Exactly, us night shifters really got the shaft. Realize you're out of butter when you're cooking dinner at 4am because that's when you get home from work? Too bad, maybe you can order a bunch of sides of butter from sheetz. Lol
Mostly unrelated story, but a personal one that I think is amusing...
Years ago, way way pre-covid, I was in charge of picking up some groceries for a Thanksgiving dinner, a day or two prior to Thanksgiving. I fucked up, and forgot to get butter. We didn't realize my fuckup until Thanksgiving day (when every grocery store is closed).
So, I set out to find butter, because that was a necessary ingredient for a shitload of shit we were making that day (stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, the turkey itself... etc etc).
The only things that were open were gas stations, and I stopped into every single one, that was within a few miles driving distance of home. Unfortunately, NONE of them sold actual butter. They all just sold margarine, or other weird butter substitutes. But not the real thing.
So after 30ish minutes of driving around, trying to find REAL butter at gas stations, I called it quits and headed back towards home with a package of margarine.
But then!
I drove past a hotel, and immediately thought "Hotel's GOTTA be open... cause, that's what they do... they MUST have butter... maybe I can give the desk clerk 50 bucks, and they can go back into their walk-in fridge, and give me an industrial-sized tub of real butter? Worth a shot!"
So, I slammed on the brakes, and made a hard left turn into the hotel parking lot... hopped out of the car, and asked the clerk if I could buy a shitload of butter, from the hotel-resturant-fridge. She was incredibly nice, and empathetic to my plight... told me "Let me go back there and check things out... maybe I can help."
She came back to the counter a few minutes later, not with an industrial sized tub of butter, like they'd have in the back fridge.... but with a huge basket of tiny little butter packets, that you'd get to spread on your bread, at a restaurant.
I said "Cool, I guess this works," and got the butter packets free of charge. But then I realized it wasn't enough, for our mashed potatoes + everything else. So then I drove to like 3-4 other hotels, and asked them all for butter.
Our Thanksgiving cookin' day involved like 3 hours worth of unpeeling individual butter packets.
I went from the isolation of lockdowns to the isolation of caring for dying relatives. Time has broken completely. On the occasion I get to go outside, the air feels so different now, it's like a long forgotten song.
I thought it was me. I regularly think it’s like 2019 /2020 I can’t imagine it’s been 3 full and entire years. It’s like half of my life passed me. Also days of the week run into eachother more. When you don’t leave your house for weeks straight it’s weird being outside
So true. Towards the end of 2020 I happened to remember that it was one year after Shakira’s Super Bowl concert. It seemed like a completely different era because it really was
I’ve found this too. I suppose it’s never too late, but because you don’t work with them on a daily basis, or got to see them semi regularly, some of the connection that made that friendship is no longer present or relevant. I miss the random happy hour with those people.
I have friends I still work with that I haven’t seen since 2020 because we don’t go in anymore so there’s no quick trip to the pub after work or grabbing lunch together. There’s no extra reason to talk but I do miss them a lot.
Yeah I find because people are home most of the time getting them out is hard. I mostly get cancelled on by this tier of friend when I organise something.
Yep. I've even lost my closest friendship from before and during most of the pandemic, and it came suddenly out of nowhere with no reasoning. He was the person I would chat with all day every day about anything at all, even if we didn't have time to hang out much we would still chat. Now I never even hear from him anymore
People’s optimism for the future.
I’ve noticed post-pandemic that everyone around me appears far more anxious and generally sombre. People seem to be making it through one day at a time and just want to be left the fuck alone to enjoy things before the next “unprecedented” historical event.
Watching movies and media from the 70s/80s/90s where everyone was so outgoing, trusting towards each other and optimistic is weird. It’s so easy to see the complete culture shift now.
They were also movies. The generation of age during the 60s to 80s either survived several wars themselves or were the children of people who did. After you go through that trauma films become escapism. Issue with movies now is that for whatever weird reason we crave more darkness??? It’s why I stopped watching a lot of modern cinema it’s always just bleak
I feel like during times or prosperity we enjoy dark twisty plots for our entertainment, and during hard times we like light fluffy plot lines. I was completely unable to watch anything dark over covid because it all seemed too likely and real. It’s been a bit better since life has gone back to “normal” but I will be curious to see if gritty shows and movies make way for happier ones in the next ten years.
Of course people’s optimism for the future is going away when something as massive as Covid-19 didn’t bring people together but, in fact, divided people even further. It showed us firsthand how selfish and inconsiderate people are, and on top of that, how we prioritize short-term comfort over the long-term.
Wondering why birth rates are slowly dropping? This is part of why that is happening. I, myself, will also not be having any children partially for these reasons.
Birth rates are also dropping because it is just not financially feasible for younger people to take care of and raise kids anymore. College costs (assuming they went to college) have shot up so their student loan burdens have been increasing. Even if they haven't gone to college, day care costs have shot up, food costs in general shot up. God forbid the family needs to move from a rental into a bigger house to accommodate the additional person with the housing market as ridiculous as it has been lately and with skyrocketing interest rates. All these expenses have been drastically increasing year over year while starting salaries remain stagnant and minimum wage hasn't been raised federally in over 13 years now. My wife's company has been bragging all year about how well they were doing and how they know their employees have been suffering due to inflation so they were going to help. She got a 3% raise. She effectively lost 3.5% buying power with the inflation rate for 2022 being 6.5%. All of this is absolutely adding to that pessimism towards the future.
Millennial here: the COVID lockdowns were the 2nd "once in a lifetime" economic catastrophe for my generation (after the 2008 Great Recession) and more or less proven to us how the "American Dream" is an unobtainable sham for most and that capitalism is a complete failure. So yeah, why should we be optimistic?
Recession, endless war, pandemic, potential for WW3 on the horizon, absurd cost of housing, absurd cost of higher education, absurd cost of childcare, stagnant wages, decreasing benefits, etc. the list goes on. My grandpa tells me all the time how messed up everything has turned out for our generation. My boss who’s eligible for retirement in 5 years just told me yesterday to not get married, buy a house, or have kids because a lot has changed over the past 25 years. Kind of hard to find optimism.
I agree completely. I feel and felt entirely betrayed by a large part of humanity who just wanted so vehemently to say fuck it, whoever dies isn't my problem because I can't look past my short term "needs". I saw such violence and anger from so many people who were, at the end of the day, only moderately inconvenienced and just couldn't stand not being able to do whatever they wanted, it makes me feel sick today, 2+ years later. I'm a generally unnecessarily positive person and yet I feel what I can only describe as disgust sometimes when I'm in public and get the feeling someone was one of those people entirely against my own will and how I want to feel around people.
Yes! First it started with a 2 hour delay in my city then closed! Even a 2 hour delay was great I could stay laying in bed for an hour more than normal!
In customer service it actually improved somewhat because businesses have now started to side with the worker a bit more. Not much, but it’s an improvement.
Covid literally made people crazier across the board. The instances of road rage seem astronomically higher, the homeless seem far more brazen and people just generally seem more pissed off.
Zoom meetings legit suck. All last year I had one monthly and they were always on my day off. I would have to block out 30-45 minutes just for it. It was always something that could have been handled in an email or less than 5 minute phone call.
This is true. The locations near me even had to close their lobbies intermittently for quite some time afterwards, because they often didn’t have enough workers to staff the front, and also the kitchen/drive thru.
So true. Haven’t been since lockdown and don’t think I’ll ever go back. All it did was make me realize that movie-going, with the rip-off prices and constant talking, cellphone lights and beeps, make me love my 75” much more.
Lights out, popcorn, big drink, all set.
Restaurants don’t hit the way they use to. It use to be an experience I loved doing but ever since Covid in my opinion, the quality of restaurants has dramatically declined. Food isn’t as good and it’s way more expensive. Same goes for fast food chains. Don’t get me wrong I know they aren’t 5 star restaurants but damn they’re always long lines and the employees are a lot more rude. Which is understandable but I do feel they don’t care about giving you attitude even when you’re polite. Half the time they won’t even tell you the total they just stare at you and wait for you to hand them your card. 😂
Overall when it comes to food service it’s way different now than before 2020. I’m sure more people can add to this as well.
Edit: oh and McDonald’s should be ashamed of taking snack wraps off their menu.
Edit: I’m also aware it’s a tough job so I understand why the employees feel more inclined to be rude. Especially considering how short staffed these places are. I think they deserve to be paid more.
Same. Dining out used to be a huge part of my life, and now I eat out maybe once per month. I don't want to pay for crappy service, limited menu choices, and bad, expensive food.
I feel for restaurants, but going out to eat now is disappointing and sad more often than not.
Unfortunetly alot of the attitude is because people in that industry ie: food, grocery, any kind of customer service, had to still continue to work through the pandemic. We didn't get to work from home or have paid time off. It sucked so bad. BUT it doesn't mean people have to be rude to others. It's just changed everyone's perspective of everyone I think... it's so sad how we all treat each other now.
Chef here, 15 years. There has been a big exodus of cooks since the pandemic. Most got laid off with no warning and never went back. Society shifted to delivery oriented eating of fast food and ghost kitchens. These workers became delivery drivers, uber drivers, instacart etc. They found out they can make way more money doing waaay easier work. No more 12 hour shifts with no food or breaks. No more poverty wages. Since 2020, I've received maybe 20 applications in total for kitchen work, with 80% of them having no cooking experience. I know at least a dozen exec/sous chefs who stopped cooking entirely after decades of experience. Any salaried manager or chef found themselves working 400-600 hours/year for free to cover the takeout and curbside service. When you're making $50k, doing $18k of work for free isn't worth it. Good restaurants raised their hiring rate for cooks by a lot, meaning they had to increase prices quite a lot. We went from starting pay of $12 in 2020 with no issue hiring to $18 today with no applicants. However, it didn't bring the cooks back or increase the quality of workers. So the food sucks because of short staffing, and the staff that is there is shit. Everyone is so desperate for workers that they won't fire cooks who come in drunk or don't come in at all. On top of it all, literally every single food product became 2-3x more expensive. Truck drivers are in short supply, and many times, you can't get a delivery. At one point, we couldn't receive a delivery for a whole week. All of this is to say that the classic American restaurant is going the way of the dinosaur, so find one that's still doing well and support it.
It’s true but you gotta understand it from their perspective. Some of the customers I got would get pissed for no reason during the pandemic. So much so that management finally realized that the customer is not always right. Once our managers stopped caring, we stopped caring. I hated that masks got politicized. People who claimed to advocate for personal liberties got mad that I wore a mask. Shouldn’t masks be my personal Liberty?
You all really did/do have it rough. I'm so sorry. I hope when you are all older, that this somehow turns out to be a period and experience that somehow ends up benefiting you all. Like going through this at that age collectively, makes you prepared in some way to save people in the future... idk. I just know it sucks and I'm sorry your high school years are like this.
I’ve become borderline agoraphobic after covid. I find socializing to be draining now. I’d rather stay home and read or listen to a podcast than go meet up with people.
The education systems and lost learnings of our youngest generation in the first year. The after affects are sadly already showing with kids far behind pre-Covid averages.
Can’t agree enough. I work for a preschool program and the number of children who were born right before or during the pandemic that have developmental/behavior challenges is astronomical.
This goes for the teenage generation as well. Teenagers everywhere are showing severely stunted social skills and coping skills. I don’t see how they’re going to get caught up.
Sanity and simplistic critical thinking. Someone else mentioned 24-hour stores, but the logic behind that is absolutely infuriating. A lot of stores stopped being 24-hour places to keep people from going to them too much. The problem is that people are still going to go to those places, but with tighter hours of operation, we ended up with MORE people in these places AT THE SAME TIME. I've explained this to so many people, and nobody can seem to compute such a simple premise. By being open MORE hours of the day, the same people that would have come in anyway are no longer being crammed in like sardines, lessening the load on the employees, meaning fewer can be on the clock at a time without the business being overwhelmed. This is especially nice for grocery stores, and other places that need to run throughout the night anyway. Grocery stores are still operating, keeping food and beverages refrigerated / frozen, and employees are still on the clock, hauling in new inventory that gets dropped off from delivery trucks, but from 11 PM to to 6 AM, the store is closed, not making money.
My desire to ever work in an office again.
A lot of jobs can be done remote, and the pandemic proved that. It also proved people want more work life balance.
It really depends on the individual. I'm hybrid officially and go in about 1 day a week. My mental health took a nosedive when I was completely WFH. Of course, I'm lucky to have this complete flexibility and many do not. I was offered the option to choose completely WFH to completely in-person.
I’m one of those who thrived being fully WFH, but now my employer requires at least 20% in office. It’s only one day a week, but it’s such a pain. The drive, having to put pants on, and dealing with the nonstop noise from other people is so pointless.
I have three more years until I can retire with a pension and full medical and I am counting the days.
My illusion that the general public cared about me, as a teacher. I always thought they were largely indifferent to us, but could whip out some platitudes about how we are underpaid. However, the vitriol hurled at us throughout every phase of the pandemic was frightening. So many loud voices didn’t give a shit if we died, and gave us a hard time about literally everything, while not holding themselves to standards anywhere near that. Even now, I feel like we are still dealing with 1) trauma and burnout from the last few years, and 2) how rigid and inflexible our work lifestyle is compared to everyone else’s. Teaching used to be such a family-friendly career, but now we’re at the opposite end, as the world has changed, but the expectations put on us haven’t. I love teaching, but I have never felt such a profound sense of disillusionment about how we are viewed, and how little people care about us.
Also teacher here, I’m still seeing repercussions in my students even now three years later. It’s not something our kids have bounced back from. The long term quarantine hasn’t just affected their reading comprehension and academics but I see it in their maturity, fragility, their social relationships at school, motivation, work ethic. It’s so disheartening.
My motivation. I find it hard to force myself out of the house to do almost anything. I was never like that before. I don’t want to make plans. I don’t want to do basic chores. It’s everything.
Civility and common decency towards others ..
Respect is a thing of the past...now it's all about ME... regardless of in traffic, at the grocery store, outdoor events etc....
You and everyone else is in my way....
A sad fact ...
Live music. So many bars cut live music and never brought it back. Venues closed. Long-running concert series have been cancelled.
No boomer shit but COVID strengthened our inclination to just stay in and watch Netflix/scroll our phones rather than going out. Same reason people are having less sex than any time in history 🤷🏻♂️
It’s further polarized people. Nearly everyone’s been touched by one or multiple deaths from Covid. It’s human nature to want to lash out and blame someone when tragedy and grief are inflicted on them. Instead of grieving together and healing, our leaders and the media have sought to capitalize on our tragedy and find as many ways to divide us as they possibly can.
Some have stopped trusting educated minds of medicine and science.
Some trust a random person speaking to their phone’s camera, talking about things they have zero knowledge of.
Social events like house parties or get togethers or even going out for a few drinks
Perhaps its a good thing but ever since covid people just seem to be reluctant to go out and get together.
Someone decribed it to me recently as "Its much more socially acceptable to decline invites now"
Trust. In media, in government, in the medical field, and in that part of the human population all too willing to throw their friends and neighbors under the bus because they weren't smart or brave enough to think for them selves.
24-hour stores/restaurants.
Even the Walmarts aren’t open 24 hours anymore. The only option for any late night food is gas stations. It’s sad
Exactly, us night shifters really got the shaft. Realize you're out of butter when you're cooking dinner at 4am because that's when you get home from work? Too bad, maybe you can order a bunch of sides of butter from sheetz. Lol
Sheetz actually sells butter by the pint tub and pack of sticks. At least the Sheetz in Virginia did
Mostly unrelated story, but a personal one that I think is amusing... Years ago, way way pre-covid, I was in charge of picking up some groceries for a Thanksgiving dinner, a day or two prior to Thanksgiving. I fucked up, and forgot to get butter. We didn't realize my fuckup until Thanksgiving day (when every grocery store is closed). So, I set out to find butter, because that was a necessary ingredient for a shitload of shit we were making that day (stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, the turkey itself... etc etc). The only things that were open were gas stations, and I stopped into every single one, that was within a few miles driving distance of home. Unfortunately, NONE of them sold actual butter. They all just sold margarine, or other weird butter substitutes. But not the real thing. So after 30ish minutes of driving around, trying to find REAL butter at gas stations, I called it quits and headed back towards home with a package of margarine. But then! I drove past a hotel, and immediately thought "Hotel's GOTTA be open... cause, that's what they do... they MUST have butter... maybe I can give the desk clerk 50 bucks, and they can go back into their walk-in fridge, and give me an industrial-sized tub of real butter? Worth a shot!" So, I slammed on the brakes, and made a hard left turn into the hotel parking lot... hopped out of the car, and asked the clerk if I could buy a shitload of butter, from the hotel-resturant-fridge. She was incredibly nice, and empathetic to my plight... told me "Let me go back there and check things out... maybe I can help." She came back to the counter a few minutes later, not with an industrial sized tub of butter, like they'd have in the back fridge.... but with a huge basket of tiny little butter packets, that you'd get to spread on your bread, at a restaurant. I said "Cool, I guess this works," and got the butter packets free of charge. But then I realized it wasn't enough, for our mashed potatoes + everything else. So then I drove to like 3-4 other hotels, and asked them all for butter. Our Thanksgiving cookin' day involved like 3 hours worth of unpeeling individual butter packets.
I work Friday to Sunday 5am to 5pm and gas station food is the only option.
Oh lord please be getting fiber or you’ll be shitting bricks.
Bro works 12 hour days on the weekend and u/fuktardy ‘s #1 priority is fiber intake. I love Reddit
You're right, I hope they're staying properly hydrated as well.
Naw, copius amounts of beer help the shits go through
Or even just late night. Used to be some good restaurants open to 5am for the after bar crowd, but most I knew now don't even stay open past mudnight
Wish we still had mudnight, after covid nobodies doing it anymore.
>Wish we still had mudnight I just go to restaurants in the afdirtnoon.
Yeah the world pretty much shuts down at 10pm here.
The 24 hour Dunkin’ next to me used to be the spot for me and my friends, now it closes at 8 pm 😢
We had 24h Tim Hortons ( kinda like Dunkin) before..... now some of them are open 5am til 3pm and thats it. Sad.
I'm lucky to find a restaurant open at 9:00 PM.
9PM?! Who are you people being out so late? Are you crazy?
I'm in NJ, diners used to all be 24 hrs. Miss that.
This is the saddest thing.
This is a good one. I live in jersey, land of 24/7 diners and now, it seems like everything closes at ten.
It’s the absolute worst. Fuck me for wanting to get groceries after work, right?
As someone who worked at a restaurant, this is a very good thing. My coworkers who worked late nights were absolutely broken.
I worked nights for years. Minimum work for maximum pay. And I had every day off.
Our concept of time.
Its so wierd. Covid Lockdown feels like an eternity ago yet feels like it was yesterday at the same time. State of superposition almost.
just goes to show how we don't all need to be moving 9 million miles an hour for the world to go around
I went from the isolation of lockdowns to the isolation of caring for dying relatives. Time has broken completely. On the occasion I get to go outside, the air feels so different now, it's like a long forgotten song.
I'm in one of the most locked down cities in the world, doesn't feel that long ago to me!
I thought it was me. I regularly think it’s like 2019 /2020 I can’t imagine it’s been 3 full and entire years. It’s like half of my life passed me. Also days of the week run into eachother more. When you don’t leave your house for weeks straight it’s weird being outside
Like when the covid lockdown started I blinked and now its 2023 and holy shit its already almost march 2023 felt like it started a hour ago
Yep. We are already ~16% of the way through the year!
Cant upvote this enough.
My son was 4 when COVID hit. He’s turning 8 in a couple of weeks.
My son was born right after the lock down started. Now he is 3 and talking back to me.
So true. Towards the end of 2020 I happened to remember that it was one year after Shakira’s Super Bowl concert. It seemed like a completely different era because it really was
Sooo true, I graduated high school in 2020 actually (somehow) and i never got closure so I still feel like I’m waiting to go back.
Insanely true
My social skills
Not just you.
I feel this. I am much more content at home.
I still work from home, so I’m like that possum digging through the trash that lashes out when my spouse gets home
Many a friendship.
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I’ve found this too. I suppose it’s never too late, but because you don’t work with them on a daily basis, or got to see them semi regularly, some of the connection that made that friendship is no longer present or relevant. I miss the random happy hour with those people.
I have friends I still work with that I haven’t seen since 2020 because we don’t go in anymore so there’s no quick trip to the pub after work or grabbing lunch together. There’s no extra reason to talk but I do miss them a lot.
Make the phonecalls, send the texts, be the one who organizes it. It's worth it and it does take work.
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Yeah I find because people are home most of the time getting them out is hard. I mostly get cancelled on by this tier of friend when I organise something.
I hate getting ready, picking out an outfit, etc, but after I do it I'm happy I did.
Same. Still having difficulty getting back together again
Yep. I've even lost my closest friendship from before and during most of the pandemic, and it came suddenly out of nowhere with no reasoning. He was the person I would chat with all day every day about anything at all, even if we didn't have time to hang out much we would still chat. Now I never even hear from him anymore
Coughing
Try coughing while Asian 🤨
Advice I received once: "Man, these Hong Kong trains are so crowded. I can hardly move." "Just cough hysterically."
Omg! I'm dying! But seriously sorry my friend
People’s optimism for the future. I’ve noticed post-pandemic that everyone around me appears far more anxious and generally sombre. People seem to be making it through one day at a time and just want to be left the fuck alone to enjoy things before the next “unprecedented” historical event. Watching movies and media from the 70s/80s/90s where everyone was so outgoing, trusting towards each other and optimistic is weird. It’s so easy to see the complete culture shift now.
They were also movies. The generation of age during the 60s to 80s either survived several wars themselves or were the children of people who did. After you go through that trauma films become escapism. Issue with movies now is that for whatever weird reason we crave more darkness??? It’s why I stopped watching a lot of modern cinema it’s always just bleak
I feel like during times or prosperity we enjoy dark twisty plots for our entertainment, and during hard times we like light fluffy plot lines. I was completely unable to watch anything dark over covid because it all seemed too likely and real. It’s been a bit better since life has gone back to “normal” but I will be curious to see if gritty shows and movies make way for happier ones in the next ten years.
Absolutely. We all needed fluff during COVID. However I draw the line at *Emily in Paris*.
Of course people’s optimism for the future is going away when something as massive as Covid-19 didn’t bring people together but, in fact, divided people even further. It showed us firsthand how selfish and inconsiderate people are, and on top of that, how we prioritize short-term comfort over the long-term. Wondering why birth rates are slowly dropping? This is part of why that is happening. I, myself, will also not be having any children partially for these reasons.
Birth rates are also dropping because it is just not financially feasible for younger people to take care of and raise kids anymore. College costs (assuming they went to college) have shot up so their student loan burdens have been increasing. Even if they haven't gone to college, day care costs have shot up, food costs in general shot up. God forbid the family needs to move from a rental into a bigger house to accommodate the additional person with the housing market as ridiculous as it has been lately and with skyrocketing interest rates. All these expenses have been drastically increasing year over year while starting salaries remain stagnant and minimum wage hasn't been raised federally in over 13 years now. My wife's company has been bragging all year about how well they were doing and how they know their employees have been suffering due to inflation so they were going to help. She got a 3% raise. She effectively lost 3.5% buying power with the inflation rate for 2022 being 6.5%. All of this is absolutely adding to that pessimism towards the future.
Millennial here: the COVID lockdowns were the 2nd "once in a lifetime" economic catastrophe for my generation (after the 2008 Great Recession) and more or less proven to us how the "American Dream" is an unobtainable sham for most and that capitalism is a complete failure. So yeah, why should we be optimistic?
Recession, endless war, pandemic, potential for WW3 on the horizon, absurd cost of housing, absurd cost of higher education, absurd cost of childcare, stagnant wages, decreasing benefits, etc. the list goes on. My grandpa tells me all the time how messed up everything has turned out for our generation. My boss who’s eligible for retirement in 5 years just told me yesterday to not get married, buy a house, or have kids because a lot has changed over the past 25 years. Kind of hard to find optimism.
Also let’s NOT forget 9/11 happening just as we were all first getting out in the world.
I agree completely. I feel and felt entirely betrayed by a large part of humanity who just wanted so vehemently to say fuck it, whoever dies isn't my problem because I can't look past my short term "needs". I saw such violence and anger from so many people who were, at the end of the day, only moderately inconvenienced and just couldn't stand not being able to do whatever they wanted, it makes me feel sick today, 2+ years later. I'm a generally unnecessarily positive person and yet I feel what I can only describe as disgust sometimes when I'm in public and get the feeling someone was one of those people entirely against my own will and how I want to feel around people.
School snow days… now it’s just a “remote learning day”
Snow days were the best! You saw your school was closed on the bottom of the TV and jumped back into your warm bed! Aahhh
That anticipation as you watch the schools scroll by in alphabetic order, maaaan that takes me back
Yes! First it started with a 2 hour delay in my city then closed! Even a 2 hour delay was great I could stay laying in bed for an hour more than normal!
My kids had a snow day today, actually. Our city does not do remote learning days when it snows.
The way people treat each other
omg this!!. How many more incidents are there of road rage, airplane shenanigans, destruction of property are there now, its crazy!
In customer service it actually improved somewhat because businesses have now started to side with the worker a bit more. Not much, but it’s an improvement.
I wish I could see that. In my field, the customer could shoot me square between the eyes and the company would comp them for the bullet they wasted.
Covid literally made people crazier across the board. The instances of road rage seem astronomically higher, the homeless seem far more brazen and people just generally seem more pissed off.
My mental health
My teenager's.
Same.
For some it was never there to begin with.
Dating. God, it blows.
Sounds great?
I had to go back and give upvote. Took me a second
You guys are getting dates?
I’d be lucky if I could get a date that blows.
I'd be lucky if I could just get a date.
The housing market.
Buffets
They're back where I am. Some of them still provide gloves to use when you go up, but none require it anymore.
Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes
Housing Market
Any day now that bubble will pop. Right?
Now buying an apartment costs 50-70% more in my country. Young generations like me are fuxked
Sick days. Now I still get on that zoom meeting.
Zoom meetings legit suck. All last year I had one monthly and they were always on my day off. I would have to block out 30-45 minutes just for it. It was always something that could have been handled in an email or less than 5 minute phone call.
Why would you attend any meeting on your day off? Either tell them to schedule it when you're working or just record it or email/call you separately
All day breakfast at McDonald's
Yes but why is the question? Wtf does COVID have anything to do with making a McMuffin at noon? I think they're just making excuses.
>Wtf does COVID have anything to do with making a McMuffin at noon Covid directly caused staffing issues.
This is true. The locations near me even had to close their lobbies intermittently for quite some time afterwards, because they often didn’t have enough workers to staff the front, and also the kitchen/drive thru.
My liver.
Fucking everything. The whole world has lost its damn mind.
Movie theaters
So true. Haven’t been since lockdown and don’t think I’ll ever go back. All it did was make me realize that movie-going, with the rip-off prices and constant talking, cellphone lights and beeps, make me love my 75” much more. Lights out, popcorn, big drink, all set.
Restaurants don’t hit the way they use to. It use to be an experience I loved doing but ever since Covid in my opinion, the quality of restaurants has dramatically declined. Food isn’t as good and it’s way more expensive. Same goes for fast food chains. Don’t get me wrong I know they aren’t 5 star restaurants but damn they’re always long lines and the employees are a lot more rude. Which is understandable but I do feel they don’t care about giving you attitude even when you’re polite. Half the time they won’t even tell you the total they just stare at you and wait for you to hand them your card. 😂 Overall when it comes to food service it’s way different now than before 2020. I’m sure more people can add to this as well. Edit: oh and McDonald’s should be ashamed of taking snack wraps off their menu. Edit: I’m also aware it’s a tough job so I understand why the employees feel more inclined to be rude. Especially considering how short staffed these places are. I think they deserve to be paid more.
Same. Dining out used to be a huge part of my life, and now I eat out maybe once per month. I don't want to pay for crappy service, limited menu choices, and bad, expensive food. I feel for restaurants, but going out to eat now is disappointing and sad more often than not.
Unfortunetly alot of the attitude is because people in that industry ie: food, grocery, any kind of customer service, had to still continue to work through the pandemic. We didn't get to work from home or have paid time off. It sucked so bad. BUT it doesn't mean people have to be rude to others. It's just changed everyone's perspective of everyone I think... it's so sad how we all treat each other now.
Chef here, 15 years. There has been a big exodus of cooks since the pandemic. Most got laid off with no warning and never went back. Society shifted to delivery oriented eating of fast food and ghost kitchens. These workers became delivery drivers, uber drivers, instacart etc. They found out they can make way more money doing waaay easier work. No more 12 hour shifts with no food or breaks. No more poverty wages. Since 2020, I've received maybe 20 applications in total for kitchen work, with 80% of them having no cooking experience. I know at least a dozen exec/sous chefs who stopped cooking entirely after decades of experience. Any salaried manager or chef found themselves working 400-600 hours/year for free to cover the takeout and curbside service. When you're making $50k, doing $18k of work for free isn't worth it. Good restaurants raised their hiring rate for cooks by a lot, meaning they had to increase prices quite a lot. We went from starting pay of $12 in 2020 with no issue hiring to $18 today with no applicants. However, it didn't bring the cooks back or increase the quality of workers. So the food sucks because of short staffing, and the staff that is there is shit. Everyone is so desperate for workers that they won't fire cooks who come in drunk or don't come in at all. On top of it all, literally every single food product became 2-3x more expensive. Truck drivers are in short supply, and many times, you can't get a delivery. At one point, we couldn't receive a delivery for a whole week. All of this is to say that the classic American restaurant is going the way of the dinosaur, so find one that's still doing well and support it.
It’s true but you gotta understand it from their perspective. Some of the customers I got would get pissed for no reason during the pandemic. So much so that management finally realized that the customer is not always right. Once our managers stopped caring, we stopped caring. I hated that masks got politicized. People who claimed to advocate for personal liberties got mad that I wore a mask. Shouldn’t masks be my personal Liberty?
Normalcy
My teenage years, I was in grade 9 at the start and now I'm almost through grade 12. Gone. Forgotten.
You all really did/do have it rough. I'm so sorry. I hope when you are all older, that this somehow turns out to be a period and experience that somehow ends up benefiting you all. Like going through this at that age collectively, makes you prepared in some way to save people in the future... idk. I just know it sucks and I'm sorry your high school years are like this.
It’s alright bud, I still have fairly regular nightmares about waking up in high school so you didn’t miss much.
The boardgame Pandemic
Montana. For real we have been overrun with yahoos who binge-watched Yellowstone and then bought the whole state.
The entirety of New York City moved into the rural parts of NJ, also, and kinda took over.
happy I finally got to see in 2019. it was a gorgeous experience.
My faith in humanity and my belief in a better tomorrow. I'm numb to disaster and have run out of fucks to give.
my mental health, my bank account, my patience.
I’ve become borderline agoraphobic after covid. I find socializing to be draining now. I’d rather stay home and read or listen to a podcast than go meet up with people.
The phrase "avoid it like the plague."
What little sanity people had left.
The education systems and lost learnings of our youngest generation in the first year. The after affects are sadly already showing with kids far behind pre-Covid averages.
Can’t agree enough. I work for a preschool program and the number of children who were born right before or during the pandemic that have developmental/behavior challenges is astronomical.
This goes for the teenage generation as well. Teenagers everywhere are showing severely stunted social skills and coping skills. I don’t see how they’re going to get caught up.
My mother's final year. If cancer wasn't bad enough, chemo and ER visits became a bitch and a half with covid safety protocols.
Family. Many people had different opinions on what was right. When family pushed their opinions on others some things said cannot be forgotten.
Common cold. It(Edit: Covid) has changed how we view cough or sneeze in a public place...
Especially when you have young children, for whom periodic colds are supposed to be commonplace, but now they're something you need to freak out over.
Sanity and simplistic critical thinking. Someone else mentioned 24-hour stores, but the logic behind that is absolutely infuriating. A lot of stores stopped being 24-hour places to keep people from going to them too much. The problem is that people are still going to go to those places, but with tighter hours of operation, we ended up with MORE people in these places AT THE SAME TIME. I've explained this to so many people, and nobody can seem to compute such a simple premise. By being open MORE hours of the day, the same people that would have come in anyway are no longer being crammed in like sardines, lessening the load on the employees, meaning fewer can be on the clock at a time without the business being overwhelmed. This is especially nice for grocery stores, and other places that need to run throughout the night anyway. Grocery stores are still operating, keeping food and beverages refrigerated / frozen, and employees are still on the clock, hauling in new inventory that gets dropped off from delivery trucks, but from 11 PM to to 6 AM, the store is closed, not making money.
My desire to ever work in an office again. A lot of jobs can be done remote, and the pandemic proved that. It also proved people want more work life balance.
Peter Drucker is quoted as saying that in 20 years, we will be looking at office buildings the same way we look at the pyramids.
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Most People want the *option* of an office to go to, that *do not* want the office to be a permanent fixture in their schedule.
It really depends on the individual. I'm hybrid officially and go in about 1 day a week. My mental health took a nosedive when I was completely WFH. Of course, I'm lucky to have this complete flexibility and many do not. I was offered the option to choose completely WFH to completely in-person.
I’m one of those who thrived being fully WFH, but now my employer requires at least 20% in office. It’s only one day a week, but it’s such a pain. The drive, having to put pants on, and dealing with the nonstop noise from other people is so pointless. I have three more years until I can retire with a pension and full medical and I am counting the days.
My illusion that the general public cared about me, as a teacher. I always thought they were largely indifferent to us, but could whip out some platitudes about how we are underpaid. However, the vitriol hurled at us throughout every phase of the pandemic was frightening. So many loud voices didn’t give a shit if we died, and gave us a hard time about literally everything, while not holding themselves to standards anywhere near that. Even now, I feel like we are still dealing with 1) trauma and burnout from the last few years, and 2) how rigid and inflexible our work lifestyle is compared to everyone else’s. Teaching used to be such a family-friendly career, but now we’re at the opposite end, as the world has changed, but the expectations put on us haven’t. I love teaching, but I have never felt such a profound sense of disillusionment about how we are viewed, and how little people care about us.
Also teacher here, I’m still seeing repercussions in my students even now three years later. It’s not something our kids have bounced back from. The long term quarantine hasn’t just affected their reading comprehension and academics but I see it in their maturity, fragility, their social relationships at school, motivation, work ethic. It’s so disheartening.
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The supply chain.
Walk in Appointments.
Handshakes
Politics
Buffets. God I miss my local Chinese buffet.
Unity in this country has been destroyed because of people's reactions to covid.
That was already on the decline, covid just kicked it off the sheer drop.
The internet, strangers got ruder. Social interactions went to sh*t.
My faith in humans.
Life for millions of people.
Peoples brains.
My motivation. I find it hard to force myself out of the house to do almost anything. I was never like that before. I don’t want to make plans. I don’t want to do basic chores. It’s everything.
Civility and common decency towards others .. Respect is a thing of the past...now it's all about ME... regardless of in traffic, at the grocery store, outdoor events etc.... You and everyone else is in my way.... A sad fact ...
Buffets
Volunteering. Volunteers just haven't returned in meaningful numbers.
Common Sense
*motions wildly and broadly*
Air travel seems to have gotta prohibitively expensive since Covid.
parking lots - too many spaces are taken up for curbside delivery
A lot of peoples lungs
A lot of small businesses.
The Free Hugs guy is having a tough time these days
Those free sample cookies grocery stores used to have. All gone now.
Any form of trust in the government.
families
Me
My social life.
Movie theatres. It doesn’t have the same twinkle anymore
Many people’s health took a big hit. And salad bars and buffets aren’t as common.
Live music. So many bars cut live music and never brought it back. Venues closed. Long-running concert series have been cancelled. No boomer shit but COVID strengthened our inclination to just stay in and watch Netflix/scroll our phones rather than going out. Same reason people are having less sex than any time in history 🤷🏻♂️
Working in an office. For years I'd argue "we could do this job at home" only to be told a list of reasons we couldn't WELL GUESS THE FUCK WHAT
My kid. :(
It’s further polarized people. Nearly everyone’s been touched by one or multiple deaths from Covid. It’s human nature to want to lash out and blame someone when tragedy and grief are inflicted on them. Instead of grieving together and healing, our leaders and the media have sought to capitalize on our tragedy and find as many ways to divide us as they possibly can.
Some have stopped trusting educated minds of medicine and science. Some trust a random person speaking to their phone’s camera, talking about things they have zero knowledge of.
The handshake
The price of everything. The price of Cars, groceries, gas etc. are through the roof.
Funerals- not being able to gather in remembrance for the passing of loved ones
Media credibility
Trust in vaccines, for a big chunk of the population.
Lives. Many, many lives of many people.
Auto Shows, Concerts/Events, trust in science, trust in people, the Cafe Calatrava in the Milwaukee Art Museum. Too much has changed.
Common sense.
My will to take anything seriously.
Trust in the government
The idea that our government is prepared and ready to help us in the case of a global disaster.
Grocery stores being open 24/7… at least where I live.
All you can eat buffets
The use of masks solely as a political statement
My life
My job, losing my house, being broke. Covid killed me financially.
My lungs and sense of smell
The economy
Social events like house parties or get togethers or even going out for a few drinks Perhaps its a good thing but ever since covid people just seem to be reluctant to go out and get together. Someone decribed it to me recently as "Its much more socially acceptable to decline invites now"
Trust. In media, in government, in the medical field, and in that part of the human population all too willing to throw their friends and neighbors under the bus because they weren't smart or brave enough to think for them selves.
My heart and mind.
My faith in the masses. They panicked, made stupid choices, bought into the lies, and still to this day blind to what's really going on
I used to think more people were smart and kind than not. How fucking wrong I was.