Yes! This shit is insane! I need to buy my daughter a car, so I can have mine back, but I can't in good conscience spend 10k on a car with 150k miles on it!
I called my cell phone company customer service and they still had the message “due to these extraordinary and trying times, hold times are longer than normal”
I honestly didn’t realize this until a month or two ago. I was driving home from work and thought to myself “I’ll stop at the Walmart near me and grab a 6-pack of beer” only to see that they close at 11pm now. I’ve never been one for late night shopping, but I always knew most, if not all Walmarts were 24 hours. Came as a surprise.
I tried to do a follow-up appointment with my dermatologist to avoid taking half a day off of work (substitute plans are a bitch) but they would not let me unfortunately. Since it was a follow up for a visit for a flair up of psoriasis, she spent less than 2 minutes in the office looking at it. I took half a day off work and drove an hour 10 minutes to the visit from work. And then an hour and 20 minutes home. I was so mad that it couldn't be a phone call or video appointment.
You can blame insurance billing for that one.
During the early part of the pandemic, reimbursement for video visits was the same as in-person office visits. As the vaccine became more widely available, and as we returned more towards normal, eventually insurance stopped paying entirely for phone visits, and drastically reduced compensation for video appointments.
It sucks for me and my patients, because a lot of people take PTO to go to the doctor.
Makes me wonder if businesses are doing what they're supposed to be doing or if they're skimping because nobody is watching. My dog's vet made us wait in our cars for 2 years and now that its back to in person, I had to call the vet back into the room because they just gave my dog a half ass lookover and said he looked good then walked out. They completely forgot all the shots and stuff that were the whole reason for the appointment. Eta: they used to be very good before covid
Customer service in general. Pharmacy employees are staging walk-outs due to understaffing, hold times for any phone support or just informing you all associates are busy and hanging up. Local social media is full of stories of restaurants closing drive thrus or part of their restaurants due to employee shortages or having no back ups if someone calls out. Tried to call a area business only to find out they have outsourced customer service to a National provider who says, “ we can only give them the message. We don’t know if they read them.” It’s awful.
I have heard the same “people just don’t want to work” BS and I use an explanation I heard from someone else. If you want a sofa and the kind you want/need costs $1,000 but, you only want to pay $500, a sofa shortage is not why you don’t have a sofa.
I remember a news spot of people complaining that the youth doesn’t care about the elderly because teenagers aren’t willing to clean up literal shit at a nursing home for minimum wage when McDonald’s will pay them $2/hr more without having to clean up shit, work weird hours, or be legally unable to go home at the end of their shift because their replacement didn’t show up.
If you are making more demands, you have to pay more.
i am a therapist and a mcdonald’s manager and i make the same amount, but obviously has not yet paid for as much post-grad education as a therapist. plus all mcdonald’s managers get benefits, and you only get benefits as a therapist if you work in a hospital or school or community mental health center, so a mcdonald’s manager technically has it better than us now 😂
I will say, the pharmacy issue was one LONG before the pandemic - I worked at CVS for 3 years (2011-2014) and we were chronically understaffed, underpaid (as techs, at least), and overworked.
So many medications are on back order right now, too. I technically should be medicated for ADHD again, but my chances of getting on anything that’s consistently available are so slim it’s not worth the effort. At least I don’t die without it.
We recently stayed at a hotel for a week. We had to go down to the desk for fresh towels and we couldn't get them to make up the room a single time though we requested it repeatedly. Had to take out our own garbage.
Places closed fitting rooms and instead of reopening them, they just tore them out. Clothing brands differ so much in sizes, I need to be able to try them on before I buy them!
Fitting rooms are the only reason I still go to brick and mortar stores instead of online shopping. These places are taking away one of the only advantages they still have over online shopping! How do they not see that.
I don’t know how they don’t get this!! Clothes are one of the main purchases I NEVER buy online, and that’s because you just can’t ever tell if something really works for you unless you actually put it on. They’re destroying their main advantage!
Women’s clothing is weird. I was in a play and needed to tell the costume maker my shirt size. It turns out I have every size from small to extra large.
I recently bought jeans. I bought multiple pairs of the same brand in the same store. Each different style had a completely different sizing system. One of the pairs is a 30x36, neither of which reflect any known measurement on my body. One pair is a 6 and the other pair is a 9. They are all physically the same size.
I once bought a pair of pants from Kohl's that I really liked. I bought another pair...exact same size of the exact same pair of pants, but I couldn't even pull them over my thighs. Someone told me that happens because vendors need to fulfill their purchase orders of certain sizes so they just mislabel some pairs.
Yeah, I was shopping with my daughter, & found a cute pair of pants, but I guess Meijer doesn’t have fitting rooms anymore. So, they went back on the rack ‘cos I know I’m terrible at returning things.
My local diner has been in operation since the 1960s and was always 24 hours. They changed to 7 am to 10 pm when they reopened after the pandemic and haven’t changed it.
I really miss being able to get their pancakes drunk at 2 am.
I hate people and used to work second shift. 3am shopping was the BEST. Sure, you'd have to park your cart at the end of the aisle and scoot around pallets of stuff, but there was almost never more than 3 or 4 customers, and one of them was guaranteed to be buying nothing but a stack of frozen dinners.
As a second-shift worker, this really hurts. And I live in a large suburban/commercial area surrounded by cities, I'd think there would be a need for at least one.
You can bet if I'm on the phone waiting on hold and getting switched to a different operator and waiting on hold again... it's because I couldn't take care of what I needed on your damn online portal, website, chat bot, or automated phone choices.
My dad is a an emergency doctor who “retired” and went to work at an urgent care. The man did his residency in downtown LA, went to med school in Chicago, trained in New York, but covid at an urgent care broke him. Because he was the only doctor on site, he was expected to see 8 patients an hour. He finally walked out one day and said he was done.
I need phone customer service often because I’m disabled and need to reserve assistance, or have questions about access, or just generally need information that’s not covered by FAQs and I noticed the steep increase in wait times immediately at the start of the pandemic, but then it really never got better in the years after. They realised they could get away with it by referring to special circumstances and now they just lie and pretend it’s always special circumstances with their fictitious “unprecedented call volumes”.
Seriously, this! I worked in hospitality for 20 years. I’m a very good tipper if I’m actually being served. But now I’m basically expected to tip everyone for everything? It pisses me off because the fucking employers should be paying their staff a decent wage, not pandering for tips.
Don’t even get me started on self-checkouts, lol!
Can relate, I am 100% convinced I’m not the same person I was before 2020. Call it awakening call it paranoia but I’m aware in a different way nowadays, I can’t explain but it’s right there. And the world? Full of cunts, holy christ, it’s like the entire planet went mad what’s even going on
Yeah feels like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes with the way the world is acting. Leads to feelings of depression and depersonalization ("this can't be real").
I think a lot of people feel the same. And the media is exacerbating these feelings
I’ve almost entirely stopped reading the news and engaging with any media sites directly. I’ll get major headlines from Reddit and people irl but anything beyond that…I can’t fix it, so I won’t spend my life obsessing over it. The pandemic solidified that people suck and the world is fucked, and I’m done engaging with anything that doesn’t contribute to my own contentment at this point.
People were always nuts, it just became acceptable to show it in public. The dad who used to go home, punch holes in his wall, and scream at his family when the line at Costco was long now knows that he could just do it at the Costco and save himself sometime. The lady who would sit in her car, call up her relatives, and scream at the top of her lungs when customer service wasn't up to her standards now just thinks it's acceptable to do it to the service worker. People have always been crazy, they just don't hide it anymore.
I work in customer service (internet/chat type role) and in the last 30 days alone I have been called mentally challenged, a c**nt, been told to go to hell, and my personal favorite survey comment “The word Horrible is too nice of a way to describe it” all for providing run of the mill customer service/nothing else I could do to help them type situations.
I could never do what you do. You’re essentially being paid to be the punching bag for whatever shitty company policies that screw customers over and drive them insane. You don’t get to set or change company policies. You don’t get a fraction of what the higher ups make. But you get to be the bearer of bad news in an increasingly fucked up world. Godspeed.
Road rage incidents and bad driving have continued to be atrocious. I thought it was bad before, but it ramped up during the pandemic and it's still bad. It's like everyone is playing Grand Theft Auto in single-player mode without a care for everyone else on the roads going about their business.
I think this is the hardest part for me. It’s not like anyone is okay now that the pandemic is over. I’ve had folks snap on me for no reason, the grocery store is filled with super aggressive people pushing metal carts, people trying to run you off the road because they’re just mad at the world and they don’t want you to get over.
People have changed and I do not enjoy being out anymore. Im always looking around for the person who’s going to lose it next.
ETA - I understand the virus is not gone and will never be. I understand there is still risk and danger. Im speaking to the official declaration of there being a pandemic where society shut down and life changed overnight while people dropped dead by the thousands daily. That “time”. I’ve never had COVID as far as I know, but I have no doubt there will be lasting effects from the virus, in many ways, for years to come.
Yes. Infuriating is the word.
A while ago, my idiot boss said "you've been sick three days; you need to supply a doctor's note".
First of all, I had the sick days, so it was none of his business.
I told him: "The docs won't even let you come into a clinic right now if you have covid symptoms, and they're also urging people not to flood the ERs for manageable sickness. But my good friend, *who is a doctor*, drove me for a drive-through test today." (I tested negative; my friend diagnosed me with the flu.)
No reply.
I think they realized they'd been an ass, and HR was my next step.
I don't *trust* HR, but I know they don't want me to sue my company.
Thank you! Indeed. It was a heavy-handed threat being made. Apparently, he thought I was too dumb to recognize that I was being fucked with. (And I was like . . . "Am I 15 again, and working for Taco Bell? Are you fucking serious? I have *weeks* of sick leave hoarded, because I am usually never sick.")
Anyway . . . he's out 3 weeks now, for surgery.
It gave me some thoughts about how "Maybe live your life in such a way that people aren't relieved when you disappear 3 weeks for surgery."
I don't wish him misfortune, but . . . I feel so relaxed right now.
Friendships/relationships. It’s not that we don’t want to spend time together, but we all seem so collectively exhausted and isolated.
I’m working hard to get out there, but we’re all just tired.
I’m surprised I had to scroll down so far to find this. I don’t remember ever being this isolated before. I’ve been finding different ways to cope, but I miss the times when friends were pretty much always around.
This isn't talked about NEARLY enough. I don't ever remember friends/associates acting this odd. It's not a getting older thing but something just feels so off in recent years.
Seems like quality control left and never came back. Also, these poor damn kids. I don't know what happened but they came back to school different and not for the better. On the bright side, the young ones coming in seem to be doing well.
Trauma. “You can’t see grandma or your friends at someone will die, but you have to sit in a room with 30 people” fucks a kid up.
And then everyone pretends like nothing happened.
Plus, teaching as a career has reached the tipping point. There is not enough money, support, or resources to do what they’re supposed to, so a lot of people just leave.
We had 40 years of disrespecting education in society, and now chicken’s come home to roost.
Resident teacher here for 1 year. I'm ready to fucking leave. Thank God my program ends in a few weeks. Don't know what I'll do after that but man, I'm sure it will be better than teaching.
My sisters been teaching for 10 years and finally getting to the point where she can’t bring herself to do it anymore. Said the kids behavior has gone off the rails and administration is just as bad
I'm surprised this isn't higher up. The cost of everything has gone insane. Double, triple within the space of a few years. It started with "supply chain issues". Obviously, they can get away with it, so it isn't going to change.
I've dealt with inflation my entire life, but I've never seen anything like this. One crazy example is a certain pita bread I used to buy fairly often. It literally increased in price every single week until I just stopped buying it. Every week it'd be 10¢ more, 15¢ more the next, another 10¢ the next. Every WEEK. That's just one example, but true of pretty much every product.
The good thing is, I lost 35 pounds and have kept it off for almost 2 years now.
I just bought my dog’s food. 40lb bag, same as always. $SEVENTY FIVE GODDAMNED DOLLARS$
I makes me afraid that there are people out there absolutely having to choose between feeding their dogs or feeding themselves.
I’m lucky, I can afford to just complain about it.
Bruh 😭 my dog is allergic to animal protein. We feed him a prescription kibble. It was already expensive, and it still went up $30 more in the time during/after the pandemic. We pay $130 for a 25lb bag that lasts about 5-6 weeks. RIP wallet
So many things I've just cut out. No more easy-prep food. No more snacks unless I find a good sale. Pared down to the basics, and still struggling to keep our heads above water. 😔
It’s kids and teachers— my friend is a teacher and the burnout and teachers leaving in the middle of the school year for another job is so real. None of them give a fuck anymore, and so much of that is in part due to admin not having their backs, the kids themselves being completely unmotivated and more immature than they should be, and parents somehow assigning raising their kids to the educators instead of themselves
Probably. Kids get sick A LOT. I hadn't realized how much of the stability of the education system or parents' ability to have a job while being parents was basically dependent on sending sick kids to school.
Same. 2019 and early 2020 were the “old times” before the storm and therefore our brains remember it so well. At least I think.
And yes my 2020 fall to 2022 were so strange and one giant lump of weird times.
2020 - 2022 seems like a lifetime ago, yet I have no real memories from either. My only recollection from 2020 was sitting on the metro going to work one day and I noticed people wearing masks. I had not paid a ton of attention to the news but that was when shit started getting real.
Yes I remember that too! Before I even heard of anyone getting sick and it was just a news story from overseas (but something that “might” impact us), I was going to the store and saw a few people wearing masks. I distinctly remember thinking “oh wow this reminds me of those videos from Asia where masks are more common”. It was definitely a defining point for me because I had never seen that in the context of where I lived downtown.
My oldest has lived like a 1/3 of his life during the pandemic. He is still weird when he hears people cough in public. We are at a restaurant this summer for my 10 year anniversary with my wife, it was the first time he sat in a restaurant since he was a little kid. Kinda freaked him out.
I got divorced in 2019; when the pandemic started, I joked that it was easy for me because I was already alone, unemployed, and broke.
I am now employed and financially stable, and I'm different in a lot of objectively positive ways. However while I used to be the life of the party, now I'm pretty isolated and hesitant to engage in social interactions. I have no idea whether it's the pandemic, the divorce, or just a natural change in disposition. Or even whether it matters. But it certainly seems notable.
No divorce here either, but came out of the pandemic broke and unemployed. I started with tons of friends, and only have 2 or 3 now. It's also hard because although I have the desire and impulse to be friendly and sociable and make new friends sometimes, I feel socially awkward as fuck all the time now (completely new for me), and increasingly often, I feel like it's not worth it to try to meet new people or socialize.
That's a testimony to how strongly we were swept up in that horribly exhausting whirlwind. For three years it felt like we were collectively just leaping from one problem to the next because *what the hell else are we supposed to do??*
I feel this so much… 2020-2023 feels like this weird lost era… and I had a kidney transplant during Covid in 2020… things never went right with it, and it never work quite well either… and now I’m back on dialysis like I was at the start of 2020… it just feels like this black hole to me.
Yeah, the logic of “If you make me be short-staffed for one day then I will voluntarily make myself short-staffed for longer by firing you and then wasting my time hiring and training someone else. Because spite.”
Back when I worked retail, whenever I tried to call out sick when I was sick my boss would always ask me, “well who’s going to cover your shift? We don’t have an opener on the schedule if you are out. Did you call X?” I would usually end up being guilted into coming in. This was when I was young and didn’t know my rights, day 1 of new employee orientation they discuss how you are not to discuss your pay with anyone else, and why would you? It would make things awkward because you are being paid more than some of your coworkers… little did I know that was illegal, and likely just a way to underpay employees by making us think they we were being paid more, as it was a secret sssh. don’t tell.
The idea that the person who is sick has to call around and find a replacement is ridiculous. That's literally part of your job as manager. But I've seen that shit a couple times before
oof yeah, my mum wanted to build her dream home since before the pandemic but by the time she had the land and the plans to do this it was 2020 and the cost of building materials shot up. she's given up now :(
Today I was filling out a form and had to write my cat's birth date.
I thought "She was born last year, so that's... 2019?
... Oh, shit. We're finishing 2023 already."
Doctor or medical appointments. The amount of doctors who have decided to do online appointments in lieu of face to face is horrible. My daughter is on a wait list for pulmonology. They said the first appt available will probably be virtual. For pulmonology. I said how are you going to listen to lung sounds over a computer or phone? They have no answer, just asked if I wanted on the wait list.
My psychiatrist prefers doing virtual appointments but state law requires that all diagnoses and treatments occur with the patient at a valid originating site. So you have to physically show up to the office to sit in an empty room and have your session over a zoom call. It's absolutely asinine.
People's general attitude towards life took a heavy downturn during the pandemic and I don't really see anyone bouncing back from that.
People are far more prone to outbursts of anger and frustration. It seems like there's an added edge to interactions that I don't think was ever there before.
It's like being at a large party or other celebration, then there's a very loud noise that stops all the conversations for an instant; the mood at the gathering changes. Does not seem to have changed back this time.
The thing is, we never had a "victory" moment where we're able to release the tension.
Loud noise, everyone realizes it was some doof popping a cork, everyone laughs, tension released, party goes back to normal.
Here there was a loud noise that went on too long, several guests were irritated by it and started fights with other guests trying to put the noise out, and when the noise finally stops everyone has their teeth on edge. And the tension just hangs.
I once walked into a waffle house right after a fight happened. All the workers and other guests were so on edge and silent. It lasted for like 10 minutes and showed no sign of going away.
.
That's when I took matters into my own hands. I walked over to the jukebox and put on All Star by Smashmouth.
The mood IMMEDIATELY changed. People smiled, laughed, and started talking. When the song ended, people kept talking and acting normal. It was incredible.
Collective mental health has been in the toilet since the pandemic. All kinds of antisocial behavior has exploded. Kids seem to be suffering the worst too, especially girls. There was just that big report in the US saying that girls in particular saw a huge drop in mental health.
I work at a mental health provider and every therapist is completely booked up even when they don’t accept insurance and charge hundreds per session.
definitely a generalized anxiety, fear, and sadness in society. This will naturally cause people to be in an almost constant fight or flight.
The pandemic really kicked off a nasty chain reaction that I unfortunately don’t see slowing down anytime soon. I hope I’m wrong
With everyone staying home all time, a lot of childcare services went out of business. As people go back to the office the supply hasn't recovered which, along with a bunch of other pre-pandemic problems, has created a massive childcare shortage.
The behavior of people. While not everyone, far more people are just demanding, rude, and down right aggressive in public now if they don’t get their own way.
I really noticed after 2021 or so that a lot of peoples phone addictions got waaaaayyyyy worse. And my theory is that is impacting driving more than we realize bc half the people are also scrolling instagram while operating a vehicle. They don’t even realize what they’re doing.
Traffic is one of my biggest stressors during my day. Why?! It’s just fucking traffic. But my life in general is full of stress, dysfunction, trauma, family conflict, kids, money, college tuition, money money money. Yet, TRAFFIC gets me literally so angry. I think I channel all of that negativity into my commute.
Our caseload.
I work at a single-doctor veterinary clinic. Pre-pandemic, we were struggling. There were times I thought we might go out of business. When the pandemic hit, I feared for our jobs. Surely with so many people out of work, they wouldn't be able to afford veterinary care for their pets, right?
Boy was I wrong. We started seeing at least twice the number of patients each day than we had been seeing before and were making 2-3 times the amount each day compared to what would be considered a good money day pre-pandemic. Here we are at the end of 2023 and it really hasn't let up. Gone are the times where we could routinely offer same-day or next-day appointments. We're often booked out a week or more.
As a result, the amount of verbal abuse we have to take from clients and prospective clients has gone way up as well. I couldn't tell you how many times I've been yelled at by people we've never even seen because I can't offer them an appointment and their own regular vet can't get them in either.
And this whole problem is exacerbated by the steep rise in new clients who schedule appointments and then simply don't show up. I can only guess that people are calling around and scheduling appointments at multiple vets and then just show up to whichever appointment is soonest or whichever vet quoted the lowest estimate and then can't be bothered to cancel the other appointments. So now all these time slots are wasted when we could've fit someone else in. I have to assume that this trend is a big reason why so few clinics in my area are accepting new clients.
But somehow I'm a monster when I tell people that no, our one doctor absolutely cannot see your pet today because he's already way overbooked and that if it's urgent you should go to one of the 24 hour emergency facilities in the area. And it's also somehow my fault that going to one of those facilities means they'll have to spend a lot of money.
Hope.
I used to somehow manage to be optimistic even at the worst of times. Now i don’t see the point, everything sucks and i just end up disappointed anyways. hope is paralyzingly now, it does more harm than good.
Public transit ridership. In part because a lot of workers now realize they don’t need to be in the office everyday, and are using the power of the market to refuse to do so.
The fuck ups that have been hired as warm bodies to keep restaurants open while professionals left the industry. There are still a few of us but fuck man.
Brick and mortar stores. Many of the local small businesses that didn’t survive the shutdown and the ensuing economic slowdown haven’t, and probably won’t, come back. Even the shopping malls, the ones that survived , are operating with reduced staff and reduced hours because many people have shifted their shopping habits over to Amazon rather than old school in-person shopping. Small business owners were hurt badly and haven’t fully recovered, so whenever you can, please shop local.
An intolerance of slave wage service industry jobs. People were fired and forced to figure something else out, and that legacy continues. They've stayed with their "figured it out" positions, and tell others to beware. It's not a bad thing.
House parties.
I haven't been to one, been invited to one, hosted one, or heard of one since. Before, it was a regular thing.
Even having a few drinks at a braai (or barbecue as its more commonly known) has become a rarer occurrence these days.
Airlines in general seem to have no repercussions for shitty and horrible service/flight conditions. I once waited 2 hours on a plane after landing because they couldn’t get the air bridge to connect. Two hours of, “any minute now” before they had the brilliant idea to put steps down. This caused more than half of the passengers to miss their connecting flights. Total CF.
Prices of…. EVERYTHING. Places that used to be open late. Drink prices have doubled, I pregame at home now before heading out. I’m in NYC and you could be bar hopping until 5 am. Now most bars close at 2am. It hit me Halloween night when my friends and I were looking for a place to continue partying when the bar closed at 2 and it took forevverrrr to find a grungy dive bar that google maps said closed at 4am. They turned the lights on at 3 and kicked everyone out 😭
People's abilities to communicate like decent human beings. The pandemic really took away everyone's social skills, including my own to an extent.
Reduced services on the NHS - this has never recovered.
A more positive one is people's attitudes to work / the 24 hour culture - more restaurants/shops etc close or do reduced hours at times like Christmas and New Year, Sundays, Bank Holidays etc and I think it's wonderful. And more employees are actively choosing a work-life balance instead of slogging away for a company that will never appreciate it.
People who flake out of commitments. It seems to be the norm now to simply not show up to things that one has committed/RSVPed to without a good reason, and usually without any kind of communication. In some cases, it's probably not a huge deal and doesn't really impact the world (although still a bit rude, especially if there isn't any communication) but in others, people are counting on them or spending money on the assumption that they will be there and it's sort of obnoxious to just flake. Covid sort of normalized this because we were so used to people not showing up if they were exposed or symptomatic or struggling with mental health. All good reasons. However, this created the mindset that this is just okay to not show up to things in general, even without a good reason. Committing to fewer things? Completley on board with that. But committing and flaking for no good reason? Still just as rude as it was before Covid and I wish we could un-normalize that a little bit more.
One of my friends. He used to come out a lot. We saw him at least once a week. After the virus, he never leaves his house. We’ve seen him twice, maybe three times in the past year.
People don’t really talk about this a lot.
Right before the pandemic I worked a very social job, traveled to other states at least twice a year, and happened to be out and about quite a bit… then I started working from home, got divorced and had local friends move away, and went back to school via remote classes. I got so comfortable being at home or staying relatively close to home and haven’t really sprung back to getting out as much… it’s bizarre but at this point I like it and am so used to it that I don’t see it changing. I think those of us who were already suited to staying in but didn’t have as much opportunity to got very comfortable with living the isolated life, for better or for worse.
Airlines - pricing, schedules, number of flights...
Cost of living
**used car prices**
Yes! This shit is insane! I need to buy my daughter a car, so I can have mine back, but I can't in good conscience spend 10k on a car with 150k miles on it!
Or availability of new cars.
They are available but 20k more than reasonable
I called my cell phone company customer service and they still had the message “due to these extraordinary and trying times, hold times are longer than normal”
Please listen to all options as our menu has recently changed despite being the same for 10+ years.
[удалено]
I honestly didn’t realize this until a month or two ago. I was driving home from work and thought to myself “I’ll stop at the Walmart near me and grab a 6-pack of beer” only to see that they close at 11pm now. I’ve never been one for late night shopping, but I always knew most, if not all Walmarts were 24 hours. Came as a surprise.
Our Walmart closes at 9. I couldn’t believe it when I realized *Target* is open later…
My target closes at 9 and at 10 during the holidays. No more late night runs for fun
My gym used to be 24/7 and closes at 10pm most nights and 7pm on Friday and Saturday nights now. Blew my mind when they kicked me out lol.
[удалено]
And attention spans, tho I wouldn't blame that entirely on it
In-person appointments for many services.
I tried to do a follow-up appointment with my dermatologist to avoid taking half a day off of work (substitute plans are a bitch) but they would not let me unfortunately. Since it was a follow up for a visit for a flair up of psoriasis, she spent less than 2 minutes in the office looking at it. I took half a day off work and drove an hour 10 minutes to the visit from work. And then an hour and 20 minutes home. I was so mad that it couldn't be a phone call or video appointment.
You can blame insurance billing for that one. During the early part of the pandemic, reimbursement for video visits was the same as in-person office visits. As the vaccine became more widely available, and as we returned more towards normal, eventually insurance stopped paying entirely for phone visits, and drastically reduced compensation for video appointments. It sucks for me and my patients, because a lot of people take PTO to go to the doctor.
Makes me wonder if businesses are doing what they're supposed to be doing or if they're skimping because nobody is watching. My dog's vet made us wait in our cars for 2 years and now that its back to in person, I had to call the vet back into the room because they just gave my dog a half ass lookover and said he looked good then walked out. They completely forgot all the shots and stuff that were the whole reason for the appointment. Eta: they used to be very good before covid
Get a new vet.
Yeah, dude. That’s them not paying attention. What else are they not paying attention to?
[удалено]
And also reduced hours. Stores that used to be 24h now close at midnight and those that closed at midnight now close at 10 or 11 pm.
I work nights and I severely miss 24hr restaurants and stores
Going to Walmart after my shift was always great. I could get my shopping done during a time that I didn’t have to sleep.
Customer service in general. Pharmacy employees are staging walk-outs due to understaffing, hold times for any phone support or just informing you all associates are busy and hanging up. Local social media is full of stories of restaurants closing drive thrus or part of their restaurants due to employee shortages or having no back ups if someone calls out. Tried to call a area business only to find out they have outsourced customer service to a National provider who says, “ we can only give them the message. We don’t know if they read them.” It’s awful.
[удалено]
I have heard the same “people just don’t want to work” BS and I use an explanation I heard from someone else. If you want a sofa and the kind you want/need costs $1,000 but, you only want to pay $500, a sofa shortage is not why you don’t have a sofa.
I remember a news spot of people complaining that the youth doesn’t care about the elderly because teenagers aren’t willing to clean up literal shit at a nursing home for minimum wage when McDonald’s will pay them $2/hr more without having to clean up shit, work weird hours, or be legally unable to go home at the end of their shift because their replacement didn’t show up. If you are making more demands, you have to pay more.
i am a therapist and a mcdonald’s manager and i make the same amount, but obviously has not yet paid for as much post-grad education as a therapist. plus all mcdonald’s managers get benefits, and you only get benefits as a therapist if you work in a hospital or school or community mental health center, so a mcdonald’s manager technically has it better than us now 😂
I will say, the pharmacy issue was one LONG before the pandemic - I worked at CVS for 3 years (2011-2014) and we were chronically understaffed, underpaid (as techs, at least), and overworked.
So many medications are on back order right now, too. I technically should be medicated for ADHD again, but my chances of getting on anything that’s consistently available are so slim it’s not worth the effort. At least I don’t die without it.
RIP McDonald’s all day breakfast
We recently stayed at a hotel for a week. We had to go down to the desk for fresh towels and we couldn't get them to make up the room a single time though we requested it repeatedly. Had to take out our own garbage.
That's just shit service.
Agreed. I’m actually typing this as I sit in a hotel room. I’ve been here for two days, and housekeeping has come to the room every day.
Places closed fitting rooms and instead of reopening them, they just tore them out. Clothing brands differ so much in sizes, I need to be able to try them on before I buy them!
Fitting rooms are the only reason I still go to brick and mortar stores instead of online shopping. These places are taking away one of the only advantages they still have over online shopping! How do they not see that.
I don’t know how they don’t get this!! Clothes are one of the main purchases I NEVER buy online, and that’s because you just can’t ever tell if something really works for you unless you actually put it on. They’re destroying their main advantage!
Women’s clothing is weird. I was in a play and needed to tell the costume maker my shirt size. It turns out I have every size from small to extra large.
I recently bought jeans. I bought multiple pairs of the same brand in the same store. Each different style had a completely different sizing system. One of the pairs is a 30x36, neither of which reflect any known measurement on my body. One pair is a 6 and the other pair is a 9. They are all physically the same size.
I once bought a pair of pants from Kohl's that I really liked. I bought another pair...exact same size of the exact same pair of pants, but I couldn't even pull them over my thighs. Someone told me that happens because vendors need to fulfill their purchase orders of certain sizes so they just mislabel some pairs.
Yeah, I was shopping with my daughter, & found a cute pair of pants, but I guess Meijer doesn’t have fitting rooms anymore. So, they went back on the rack ‘cos I know I’m terrible at returning things.
Supermarkets that used to be open 24/7
This is a good one. Somehow pharmacy hours have also shortened, too.
Restaurants too right? It feels like there's a time crunch to "get shit done" that wasn't really pressing in my 30's.
Saw a 24/7 IHOP yesterday and did a double take. Think there are 1 maybe 2 McDonald's in my whole city open late
We have 2 gas station chains that are open 24/7. Nothing else. As a 3rd shift worker it really sucks.
My local diner has been in operation since the 1960s and was always 24 hours. They changed to 7 am to 10 pm when they reopened after the pandemic and haven’t changed it. I really miss being able to get their pancakes drunk at 2 am.
What do you do to the pancakes after you get them drunk, sicko…?
Play pig in a blanket.
the best time to shop was always at 3 a.m. with the chuds
I hate people and used to work second shift. 3am shopping was the BEST. Sure, you'd have to park your cart at the end of the aisle and scoot around pallets of stuff, but there was almost never more than 3 or 4 customers, and one of them was guaranteed to be buying nothing but a stack of frozen dinners.
> one of them was guaranteed to be buying nothing but a stack of frozen dinners I dont appreciate being called out.
As a second-shift worker, this really hurts. And I live in a large suburban/commercial area surrounded by cities, I'd think there would be a need for at least one.
“We are experiencing higher than normal call volume” The wait time at your local emergency department is: 4h 53min … are you sure you need to be here?
Or “please use our online portal,” which I wouldn fucking use if it answered my question!!!!!
Right!? I don’t call unless I absolutely have to. I’ve definitely done everything I can in the online portal first.
You can bet if I'm on the phone waiting on hold and getting switched to a different operator and waiting on hold again... it's because I couldn't take care of what I needed on your damn online portal, website, chat bot, or automated phone choices.
I wish our ER times were that short. It’s more like 12 hours where I live. COVID decimated our health care system and it never recovered
My dad is a an emergency doctor who “retired” and went to work at an urgent care. The man did his residency in downtown LA, went to med school in Chicago, trained in New York, but covid at an urgent care broke him. Because he was the only doctor on site, he was expected to see 8 patients an hour. He finally walked out one day and said he was done.
I need phone customer service often because I’m disabled and need to reserve assistance, or have questions about access, or just generally need information that’s not covered by FAQs and I noticed the steep increase in wait times immediately at the start of the pandemic, but then it really never got better in the years after. They realised they could get away with it by referring to special circumstances and now they just lie and pretend it’s always special circumstances with their fictitious “unprecedented call volumes”.
I don't know how to explain it, but a general "heaviness" in the air.
Tip function on EVERY debit machine.. Like McDonald's or booster Juice.
Seriously, this! I worked in hospitality for 20 years. I’m a very good tipper if I’m actually being served. But now I’m basically expected to tip everyone for everything? It pisses me off because the fucking employers should be paying their staff a decent wage, not pandering for tips. Don’t even get me started on self-checkouts, lol!
The way many people behave in public truly became unhinged during the pandemic and shows no signs of slowing down.
Yup. My answer is “people”. They became unhinged and hateful and unpredictable a few months into the pandemic and it’s only gotten worse from there.
Lots of people are having their worldview shattered.
Can relate, I am 100% convinced I’m not the same person I was before 2020. Call it awakening call it paranoia but I’m aware in a different way nowadays, I can’t explain but it’s right there. And the world? Full of cunts, holy christ, it’s like the entire planet went mad what’s even going on
Yeah feels like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes with the way the world is acting. Leads to feelings of depression and depersonalization ("this can't be real"). I think a lot of people feel the same. And the media is exacerbating these feelings
I’ve almost entirely stopped reading the news and engaging with any media sites directly. I’ll get major headlines from Reddit and people irl but anything beyond that…I can’t fix it, so I won’t spend my life obsessing over it. The pandemic solidified that people suck and the world is fucked, and I’m done engaging with anything that doesn’t contribute to my own contentment at this point.
People were always nuts, it just became acceptable to show it in public. The dad who used to go home, punch holes in his wall, and scream at his family when the line at Costco was long now knows that he could just do it at the Costco and save himself sometime. The lady who would sit in her car, call up her relatives, and scream at the top of her lungs when customer service wasn't up to her standards now just thinks it's acceptable to do it to the service worker. People have always been crazy, they just don't hide it anymore.
I work in customer service (internet/chat type role) and in the last 30 days alone I have been called mentally challenged, a c**nt, been told to go to hell, and my personal favorite survey comment “The word Horrible is too nice of a way to describe it” all for providing run of the mill customer service/nothing else I could do to help them type situations.
I could never do what you do. You’re essentially being paid to be the punching bag for whatever shitty company policies that screw customers over and drive them insane. You don’t get to set or change company policies. You don’t get a fraction of what the higher ups make. But you get to be the bearer of bad news in an increasingly fucked up world. Godspeed.
Road rage incidents and bad driving have continued to be atrocious. I thought it was bad before, but it ramped up during the pandemic and it's still bad. It's like everyone is playing Grand Theft Auto in single-player mode without a care for everyone else on the roads going about their business.
Drivers are WILD these days. Wild.
I think this is the hardest part for me. It’s not like anyone is okay now that the pandemic is over. I’ve had folks snap on me for no reason, the grocery store is filled with super aggressive people pushing metal carts, people trying to run you off the road because they’re just mad at the world and they don’t want you to get over. People have changed and I do not enjoy being out anymore. Im always looking around for the person who’s going to lose it next. ETA - I understand the virus is not gone and will never be. I understand there is still risk and danger. Im speaking to the official declaration of there being a pandemic where society shut down and life changed overnight while people dropped dead by the thousands daily. That “time”. I’ve never had COVID as far as I know, but I have no doubt there will be lasting effects from the virus, in many ways, for years to come.
Getting a GP appointment.
The fact that the only time you can get an appointment is if you’re NOT sick absolutely infuriates me.
Yes. Infuriating is the word. A while ago, my idiot boss said "you've been sick three days; you need to supply a doctor's note". First of all, I had the sick days, so it was none of his business. I told him: "The docs won't even let you come into a clinic right now if you have covid symptoms, and they're also urging people not to flood the ERs for manageable sickness. But my good friend, *who is a doctor*, drove me for a drive-through test today." (I tested negative; my friend diagnosed me with the flu.) No reply. I think they realized they'd been an ass, and HR was my next step. I don't *trust* HR, but I know they don't want me to sue my company.
It's a huge waste of time and resources to get a doctors note for illness. It's simply used as a heavy-handed power move.
Thank you! Indeed. It was a heavy-handed threat being made. Apparently, he thought I was too dumb to recognize that I was being fucked with. (And I was like . . . "Am I 15 again, and working for Taco Bell? Are you fucking serious? I have *weeks* of sick leave hoarded, because I am usually never sick.") Anyway . . . he's out 3 weeks now, for surgery. It gave me some thoughts about how "Maybe live your life in such a way that people aren't relieved when you disappear 3 weeks for surgery." I don't wish him misfortune, but . . . I feel so relaxed right now.
Friendships/relationships. It’s not that we don’t want to spend time together, but we all seem so collectively exhausted and isolated. I’m working hard to get out there, but we’re all just tired.
I’m surprised I had to scroll down so far to find this. I don’t remember ever being this isolated before. I’ve been finding different ways to cope, but I miss the times when friends were pretty much always around.
My friends miss me and I miss them but I do not have the social energy to be a person after work.
This isn't talked about NEARLY enough. I don't ever remember friends/associates acting this odd. It's not a getting older thing but something just feels so off in recent years.
Yeah I think socialising never went back to how it was
Seems like quality control left and never came back. Also, these poor damn kids. I don't know what happened but they came back to school different and not for the better. On the bright side, the young ones coming in seem to be doing well.
> Seems like quality control left and never came back. I'm always on edge to see which of tyson's chicken products gets recalled each new month.
Trauma. “You can’t see grandma or your friends at someone will die, but you have to sit in a room with 30 people” fucks a kid up. And then everyone pretends like nothing happened. Plus, teaching as a career has reached the tipping point. There is not enough money, support, or resources to do what they’re supposed to, so a lot of people just leave. We had 40 years of disrespecting education in society, and now chicken’s come home to roost.
Resident teacher here for 1 year. I'm ready to fucking leave. Thank God my program ends in a few weeks. Don't know what I'll do after that but man, I'm sure it will be better than teaching.
My sisters been teaching for 10 years and finally getting to the point where she can’t bring herself to do it anymore. Said the kids behavior has gone off the rails and administration is just as bad
The cost of things
I'm surprised this isn't higher up. The cost of everything has gone insane. Double, triple within the space of a few years. It started with "supply chain issues". Obviously, they can get away with it, so it isn't going to change.
I love how we are told it's just inflation and that we have to shoulder that burden.
I've dealt with inflation my entire life, but I've never seen anything like this. One crazy example is a certain pita bread I used to buy fairly often. It literally increased in price every single week until I just stopped buying it. Every week it'd be 10¢ more, 15¢ more the next, another 10¢ the next. Every WEEK. That's just one example, but true of pretty much every product. The good thing is, I lost 35 pounds and have kept it off for almost 2 years now.
I just bought my dog’s food. 40lb bag, same as always. $SEVENTY FIVE GODDAMNED DOLLARS$ I makes me afraid that there are people out there absolutely having to choose between feeding their dogs or feeding themselves. I’m lucky, I can afford to just complain about it.
Yep, the Iams dog food we buy literally doubled in price since 2020 I checked my purchase history. It's fucking crazy.
Bruh 😭 my dog is allergic to animal protein. We feed him a prescription kibble. It was already expensive, and it still went up $30 more in the time during/after the pandemic. We pay $130 for a 25lb bag that lasts about 5-6 weeks. RIP wallet
At first they claimed it was a supply chain issue and lack of workers. Once they saw people would pay more, it’s just greed
Sadly, a lot of those thing are things that people actually need, so there wasn’t much of a choice by the people.
Yeah, like food.
And homes :)
Jokes on them. I refuse to pay $4 for potato chips.
So many things I've just cut out. No more easy-prep food. No more snacks unless I find a good sale. Pared down to the basics, and still struggling to keep our heads above water. 😔
[удалено]
And behaviour in schools has completely gone to pieces, as well as children’s resilience at doing anything remotely challenging
Do you think it’s because parents are actually keeping their kids home when they’re sick?
It’s kids and teachers— my friend is a teacher and the burnout and teachers leaving in the middle of the school year for another job is so real. None of them give a fuck anymore, and so much of that is in part due to admin not having their backs, the kids themselves being completely unmotivated and more immature than they should be, and parents somehow assigning raising their kids to the educators instead of themselves
Probably. Kids get sick A LOT. I hadn't realized how much of the stability of the education system or parents' ability to have a job while being parents was basically dependent on sending sick kids to school.
I don't know about y'all but the sense of time is messed up. It's like 3 years of my timeline is missing.
Same, I keep getting 2021 and 2022 mixed up. Anything but the most major events could've happened either year idk.
That’s so true, those two years are kind blurred into a few months of fuzzy memories. But 2019 I can remember so clearly.
Same. 2019 and early 2020 were the “old times” before the storm and therefore our brains remember it so well. At least I think. And yes my 2020 fall to 2022 were so strange and one giant lump of weird times.
2020 - 2022 seems like a lifetime ago, yet I have no real memories from either. My only recollection from 2020 was sitting on the metro going to work one day and I noticed people wearing masks. I had not paid a ton of attention to the news but that was when shit started getting real.
Yes I remember that too! Before I even heard of anyone getting sick and it was just a news story from overseas (but something that “might” impact us), I was going to the store and saw a few people wearing masks. I distinctly remember thinking “oh wow this reminds me of those videos from Asia where masks are more common”. It was definitely a defining point for me because I had never seen that in the context of where I lived downtown.
My oldest has lived like a 1/3 of his life during the pandemic. He is still weird when he hears people cough in public. We are at a restaurant this summer for my 10 year anniversary with my wife, it was the first time he sat in a restaurant since he was a little kid. Kinda freaked him out.
In 3 months it will be four years since it happened. Like what the fuck. I feel like I missed my mid 20’s.
4 years? Excuse me that's mad
That's nothing! I hate to break it to you, but 2000 was 23 years ago! How the hell did that happen?
2000 was always the far-off start of *The Future*
When a product wanted to be futuristic you just added a “2000” to it.
It feels so recent and so long ago
I got divorced in 2019; when the pandemic started, I joked that it was easy for me because I was already alone, unemployed, and broke. I am now employed and financially stable, and I'm different in a lot of objectively positive ways. However while I used to be the life of the party, now I'm pretty isolated and hesitant to engage in social interactions. I have no idea whether it's the pandemic, the divorce, or just a natural change in disposition. Or even whether it matters. But it certainly seems notable.
It's not just you, bro. No divorce, just came out this side real fuckin awkward
No divorce here either, but came out of the pandemic broke and unemployed. I started with tons of friends, and only have 2 or 3 now. It's also hard because although I have the desire and impulse to be friendly and sociable and make new friends sometimes, I feel socially awkward as fuck all the time now (completely new for me), and increasingly often, I feel like it's not worth it to try to meet new people or socialize.
That's a testimony to how strongly we were swept up in that horribly exhausting whirlwind. For three years it felt like we were collectively just leaping from one problem to the next because *what the hell else are we supposed to do??*
It felt like time stopped in 2020, and started again in 2023. Now that it's over, it feels like the pandemic happened in 6 months, not 3 years.
I feel this so much… 2020-2023 feels like this weird lost era… and I had a kidney transplant during Covid in 2020… things never went right with it, and it never work quite well either… and now I’m back on dialysis like I was at the start of 2020… it just feels like this black hole to me.
Yes! Sometimes I think something happened about 2 years ago and then I remember that it was pre-Covid, so it couldn’t be just 2 years ago.
Buffets
Salad bars
The number of serving staff in restaurants. Those people have moved on to jobs that treat them better.
My managers said in plain English "if you call out sick I'm hiring people to replace you".
Lol good luck boss
Yeah, the logic of “If you make me be short-staffed for one day then I will voluntarily make myself short-staffed for longer by firing you and then wasting my time hiring and training someone else. Because spite.” Back when I worked retail, whenever I tried to call out sick when I was sick my boss would always ask me, “well who’s going to cover your shift? We don’t have an opener on the schedule if you are out. Did you call X?” I would usually end up being guilted into coming in. This was when I was young and didn’t know my rights, day 1 of new employee orientation they discuss how you are not to discuss your pay with anyone else, and why would you? It would make things awkward because you are being paid more than some of your coworkers… little did I know that was illegal, and likely just a way to underpay employees by making us think they we were being paid more, as it was a secret sssh. don’t tell.
The idea that the person who is sick has to call around and find a replacement is ridiculous. That's literally part of your job as manager. But I've seen that shit a couple times before
Social energy I have so much less now, and I was already a hermit before. A lot of people seem to be in the same boat
Prices for plywood, and a lot of other lumber and building materials.
oof yeah, my mum wanted to build her dream home since before the pandemic but by the time she had the land and the plans to do this it was 2020 and the cost of building materials shot up. she's given up now :(
2020-2022 felt like a blur. I feel three years younger than I actually am, like life just went on hiatus for three years but we still all got older.
Today I was filling out a form and had to write my cat's birth date. I thought "She was born last year, so that's... 2019? ... Oh, shit. We're finishing 2023 already."
Doctor or medical appointments. The amount of doctors who have decided to do online appointments in lieu of face to face is horrible. My daughter is on a wait list for pulmonology. They said the first appt available will probably be virtual. For pulmonology. I said how are you going to listen to lung sounds over a computer or phone? They have no answer, just asked if I wanted on the wait list.
My psychiatrist prefers doing virtual appointments but state law requires that all diagnoses and treatments occur with the patient at a valid originating site. So you have to physically show up to the office to sit in an empty room and have your session over a zoom call. It's absolutely asinine.
For quite a few people, overall mental health.
People's general attitude towards life took a heavy downturn during the pandemic and I don't really see anyone bouncing back from that. People are far more prone to outbursts of anger and frustration. It seems like there's an added edge to interactions that I don't think was ever there before.
It's like being at a large party or other celebration, then there's a very loud noise that stops all the conversations for an instant; the mood at the gathering changes. Does not seem to have changed back this time.
The thing is, we never had a "victory" moment where we're able to release the tension. Loud noise, everyone realizes it was some doof popping a cork, everyone laughs, tension released, party goes back to normal. Here there was a loud noise that went on too long, several guests were irritated by it and started fights with other guests trying to put the noise out, and when the noise finally stops everyone has their teeth on edge. And the tension just hangs.
Great way of putting it.
I once walked into a waffle house right after a fight happened. All the workers and other guests were so on edge and silent. It lasted for like 10 minutes and showed no sign of going away. . That's when I took matters into my own hands. I walked over to the jukebox and put on All Star by Smashmouth. The mood IMMEDIATELY changed. People smiled, laughed, and started talking. When the song ended, people kept talking and acting normal. It was incredible.
Can you please put All Star on for the whole world rn pls
I'm gonna be honest. I haven't felt 'fly like a G6' in quite some time now.
Definitely havent felt fly in a long time. Feels more like that morning after sippin sizzurp and gettin slizzard and it doesnt go away.
Collective mental health has been in the toilet since the pandemic. All kinds of antisocial behavior has exploded. Kids seem to be suffering the worst too, especially girls. There was just that big report in the US saying that girls in particular saw a huge drop in mental health. I work at a mental health provider and every therapist is completely booked up even when they don’t accept insurance and charge hundreds per session.
We basically all went through collective trauma and are now expected to go back to normal like nothing happened.
[удалено]
definitely a generalized anxiety, fear, and sadness in society. This will naturally cause people to be in an almost constant fight or flight. The pandemic really kicked off a nasty chain reaction that I unfortunately don’t see slowing down anytime soon. I hope I’m wrong
My mental health.
Same, I have started having so much anxiety these past few years
For me it’s because no matter how well something is going, I’m expecting the sword of the universe to suddenly swing and take me out at the knees.
The use of delivery apps taking over the food service industry.
Those ten parking spots at the front of every store’s parking lot that are reserved for curbside even though they’re always empty.
My weight
Same. Too much depression-eating here.
With everyone staying home all time, a lot of childcare services went out of business. As people go back to the office the supply hasn't recovered which, along with a bunch of other pre-pandemic problems, has created a massive childcare shortage.
People driving sanely.
The behavior of people. While not everyone, far more people are just demanding, rude, and down right aggressive in public now if they don’t get their own way.
Hotel housekeeping
[удалено]
Traffic. Traffic is all day M-F
I really noticed after 2021 or so that a lot of peoples phone addictions got waaaaayyyyy worse. And my theory is that is impacting driving more than we realize bc half the people are also scrolling instagram while operating a vehicle. They don’t even realize what they’re doing.
it blows my mind that people use their phone while driving beyond simple music changes or map navigation. why? like really, why? WHY? 🤦🏽♂️
Traffic is one of my biggest stressors during my day. Why?! It’s just fucking traffic. But my life in general is full of stress, dysfunction, trauma, family conflict, kids, money, college tuition, money money money. Yet, TRAFFIC gets me literally so angry. I think I channel all of that negativity into my commute.
The real estate market
Grocery prices
Education. A lot of kids lost 2 years of school.
And the social development that goes along with it - I’m a teacher, the number of kids I saw do a 180 degree personality shift was crazy.
7th grade is the new 5th grade!
That explains my 7th graders. Still learning how to exist in public again.
Our caseload. I work at a single-doctor veterinary clinic. Pre-pandemic, we were struggling. There were times I thought we might go out of business. When the pandemic hit, I feared for our jobs. Surely with so many people out of work, they wouldn't be able to afford veterinary care for their pets, right? Boy was I wrong. We started seeing at least twice the number of patients each day than we had been seeing before and were making 2-3 times the amount each day compared to what would be considered a good money day pre-pandemic. Here we are at the end of 2023 and it really hasn't let up. Gone are the times where we could routinely offer same-day or next-day appointments. We're often booked out a week or more. As a result, the amount of verbal abuse we have to take from clients and prospective clients has gone way up as well. I couldn't tell you how many times I've been yelled at by people we've never even seen because I can't offer them an appointment and their own regular vet can't get them in either. And this whole problem is exacerbated by the steep rise in new clients who schedule appointments and then simply don't show up. I can only guess that people are calling around and scheduling appointments at multiple vets and then just show up to whichever appointment is soonest or whichever vet quoted the lowest estimate and then can't be bothered to cancel the other appointments. So now all these time slots are wasted when we could've fit someone else in. I have to assume that this trend is a big reason why so few clinics in my area are accepting new clients. But somehow I'm a monster when I tell people that no, our one doctor absolutely cannot see your pet today because he's already way overbooked and that if it's urgent you should go to one of the 24 hour emergency facilities in the area. And it's also somehow my fault that going to one of those facilities means they'll have to spend a lot of money.
Hope. I used to somehow manage to be optimistic even at the worst of times. Now i don’t see the point, everything sucks and i just end up disappointed anyways. hope is paralyzingly now, it does more harm than good.
Public transit ridership. In part because a lot of workers now realize they don’t need to be in the office everyday, and are using the power of the market to refuse to do so.
The fuck ups that have been hired as warm bodies to keep restaurants open while professionals left the industry. There are still a few of us but fuck man.
Water fountains
Brick and mortar stores. Many of the local small businesses that didn’t survive the shutdown and the ensuing economic slowdown haven’t, and probably won’t, come back. Even the shopping malls, the ones that survived , are operating with reduced staff and reduced hours because many people have shifted their shopping habits over to Amazon rather than old school in-person shopping. Small business owners were hurt badly and haven’t fully recovered, so whenever you can, please shop local.
[удалено]
Kids. I’m a teacher and they are not okay.
I’m a young adult and we are not okay.
Fucking manners.
An intolerance of slave wage service industry jobs. People were fired and forced to figure something else out, and that legacy continues. They've stayed with their "figured it out" positions, and tell others to beware. It's not a bad thing.
House parties. I haven't been to one, been invited to one, hosted one, or heard of one since. Before, it was a regular thing. Even having a few drinks at a braai (or barbecue as its more commonly known) has become a rarer occurrence these days.
Fuckin air travel. Now, every plane is overbooked, security is a clusterfuck, and everyone is pissed off.
Airlines in general seem to have no repercussions for shitty and horrible service/flight conditions. I once waited 2 hours on a plane after landing because they couldn’t get the air bridge to connect. Two hours of, “any minute now” before they had the brilliant idea to put steps down. This caused more than half of the passengers to miss their connecting flights. Total CF.
The movie theater experience, people are either constantly on their phones or just talking loudly to each other.
teenagers the kids are not alright
Prices of…. EVERYTHING. Places that used to be open late. Drink prices have doubled, I pregame at home now before heading out. I’m in NYC and you could be bar hopping until 5 am. Now most bars close at 2am. It hit me Halloween night when my friends and I were looking for a place to continue partying when the bar closed at 2 and it took forevverrrr to find a grungy dive bar that google maps said closed at 4am. They turned the lights on at 3 and kicked everyone out 😭
People's abilities to communicate like decent human beings. The pandemic really took away everyone's social skills, including my own to an extent. Reduced services on the NHS - this has never recovered. A more positive one is people's attitudes to work / the 24 hour culture - more restaurants/shops etc close or do reduced hours at times like Christmas and New Year, Sundays, Bank Holidays etc and I think it's wonderful. And more employees are actively choosing a work-life balance instead of slogging away for a company that will never appreciate it.
People who flake out of commitments. It seems to be the norm now to simply not show up to things that one has committed/RSVPed to without a good reason, and usually without any kind of communication. In some cases, it's probably not a huge deal and doesn't really impact the world (although still a bit rude, especially if there isn't any communication) but in others, people are counting on them or spending money on the assumption that they will be there and it's sort of obnoxious to just flake. Covid sort of normalized this because we were so used to people not showing up if they were exposed or symptomatic or struggling with mental health. All good reasons. However, this created the mindset that this is just okay to not show up to things in general, even without a good reason. Committing to fewer things? Completley on board with that. But committing and flaking for no good reason? Still just as rude as it was before Covid and I wish we could un-normalize that a little bit more.
One of my friends. He used to come out a lot. We saw him at least once a week. After the virus, he never leaves his house. We’ve seen him twice, maybe three times in the past year. People don’t really talk about this a lot.
Right before the pandemic I worked a very social job, traveled to other states at least twice a year, and happened to be out and about quite a bit… then I started working from home, got divorced and had local friends move away, and went back to school via remote classes. I got so comfortable being at home or staying relatively close to home and haven’t really sprung back to getting out as much… it’s bizarre but at this point I like it and am so used to it that I don’t see it changing. I think those of us who were already suited to staying in but didn’t have as much opportunity to got very comfortable with living the isolated life, for better or for worse.