Facemasks: Yes, No, Or Sometimes

Choices to make at an in-person business meeting. Masks: Yes, No, Or Undecided

I was excited when the company said we all would meet in person for our annual spring summit. The last time we’d met in one place together was 2019. This Brady Bunch business on Zoom had become tiresome. Part of the preparations for our meeting were COVID protection protocols. It never occurred to me that voluntarily masking would be an unsettling choice.

As voluntary mask-wearing has replaced mask mandates around the country, I am more unsure about when to wear face-covering and when not to. Some situations are pretty easy to decide. Last week, I was in a small classroom packed with students taking their AP exams. Three of the students had sniffles and runny noses. I had to interact with every student in close quarters, so I wore an N95 mask for four hours of testing. To my way of thinking, that was pretty much a no-brainer.

I typically go maskless when I'm outside as it makes breathing easier. Inside, in spacious areas, I usually wear a cloth mask. Even though I am fully vaccinated against COVID and boosted, the flu, colds, and other common bugs are concerns. Society’s rush to shed the facemask against COVID has ushered in the return of typical air transmitted diseases.

Our meeting provided a whole new challenge. The training I attended was the first time these teacher trainers met in person. We’ve been doing monthly Zoom calls since last summer. My group consisted of twenty-four trainees, two facilitators, and support staff. The trainees were seated at six tables of four persons each. We were in a hotel meeting room where noise bounced off the walls. I was delighted to be with old friends doing our spring training, but we were not social distancing. Our training followed a collaborative learning model, which we, in turn, will use when we train classroom teachers during the summer.

We had a lot of discussions in close proximity. That is good and bad. It is good in that we communicate well. With masks off, I can understand what someone is saying much easier by volume and by watching their mouths. Watching a speaker’s mouth clarifies their speech, especially in noisy environments. But the trade-off is any germs the speakers are carrying transmit easily to me.

I’ve found I have trouble understanding many people wearing a mask. Soft speaking folks are hard to hear, and many are hard to understand when I can’t see their mouths. Mask wearing hampers communication.

So here is the problem, wearing a mask protects me against common illnesses and COVID but impedes effective communication. These are hard choices to make.

My Solution

There are no guarantees in life. All choices have consequences. Even failing to make a choice has effects.

In the training room, I went maskless. I needed the training. Effective communication was the highest priority.

I sometimes wore a cloth mask in the breakroom and casual but close environments.

Whenever I was in a densely packed area, I wore my N95 mask.

Lessons learned these past two years.

Good health is essential. Washing hands frequently, using hand sanitizer, and using a face mask plain makes sense. I’ve liked not having the flu or even a cold over several years. I want to keep it that way.

I want to share a funny incident in our training as a side note. Our group project was to model a class (a computer structure in the Java programming language). One of our group members wrote the word “Sailboat” in his usual but barely legible script. To everyone else in the group, it looked like it said “Jailbait.” For a few moments, there was dead silence, then a burst of laughter as everyone realized their error. This kind of interaction occurs in person but not in Zoom.

Disclosure: Grammarly.com edited this story.

Copyright 2022 Harold Zeitung All Rights Reserved

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