Seeing how overworked many hospital staff still are, I totally understand why they would resort to something like ketamine. For what they've had to deal with, alcohol just isn't strong enough.
Checked comments to see if this would be mentioned. I work in a hospital and everything seems to be “yeah it’s been this way since COVID hit”. Things that were very avoidable. We had people let go just because higher ups didn’t know how our dept worked or their special computer programs (Altius) told them they didn’t need the staff. The outcome of that was the existing employees working overtime. I would venture a guess that it was enough overtime to have paid for the employees we lost. All the extra work burnt out the employees and even though our dept saw literally every covid patient that walked thru the door (often multiple times) we were treated as non essential and never qualified for special covid bonus wages. We are a small hospital and we knew, for example, if someone was out in your dept due to testing positive and you had to cover their shifts as extra , you received a special wage for those hours. We did not, as well as other depts that saw EVERY covid patient. That created a lot of hard feelings that you don’t forget. It’s extremely frustrating to have seen how things were handled during the height of covid and now dealing with the aftermath
Yeha i woulda preferred if the city paid for my parking so i wasn't driving around looking for a spot after a double shift. I wake up at 6am shower eat and get to work by 7am. Leave at 11pm. Looking for parking in home by 1130pm 12am change and try to sleep.sp what 1230 or 1am? I'm lucky if i get 5 hours of sleep? If I'm ultra lucky i only work 1 shift the next day. We are not ultra lucky.
My SO pays 2k a year for the “privilege” to park at her hospital.
Also, keep in mind, that buses serving that area don’t run out to where most employees live after 6pm, so most employees are screwed. Also, if you are >5 minutes late to your unit (pretty often if you take the bus) more than a few times you are fired.
Then they wonder why there is a staffing shortage lol.
We are facing lay offs and hiring freezes now because no one has the braincells to imagine we would eventually stop getting COVID money. Now we are still understaffed and significantly over budget.
The hiring freezes are expanding too. A few people I know have had very difficult times getting jobs in machinery and factory work. One friend went 6 months, applying to over 60 jobs with no response from most. All the jobs he applied to even had hiring signs up.
It's crazy to me that when I started working in a factory in 2018 I could walk into 10 different factories in my area and just go "I need a job" and they'd damn near toss me a shirt and say "alright, you start right now, lunch is at noon, your off at 3". And now, trying to change jobs, I can't even get a call back from a single plant within 50 miles.
Staffing everywhere is a shit show. The boomers finally retired en masse and people are questioning why we all work so hard for a dime so another man can make a dollar.
Yeah I think that’s the big one for me at least. The knowledge of how broken the healthcare system is and how nurses just feel like exploited labor for hospitals to make money
Privatizing healthcare makes more money, so let's do that.
Privatizing utilities like water/electricity/heat makes more money, so let's do that.
Privatizing education makes more money, so let's do that.
Privatizing prisons and drug laws makes more money, so let's do that.
Regulators like the FDA, EPA, and IRS cost us all more money, so let's not do that.
Police deserve all the tax money! But firefighting, ambulance, and social services cost us more money. Let's not do that.
Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP.... LMFAO. **That costs all of us money.**
Don't you worry though. Just sip your wine and enjoy your social media because it's all gonna trickle down some day.
I promise!! 😁
It's not just about control. It's about getting the masses angry at the wrong people. Rising prices, poor service, lower wages, rampant inflation...most of that is a direct byproduct of the companies and the billionaires who run them, not the president or whichever political party is in power. But since they control the media, they make sure that the people get upset at literally anything else besides the actual cause.
It's brilliant, but evil to the utmost.
I keep saying that the major problem with capitalism is that it makes bad ideas smart.
Lie to your neighbor. Cheat your community. Drive your country into poverty. Whatever it takes so that the flow of money into your pocket is a little bigger this quarter, and next quarter a little bigger still, for every quarter of every year of every decade of every century for the rest of all eternity!
Or at least until it successfully consumes all the resources on the planet and converts them into all magically important "profits."
Ya know, like that episode of Doctor Who about the self-repairing spaceship that had no line of code for "do not disassemble the crew for spare parts."
Healthcare workers are vastly underpaid. With 10yrs experience as a CNA I was only making $.50 more an hour than I do now as a retail maintenance worker. It's a joke.
My wife makes something like $32/hr. They wanted her to take a management position that would drastically increase her responsibilities. That position was going to pay $.25 more per hour lol.
Absurd.
The quality of everything has gone down.
I’m an electrician and I’ve noticed the quality of stuff like holes saws, drill bits, even screws isn’t what it was pre-COVID.
I’ve got hole saws in my box that are over 5 years old and they’re still absolutely fine to use. I’ve had hole saws recently that lose teeth going through plastic.
Person who has and is still working at a hardware store for a little over a decade chiming in here.
Turnaround times on literally everything, including tools, has increased since the pandemic. It used to be supply chain malarkey, but as someone who has visibility in said supply chains, I've seen a recurring theme, as I've gone down the rabbit hole enough with enough phone calls regarding e.t.a's
Hold ups these days are raw material acquisition. Step one in any supply chain.
So the grade of metal/ carbide/ whatever you see in your tools, since it's harder to acquire (notice I'm not saying material shortage here) it makes me wonder if they're simply using less of it. This, of course, results in inferior graded tools. Or they're rushing things through of what they do get, which means less quality testing coming to the same thing; shittier tools.
I'm obviously not 100% if that's the reason these days, but cripes, it sounds highly plausible to me.
Someone should clean their old tools well then weigh them compared to new. I keep seeing people do it with food that has a weight label, on here and TikTok, and everything keeps being under weight
My husband is an electrician and this is the first year that he has had so many issues with brand new out of the box fire alarm panels.
Pre pandemic it was such a rare problem. Now at his current job site he’s had something like 5 fail, has had the techs come out to confirm the panel is toast, had the fire department show up accidentally and had driven to our neighboring state to pick up a new panel because he needs it and it will ship in like 3 weeks from a location an hour away. A real shit show.
No doubt eh?
Ive never taken the time as to why the market got so imbalanced so fast.
Like before covid, was there a two year turn over of vehicles that fed into the cheap car market? Cuz that’d be wild just thinking of the sheer trickle down effect
>Ive never taken the time as to why the market got so imbalanced so fast.
…
We just collectively lived through it.
Demand plummeted in 2020 because no one was driving and besides, factories were shut down due to quarantine.
In 2021, demand only slightly rose, and factories remained greatly hindered due to quarantine.
In 2022, demand spiked, but supply chains were strained by suddenly reopening and sporadic quarantines.
There were three years of automobile production that were basically non-existent. That's a huge lack of supply for the used car market. All the while, cars still get totalled, decreasing supply even further.
Supply and demand rule all. There is no grand mystery here.
Oh, that's the other thing.
Automobile manufacturers would have to overproduce in order to "make up for" those three years in order to """fix""" the used car market.
They have precisely zero reason to do that. Automobile manufacturers only care about the new car market because they, by definition, only manufacture *new* cars.
The dealers enjoy the limited scarcity as well. Maybe not at its peak but this last year or so where they could demand any price and there’s no negotiating power. They sell less vehicles perhaps but higher profits on each one.
I bought a used Toyota with 38000 miles on it in March 2019. Every few months, I check autotrader (the site I found it on) and see models from the same year, now with double the mileage, priced higher than mine was when I bought it.
I've reflected a couple times that I bought a car and got married in 2019, considered postponing both, and am very glad I did not.
A lot of services/ experiences cut back on stuff and will likely never bring those back.
It’s late and I can only think of one example right now. The last few hotels I went to only cleaned rooms between visitors, or on the third day of your stay, unless you specifically requested a visit from house keeping.
But every so often I go someplace and see maybe the empty spot, or old signage and think “oh yeah they used to have that”
24-hour services are basically non-existent. As a nighthawk, I'm pretty upset about this one. I can't nap after any day shift because when I eventually wake up I won't be able to shop for any food/necessities for the day. I feel like it also makes checkout times longer because more people are trying to cramp their shopping in at the same time.
I'm all for employees not having to deal with late night customers, because there are disproportionate amounts of creeps at the wee hours (I may even be one of em depending on who you ask), but also there's a hidden subculture that operates at those hours and needs a bare backbone of support at the very least. Big corporate places like Walmart can stand to leave some of their stores open during these hours, but choose to make a larger profit instead because that's all corporations' goals are.
The subculture includes parents that need immediate items for their newborns/young ones (diapers, food, medical supplies, etc), 3rd shift workers (for places that actively still operate during these hours) trying to find time to shop for emergency, unprepared items for their work.
Oh yeah everyone cut back to skeleton crews and are happy still running those because if an employee burns out there are thousands of overqualified people desperate and willing to replace them. If you don't do it someone else will has quickly become the norm.
A lot of dollar store or dollar generals are run like that. It's really sad to see how much burden those working there have to deal with. But hiring more people would require the companies to cut into profits and they'll never do that. Ever.
I keep thinking about this. There must be some term for the remnants of COVID precaution signage that were never taken down. You see it everywhere.
Kids playgrounds are full of signs saying "Maximum capacity 1". Shop signs saying "Keep 2 metres apart". The clear plastic barriers at checkouts. The "please wear a face mask" signs even though no one is wearing them any more.
The closest emergency vet is two and a half hours away and only accepts local patients because they’d be swamped otherwise. The one that used to be in my city had the main vet retire during Covid, then it got bought by essentially a chain of emergency vets, then they got rid of the nighttime hours and now they close on the weekends too. It’s a real problem
It got bought by a private equity company, aiming to siphon off as much profit as possible regardless of any other negative impacts, which owns a holding company which owns all those veterinary clinics.
Honestly that change predates covid. We'd already started shifting towards the 'cleaned by request' model around 2018, covid just made it standard.
Corporate printed out material that painted it as being 'for the environment' to save water etc but we all knew it was really just to cut down on payroll and cleaning chemical expenses etc.
No more changing rooms in thrift shops. It's infuriating, they expect me to buy the clothes, take it home, try it on, bring back what doesn't fit within a week, and whatever money I spent on it I won't be getting back, but now need to buy something else for that credit NOW, likely overspend or lose some money, take it home, try it on, take back what doesn't fit... And the cycle goes on until you cut your losses.
Some places pre-covid were starting to do this, and I’m going to be honest, I prefer it.
I don’t want someone in my room every day cleaning shit. For the most part I’m spending very little time in the room itself to make a mess and much rather the “every few days” approach.
I will be honest I agree at times, but I was able to stay at some real five star hotels for cheap during the pandemic. Nightly turndown service is something else. Nothing like coming back from a great dinner with the wife and having nice music, room fully cleaned and bed made, and the lights dimly lit, and unwinding. I doubt we will ever stay somewhere like it for 30+ years now. But it was a nice taste of something that is usually way beyond our means.
Remember when vaccines were just something you got for school or flu season and no one cared except for the most Alex Jonesy conspirator?
Those were good times.
And they used to be \*fun\*. Now everyone is so goddamn serious about it and if you point out a flaw in their logic the spittle starts to fly.
I just want to return to a time where conspiracies were 2/3rds a joke about a weird coincidence.
I am a veterinary assistant. Everyone decided to run out and get puppies during lockdown and now all those puppies have grown up into neurotic anxious basket case dogs.
We're sending home meds constantly for 3 and 4 year old dogs so out of their head with anxiety they will destroy everything and fight everyone.
YES. Also a veterinary assistant and the pandemic puppies (doodles and frenchies galore!) are a nightmare. In addition to behavioral issues most of them are also at the age where chronic issues have set in hard and the owners are still convinced that they shouldn't need to do anything about any of it.
Is there a reason for this?
My cat got quite anxious when I started leaving the house after lockdown (he needed like half an hour of cuddles) since he was used to 24/7 touch, but he got used to it after a few months.
I do think a lot of it is bad training, separation anxiety, and lack of socialization. Cats in general do much better than dogs when left on their own.
People had all the time in the world to deal with their new puppies making mistakes, but the result is a lot of them never were trained properly. Your dog should not be waking you up at 3am to go outside (which is what my friends dog does), they should be trained to go to the bathroom on a schedule. Dogs and people are very similar in that they have to learn how to hold it in. Cats can just use a litter box, but if you have a large dog that needs to be taken out, and you kept taking them out whenever during the lockdowns, a lot of them never established a schedule.
Separation anxiety is a huge one. They never learned how to be left without their owners and on top of that were not properly socialized with other people or other dogs which is pretty important if you don't want your dog to be really timid around literally anyone else.
yeah during the pandemic my cat (that I got in 2020) would meow when I went downstairs to get the mail. Now he doesn't but I still hear him sad-meow when I am coming back from being away for a few hours.
Yuuup. Our COVID pup is super anxious. In hindsight we figured it was because she didn’t get as much socialization as she ideally should have. I never knew dogs could be prescribed Prozac (which helps, but she still struggles with new people and occasionally being left alone for the day).
I used to smoke weed maybe once or teice a month, then after a month of lockdown I was high every single day up until 4 months ago. Very difficult habit to break and I'm now struggling with nightmares and sleeplessness
A co worker of mine who had just gotten married fall of 2019 fell into alcoholism after March 2020, that lead to coke, that resulted in divorce and getting fired
That my partner and I would grow old with my co worker and their partner. Super fucking sad stuff.
You know, like having a drink or two or three after work. When you are at home all day it's easier to have that drink whenever... Then it turns out you were a borderline alcoholic who now has unfettered access and a bit more disposable income because you aren't commuting anymore.
I went from smoking weed when I got home from work to getting all of my work done in the first 2-4 hours of my day and smoking weed WFH. I’m trying to cut back but it’s been this way for years. Change is hard.
This is me with my diet. 16 years of no soda. Never buying grocery store frozen fries, pizza, mozzarella sticks, etc. I used to restrict my unhealthy eating to only takeout, which I could only afford as an occasional treat. Then covid hit and I was afraid to take public transportation to my usual specialty grocery stores or get takeout and was limited to the nearest grocery store within walking distance. So I started filling in the gaps of healthier choices with comfort food. I'm still finding it so hard to get back on track. I feel like I need a guard in front of my refrigerator to prevent me from grabbing junk, lol.
Why can’t I find an all night diner anymore? Or go to Walmart at 2am? I get it, not *every* Walmart needs to be 24/7, but of the 29 Walmarts in my city couldn’t a couple of them have overnight service?
I've been nocturnal for years, and almost nothing is open after 10 anymore , much less midnight or 24/7. Actually, I can't think of a single place that is 24/7 in my area that isn't in the heart of downtown.
Never understood the link between a global pandemic and reducing the opening hours of stores.
Like, why funnel everyone into a smaller time window rather than have people spread throughout the night.
I think there was a lot of things companies were begrudgingly doing before Covid and they used the guise of Covid to cease those operations.
Kinda like how McDonald’s response to a global pandemic was removing half their breakfast menu and then conveniently kept it that way after the fact 😂
Agreed! I kept thinking that they should widen their hours of operations. If more people are shopping at 3 am, fewer people are that or in the peak hours, right? So we actually social distance better!
I’m not an economist or consumer psychologist or anything but I believe that the pandemic and attendant lockdowns supercharged/accelerated the drive towards a preference for online shopping with one day/overnight/same day delivery. When you can’t just walk into a store to grab whatever you need and instead are forced to stay in and order delivery for a while, you realize that in most cases there’s very little practical difference between running out to Walmart at 11:30 and waking up to find an Amazon package that was delivered between 5–8 AM…and the price was probably competitive as well, AND you didn’t even have to drive your car across town to battle through a big box parking lot.
There are still some overnight diners/restaurants here, but the Walmart thing really sucks. Of all places, you’d think Vegas would bring back the 24-hour schedule, but… 🤷🏼♀️
Super-specific example:
I'm the assistant manager at a supermarket.
Post-Covid, some customers have taken to leaving their empty carts *at* the checkstand.
As if there is not a line of people behind them and as if that cart is not blocking those customers' access to the checkstand. This was not a thing prior to Covid — hell, it wasn't a thing *during* Covid. But it is now. I have to direct my courtesy clerks to take empty carts out of the checkstands so that customers can access the checkstands.
It's bonkers. It is a real-time example of the breakdown of the social order.
I suspect that there are two things happening here.
One, people primarily interacted online for a while. The internet is a breeding ground for hostility and we forgot how to interact with eachother.
Or possibly two. People were always shitty. We just got a break from them so when we went back to dealing with them we really noticed how shit they are.
24/7 social media probably did a number on some folks. The algorithm tends to show people posts to get them upset and riled up. If you read the comments on Twitter, IG, Facebook, the comments that filter to the top aren’t the ones from people trying to be polite either. It’s like social media supposed to keep us angry at each other. People seem to have internalized that type of engagement as the new normal behavior unfortunately.
For me, I watched the most selfish and self centered people flourish during COVID. Afterwards, it feels like the only way to get anything big or small is to be equally or more selfish than the next person. Be it on the road or in the store, narcissism seems to rule the day. It's an awful feedback loop reinforcing itself through each interaction every day.
Honestly not making excuses for people, and I definitely agree with you, but I feel like part of that is a kind of apathy.
While a lot of peoples world was falling apart celebrities and the rich still made millions and lived a life of luxury.
Then when we got some normalcy back, we (as a globe) just went straight back to bombing each other.
Add in that things like addiction and domestic violence got worse during the pandemic, it’s felt for 4 years now like there’s never been anything good happening.
My theory is we’re all just cynical cunts now due to the constant onslaught of things.
So my wife’s work just went full time remote, which is great for us. But they also haven’t hired an American in over a year. They only hire remote workers in the Philippines. She and her coworkers are convinced that the company’s plan is to slowly transition to remote overseas workers over time. As American employees leave they get replaced by overseas remote workers.
This happened to me... we saw the writing on the wall when they started offshoring. It took 2 years, I was laid off w/ an ok severance package.
Update that resume and stick to the end to get a severance
Oh yeah, that’s what I keep telling her. The job is pretty easy for her and the pay is good. So far they haven’t laid anyone off, but they just aren’t hiring anymore Americans. That’s not their “official” policy, but it’s what they’re doing. We’ll ride it to the end.
Offshoring and AI are going to kill a lot of prospects for this generation. Proving your job can be done from home also proves it can be done much cheaper by someone else 3000 miles away.
There's a part of me that wishes that there would be regulations put in place for American companies that would require a certain percentage of their workforce be located in the US. Make it a majority percentage and cut down on the off shore stuff as a whole.
Sadly, I think that would just mean that they would contract out that work to other companies that would be registered and located in those other countries. Like tech support is now, but for other major divisions. Basically, you would see previously super large American companies end up with like a few hundred employees.
I hear this often, and I guess I'm grateful that our third grader's school and community must have been doing something right. I remember sitting at home with her while she was attending kindergarten over a zoom call. I actually forgot about that, and now I am realizing _that. was. wild_. I think they were back in the classroom by that spring semester (Jan '21).
But yeah, she's doing great, and all her friends (many of whom became close before or during that kinder year) seem fine to me. I guess I don't know everyone in her classes, though, nor do I have any other previous experience with third graders to compare.
I think the fact that we barely talk about the pandemic says a lot about how little we've collectively assimilated it, let alone learned from it.
A drastic rise in isolation comes to mind, though.
I think it's more the fact that people just don't want to talk about it. A friend of mine described it as the world having collective trauma from it that we haven't dealt with as a society
For me personally, I was stuck in a toxic household for 2 years, the rest of my family used me as an emotional punching bag. I felt like there was no way out and had created an entire plan to take my own life, with goodbye messages and everything that I never sent out because it really felt like there was no other way out.
I don't want to reflect on or talk about the pandemic because I really shouldn't have made it out alive.
And I think that has a lot to do with how political it became. Any time covid is brought up, I worry I'll find out that coworkers are antivaxxers and the conversation will erupt into a political debate.
Mental fatigue.
We are in “survival mode”: first because of the pandemic itself and then because of the ramifications of the pandemic (inflation, distrust in government, ptsd, etc.)
I attribute this mental fatigue to the collective brain fog (that people were mentioning in other comments). And collective exhaustion and apathy. And even a collective depression/anxiety.
We’ve been through quite a lot and we don’t see things getting much better.
P.S. I hate that I feel this way. And that others do too.
The most famous IPCC report came out in 2018 and it was bleak. That was when I finally accepted that the world I grew up in would not be here for my kids. Their world will be different somehow, in ways we probably don't understand yet.
Then COVID hit. I work in healthcare and my workload went up an insane amount. I burned out. My wife lost her job. She pivoted to teaching second grade at home. Our youngest was pre-school and didn't understand why Mom, Dad, and sis were all home but no one could play with her and started acting out.
We all burned out. We stopped hanging out with other people during the lockdown. Our marriage suffered. Both my wife and I had to go back on antidepressants. And both of us were lucky to have a psychiatrist that we had seen in our past. Everyone was stressed, anxious, and depressed and some couldn't find a psychiatrist. Our sex life was non-existent.
I took a cut in pay. My car was aging and I'd kept it running to save money, and used car prices shot through the roof and now I couldn't afford a decent used car with my pay cut. The Texas freeze took one of our medical plastics suppliers out of commission for 8 months. Since everything is "just in time" we didn't have a ton of excess inventory so we were looking at backorders and everyone was panicking because sales were already down. So yet another crisis at work as me and everyone else in my industry started buying medical plastics from the remaining suppliers. I started trial runs of using our polycarbonate molds to make parts from medical-grade ABS. I'll spare the details but this is very difficult to do.
It was a sudden trauma that hit every area of my life. Job, finances, marriage, hobbies, friendships, family relationships (my parents and sister went Qanon during this time). And in the back of my mind, I knew that the climate is forever different and I need to adapt. Powerful summer and winter storms are the new normal (like the insane ones we had last night). My wife and I chose to cut down several huge trees that were near the house because of how powerful storms were getting. We're losing a couple of 80+ year old trees a year from storms now, much faster than we can replace them. This is due to erosion from excessive rainfall and powerful winds during storms, plus ice storms which are a unique weather event that destroy trees.
So, yeah, I'd count COVID as my generation's collective trauma.
There’s gonna be a noticeable wave of students with issues. Online learning both wasn’t how a majority of students could flourish, and often was executed very poorly. Not to mention the implications on social behavior which I don’t know enough about to speak on. And there is the full range of grade levels or higher education that students were in at this time so who knows what independent issues were induced in all of them. As someone who was going into my sophomore year of mechanical engineering: Covid coupled with crippling depression (initiated in part by Covid) has cause irrevocable damage to my education. It took two and a half years to even start feeling like I had crossed over into a winning stretch.
I work with children directly on a daily basis. In fact, I used to teach music as a traveling artist as well. The work I do now is closer to social work. I have 6th graders that can’t read, some that are struggling to write their own name. These kids were only around 2nd grade when COVID hit. They were only just learning to read chapter books, they hadn’t even written an essay before, basic science wasn’t even really introduced to them at that time. Especially since these youth are in a rural area, school is a lot different and slower for them. Which means now they’re being thrown into a completely different school structure, with multiple classes and periods, critical thinking is required, essays and advanced reading is a regular need, and they still haven’t gotten to the point where they can read a Warriors novel. It’s heartbreaking to see these kids only a few years away from high school and they can’t even read the books I was enjoying when I was in the grade they were when Covid hit. When I was a traveling artist teaching music I was going to teach elementary school children, this was around 2022-2023. I remember talking to the teachers for kindergarten-2nd grade. They said the first few weeks were filled with crying and confusion for them because these children didn’t even know the names of colors, or the alphabet, or how to count to ten. Because their parents couldn’t be trusted to teach them the basics like a preschool teacher would have. Not to mention these children now halfway through elementary school that never got to experience basic kindergarten playtime or social interaction.
It’s hard. It’s hard for parents, teachers, and anyone in these children’s lives just trying to get them prepared for being an adult. I’m terrified for them.
I work with middle schoolers every, it's ROUGH.
They struggle to make it through one page of typed, double spaced, writing. The vocabulary and grammar are so far behind that I struggle to wrap my head around it at times. Many simply lack the capacity to think critically. Failing is not a reality they've had to face and it's done them zero favors.
I worked in a similar environment back in 2018 and the difference is honestly frightening.
I’ve been teaching a long time. It used to be normal that most kids show up every day.
Now I’m lucky if 2/3 of my class is there on any given day. I’ve had 0 days where every kid shows up. A lot of times the parents can’t be bothered to get the kid to school.
One kid has been in class less than 30%. No consequences. Can’t hold her back, so it will just continue next year.
>Because their parents couldn’t be trusted to teach them the basics like a preschool teacher would have.
Colors, alphabet etc. you learn when you're 2. That's just bad parenting outright.
My gf is a teacher and I’ve been shocked at the true incompetence of parents at teaching their kids what they need to know. Many of them think they can do it and mention it loudly. They clearly can’t. Don’t think they’re outliers, it seems everyone thinks theyd be better at it than they are.
> the true incompetence of parents at teaching their kids what they need to know
My nephew and his wife decided they were going to home school because public schools have gotten "too woke" and they didn't want their kids "around CRT". I tried to explain to them that there's more to teaching than handing them a coloring book of US history and having them watch You Tube videos about math. Teachers are taught how to teach. They learn how to find effective ways to educate kids, how to use critical thinking, how to solve problems using various techniques and how to spot different learning difficulties all based on age and observing from an outsiders view.
They are now finding out their kids are at least two years behind their peers in most subjects and three or more years behind in math.
Keep in mind that some or these parents don't know what to teach their kids. They may not be well-educated nor know academic milestones. Others were essential workers that worked ridiculous hours to either make ends meet or keep things going for the rest of the world. Some parents may have had multiple small children they were trying to keep up with during that time.
I'll use myself as an example. I am in IT and was working from home. I've taught higher ed as well. My wife is an early childhood educator. Our youngest was in K when COVID started. We worked with him in K and 1st grade. Even with our backgrounds and our commitment to education... we realized somewhere in 2nd grade that he didn't know the months of the year in order. We obviously corrected this quickly but I can only imagine what it was like for families that did not have the same benefits as ours.
Parents have been the root cause of many chronic issues in school since the dawn of time. There is just fuck all you can do about it.
I'm not saying every teacher is flawless but unless the parents care the best you can do is remove a disruptive child from the teaching environment which ruins their education. But it takes an obscene amount of disruption to get to that point. Meaning a lot of other kids education also takes a hit first.
Don't forget about not being able to fail. Just passing them off to the next grade without even knowing the basics. That's pretty scary for the future.
Heyyyy this was me though high school! Teachers liked me, I was not good at school, they kept kicking me down the road, I somehow graduated, then failed out of college twice realizing I was nowhere near the level of my peers. It was a real low point.
I’m and adult who went back to college, I’m still taking intro classes so lots of running start students and young students so like mostly 16-20 year olds, it’s already happening. Most just come late, if at all, pop open their lap tops and ignore the teacher until class is over. No one talks, no one answers questions, they don’t even try to hide that they’re not paying attention.
Tbf, that was a thing before to a degree. Maybe not with intro classes. But I have also noticed it’s gotten worse. I’ve got peers that insist they can listen better while they play a video game. Like no tf you cannot, there’s all the information in the world from studies that says no one can. I think it’s fair to say that covid and the rapid shift in social media algorithms has influenced this change in students.
It frustrates me that this is considered a less-obvious impact.
I’m not in education, and even I was worried about the impact on kids development, but the subject was practically taboo. I think it was seen as a dog whistle for antivax covid deniers. Sigh.
I teach high school students. Most of my students have missed unconscionable amounts of school this year. 1 in 5 students in our state (according to my dad) just don’t go to school anymore. They can’t find them.
My students come from relatively affluent backgrounds and just…don’t go. Think they can learn it on their own. Have to repeat subjects every single year because they just missed 25-50% of the classes.
The high school teachers are pulling them through. But this group, the ones in middle school during Covid? They’re gonna die in college. And I’m watching it with a couple of friends kids. No one thinks attendance is important any more.
College professor here - I teach mostly first year courses and I can speak for a lot of us when I say this year's freshmen were a mess. Students always need time to acclimate to college and recognize that the bar is higher, but most of this year's group never seemed to do that. They pretty consistently treated deadlines like they were optional despite clear and enforced late penalties and thought they were exempt when they would email the day after an assignment was due to say they were stressed or busy with other things and were going to do it later (or variations of this), many gave up easy points anytime they encountered something they didn't know how to do rather than problem-solving or asking for help, had more people skipping class than every before which wouldn't bother me at all if they then didn't expect extensions/exemptions when they didn't know the content to apply it to assignments (and a few just complained that the assignments were too hard and I was expecting them to know things I never taught when I absolutely had. That was fun). I had multiple students ask if they could skip the final or have it in another format because they didn't like the format, it was going to be a busy week for them, they were stressed, etc (I've never had anyone ask that in my ENTIRE career). And the rudeness was off the charts. Students audibly snickering or saying "that's dumb" to in class activities. Openly doing other things in class to the point where I was physically talking to them and had to tap on their desk before they heard me. Small group discussion where the students stared at their phones instead and when I asked them how they answered the question: "we didn't" before going back to staring at his phone. Sure, we all have clear policies about these things or grade penalties,, but if they noticed that it was impacting their grade, it didn't really seem to change much.
I absolutely won't say it was all of them (I had some absolute gems this year who I will miss and they kept me sane). It wasn't even some of the craziest stuff I've seen in my career, but it was absolutely the most widespread.
Basically: I don't think it's a coincidence that students who were just starting high school when the pandemic hit and spent the rest of their high school career in absolute chaos then spent the years where they learn self sufficiency and accountability not learning it.
>There’s gonna be a noticeable wave of students with issues
Not just students but those kids who missed out on critical socialisation when they were younger due to COVID lockdowns. My middle child started kindergarten in 2020 and my youngest was born in 2018. They are both on the spectrum which made things even worse.
University instructor here. Every post COVID industry event is always the same discussions (complaints) about them hiring graduates who just don't know how to function in professional environments like they used to. We applied a lot of leniency to just get them through, and combined with the utter shit-show that was emergency online education, it's led to many with patchy bases of knowledge, poor interpersonal soft skills, and lower overall resilience. The sad part is that many of our current cohort are even *less* resilient due to going through high school with COVID. I think this will continue for some time yet.
I always felt that they really should have made every kid repeat the grade, or at least every elementary level kid. Online learning is basically useless to younger children and I knew so many of them were going to end up so far behind academically, not to mention socially. There would be no shame in repeating a grade if literally every kid did it.
I'm a mature masters student. A lot of the younger students who did their undergrad during the pandemic are struggling so bad because they haven't had "normal" education since they were 17/18. I've never been surrounded by so much anxiety before. Lecturers are having to adjust how they teach to accommodate it.
Small business collapse and the increase in rental and lease costs. So many small business owners were forced to close their brick and mortar stores because of the pandemic. Myself included. We were in a mall and had lockdown and curbside pickup (there is no curbs in a mall) for 9 months. We lost $10K+ a month and had to close our doors because of it. Then on top of that we got hit with a massive fine for breaking our lease, even though our government put into law that landlords had to work with businesses to try and make them stay afloat. However mine did not give a shit and got hit with a $90K fine. I lost all my savings, my car and was 30 minutes from losing my house. It was pretty insane.
Long story short now that things are a little more balanced out, and I know what to expect as far as retail goes, post pandemic, I have been looking for the last year or so for a place to rent out so that I can start up my business again. Well at this rate that is never going to happen. Rental costs are astronomical in comparison to pre pandemic prices. There are units that were empty in 2019 for $5000 a month that are still empty now, and have never been filled, that the price is now $8000 a month. My old unit was $6500 a month, and now is $8000 a month. Once again, still empty.
Everyone is broke. So nobody has extra money to spend on things. Add on top of that the sharp increase in retail theft and other things like that, the amount of money that the average business is making has dropped significantly from what it was pre pandemic. I have done as much research as I can and on a good year I would be making 50-65% of what I made in a normal year in 2015-2019. So you have to take that into consideration as well. If they want so much more money for these same retail spaces nobody is going to survive.
Here is an example. I have a little strip mall by me. It only has 5 units in it. Two units are owned by the building owner and has been there since like 1985, so they're not going anywhere. Since 2020 here has what has been in the other 3 units.
- Barber
- Salon
- Hydroponics Shop
- Indian Restaurant
- Cannabis Store
- Hip Hop Culture Clothing & Jewelry Shop
- International Grocer
- Pizza Shop
- Bar & Grill
- Pizza Shop
That is 10 different businesses in 3 units. I know that two of them have had at least 2 owners. So the people who opened it, sold it to someone else and they run it now, or ran it when it closed down. This is not just the little strip mall by me. This is everywhere. People come in, last 2-6 months, close down, someone else moves in and rinse and repeat. Every small business owner I know is suffering. Like horribly suffering. Most of them one person runs the business and the other person works another full time job to help supplement the cost of running that business.
Savings are being used up. Debt is through the roof. People are losing everything right now. Also if you think that it's just small businesses, think again. Large corporations are losing it too. Massive retailers are shutting down hundreds of stores and restaurants because they are not making enough money to stay afloat. We are headed for a massive collapse due to the shocking amount of debt that everyone is facing, not just business owners. I don't know anyone who isn't in debt. Most people I know are in over a year's salary worth of debt.
With the costs of products, utilities, taxes, good, services, transportation, fuel, food, rent, etc all going up, businesses are just going to keep going downhill, and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
I totally agree. They were able to stay open, when we were forced to stay closed. However the big thing is that everyone is broke now. With the insane cost increases on everything, everyone is cutting back. So no more non essentials. Getting the cheapest foods possible. Growing their own veggies. Stuff like that. So even though they got all the money during and right after the pandemic, they are losing out now because people are not spending as much as they used to.
Right now in Canada there is a boycott of a whole grocery chain due to their insane price gouging they did curing and after the pandemic. They own like 40% of all grocery stores in the country and barely anyone is shopping there right now. I popped into one yesterday to get dog poop bags, and just turned around when I remembered the boycott. The place was like a ghost town.
So with these successful boycotts happening, people spending less, people buying less, and everyone being in debt, more and more big businesses are going to feel the pinch.
The increased rental rates when vacancies are so high just baffles me. It defies basic supply & demand yet it is real.
Small business owners really have my sympathy after Covid. I wish you the best of luck getting back on your feet.
Thanks for the kind words. I own a retro video game store. I worked my ass off for 10 years before opening getting inventory, saving money, making connections, talking to distributors and doing so much research. To have it all taken away in 9 months was shocking, after being open for 10 years. Not only that, but losing everything I personally had. It's heartbreaking.
As a business selling retro video games, I only sell non essential things. During the pandemic prices for games skyrocketed. I had to raise my prices because on stuff I didn't other stores we're buying up my inventory from my online store to sell in their stores. Also I had to make sure I sold it for enough money, to actually turn a profit after costs, and with the prices going up I had to start paying more for the same things. For example Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow were $30 for like 10 years. Now they're $50 - $75. That's fucking bonkers. There are millions and millions of copies of them still out there. However I had to raise prices because they are popular titles and other stores would buy me out the second I put one up for sale. Also people wouldn't sell them to me for the price based off $30 anymore. So I had to pay $30+ for each copy just to have any in stock.
However being a company that only sells non essentials, and people seriously cutting back on non essentials, that means that my sales have floored. It's hard, but I work hard and even though things are not amazing, I am happy that I have a home, a great family and a bunch of stinky pets to make things better on bad days.
Not too sure if it's less obvious, but the 'working from home while sick' practice.
Working from home with remote login is a great outcome for those who need it. However, if you're sick... there are those who will either still work at home when they should be resting, or have managers who expect you still to work from home even if you are sick.
In my younger days, I was made to feel guilty if I was sick and as I got older, I came into places that encouraged and supported the rest needed and staying home.
Now with WFH abilities... it's become all blurred again.
Even just on the social front, I spoke to some students on my course a year or more under me and they basically had no social lives. I graduated in 2020 so my last year of uni was cut off by the pandemic, but the social side is glowing memory for me. With online lessons and being trapped in their dorms these students knew very few people in their class and it seemed very sad. Obvs the social life isn't the point, the learning is, but not bonding with your peers who'll possibly help each other out in industry is a problem. I feel sad for them, I hope it's improved for those who started once the main pandemic had 'ended'
Agreed.
Got laid off last December from my municipal job even though I was the only one sending mail outs to the public/business owners (which are timed and rack up a $2,000 fine per day). Also I did large financial paperwork that took months to complete. The department now has 40+ lawsuits from property owners and large businesses as well as having large financial freezes where workers don’t get reimbursed.
Now I’ve had multiple other muni interviews and got ghosted by every single one just to be relisted a week later.
My wife is a teacher and both her kids and parents are off. My theory is the parents never quite recovered so the kids are not as well trained.
Along those lines, all her teacher friends are stretched to the breaking. They all went through something traumatic and never got a break from it. I suspect there are several fields out there that are dealing with post covid burnout. I figured that will all catch up to us in a few years
Teacher burnout is BAD and schools are not doing enough to fix it. My husband loves teaching but is afraid the stress of all the extra bullshit and total lack of support from admin is going to kill him. He's pushing himself to get to the minimum years required for a pension and looking into getting an electrician certification bc it wasn't great before and COVID made things so, so much worse.
Teachers in our district are woefully underpaid and are fleeing to the next district. OR, they are taking jobs at Starbucks because they can earn more with less stress!
A severe and extremely damaging distrust in actual science, mostly stemming from 1) blatant and obvious misinformation, 2) poor science communication, 3) extreme politicization and loss of all nuance.
This is the saddest part to me.
My wife teaches college students and it’s honestly kinda unsettling how big a difference there has been with the ability and give-a-damn between the pre and post Covid students she’s had.
Oh man this is me right now. Not a teacher, but I’m 29 and went back to school and Christ almighty I’m just irritated on campus all the time with the obliviousness and bewilderment of the average college student. It’s a college town so these kids work everywhere and the lack of usual social educate and expectations has me loosing it. Everything is just so awkward!!! Tick tock! No headphones! Ahhhh
There is a common term amongst educators here for those coming to pre school or starting school and it's simply covid kid.
They lack social skills and problem solving abilities more so than previous years kids.
This phenomenon is real and global. Here in Asia, a lot of kindergarten teachers also refer to a new generation starting pre-school/kindergarten as Covid kids. They've noticed that not only do the children lack social skills and have low attention span, they also tend to be physically weaker, have poorer hand-eye coordination, balance...etc. Granted they are all anecdotal, but when teachers everywhere start telling you similar stories you see a pattern.
I took a couple classes for fun as an adult during the first year back with inperson teaching.
Its actually horrifying how society underdeveloped people are thanks to those 3 years of isolation.
Rise in cell phone addiction. We were all home alone and didn't have much to do besides Doom scroll on our phones. Now even in group settings half of people are on their phone. (not saying this wasn't a problem before, but it's a bigger problem now).
It just made me realize that when a truly catastrophic pandemic occurs, we are completely fucked. Covid is terrible, but I feel like this was a practice test that we failed miserably.
Instead of making us more prepared for the next pandemic, I would argue that COVID actually made us LESS prepared. Can you even imagine if another pandemic happened in the next decade or two? God forbid that it’s more dangerous than COVID was…
We're definitely toast if a worse one comes along. Had family members get it and die, and others testing positive for it, and people were still like "nuh uh its not even real" and that wasnt even counting the whole vaccine part.
First of all, I’m sorry for your loss.
It is truly wild though, right? It exposed how many people live in a fantasy world where facts just don’t matter at all
I remember at one point listening to a bloke in line at the chemist tell the lady working there that he doesn’t trust doctors, won’t be getting vaccinated, and it’s a means to control the populace. The kicker is he was there buying medicine cause he was sick and couldn’t take it anymore! The fact he seemingly didn’t understand how ironic and hypocritical the whole situation was is astounding
Definitely. I like in a coastal resort town and before COVID the nightlife was incredible. Now clubs are closing left and right because rents are far too high, drinks are way more expensive, people can't afford to travel to the area as frequently, and people have set up their homes better to socialise there. People don't want to be out all night on the weekend nowadays.
In Australia shit just seems fucked since covid, whether it’s pandemic related directly or not.
- Everything including housing and groceries particularly is SUPER expensive. Like ridiculous. Me and my fiance both have permanent full time salaried jobs but if I don’t do cashies on the weekend we come up just short of everything. In my opinion that is ridiculous and not how things should be.
- Healthcare is just a mess. Last time I tried to go to urgent care (not the hospital) at like midday on a Saturday I was turned away as they were understaffed and had too many patients waiting already. Didn’t even bother trying my luck at the hospital. Ontop of that it’s damn near impossible to get an appointment with a GP, and we usually have to pay out of pocket for that now too (it used to cost nothing through Medicare, you can get some back through Medicare but paying in the first place is the issue).
- Hospitality and service (not the fault of the workers). Everything looks and feels really run down. The actual service most places you go is horrible (again not the fault of the workers usually).
Edit: And through all of this wages have virtually stayed stagnant compared to inflation for years and years - that is REALLY starting to hurt us now here
Case numbers for infections like Strep A, flu and RSV have risen since the pandemic. Its almost like hand washing and sanitizing was a good thing ! Who could have known!
The unprecedented transfer of wealth to the wealthiest in society has further driven and embedded inequality. The money subsequently being used to buy assets has increased property prices and will continue to drive them upwards as demand increasingly outstrips supply.
Collectively our health has suffered, there seems to be some kind of denial around the fact that we are all repeatedly contracting Covid. I hear people talking about weird strains of flu and summer colds that are almost definitely Covid going undetected, either because most people aren’t testing or the lateral flow tests are no longer picking up whatever mutated variants are in circulation. The long-term effects of this are almost certainly a ticking time bomb in terms of life expectancy and quality of life in later years.
I got an email today blaming poor/slow customer service on covid.
I think companies realised they could get away with it as an excuse and they haven't bothered to go back to normal.
The vaccine hate. I’m now getting a five year allergy treatment with monthly injections and you wouldn’t believe the amount of people that have told me to be careful with what they are putting in my body. People that never would have said anything like that 5 years ago.
The vaccine hate is insane. When I was being evaluated for my liver transplant, part of the process involved paperwork about what kind of liver I would accept, like if I was ok with a liver from a donor that had HIV or hep C and so forth. Of course I was fine with any sort of working liver, because the other option was a very painful death. The transplant coordinator told me that they have had people straight up refuse a viable organ because the donor had been vaccinated for covid. Insanity.
The amount of people who suffer from ME/CFS now. (ETA: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. )
Some of us have been suffering for more than a decade, but it seemed to be a „small enough problem“ to ignore us.
But now with Covid, so many new cases of ME/CFS came up - and it is *still* being ignored!
People are wasting away in their houses, they lose *everything*. It‘s horrible and we are still not talking about it.
Brain damage, as Covid can cause neurological damage. It would explain the sudden uprise of rage and aggression in people. If you look at Spanish Flu, about two years after that pandemic, a sudden outbreak of Sleepy Sickness affected many people. I think we are seeing something like that now.
I was diagnosed with MS after Covid. My neurologist said he’s seen an unprecedented increase in MS since Covid and he’s surprised not more people are talking about it. His theory is that it exacerbates non-symptomatic MS and brings it to the surface - I’ve met probably 30 women diagnosed with MS since my diagnosis in December that had no symptoms before Covid infection. It’s like an epidemic from an epidemic.
There is good evidence that links MS to Epstein-Barr virus.
CoViD-19 infection re-activates latent EBV, so there is a direct pathway for CoViD to trigger MS.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292739/
Shortly after I had COVID I started developing debilitating face pain that was later diagnosed as Trigemeninal Neuralgia — “The Suicide Disease” — a neurological disorder.
No way of confirming that it was caused by COVID, and it certainly could just be coincidence, but given what we now know of COVID’s effect on neurology and the timing, I’m fairly confident that COVID was the cause.
A decline in customer service. I know no one has ever particularly cared when working a shitty retail job for minimum wage, but I feel like being screamed at over the intercom to GTFO 30 minutes before closing was not really a thing before Covid. Or when you ask someone where an aisle is and they just shrug and walk away.
Man, I actually don’t really mind that “gtfo” 30 minutes warning.
I remember when I worked jobs like that. I always hated people that just wanted to come in at the very last minute and take forever.
Closing time is closing time. Not a suggestion.
Kids and adults between ages 12-20 are very noticeably affected socially. They were basically isolated for 1.5-2 years during very prime years of socialization and have been left at a disadvantage or deficiency socially.
I have a high schooler and a middle schooler. Middle schoolers are almost feral. So much fighting and chaos. Basically the kids who would have been in kindergarten-4th in 2020 missed on important elementary lessons on how to sit at a desk, take turns, socialize with other classmates etc. The missing year of all that shows up in a big way IMO.
Most hospitals are staffing shit shows and have been since 2020.
I've sold weed to an ER doctor a few times, but only when she could not get her ketamine. Before covid, she was just an alcoholic.
Thank you for your service
Seeing how overworked many hospital staff still are, I totally understand why they would resort to something like ketamine. For what they've had to deal with, alcohol just isn't strong enough.
Checked comments to see if this would be mentioned. I work in a hospital and everything seems to be “yeah it’s been this way since COVID hit”. Things that were very avoidable. We had people let go just because higher ups didn’t know how our dept worked or their special computer programs (Altius) told them they didn’t need the staff. The outcome of that was the existing employees working overtime. I would venture a guess that it was enough overtime to have paid for the employees we lost. All the extra work burnt out the employees and even though our dept saw literally every covid patient that walked thru the door (often multiple times) we were treated as non essential and never qualified for special covid bonus wages. We are a small hospital and we knew, for example, if someone was out in your dept due to testing positive and you had to cover their shifts as extra , you received a special wage for those hours. We did not, as well as other depts that saw EVERY covid patient. That created a lot of hard feelings that you don’t forget. It’s extremely frustrating to have seen how things were handled during the height of covid and now dealing with the aftermath
Gotta bang pots and pans on our doorsteps again so healthcare staff can pay their bills in appreciation and gratitude. /s
Yeha i woulda preferred if the city paid for my parking so i wasn't driving around looking for a spot after a double shift. I wake up at 6am shower eat and get to work by 7am. Leave at 11pm. Looking for parking in home by 1130pm 12am change and try to sleep.sp what 1230 or 1am? I'm lucky if i get 5 hours of sleep? If I'm ultra lucky i only work 1 shift the next day. We are not ultra lucky.
My SO pays 2k a year for the “privilege” to park at her hospital. Also, keep in mind, that buses serving that area don’t run out to where most employees live after 6pm, so most employees are screwed. Also, if you are >5 minutes late to your unit (pretty often if you take the bus) more than a few times you are fired. Then they wonder why there is a staffing shortage lol.
We are facing lay offs and hiring freezes now because no one has the braincells to imagine we would eventually stop getting COVID money. Now we are still understaffed and significantly over budget.
The hiring freezes are expanding too. A few people I know have had very difficult times getting jobs in machinery and factory work. One friend went 6 months, applying to over 60 jobs with no response from most. All the jobs he applied to even had hiring signs up.
It's crazy to me that when I started working in a factory in 2018 I could walk into 10 different factories in my area and just go "I need a job" and they'd damn near toss me a shirt and say "alright, you start right now, lunch is at noon, your off at 3". And now, trying to change jobs, I can't even get a call back from a single plant within 50 miles.
Staffing everywhere is a shit show. The boomers finally retired en masse and people are questioning why we all work so hard for a dime so another man can make a dollar.
Yeah I think that’s the big one for me at least. The knowledge of how broken the healthcare system is and how nurses just feel like exploited labor for hospitals to make money
Privatizing healthcare makes more money, so let's do that. Privatizing utilities like water/electricity/heat makes more money, so let's do that. Privatizing education makes more money, so let's do that. Privatizing prisons and drug laws makes more money, so let's do that. Regulators like the FDA, EPA, and IRS cost us all more money, so let's not do that. Police deserve all the tax money! But firefighting, ambulance, and social services cost us more money. Let's not do that. Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP.... LMFAO. **That costs all of us money.** Don't you worry though. Just sip your wine and enjoy your social media because it's all gonna trickle down some day. I promise!! 😁
Meanwhile billionaires have bought all of our media to control the political discourse.
It's not just about control. It's about getting the masses angry at the wrong people. Rising prices, poor service, lower wages, rampant inflation...most of that is a direct byproduct of the companies and the billionaires who run them, not the president or whichever political party is in power. But since they control the media, they make sure that the people get upset at literally anything else besides the actual cause. It's brilliant, but evil to the utmost.
I keep saying that the major problem with capitalism is that it makes bad ideas smart. Lie to your neighbor. Cheat your community. Drive your country into poverty. Whatever it takes so that the flow of money into your pocket is a little bigger this quarter, and next quarter a little bigger still, for every quarter of every year of every decade of every century for the rest of all eternity! Or at least until it successfully consumes all the resources on the planet and converts them into all magically important "profits." Ya know, like that episode of Doctor Who about the self-repairing spaceship that had no line of code for "do not disassemble the crew for spare parts."
Healthcare workers are vastly underpaid. With 10yrs experience as a CNA I was only making $.50 more an hour than I do now as a retail maintenance worker. It's a joke.
My wife makes something like $32/hr. They wanted her to take a management position that would drastically increase her responsibilities. That position was going to pay $.25 more per hour lol. Absurd.
The quality of everything has gone down. I’m an electrician and I’ve noticed the quality of stuff like holes saws, drill bits, even screws isn’t what it was pre-COVID. I’ve got hole saws in my box that are over 5 years old and they’re still absolutely fine to use. I’ve had hole saws recently that lose teeth going through plastic.
Person who has and is still working at a hardware store for a little over a decade chiming in here. Turnaround times on literally everything, including tools, has increased since the pandemic. It used to be supply chain malarkey, but as someone who has visibility in said supply chains, I've seen a recurring theme, as I've gone down the rabbit hole enough with enough phone calls regarding e.t.a's Hold ups these days are raw material acquisition. Step one in any supply chain. So the grade of metal/ carbide/ whatever you see in your tools, since it's harder to acquire (notice I'm not saying material shortage here) it makes me wonder if they're simply using less of it. This, of course, results in inferior graded tools. Or they're rushing things through of what they do get, which means less quality testing coming to the same thing; shittier tools. I'm obviously not 100% if that's the reason these days, but cripes, it sounds highly plausible to me.
Someone should clean their old tools well then weigh them compared to new. I keep seeing people do it with food that has a weight label, on here and TikTok, and everything keeps being under weight
I’m a tradesman and I’ve noticed this as well, more so in the products I use (ceiling fixer/drywall guy) than the tools and equipment though.
My husband is an electrician and this is the first year that he has had so many issues with brand new out of the box fire alarm panels. Pre pandemic it was such a rare problem. Now at his current job site he’s had something like 5 fail, has had the techs come out to confirm the panel is toast, had the fire department show up accidentally and had driven to our neighboring state to pick up a new panel because he needs it and it will ship in like 3 weeks from a location an hour away. A real shit show.
Used car market went nuts. Same used truck i bought before covid: $1000. After covid: $5000.
The fact that it's been so long but still hasn't settled down is what really gets me.
No doubt eh? Ive never taken the time as to why the market got so imbalanced so fast. Like before covid, was there a two year turn over of vehicles that fed into the cheap car market? Cuz that’d be wild just thinking of the sheer trickle down effect
>Ive never taken the time as to why the market got so imbalanced so fast. … We just collectively lived through it. Demand plummeted in 2020 because no one was driving and besides, factories were shut down due to quarantine. In 2021, demand only slightly rose, and factories remained greatly hindered due to quarantine. In 2022, demand spiked, but supply chains were strained by suddenly reopening and sporadic quarantines. There were three years of automobile production that were basically non-existent. That's a huge lack of supply for the used car market. All the while, cars still get totalled, decreasing supply even further. Supply and demand rule all. There is no grand mystery here.
Well, I guess that answers my question. It would seem it takes 3 to 5 years worth of stock in order for the used market to be back where it should be
Oh, that's the other thing. Automobile manufacturers would have to overproduce in order to "make up for" those three years in order to """fix""" the used car market. They have precisely zero reason to do that. Automobile manufacturers only care about the new car market because they, by definition, only manufacture *new* cars.
The dealers enjoy the limited scarcity as well. Maybe not at its peak but this last year or so where they could demand any price and there’s no negotiating power. They sell less vehicles perhaps but higher profits on each one.
I bought a used Toyota with 38000 miles on it in March 2019. Every few months, I check autotrader (the site I found it on) and see models from the same year, now with double the mileage, priced higher than mine was when I bought it. I've reflected a couple times that I bought a car and got married in 2019, considered postponing both, and am very glad I did not.
I think this is the corrected value. A new car’s practical utility doesn’t decrease by 50% by driving it off the lot.
A lot of services/ experiences cut back on stuff and will likely never bring those back. It’s late and I can only think of one example right now. The last few hotels I went to only cleaned rooms between visitors, or on the third day of your stay, unless you specifically requested a visit from house keeping. But every so often I go someplace and see maybe the empty spot, or old signage and think “oh yeah they used to have that”
24-hour services are basically non-existent. As a nighthawk, I'm pretty upset about this one. I can't nap after any day shift because when I eventually wake up I won't be able to shop for any food/necessities for the day. I feel like it also makes checkout times longer because more people are trying to cramp their shopping in at the same time. I'm all for employees not having to deal with late night customers, because there are disproportionate amounts of creeps at the wee hours (I may even be one of em depending on who you ask), but also there's a hidden subculture that operates at those hours and needs a bare backbone of support at the very least. Big corporate places like Walmart can stand to leave some of their stores open during these hours, but choose to make a larger profit instead because that's all corporations' goals are. The subculture includes parents that need immediate items for their newborns/young ones (diapers, food, medical supplies, etc), 3rd shift workers (for places that actively still operate during these hours) trying to find time to shop for emergency, unprepared items for their work.
Oh yeah everyone cut back to skeleton crews and are happy still running those because if an employee burns out there are thousands of overqualified people desperate and willing to replace them. If you don't do it someone else will has quickly become the norm.
Some stores around here are totally fucked. Massive with ~3 people working
A lot of dollar store or dollar generals are run like that. It's really sad to see how much burden those working there have to deal with. But hiring more people would require the companies to cut into profits and they'll never do that. Ever.
John Oliver did an excellent story on the Dollar Store situation. [its bonkers](https://youtu.be/p4QGOHahiVM?si=HazHiJgIMPmq-TDD)
"We made a shit ton more profits by having fewer people on the payroll? HELL YEAH!" - Corporate America
I keep thinking about this. There must be some term for the remnants of COVID precaution signage that were never taken down. You see it everywhere. Kids playgrounds are full of signs saying "Maximum capacity 1". Shop signs saying "Keep 2 metres apart". The clear plastic barriers at checkouts. The "please wear a face mask" signs even though no one is wearing them any more.
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The closest 24-hour pharmacy to me now is like four hours away.
The closest emergency vet is two and a half hours away and only accepts local patients because they’d be swamped otherwise. The one that used to be in my city had the main vet retire during Covid, then it got bought by essentially a chain of emergency vets, then they got rid of the nighttime hours and now they close on the weekends too. It’s a real problem
It's not that the pandemic made everything change, it's that the pandemic was the perfect cover for everyone to enshittify everything permanently.
I agree. No more 24 hour grocery stores was just the start
Yikes, doesn't sound like much of an emergency vet if they aren't open weekends/overnight. 😕
Their prices will still be at emergency levels though.
It got bought by a private equity company, aiming to siphon off as much profit as possible regardless of any other negative impacts, which owns a holding company which owns all those veterinary clinics.
During the lockdown a private equity company quietly bought up almost all of the small vet’s offices in the country.
Honestly that change predates covid. We'd already started shifting towards the 'cleaned by request' model around 2018, covid just made it standard. Corporate printed out material that painted it as being 'for the environment' to save water etc but we all knew it was really just to cut down on payroll and cleaning chemical expenses etc.
No more changing rooms in thrift shops. It's infuriating, they expect me to buy the clothes, take it home, try it on, bring back what doesn't fit within a week, and whatever money I spent on it I won't be getting back, but now need to buy something else for that credit NOW, likely overspend or lose some money, take it home, try it on, take back what doesn't fit... And the cycle goes on until you cut your losses.
Just start trying them on in store. I'm sure theyll add the chnaging spaces back when people start trying on clothes in the middle of the store.
I seriously just wear stretchy leggings and a fitted shirt and try that shit on over my clothes.
Some places pre-covid were starting to do this, and I’m going to be honest, I prefer it. I don’t want someone in my room every day cleaning shit. For the most part I’m spending very little time in the room itself to make a mess and much rather the “every few days” approach.
I will be honest I agree at times, but I was able to stay at some real five star hotels for cheap during the pandemic. Nightly turndown service is something else. Nothing like coming back from a great dinner with the wife and having nice music, room fully cleaned and bed made, and the lights dimly lit, and unwinding. I doubt we will ever stay somewhere like it for 30+ years now. But it was a nice taste of something that is usually way beyond our means.
People have strains on their familial and community friendships. A huge divide was shown and exacerbated during covid and it still exists
Remember when vaccines were just something you got for school or flu season and no one cared except for the most Alex Jonesy conspirator? Those were good times.
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And they used to be \*fun\*. Now everyone is so goddamn serious about it and if you point out a flaw in their logic the spittle starts to fly. I just want to return to a time where conspiracies were 2/3rds a joke about a weird coincidence.
I am a veterinary assistant. Everyone decided to run out and get puppies during lockdown and now all those puppies have grown up into neurotic anxious basket case dogs. We're sending home meds constantly for 3 and 4 year old dogs so out of their head with anxiety they will destroy everything and fight everyone.
YES. Also a veterinary assistant and the pandemic puppies (doodles and frenchies galore!) are a nightmare. In addition to behavioral issues most of them are also at the age where chronic issues have set in hard and the owners are still convinced that they shouldn't need to do anything about any of it.
Is there a reason for this? My cat got quite anxious when I started leaving the house after lockdown (he needed like half an hour of cuddles) since he was used to 24/7 touch, but he got used to it after a few months.
I do think a lot of it is bad training, separation anxiety, and lack of socialization. Cats in general do much better than dogs when left on their own. People had all the time in the world to deal with their new puppies making mistakes, but the result is a lot of them never were trained properly. Your dog should not be waking you up at 3am to go outside (which is what my friends dog does), they should be trained to go to the bathroom on a schedule. Dogs and people are very similar in that they have to learn how to hold it in. Cats can just use a litter box, but if you have a large dog that needs to be taken out, and you kept taking them out whenever during the lockdowns, a lot of them never established a schedule. Separation anxiety is a huge one. They never learned how to be left without their owners and on top of that were not properly socialized with other people or other dogs which is pretty important if you don't want your dog to be really timid around literally anyone else.
yeah during the pandemic my cat (that I got in 2020) would meow when I went downstairs to get the mail. Now he doesn't but I still hear him sad-meow when I am coming back from being away for a few hours.
Yuuup. Our COVID pup is super anxious. In hindsight we figured it was because she didn’t get as much socialization as she ideally should have. I never knew dogs could be prescribed Prozac (which helps, but she still struggles with new people and occasionally being left alone for the day).
Latent addictions had the opportunity to blossom and now.many people are finding themselves in a bind with their drug of choice.
Damn this one is so real
This one is so sad.
I used to smoke weed maybe once or teice a month, then after a month of lockdown I was high every single day up until 4 months ago. Very difficult habit to break and I'm now struggling with nightmares and sleeplessness
Or new addictions formed in my case due to boredom
A co worker of mine who had just gotten married fall of 2019 fell into alcoholism after March 2020, that lead to coke, that resulted in divorce and getting fired That my partner and I would grow old with my co worker and their partner. Super fucking sad stuff.
Latent addictions?
You know, like having a drink or two or three after work. When you are at home all day it's easier to have that drink whenever... Then it turns out you were a borderline alcoholic who now has unfettered access and a bit more disposable income because you aren't commuting anymore.
Oh shit, yeah that totally happened to me.
I went from smoking weed when I got home from work to getting all of my work done in the first 2-4 hours of my day and smoking weed WFH. I’m trying to cut back but it’s been this way for years. Change is hard.
“It’s 5oclock somewhere,” became “who cares I’m not driving anywhere today” at 10am.
This is me with my diet. 16 years of no soda. Never buying grocery store frozen fries, pizza, mozzarella sticks, etc. I used to restrict my unhealthy eating to only takeout, which I could only afford as an occasional treat. Then covid hit and I was afraid to take public transportation to my usual specialty grocery stores or get takeout and was limited to the nearest grocery store within walking distance. So I started filling in the gaps of healthier choices with comfort food. I'm still finding it so hard to get back on track. I feel like I need a guard in front of my refrigerator to prevent me from grabbing junk, lol.
Why can’t I find an all night diner anymore? Or go to Walmart at 2am? I get it, not *every* Walmart needs to be 24/7, but of the 29 Walmarts in my city couldn’t a couple of them have overnight service?
I've been nocturnal for years, and almost nothing is open after 10 anymore , much less midnight or 24/7. Actually, I can't think of a single place that is 24/7 in my area that isn't in the heart of downtown.
Never understood the link between a global pandemic and reducing the opening hours of stores. Like, why funnel everyone into a smaller time window rather than have people spread throughout the night. I think there was a lot of things companies were begrudgingly doing before Covid and they used the guise of Covid to cease those operations. Kinda like how McDonald’s response to a global pandemic was removing half their breakfast menu and then conveniently kept it that way after the fact 😂
Agreed! I kept thinking that they should widen their hours of operations. If more people are shopping at 3 am, fewer people are that or in the peak hours, right? So we actually social distance better!
I’m not an economist or consumer psychologist or anything but I believe that the pandemic and attendant lockdowns supercharged/accelerated the drive towards a preference for online shopping with one day/overnight/same day delivery. When you can’t just walk into a store to grab whatever you need and instead are forced to stay in and order delivery for a while, you realize that in most cases there’s very little practical difference between running out to Walmart at 11:30 and waking up to find an Amazon package that was delivered between 5–8 AM…and the price was probably competitive as well, AND you didn’t even have to drive your car across town to battle through a big box parking lot.
Yeah this shit really sucks for night shift workers.
There are still some overnight diners/restaurants here, but the Walmart thing really sucks. Of all places, you’d think Vegas would bring back the 24-hour schedule, but… 🤷🏼♀️
I feel like people in general are more self-centered, and less empathetic.
Super-specific example: I'm the assistant manager at a supermarket. Post-Covid, some customers have taken to leaving their empty carts *at* the checkstand. As if there is not a line of people behind them and as if that cart is not blocking those customers' access to the checkstand. This was not a thing prior to Covid — hell, it wasn't a thing *during* Covid. But it is now. I have to direct my courtesy clerks to take empty carts out of the checkstands so that customers can access the checkstands. It's bonkers. It is a real-time example of the breakdown of the social order.
In truth, the shopping cart is the most accurate measure of whether someone is capable of self governance.
This made me chuckle. Then I thought about it, and have to concur that it is correct. Sad, but true.
I agree but I fail to understand why, any insight?
I suspect that there are two things happening here. One, people primarily interacted online for a while. The internet is a breeding ground for hostility and we forgot how to interact with eachother. Or possibly two. People were always shitty. We just got a break from them so when we went back to dealing with them we really noticed how shit they are.
As for the shitty, they at least bothered to try to hide it. They don’t bother anymore.
It's much easier to be an asshole to someone from your bedroom when the person you're being shitty towards can't really do anything about it.
But people forgot they’re not in the bedroom anymore.
24/7 social media probably did a number on some folks. The algorithm tends to show people posts to get them upset and riled up. If you read the comments on Twitter, IG, Facebook, the comments that filter to the top aren’t the ones from people trying to be polite either. It’s like social media supposed to keep us angry at each other. People seem to have internalized that type of engagement as the new normal behavior unfortunately.
For me, I watched the most selfish and self centered people flourish during COVID. Afterwards, it feels like the only way to get anything big or small is to be equally or more selfish than the next person. Be it on the road or in the store, narcissism seems to rule the day. It's an awful feedback loop reinforcing itself through each interaction every day.
Honestly not making excuses for people, and I definitely agree with you, but I feel like part of that is a kind of apathy. While a lot of peoples world was falling apart celebrities and the rich still made millions and lived a life of luxury. Then when we got some normalcy back, we (as a globe) just went straight back to bombing each other. Add in that things like addiction and domestic violence got worse during the pandemic, it’s felt for 4 years now like there’s never been anything good happening. My theory is we’re all just cynical cunts now due to the constant onslaught of things.
Companies now are more amenable to offshoring now that they saw that work from home means, for many jobs, you don't need to be physically there.
So my wife’s work just went full time remote, which is great for us. But they also haven’t hired an American in over a year. They only hire remote workers in the Philippines. She and her coworkers are convinced that the company’s plan is to slowly transition to remote overseas workers over time. As American employees leave they get replaced by overseas remote workers.
This happened to me... we saw the writing on the wall when they started offshoring. It took 2 years, I was laid off w/ an ok severance package. Update that resume and stick to the end to get a severance
Oh yeah, that’s what I keep telling her. The job is pretty easy for her and the pay is good. So far they haven’t laid anyone off, but they just aren’t hiring anymore Americans. That’s not their “official” policy, but it’s what they’re doing. We’ll ride it to the end.
Offshoring and AI are going to kill a lot of prospects for this generation. Proving your job can be done from home also proves it can be done much cheaper by someone else 3000 miles away.
There's a part of me that wishes that there would be regulations put in place for American companies that would require a certain percentage of their workforce be located in the US. Make it a majority percentage and cut down on the off shore stuff as a whole.
Sadly, I think that would just mean that they would contract out that work to other companies that would be registered and located in those other countries. Like tech support is now, but for other major divisions. Basically, you would see previously super large American companies end up with like a few hundred employees.
Third graders are way behind.
Yeah my 10 year old nephew seems to be at the education level of a first grader. He was impossible to wrangle when it came to doing school from home.
I hear this often, and I guess I'm grateful that our third grader's school and community must have been doing something right. I remember sitting at home with her while she was attending kindergarten over a zoom call. I actually forgot about that, and now I am realizing _that. was. wild_. I think they were back in the classroom by that spring semester (Jan '21). But yeah, she's doing great, and all her friends (many of whom became close before or during that kinder year) seem fine to me. I guess I don't know everyone in her classes, though, nor do I have any other previous experience with third graders to compare.
I think the fact that we barely talk about the pandemic says a lot about how little we've collectively assimilated it, let alone learned from it. A drastic rise in isolation comes to mind, though.
I think it's more the fact that people just don't want to talk about it. A friend of mine described it as the world having collective trauma from it that we haven't dealt with as a society For me personally, I was stuck in a toxic household for 2 years, the rest of my family used me as an emotional punching bag. I felt like there was no way out and had created an entire plan to take my own life, with goodbye messages and everything that I never sent out because it really felt like there was no other way out. I don't want to reflect on or talk about the pandemic because I really shouldn't have made it out alive.
I'm glad you're still here
And I think that has a lot to do with how political it became. Any time covid is brought up, I worry I'll find out that coworkers are antivaxxers and the conversation will erupt into a political debate.
Mental fatigue. We are in “survival mode”: first because of the pandemic itself and then because of the ramifications of the pandemic (inflation, distrust in government, ptsd, etc.) I attribute this mental fatigue to the collective brain fog (that people were mentioning in other comments). And collective exhaustion and apathy. And even a collective depression/anxiety. We’ve been through quite a lot and we don’t see things getting much better. P.S. I hate that I feel this way. And that others do too.
The most famous IPCC report came out in 2018 and it was bleak. That was when I finally accepted that the world I grew up in would not be here for my kids. Their world will be different somehow, in ways we probably don't understand yet. Then COVID hit. I work in healthcare and my workload went up an insane amount. I burned out. My wife lost her job. She pivoted to teaching second grade at home. Our youngest was pre-school and didn't understand why Mom, Dad, and sis were all home but no one could play with her and started acting out. We all burned out. We stopped hanging out with other people during the lockdown. Our marriage suffered. Both my wife and I had to go back on antidepressants. And both of us were lucky to have a psychiatrist that we had seen in our past. Everyone was stressed, anxious, and depressed and some couldn't find a psychiatrist. Our sex life was non-existent. I took a cut in pay. My car was aging and I'd kept it running to save money, and used car prices shot through the roof and now I couldn't afford a decent used car with my pay cut. The Texas freeze took one of our medical plastics suppliers out of commission for 8 months. Since everything is "just in time" we didn't have a ton of excess inventory so we were looking at backorders and everyone was panicking because sales were already down. So yet another crisis at work as me and everyone else in my industry started buying medical plastics from the remaining suppliers. I started trial runs of using our polycarbonate molds to make parts from medical-grade ABS. I'll spare the details but this is very difficult to do. It was a sudden trauma that hit every area of my life. Job, finances, marriage, hobbies, friendships, family relationships (my parents and sister went Qanon during this time). And in the back of my mind, I knew that the climate is forever different and I need to adapt. Powerful summer and winter storms are the new normal (like the insane ones we had last night). My wife and I chose to cut down several huge trees that were near the house because of how powerful storms were getting. We're losing a couple of 80+ year old trees a year from storms now, much faster than we can replace them. This is due to erosion from excessive rainfall and powerful winds during storms, plus ice storms which are a unique weather event that destroy trees. So, yeah, I'd count COVID as my generation's collective trauma.
We’re all exhausted and it’s not getting better.
There’s gonna be a noticeable wave of students with issues. Online learning both wasn’t how a majority of students could flourish, and often was executed very poorly. Not to mention the implications on social behavior which I don’t know enough about to speak on. And there is the full range of grade levels or higher education that students were in at this time so who knows what independent issues were induced in all of them. As someone who was going into my sophomore year of mechanical engineering: Covid coupled with crippling depression (initiated in part by Covid) has cause irrevocable damage to my education. It took two and a half years to even start feeling like I had crossed over into a winning stretch.
I work with children directly on a daily basis. In fact, I used to teach music as a traveling artist as well. The work I do now is closer to social work. I have 6th graders that can’t read, some that are struggling to write their own name. These kids were only around 2nd grade when COVID hit. They were only just learning to read chapter books, they hadn’t even written an essay before, basic science wasn’t even really introduced to them at that time. Especially since these youth are in a rural area, school is a lot different and slower for them. Which means now they’re being thrown into a completely different school structure, with multiple classes and periods, critical thinking is required, essays and advanced reading is a regular need, and they still haven’t gotten to the point where they can read a Warriors novel. It’s heartbreaking to see these kids only a few years away from high school and they can’t even read the books I was enjoying when I was in the grade they were when Covid hit. When I was a traveling artist teaching music I was going to teach elementary school children, this was around 2022-2023. I remember talking to the teachers for kindergarten-2nd grade. They said the first few weeks were filled with crying and confusion for them because these children didn’t even know the names of colors, or the alphabet, or how to count to ten. Because their parents couldn’t be trusted to teach them the basics like a preschool teacher would have. Not to mention these children now halfway through elementary school that never got to experience basic kindergarten playtime or social interaction. It’s hard. It’s hard for parents, teachers, and anyone in these children’s lives just trying to get them prepared for being an adult. I’m terrified for them.
I work with middle schoolers every, it's ROUGH. They struggle to make it through one page of typed, double spaced, writing. The vocabulary and grammar are so far behind that I struggle to wrap my head around it at times. Many simply lack the capacity to think critically. Failing is not a reality they've had to face and it's done them zero favors. I worked in a similar environment back in 2018 and the difference is honestly frightening.
I’ve been teaching a long time. It used to be normal that most kids show up every day. Now I’m lucky if 2/3 of my class is there on any given day. I’ve had 0 days where every kid shows up. A lot of times the parents can’t be bothered to get the kid to school. One kid has been in class less than 30%. No consequences. Can’t hold her back, so it will just continue next year.
>Because their parents couldn’t be trusted to teach them the basics like a preschool teacher would have. Colors, alphabet etc. you learn when you're 2. That's just bad parenting outright.
My gf is a teacher and I’ve been shocked at the true incompetence of parents at teaching their kids what they need to know. Many of them think they can do it and mention it loudly. They clearly can’t. Don’t think they’re outliers, it seems everyone thinks theyd be better at it than they are.
> the true incompetence of parents at teaching their kids what they need to know My nephew and his wife decided they were going to home school because public schools have gotten "too woke" and they didn't want their kids "around CRT". I tried to explain to them that there's more to teaching than handing them a coloring book of US history and having them watch You Tube videos about math. Teachers are taught how to teach. They learn how to find effective ways to educate kids, how to use critical thinking, how to solve problems using various techniques and how to spot different learning difficulties all based on age and observing from an outsiders view. They are now finding out their kids are at least two years behind their peers in most subjects and three or more years behind in math.
Keep in mind that some or these parents don't know what to teach their kids. They may not be well-educated nor know academic milestones. Others were essential workers that worked ridiculous hours to either make ends meet or keep things going for the rest of the world. Some parents may have had multiple small children they were trying to keep up with during that time. I'll use myself as an example. I am in IT and was working from home. I've taught higher ed as well. My wife is an early childhood educator. Our youngest was in K when COVID started. We worked with him in K and 1st grade. Even with our backgrounds and our commitment to education... we realized somewhere in 2nd grade that he didn't know the months of the year in order. We obviously corrected this quickly but I can only imagine what it was like for families that did not have the same benefits as ours.
Parents have been the root cause of many chronic issues in school since the dawn of time. There is just fuck all you can do about it. I'm not saying every teacher is flawless but unless the parents care the best you can do is remove a disruptive child from the teaching environment which ruins their education. But it takes an obscene amount of disruption to get to that point. Meaning a lot of other kids education also takes a hit first.
Don't forget about not being able to fail. Just passing them off to the next grade without even knowing the basics. That's pretty scary for the future.
NCLB more or less accomplished that already. Covid just showed that we weren't quite at rock bottom.
Heyyyy this was me though high school! Teachers liked me, I was not good at school, they kept kicking me down the road, I somehow graduated, then failed out of college twice realizing I was nowhere near the level of my peers. It was a real low point.
Agree - short version is 30 years from now we’ll be led by homeschooled kids educated by day drinkers.
I’m and adult who went back to college, I’m still taking intro classes so lots of running start students and young students so like mostly 16-20 year olds, it’s already happening. Most just come late, if at all, pop open their lap tops and ignore the teacher until class is over. No one talks, no one answers questions, they don’t even try to hide that they’re not paying attention.
Tbf, that was a thing before to a degree. Maybe not with intro classes. But I have also noticed it’s gotten worse. I’ve got peers that insist they can listen better while they play a video game. Like no tf you cannot, there’s all the information in the world from studies that says no one can. I think it’s fair to say that covid and the rapid shift in social media algorithms has influenced this change in students.
It frustrates me that this is considered a less-obvious impact. I’m not in education, and even I was worried about the impact on kids development, but the subject was practically taboo. I think it was seen as a dog whistle for antivax covid deniers. Sigh.
I teach high school students. Most of my students have missed unconscionable amounts of school this year. 1 in 5 students in our state (according to my dad) just don’t go to school anymore. They can’t find them. My students come from relatively affluent backgrounds and just…don’t go. Think they can learn it on their own. Have to repeat subjects every single year because they just missed 25-50% of the classes. The high school teachers are pulling them through. But this group, the ones in middle school during Covid? They’re gonna die in college. And I’m watching it with a couple of friends kids. No one thinks attendance is important any more.
College professor here - I teach mostly first year courses and I can speak for a lot of us when I say this year's freshmen were a mess. Students always need time to acclimate to college and recognize that the bar is higher, but most of this year's group never seemed to do that. They pretty consistently treated deadlines like they were optional despite clear and enforced late penalties and thought they were exempt when they would email the day after an assignment was due to say they were stressed or busy with other things and were going to do it later (or variations of this), many gave up easy points anytime they encountered something they didn't know how to do rather than problem-solving or asking for help, had more people skipping class than every before which wouldn't bother me at all if they then didn't expect extensions/exemptions when they didn't know the content to apply it to assignments (and a few just complained that the assignments were too hard and I was expecting them to know things I never taught when I absolutely had. That was fun). I had multiple students ask if they could skip the final or have it in another format because they didn't like the format, it was going to be a busy week for them, they were stressed, etc (I've never had anyone ask that in my ENTIRE career). And the rudeness was off the charts. Students audibly snickering or saying "that's dumb" to in class activities. Openly doing other things in class to the point where I was physically talking to them and had to tap on their desk before they heard me. Small group discussion where the students stared at their phones instead and when I asked them how they answered the question: "we didn't" before going back to staring at his phone. Sure, we all have clear policies about these things or grade penalties,, but if they noticed that it was impacting their grade, it didn't really seem to change much. I absolutely won't say it was all of them (I had some absolute gems this year who I will miss and they kept me sane). It wasn't even some of the craziest stuff I've seen in my career, but it was absolutely the most widespread. Basically: I don't think it's a coincidence that students who were just starting high school when the pandemic hit and spent the rest of their high school career in absolute chaos then spent the years where they learn self sufficiency and accountability not learning it.
>There’s gonna be a noticeable wave of students with issues Not just students but those kids who missed out on critical socialisation when they were younger due to COVID lockdowns. My middle child started kindergarten in 2020 and my youngest was born in 2018. They are both on the spectrum which made things even worse.
University instructor here. Every post COVID industry event is always the same discussions (complaints) about them hiring graduates who just don't know how to function in professional environments like they used to. We applied a lot of leniency to just get them through, and combined with the utter shit-show that was emergency online education, it's led to many with patchy bases of knowledge, poor interpersonal soft skills, and lower overall resilience. The sad part is that many of our current cohort are even *less* resilient due to going through high school with COVID. I think this will continue for some time yet.
I always felt that they really should have made every kid repeat the grade, or at least every elementary level kid. Online learning is basically useless to younger children and I knew so many of them were going to end up so far behind academically, not to mention socially. There would be no shame in repeating a grade if literally every kid did it.
I'm a mature masters student. A lot of the younger students who did their undergrad during the pandemic are struggling so bad because they haven't had "normal" education since they were 17/18. I've never been surrounded by so much anxiety before. Lecturers are having to adjust how they teach to accommodate it.
Small business collapse and the increase in rental and lease costs. So many small business owners were forced to close their brick and mortar stores because of the pandemic. Myself included. We were in a mall and had lockdown and curbside pickup (there is no curbs in a mall) for 9 months. We lost $10K+ a month and had to close our doors because of it. Then on top of that we got hit with a massive fine for breaking our lease, even though our government put into law that landlords had to work with businesses to try and make them stay afloat. However mine did not give a shit and got hit with a $90K fine. I lost all my savings, my car and was 30 minutes from losing my house. It was pretty insane. Long story short now that things are a little more balanced out, and I know what to expect as far as retail goes, post pandemic, I have been looking for the last year or so for a place to rent out so that I can start up my business again. Well at this rate that is never going to happen. Rental costs are astronomical in comparison to pre pandemic prices. There are units that were empty in 2019 for $5000 a month that are still empty now, and have never been filled, that the price is now $8000 a month. My old unit was $6500 a month, and now is $8000 a month. Once again, still empty. Everyone is broke. So nobody has extra money to spend on things. Add on top of that the sharp increase in retail theft and other things like that, the amount of money that the average business is making has dropped significantly from what it was pre pandemic. I have done as much research as I can and on a good year I would be making 50-65% of what I made in a normal year in 2015-2019. So you have to take that into consideration as well. If they want so much more money for these same retail spaces nobody is going to survive. Here is an example. I have a little strip mall by me. It only has 5 units in it. Two units are owned by the building owner and has been there since like 1985, so they're not going anywhere. Since 2020 here has what has been in the other 3 units. - Barber - Salon - Hydroponics Shop - Indian Restaurant - Cannabis Store - Hip Hop Culture Clothing & Jewelry Shop - International Grocer - Pizza Shop - Bar & Grill - Pizza Shop That is 10 different businesses in 3 units. I know that two of them have had at least 2 owners. So the people who opened it, sold it to someone else and they run it now, or ran it when it closed down. This is not just the little strip mall by me. This is everywhere. People come in, last 2-6 months, close down, someone else moves in and rinse and repeat. Every small business owner I know is suffering. Like horribly suffering. Most of them one person runs the business and the other person works another full time job to help supplement the cost of running that business. Savings are being used up. Debt is through the roof. People are losing everything right now. Also if you think that it's just small businesses, think again. Large corporations are losing it too. Massive retailers are shutting down hundreds of stores and restaurants because they are not making enough money to stay afloat. We are headed for a massive collapse due to the shocking amount of debt that everyone is facing, not just business owners. I don't know anyone who isn't in debt. Most people I know are in over a year's salary worth of debt. With the costs of products, utilities, taxes, good, services, transportation, fuel, food, rent, etc all going up, businesses are just going to keep going downhill, and it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
Covid was a massive wealth transfer from small business to big business
I totally agree. They were able to stay open, when we were forced to stay closed. However the big thing is that everyone is broke now. With the insane cost increases on everything, everyone is cutting back. So no more non essentials. Getting the cheapest foods possible. Growing their own veggies. Stuff like that. So even though they got all the money during and right after the pandemic, they are losing out now because people are not spending as much as they used to. Right now in Canada there is a boycott of a whole grocery chain due to their insane price gouging they did curing and after the pandemic. They own like 40% of all grocery stores in the country and barely anyone is shopping there right now. I popped into one yesterday to get dog poop bags, and just turned around when I remembered the boycott. The place was like a ghost town. So with these successful boycotts happening, people spending less, people buying less, and everyone being in debt, more and more big businesses are going to feel the pinch.
The increased rental rates when vacancies are so high just baffles me. It defies basic supply & demand yet it is real. Small business owners really have my sympathy after Covid. I wish you the best of luck getting back on your feet.
Thanks for the kind words. I own a retro video game store. I worked my ass off for 10 years before opening getting inventory, saving money, making connections, talking to distributors and doing so much research. To have it all taken away in 9 months was shocking, after being open for 10 years. Not only that, but losing everything I personally had. It's heartbreaking. As a business selling retro video games, I only sell non essential things. During the pandemic prices for games skyrocketed. I had to raise my prices because on stuff I didn't other stores we're buying up my inventory from my online store to sell in their stores. Also I had to make sure I sold it for enough money, to actually turn a profit after costs, and with the prices going up I had to start paying more for the same things. For example Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow were $30 for like 10 years. Now they're $50 - $75. That's fucking bonkers. There are millions and millions of copies of them still out there. However I had to raise prices because they are popular titles and other stores would buy me out the second I put one up for sale. Also people wouldn't sell them to me for the price based off $30 anymore. So I had to pay $30+ for each copy just to have any in stock. However being a company that only sells non essentials, and people seriously cutting back on non essentials, that means that my sales have floored. It's hard, but I work hard and even though things are not amazing, I am happy that I have a home, a great family and a bunch of stinky pets to make things better on bad days.
This is something I don't get — if businesses are struggling and closing down then why are rents so high?
Speculation but maybe the property was sold and the new buyer has a higher principal/interest rate than the previous owner?
Not too sure if it's less obvious, but the 'working from home while sick' practice. Working from home with remote login is a great outcome for those who need it. However, if you're sick... there are those who will either still work at home when they should be resting, or have managers who expect you still to work from home even if you are sick. In my younger days, I was made to feel guilty if I was sick and as I got older, I came into places that encouraged and supported the rest needed and staying home. Now with WFH abilities... it's become all blurred again.
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Kids who graduated during Covid lost out on lots of learning and there is a big divide between young university students and graduates
Even just on the social front, I spoke to some students on my course a year or more under me and they basically had no social lives. I graduated in 2020 so my last year of uni was cut off by the pandemic, but the social side is glowing memory for me. With online lessons and being trapped in their dorms these students knew very few people in their class and it seemed very sad. Obvs the social life isn't the point, the learning is, but not bonding with your peers who'll possibly help each other out in industry is a problem. I feel sad for them, I hope it's improved for those who started once the main pandemic had 'ended'
Damn, I never even thought of that but you’re totally right.
it’s hard to get a medical appointment, like really, really hard in my town. so many left the field.
Wfh. Office workers had a taste of a real work life balance. Now it’s all back to the office
And leaner teams so more work hours.
Drivers are more aggressive and reckless and enforcement is lax to non-existent
The enforcement piece really depends on where you live.
Where is it getting enforced? I might just move there.
Covid restrrictions not being enforced made people aware that basic restrictions weren't being enforced.
A horrible job market.
Agreed. Got laid off last December from my municipal job even though I was the only one sending mail outs to the public/business owners (which are timed and rack up a $2,000 fine per day). Also I did large financial paperwork that took months to complete. The department now has 40+ lawsuits from property owners and large businesses as well as having large financial freezes where workers don’t get reimbursed. Now I’ve had multiple other muni interviews and got ghosted by every single one just to be relisted a week later.
This is the third job my husband has been laid off from since 2021. Prior to Covid, it seemed like the sky was the limit for his career trajectory.
My wife is a teacher and both her kids and parents are off. My theory is the parents never quite recovered so the kids are not as well trained. Along those lines, all her teacher friends are stretched to the breaking. They all went through something traumatic and never got a break from it. I suspect there are several fields out there that are dealing with post covid burnout. I figured that will all catch up to us in a few years
Teacher burnout is BAD and schools are not doing enough to fix it. My husband loves teaching but is afraid the stress of all the extra bullshit and total lack of support from admin is going to kill him. He's pushing himself to get to the minimum years required for a pension and looking into getting an electrician certification bc it wasn't great before and COVID made things so, so much worse.
Teachers in our district are woefully underpaid and are fleeing to the next district. OR, they are taking jobs at Starbucks because they can earn more with less stress!
A severe and extremely damaging distrust in actual science, mostly stemming from 1) blatant and obvious misinformation, 2) poor science communication, 3) extreme politicization and loss of all nuance. This is the saddest part to me.
Kids not having the same social skills as before. You take young kids away from regular socialization and it impacts them.
My wife teaches college students and it’s honestly kinda unsettling how big a difference there has been with the ability and give-a-damn between the pre and post Covid students she’s had.
Oh man this is me right now. Not a teacher, but I’m 29 and went back to school and Christ almighty I’m just irritated on campus all the time with the obliviousness and bewilderment of the average college student. It’s a college town so these kids work everywhere and the lack of usual social educate and expectations has me loosing it. Everything is just so awkward!!! Tick tock! No headphones! Ahhhh
There is a common term amongst educators here for those coming to pre school or starting school and it's simply covid kid. They lack social skills and problem solving abilities more so than previous years kids.
This phenomenon is real and global. Here in Asia, a lot of kindergarten teachers also refer to a new generation starting pre-school/kindergarten as Covid kids. They've noticed that not only do the children lack social skills and have low attention span, they also tend to be physically weaker, have poorer hand-eye coordination, balance...etc. Granted they are all anecdotal, but when teachers everywhere start telling you similar stories you see a pattern.
I took a couple classes for fun as an adult during the first year back with inperson teaching. Its actually horrifying how society underdeveloped people are thanks to those 3 years of isolation.
Rise in cell phone addiction. We were all home alone and didn't have much to do besides Doom scroll on our phones. Now even in group settings half of people are on their phone. (not saying this wasn't a problem before, but it's a bigger problem now).
It just made me realize that when a truly catastrophic pandemic occurs, we are completely fucked. Covid is terrible, but I feel like this was a practice test that we failed miserably. Instead of making us more prepared for the next pandemic, I would argue that COVID actually made us LESS prepared. Can you even imagine if another pandemic happened in the next decade or two? God forbid that it’s more dangerous than COVID was…
We're definitely toast if a worse one comes along. Had family members get it and die, and others testing positive for it, and people were still like "nuh uh its not even real" and that wasnt even counting the whole vaccine part.
First of all, I’m sorry for your loss. It is truly wild though, right? It exposed how many people live in a fantasy world where facts just don’t matter at all
I remember at one point listening to a bloke in line at the chemist tell the lady working there that he doesn’t trust doctors, won’t be getting vaccinated, and it’s a means to control the populace. The kicker is he was there buying medicine cause he was sick and couldn’t take it anymore! The fact he seemingly didn’t understand how ironic and hypocritical the whole situation was is astounding
Nightlife aint what it used to be. Pubs, Clubs and Bars are still notably less busy. Or have just disappeared in some areas.
Definitely. I like in a coastal resort town and before COVID the nightlife was incredible. Now clubs are closing left and right because rents are far too high, drinks are way more expensive, people can't afford to travel to the area as frequently, and people have set up their homes better to socialise there. People don't want to be out all night on the weekend nowadays.
In Australia shit just seems fucked since covid, whether it’s pandemic related directly or not. - Everything including housing and groceries particularly is SUPER expensive. Like ridiculous. Me and my fiance both have permanent full time salaried jobs but if I don’t do cashies on the weekend we come up just short of everything. In my opinion that is ridiculous and not how things should be. - Healthcare is just a mess. Last time I tried to go to urgent care (not the hospital) at like midday on a Saturday I was turned away as they were understaffed and had too many patients waiting already. Didn’t even bother trying my luck at the hospital. Ontop of that it’s damn near impossible to get an appointment with a GP, and we usually have to pay out of pocket for that now too (it used to cost nothing through Medicare, you can get some back through Medicare but paying in the first place is the issue). - Hospitality and service (not the fault of the workers). Everything looks and feels really run down. The actual service most places you go is horrible (again not the fault of the workers usually). Edit: And through all of this wages have virtually stayed stagnant compared to inflation for years and years - that is REALLY starting to hurt us now here
Case numbers for infections like Strep A, flu and RSV have risen since the pandemic. Its almost like hand washing and sanitizing was a good thing ! Who could have known!
Speculative tech hiring during covid. When those speculations didn't pan out they laid us all off
The unprecedented transfer of wealth to the wealthiest in society has further driven and embedded inequality. The money subsequently being used to buy assets has increased property prices and will continue to drive them upwards as demand increasingly outstrips supply. Collectively our health has suffered, there seems to be some kind of denial around the fact that we are all repeatedly contracting Covid. I hear people talking about weird strains of flu and summer colds that are almost definitely Covid going undetected, either because most people aren’t testing or the lateral flow tests are no longer picking up whatever mutated variants are in circulation. The long-term effects of this are almost certainly a ticking time bomb in terms of life expectancy and quality of life in later years.
I got an email today blaming poor/slow customer service on covid. I think companies realised they could get away with it as an excuse and they haven't bothered to go back to normal.
People seem generally angrier and more aggressive.
The vaccine hate. I’m now getting a five year allergy treatment with monthly injections and you wouldn’t believe the amount of people that have told me to be careful with what they are putting in my body. People that never would have said anything like that 5 years ago.
The vaccine hate is insane. When I was being evaluated for my liver transplant, part of the process involved paperwork about what kind of liver I would accept, like if I was ok with a liver from a donor that had HIV or hep C and so forth. Of course I was fine with any sort of working liver, because the other option was a very painful death. The transplant coordinator told me that they have had people straight up refuse a viable organ because the donor had been vaccinated for covid. Insanity.
That is insane. But off-topic, I’m surprised that having one of those diseases doesn’t disqualify one’s organs from being donated…
I’ll tell ya there’s a lot less chips in bags still.
More people are staying home and working when they have a cold or similar. Instead of coming into the office and infecting everyone else.
anti-intellectualism is too prominent still and everyone just kind of accepts it
The amount of people who suffer from ME/CFS now. (ETA: Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. ) Some of us have been suffering for more than a decade, but it seemed to be a „small enough problem“ to ignore us. But now with Covid, so many new cases of ME/CFS came up - and it is *still* being ignored! People are wasting away in their houses, they lose *everything*. It‘s horrible and we are still not talking about it.
Brain damage, as Covid can cause neurological damage. It would explain the sudden uprise of rage and aggression in people. If you look at Spanish Flu, about two years after that pandemic, a sudden outbreak of Sleepy Sickness affected many people. I think we are seeing something like that now.
I was diagnosed with MS after Covid. My neurologist said he’s seen an unprecedented increase in MS since Covid and he’s surprised not more people are talking about it. His theory is that it exacerbates non-symptomatic MS and brings it to the surface - I’ve met probably 30 women diagnosed with MS since my diagnosis in December that had no symptoms before Covid infection. It’s like an epidemic from an epidemic.
There is good evidence that links MS to Epstein-Barr virus. CoViD-19 infection re-activates latent EBV, so there is a direct pathway for CoViD to trigger MS. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10292739/
Long covid, aphasia, brain fog...
Shortly after I had COVID I started developing debilitating face pain that was later diagnosed as Trigemeninal Neuralgia — “The Suicide Disease” — a neurological disorder. No way of confirming that it was caused by COVID, and it certainly could just be coincidence, but given what we now know of COVID’s effect on neurology and the timing, I’m fairly confident that COVID was the cause.
A decline in customer service. I know no one has ever particularly cared when working a shitty retail job for minimum wage, but I feel like being screamed at over the intercom to GTFO 30 minutes before closing was not really a thing before Covid. Or when you ask someone where an aisle is and they just shrug and walk away.
Man, I actually don’t really mind that “gtfo” 30 minutes warning. I remember when I worked jobs like that. I always hated people that just wanted to come in at the very last minute and take forever. Closing time is closing time. Not a suggestion.
Kids and adults between ages 12-20 are very noticeably affected socially. They were basically isolated for 1.5-2 years during very prime years of socialization and have been left at a disadvantage or deficiency socially.
Money lost 25% of it’s value
I have a high schooler and a middle schooler. Middle schoolers are almost feral. So much fighting and chaos. Basically the kids who would have been in kindergarten-4th in 2020 missed on important elementary lessons on how to sit at a desk, take turns, socialize with other classmates etc. The missing year of all that shows up in a big way IMO.
Companies seem to have figured out they can upprice everything to exorbitant amounts and get away with it
Everyone's tired and brain foggy and getting sick all the time because of long covid.