big yawns in meetings", relearning to "smile with the mouth and not just the eyes", "knowing again the joys of fetid breath and sputters"...

Beyond "a certain relief, better comfort" for employees, Elisabeth Pélegrin-Genel, architect and work psychologist, wonders: "Does the end of the mask mean that we forget this kind of bubble? individual that we always had with us while remaining at a distance from others?"

The mask had "a protective effect both literally and figuratively" and "gave a form of intimacy", she points out.

Once accustomed to wearing it, the mask had become "a mini-victory over the permanent visibility of everything and everyone", she continues.

"Won't we miss him?".

© 2022 AFP