Got Caught Hoarding Masks, For God's Sake

The omicron variant of the coronavirus has -- or had -- me panicking in a way I haven't since the onset of the pandemic.  We get canned e-mails at work every time upper management learns an employee has come down with the 'Rona.  Around this time last year -- during the winter, just as a vaccine became available for the elderly and front-line workers -- we would get an average of, if I recall correctly, one of these updates a day.  Sometimes two.  For several days starting a couple weeks ago, we have gotten three, if not four of these e-mails per day.  That frequency has died down somewhat, but these messages were stacked up, sometimes one following mere minutes after the one before, that I seriously have begun thinking that there was an outbreak at work.  That was my biggest fear when the pandemic started: I was going to catch it at work, bring it home and give it to my parents.  But after the wave of Winter 2020-1 passed and I didn't get it, I had been convinced that the mask mandate at work largely contributed to the relatively safe and COVID-free environment.

Well, now upon hearing  that cloth masks are useless, I have gone back to being overzealous when it comes to my protection.  I heard back in the summer of 2020 that a cloth mask over a surgical mask will give you a lot more protection than either mask alone.  That double-masked mindset became something I now wanted.  And so omicron prompted me to ask my boss if I could just throw on a second mask to (hopefully) double up the protection from the coronavirus.  He said I could ... so long as, a cloth mask, I wash it regularly.  Hell no, I won't do that.

Two surgical masks, however, appeared to be an option that, if I brought it up to my boss, he would accept as a compromise.  But where to find masks if you don't want to buy them?  I know -- the community gym where I work out!  They have trays of masks -- and of a different color to the ones we get at work.  That allows me to double-mask with no one at work accusing me of grabbing two masks when I start my day.  I figure that there's so much of these masks -- I am guessing that half the people I see at the community center is talking with no masks -- no one is going to notice that I took, oh, a dozen straws from the tray in the foyer, and then a few more at the front desk to supply myself with five a workweek until this whole pandemic (fingers crossed) is over.

Well, I think me grabbing a couple surgicals at the front desk tipped off, uh, someone.  I breezed into the front door, took a few from the first tray I saw, then a couple more from a cup at the front desk.  I had half a mind to skip working out last/Thursday night, but that possibly could have meant going to work without a second mask.  Now, I think I have enough for, oh, three workweeks, and hey, maybe the pandemic would have subsided by then.  Not counting on that, though.

Anyway, I thought about grabbing a few more masks on my way out.  But I looked down at the tray of black masks and, in a small note card off to the tray's side, I see: "Please take only 1."  That note wasn't there when I went in.

Fine, I'll take only one.  But it never feels good to get busted over something bad, or at least unethical, unless you learn from it and forgive yourself so you can move on with your life.  Then again, I don't know how those guys figured out I was hoarding masks.  Is there a spy eavesdropping on me?