COVID caveat came up Friday

There’s no question all of us have been impacted in some way by the coronavirus pandemic.

Perhaps you or a family member has contracted COVID-19.

(Three of my in-laws tested positive.)

Maybe your job came to a screeching halt because of the pandemic, just like mine did March 13 when sports across the globe began to cancel.

Or, at the very least, it’s those masks we are all required to wear.

We are all feeling the ramifications of the virus.

A sort of normalcy began last week as fall sports officially kicked off in Indiana (although girls golf started at the beginning of the month) and OHSAA started its fall season on Monday.

Though there are considerable changes to the way in which spectators have to conduct themselves — if they’re allowed at all — we are finding ways in which the coronavirus is still altering our lives.

One of those happened to me Friday, and it had nothing to do with being required to wear a mask outdoors (I did). Nor did it involve me being forced to socially distance (I did as best I could while still performing my job functions on a football field Friday).

COVID-19 forced me to alter the way in which I conduct my work after football games, not before or during. And it was something I didn’t think much about until it happened.

There are a few times each year when the Jay County High School football team plays far enough away from Portland I cannot make it back to the office in time after the game to meet the deadline for Saturday’s newspaper.

Last year, it was games at Huntington North, Lapel and Woodlan, although the game at Woodlan eventually got postponed to the next day because of lightning.

This year, I will have two such trips — last week at Norwell and the regular-season finale at Heritage.

For these road games, I typically find the closest McDonald’s, grab a coffee — probably my fifth or sixth cup of the day by then — perhaps get a snack too and find a table inside to get my work done.

The free Wi-Fi is a godsend on these nights, allowing me to put my nose to the keyboard and churn out the night’s game story.

I go the McDonald’s in Decatur for games at Heritage and Woodlan. It is a spot where the JCHS football team stops for food as well, so I have to tell the coaching staff to be sure to keep the kids out of my hair so I can get my work done.

The coaches and players have graciously obliged.

I’ve been in these restaurant lobbies far too long sometimes. There are times I’ve been kicked out because the store closed for the night and I wasn’t quite done working. Some instances, the employees allow me to stay despite the lobby being closed.

I appreciate those times, but they’re few and far between.

So here’s the COVID-19 caveat.

Because of the pandemic, most McDonald’s stores have closed their lobbies for dine-in eating, and rightfully so. For the most part, it is not the biggest deal. I can just relocate to my car and finish from there. After all, it’s what I’d do during those times I’m politely asked to leave.

On a side note, I previously had Wi-Fi in my car, so instead of finding the local Golden Arches I would work from the school’s parking lot. However, I nixed the novelty because I didn’t use it enough to justify the cost.

Following Jay County’s 42-0 loss to Norwell on Friday night in Ossian, I made my way south to Bluffton. As expected, the lobby was closed, so I went through the drive-thru for my coffee, found a parking spot and got to work.

After each football or basketball game on a Friday night, I typically have one or two hours of work left to do depending on how smoothly things go.

Friday was about as bumpy as it could have been. From my parking spot, I was not able to get a strong enough Wi-Fi signal and got disconnected about every five minutes.

When working on deadline, every second counts. And each time I had to reconnect to Wi-Fi, open a browser to accept the connection and get back to what I was doing wasted that precious time.

The intermittent connection was causing me headaches. Each wasted minute was adding up, and the hassles create great possibility for errors in story details or statistics.

Friday’s start to the football season for me was about as rough as it was for the Patriots on the gridiron that night.

Because I wasn’t able to work in the McDonald’s lobby, I went with a slower option — utilizing my phone as a hotspot — to file my story, photos and box score.

It’s not the fastest, but it is acceptable when in a crunch.

Just another inconvenience this pandemic has caused.

Oh well.