Masking my Judgements

          This past Friday night, I visited my grandmother at her assisted living facility. My grandma, dad, aunt, cousin, my cousin’s two dogs, and I all sat spaced out outside with masks on, enjoying each other’s company. My grandmother is diabetic, so it’s not uncommon for my dad or aunt to ask a nurse or medtech from her facility to view my grandmother’s blood sugar readings from the past week or month. However, when the medtech came outside to give the paper of readings to my father, I noticed her mask was below her nose, and it kept sliding down her face as she spoke.

“Joan’s sugar was a little high this week but it’s because…”. The mask slid down. I had a visibly puzzled face, and was internally questioning whether she’d pull it up or not. Luckily she did, but seconds later after saying “you would be able to bring her sugar free snacks for the holidays”, the mask was down once again. 

Off of this situation, I made an immediate and rather rash judgement. I assumed that she did not care as much about the residents at the assisted living facility that she took care of as much as some of the other employees there. The rationale behind my judgement seemed simple; the medtech works with the MOST at risk group for COVID-19, and even my grandmother specifically has almost every underlying condition. I viewed not wearing her mask properly as a sign of a lack of regard for the health of those the medtech was supposedly working to keep healthy and safe. While I know that this situation was probably a moment of forgetfulness, a lack of noticing, or just an innocent mistake, it still ruffled my feathers a bit. Off of what I saw, I could only logically assume that she had the same mask habits whether I could see it or not. 

Looking back, my assumption that this was probably not just a one time occurrence was rational, there was no reason for my brain to immediately assume the worst and judge an actually very kind and intelligent medical technician off of a 10 minute conversation of which I was just an observer. 

In a time as crazy as this, there isn’t necessarily a problem with finding an issue that regards public safety and health, especially of one of my family members, but making a judgement off of someone’s character off of that was an issue.