COLUMBUS, Ohio — Wear a mask. Don’t wear a mask. You need to wear a mask. You don’t have to wear a mask.
Ugh. It’s been a tiring two years.
“Yeah, it’s a real pain in the [expletive],” Jason Williams said. “The inconsistency of it.”
Williams owns Big Fun in Columbus. The news of the city lifting its mask mandate has him hoping it’s not too soon.
“We’re not out of the woods just yet,” he said. “Hopefully we don’t get another variant, but who knows.”
During the pandemic, his shop was closed for 70 days. Once open, it focused on safety by wearing masks, social distancing and limiting the number of people in the store at one time. All necessities, Williams says, given the store’s compact, small quarters. Now, he says customers can be unmasked if they choose. Employees will remain masked for the next couple of weeks just in case.
High foot traffic, Williams says, will still not be a thing.
“Post masks, we’ll probably still just do the capacity,” he said. “Try to keep it to 20 people, tops, in this place.”
Erring on the side of caution.
“I think [Governor] DeWine said it best at the beginning of the pandemic that life ain’t gonna be a light switch – it’s gonna be a dimmer,” Williams said.
Williams says where we are is much better than where we’ve been.
“Now I feel like short of a worse variant, hopefully, life can get back to some kind of normalcy,” he said.