Who Was That Unmasked Man?
Mark Leger is the editor and part-owner of Huddle. This is a weekly column that features opinion, analysis and reflections on Huddle stories, podcasts and business news in the region.
On Tuesday around lunch, I walked to a nearby corner store for a can of soup. I went into the shop that was empty apart from the store clerk, found what I was looking for and walked up to the counter to pay. As I looked through the plastic shield at the masked employee on the other side, I realized I wasn’t wearing a mask myself. I’m so sorry, I said, as he told me about the fines he and I could be charged.
I was justifiably chastened for putting that store clerk at risk, right? Of course, and I did feel awful, but the previous night my family went to the local aquatic centre for a swim and then had supper at a restaurant. We were in the pool without masks amidst dozens of other unmasked children and adults, and masked employees – all within a few feet of each other at times. At the restaurant, we wore masks until we sat down but kept them off even when a server came within two feet of us to take our orders.
A year into the pandemic and I must admit I’m still utterly confused, maybe more so. The New Brunswick government got us off to a good start with distinct, colour-coded phases of recovery with clearly outlined rules. Then it naturally started adjusting the rules as we moved from one phase to another and back again.
Do I need to be wearing a mask at work or not? Outside or not? In a restaurant seated at a table or going to the restroom? What if I don’t look down and see the arrows on the ground? What if there are no arrows?!
In the early days of the pandemic, I got myself into trouble constantly. A customer in a large grocery store yelled at me because I didn’t see the stickers on the floor, spaced six feet apart, that indicated where the line to the cash register started, and I accidentally butted in front of her. I walked into a smaller grocery store with gloves on, so I didn’t sanitize. The owner angrily told me I was putting her staff at risk. Meekly apologizing in both cases didn’t calm them down.
Of course, we were still getting used to things back then, so I understood why they were so upset. We still make mistakes now but we’re more forgiving of each other. I walked out of my office last week and passed through the hallway on the way to the door. Someone was coming down the stairs to the lobby and I suddenly froze. “I’m sorry, I don’t have my mask on.” He stopped suddenly too. “I don’t either.” We both turned around and went back to our offices to retrieve our masks. My colleague calls this the “walk of shame.”
I’m especially sensitive about my own mistakes because, since the beginning, I’ve been more liberal about loosening the rules than most people I know. I don’t want to be disrespectful toward people who favour more restrictive measures, for good reasons.
The pandemic was less than a month old and Huddle was already writing stories and doing podcast interviews that explored safe ways to reopen an economy that was causing great hardship to the region’s businesses, small and large, during the shutdown period.
A year ago this week, we launched a special section called Open For Business that advertised businesses that were still serving customers, from take-out food to online shopping.
Less than two weeks later, we published the first of a two-part series by entrepreneurs David Alston and Marcel LeBrun. “Is New Brunswick Ready For The Dance” and “New Brunswick’s Reopening Plan – A Draft Framework” chartered a course to reopening businesses and public institutions like schools. LeBrun and Alston were on the leading edge of the public discussion at the time, and there was some criticism online about the appropriateness of businesspeople wading into health-related public policy discussions with controversial recommendations. But then a week later Premier Blaine Higgs was talking about the reopening process starting soon.
In the year since then, the reopening process has had a feeling of “two steps forward, one step back,” depending on when and where you were in the region. Overall, though, we’re in a better place, apart from the Edmundston region of course, and seem to be on the road to recovery, from a health and economic perspective.
There are many reasons why we’ve fared better than most places, but I’m grateful to live in a region populated mostly by respectful people who follow the rules (a quick internet search using the phrase “enraged anti-maskers in Walmart” will make you similarly grateful if you weren’t already).
The rational, respectful character of people and politicians has helped us stay safer and come up with plans to safely reopen the economy and our public institutions, even though we often have disagreements about the best way to do that.
Sometimes, though, we’re rule-followers to a fault and we don’t make commonsense corrections to our behaviour because, well, we’re just following the rules. The government tries to be consistent when it introduces or relaxes restrictions, but we need to make our own adjustments when that’s not the case.
I rightly felt bad about accidentally walking into the corner store without a mask. But what about the server in the restaurant that faces the same risk even though I’m not breaking any rules? Next time I eat out, I’m wearing a mask when the server comes to the table. It’s the respectful thing to do.
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Banner photo: Mark Leger/Huddle.