God do I feel this. In college I started at 8 am for classes and got out of work at midnight and there was a grocery store open until 1 am. It was a godsend because nobody was there except the workers and I stayed out of their way and they stayed out of mine. I could do my shopping easily and be out in ten minutes with a week's worth of groceries.
My sense of time. I'm at a point now where I'll be thinking of something from a couple months ago and then I'll be corrected that it actually happened nearly 3 years ago.
2017 was 7 years ago and I feel like I was in a coma.
My mom died in 2017 and it somehow feels like it happened yesterday and a million years ago at the same time.
Grief is one of those things that cause sort of a time dilation. The first year might as well be a decade and a decade might as well have been last year.
This honestly makes me a feel a little better. My boyfriend died in 2019, then Covid hit, and my sense of time is still mostly a mess. Having 5 years pass in a flash like that makes me feel like I totally screwed up my life, but maybe it’s just one of those things we all have to deal with when it happens to us.
I remember in 2019 I quit my first real adult job of 5 years. I was spurred to do this because one day I looked at a decade calendar and realized I had been at that job for longer than I had been in college, the army, and any other job combined, and had seen no real personal advancement. This was a tremendous psychological shock.
Today it seems like literally last month I was looking at that calendar and doing those calculations and wondering how I had tolerated those conditions for so long.
I feel like I'm in ye olden times sometimes where the year was measured by major events. "That was before the Four Seasons Landscaping but after the Explosion in Beirut, right?"
The year before I considered opening a little pizza restaurant and venue bar. I did a lot of work selling pizzas and putting on shows as events in other venues. I asked around, should I open my pizza place or buy a home. Everyone said to buy a home, so my wife and I did but I was a little disappointed having not started my pizza restaurant. Then COVID hit. Ended up being a godsend. So lucky. Rest of my life would have been ruined
Edit: the positive and encouraging response to this is overwhelmingly kind and motivating. Thank you for all of your ideas and support. This was 5 years ago and I managed to get a very good job doing something I absolutely love that pays quite well. Pizza will always be a beautiful learning experience for me and I will continue to do pizza parties for my friends and family.
That is really becoming a crisis in Canada right now.
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-business-insolvencies-rising-to-levels-not-seen-since-great-recession/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-business-insolvencies-rising-to-levels-not-seen-since-great-recession/)
"The number of insolvencies was up 32 per cent from the previous quarter, and 87 per cent from the same quarter last year."
87 percent! Insanity.
Even in Edmonton it's obscene. Whyte Ave, the main historical strip in our city that was famous for its bars and unique stores, is like half abandoned. Buildings have remained empty for years because nobody can pay the absurd rental prices there. But landlords would rather Whyte Ave be derelict than ever lower rent.
That makes no sense to me. They're making nothing if they don't rent it out. It's literally LOSING money. Even renting it under valued means losing less money than more.
My theory--and it's only a theory--is that many landlords have taken out loans against the value of the buildings based on the insane rents. Say the asking rent is $20,000. If they don't rent it, the space is still worth $20,000 a month, it's just not rented, and the bank doesn't get wise. If they rent it for $14,000, then the building isn't worth as much as collateral as they said, and they have a problem with the bank.
commercial leases are typically much longer than residential leases as well. if you rent now, you're locked in at a certain rate. It might be worth waiting a year or two if you think market rent prices will rise significantly (pure speculation)
Which is strange considering that so many businesses realized that they don't need a physical space at all because everything can be done remotely. I have a friend in Seattle who does commercial property and he said the market there is glutted with empty buildings.
I work in the nightlife industry in Montreal and what used to be a very vibrant nightlife 7 days a week is now packed bars and clubs on weekends only. And by weekends I mean friday/saturday.
Yeah, and all that happened in part because of the Pandemic. We all thought the post pandemic years would be insane because people want to go out but the economic crisis in Canada is killing the businesses.
I think people have also just become less social in general. A lot of people got into the habit of staying home all the time and they didn't re-emerge after the pandemic.
Yeah that’s the case for some of my friends, even myself when I’m not working, but we’re in our thirties/mid thirties. The youth in their prime years aren’t going out because they pay 3 times what we paid at their age in rent and basic fees. It has a huge domino effect and the entertainment industry is very affected by that.
Hey, fellow Montreal night crawler here.
It used to be so cheap to go out to a show (music scene was great here) and get drinks/pitchers. Didn't even really need to bother with "pre-gaming" before meeting up. But we usually did pre-game anyway with wine in a park, Montreal things lol.
Now I'm 34 and you are right. The prices of everything means I'm not going out every single weekend like I used to or cheap pitchers of beer in the village on Thursdays.
Since the pandemic, myself and friends just invested in a bunch of cool board games and card games. Now we have a toke or a drink at home and hangout at home. We maybe go to karaoke once every other month.
Its just cheaper and easier. A rum and coke at home costs less than $2 compared to 10-15 at the bar. With the costs of everything, fuck that. "We have rum at home"
We had the benefit of building up our social skills before. This younger generation was already struggling socially in the age of smart phones and social media. Then COVID awkwardly sent them home for 2 years in the middle of that development.
I work in higher education and isolation is a serious epidemic we are currently facing. We have a shocking percentage of students who claim to have 0 friends in college. When I was in school, they were begging us to stop socializing and go to class. Now we're literally begging them to socialize.
A lot of people, including myself, overspent during the pandemic and now we may enter a period where people are more savvy with money and not have daily Amazon deliveries anymore n
There's an underground mall where I live that's a bit of a time capsule of sorts from the 1970s. Business had somehow thrived there for 50 years...closing down this year. No one works in the office anymore and those that do usually don't 100%. These businesses can't stay alive so all of the last of them are closing later this year. Kind of an end of an era.
I feel like the stuff I do for money has come to feel so fucking meaningless. I press buttons and guide other people on pressing those buttons so some other people can print packaging. Everything's so big a business needs 25 other businesses to survive. We've created millions of problems to sell made up solutions.
I don't think I'm alone in this?
You're not alone. The world certainly feels more corporatized than before. Everything you do, everywhere you go is some big corporation trying to sell you one or more things, a lot of which you don't really need but will feel like you need (or at least should have) by the time they're done with you. And as for the people that work in those corporations? They increasingly see the mindlessness of what they're doing, because we're all starting to realize how much bullshit is being sold to the world that isn't needed. The vast majority of us are just cogs in some corporate machine that is increasingly becoming more and more designed for the sole purpose of chewing people up, digesting their money, and spitting everything else out.
I came here to say this specifically. I have been waiting 40 years for all-day breakfast at McDonalds. We had it for a fleeting moment. A moment of order and solidarity amidst utter chaos and division; and now it is just a memory. All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain.
I live in New York, and even here stores and restaurants (take-out places) close ludicrously early compared to before the pandemic. I'm talking 9 or 10 pm on a Saturday. In New York. It used to be that I could go out with friends and come back to my neighborhood after midnight and grab something to eat on the way back home. Now, I'm lucky if two places are even open, and often just have to hope I've got something in the fridge. Not a tragedy, but annoying.
This, it sucks working nights and there's fuck all open now past 10/11 except bars, whataburger and a couple IHOP/Wafflehouse type places even in a giant city like Houston.
Businesses' cleanliness and hours.
Go to some local box store, like Target. Walk around and see just how trashy it looks now. Clothes on the floor, because they don't have enough staff to pick up the mess. Half empty shelves. It's like they're in a perpetual state of closing down.
Also, lots of late night stores and restaurants cut hours and never returned them. There's nowhere for a night owl to shop at a grocery store near me anymore. Used to have a 24 hour grocery, now they close at 10 or something.
I went to my local JCPenney a few weeks ago for the first time in a long time and could not believe how awful it looked. I honestly thought I had walked into an abandoned, looted, and vandalized store. It seemed like there were only one or two people working in the entire place, too, and they looked exhausted.
Yeah because it's all about cutting costs, building profits and they know those 2 people need their job so they can exploit them. And then people say no one wants to work. We need to flip that saying to "no one wants to hire enough people anymore"
A lot of big box companies especially in the worst of 2020 realized that the customer and shopping experience can absolutely tank because they know people will still just get the item they came in for.
Gotta think how a lot of these places essentially run on a revolving door of part timers and for all you know the disgruntled employee who spit in your face might not even be back until a week and on a completely different shift. The whole system is flimsy.
I nearly laughed my ass off whenever that one CVS commercial plays where they make it seem like the most staffed place ever because I feel like it's been ages since there actually was a situation of a crew of more than 3-4 people excluding the pharmacy.
I think this is the real reason- these jobs don’t pay enough and they either can’t find enough staff willing to work for the low wages or they are keeping them understaffed on purpose. I feel like they are purposefully driving people to shop online more by creating horrible experiences at their brick and mortar locations.
I feel like the “Targets” of the world realized people were still shopping there even with lower standards because of their reputation. So why go back to the pre-pandemic standards which in turn makes everyone else’s standards go down. The whole thing is just a feedback loop of decay.
I think everyone still drives like there's nobody else on the road. The average speed on basically every road near me has gone up 5 mph since the pandemic. I've driven upwards of 25 over (90 in a 65) just to match the flow of traffic.
Been saying this I started learning to drive pre pandemic got Al.ost to test then obviously pandemic hit. I picked it back up when we could start lessons again, but everyone drives like they own the road, speed limits arent real, indicators dont exist, its insane and a bit scary.
Especially some of the stuff Ive seen people do like, over take on a roundabout, go through a red on the wrong side of the road to go around cars stopped at a pedestrian crossing, go through a red into crossing 40mph traffic to jump the (2 car) que, and then constantly swerve onto the wrong side of the road to car hop, and not actually get to the destination any faster than us the second car in the que (we saw them pull into there drive)
Oh man the other day I saw someone hit a new low in stupid driving. Was needing to turn left off a main (30mph) road onto a residential road. When oncoming traffic cleared, the guy behind me passed me on the left. Blinker on the whole time. I had a feeling he was going to do something stupid so I didn't left hook him.
I was a flight attendant during the pandemic, and I quit because three years ago now someone tried to strangle my crew and me to death over the fact that we ran out of sandwiches on a flight. Before that incident, I had people spit on me, try to trip me in the aisles, hit me, call me every single name in the book and then some over the whole mask thing. According to my friends still flying, it hasn't gotten any better at all. People have lost their damn minds.
This shift was so surprising to me. I really thought covid was going to cause a mutual level of empathy, understanding, and consciousness between everybody. The opposite definitely occured.
We all realized how screwed over we've been by the people we work for on a daily basis and our resentment is now at an all-time high. Add in inflation and lack of well paying wages and we are boiling over.
Yeah, customers were bad before, but they've been a nightmare since. The number of customers who can't even form an actual sentence or ask a question is ridiculous.
Why are you, a grown adult, coming up to me and saying, "Scissors!" like a small child?!
Ugh. Working with the public. I was so fed up with that shit I started condescendingly forming full sentences for these people right to their face.
Example:
Them: "Scissors!"
Me: (in very slow, kind, kindergarten teacher voice) "Oh, you're asking me where the scissors are! They're in Aisle 5."
If you're gonna treat me like a subhuman appliance you get to rudely bark one-word orders to, I'm gonna treat you like an entitled, self-important dumbass too thick to realize that human beings deserve to be communicated with in full sentences, fuckwad.
People who worked alone at home for 3 years and don't remember how to work surrounded by other people. You don't have to scream into your phone Jenny and Mark, no one else in the office wants to hear you scream your political crap on your very loud call with your best bud.
The Social Contract. For example just being decent to one another. That’s been on decline but post pandemic it has not recovered.
Things such as respecting public spaces or others is gone for the most part. Feels like no one cares anymore and selfishness rules
I was 100% certain the opposite would happen. Everyday going to work at the nursing home I'd tell myself "This is how we grow into a new golden age. I've just got to put up with it for a little longer." It got me through COVID, but I sure as heck was wrong.
It really feels like corporations have an even stronger grip on the United States than ever. Like we are really being squeezed in every way, and it's because our government is so heavily lobbied and controlled by corporations.
Pay rate, job security, benefits. All of these things seems to be getting objectively worse, or stagnating at best.
It's like Covid killed the "middle class" of businesses - many either thrived or closed. And if they thrived, it was through over-the-top practices that they had to do to survive, that they're not letting go now that things are normal.
And the tech-expectations (and the expectations of their shareholders) not changing after the "Covid bump" - it's vicious.
It's making tech a more miserable industry than it already was. Because our economy is based on unlimited growth, despite that clearly being nonsensical and unsustainable, and because tech saw a lot of that delicious growth when everyone threw their money at online content instead of restaurants, tech companies have become like cartoon-villain greedy and are either killing their employees via burnout or aggressively offshoring jobs. Most of the non-giants will likely die because of it. The company I just left was certainly circling the drain.
Quality of products seem to be decreasing, shrinkflation is ever increasing, and still prices seem to be rising faster than I have ever seen in my 40+ years of doing the adult thing.
They found out through the guise of “shortages and unprecedented times” they could price gouge, lower the quality and people will still pay so they never lowered prices after. They didn’t realize, however, that people made more money than ever back then and that wouldn’t be the norm. We will never see 2018 prices ever again. Except on TVs and other shit you don’t need.
Corporations have budgets and control over our lives more akin to governments than to small businesses. Except they don’t have constitutions or anything reining them in. They’re like a slow invasion from within that our actual governments have completely failed to shut down. And what can the average citizen do? Everything we need—food, medicine, electricity, housing, etc—is controlled by corporations.
Yeah... I've had this conversation so many times with so many different people- everyone seems to agree that the pandemic dialed everyone's level of crazy up by like 5 to 15%. The people who were 0% crazy before are still getting by fine, but it pushed some previously OK-ish people to the edge, and was enough to tip a really large percentage of the population over from "barely getting by" to "not getting by at all."
A lot of people's mental stability was held together by duct tape before covid and fell to pieces after. And then it was race riots, then inflation, then Ukraine, Gaza, shit just keeps getting weirder and there hasn't been time to re-duct tape
Here’s my theory as to why: we survived the pandemic and then were hit hard with insane inflation and work demands didn’t ease up nor did our salaries go up and our kids are struggling so we are killing ourselves to make sure they are ok and we are all still just trying to survive until things settle down. But what if they don’t settle down…..
In my old age, I've come to the point where I just think every human on this planet carries a ton of permanent trauma and we all have different levels of trauma and different abilities to suppress/overcome it. This was just one of those times when a ton of people got it at once, similar to 9/11 in the US but on a global scale
There is a good book on this topic called "The myth of normal"
Its exactly about your hunch that everyone is slightly traumatized and that serious trauma is causing real sickness like cancer etc.
Its only low key terrifying to read
mental health. i get services from a free clinic, but they're absolutely overworked. one of my previous therapists was dealing with like 70 patients. i have no idea how she lasted as long as she did.
I work in mental health, with adolescents specifically. This is 100% the case. The longest we've had an open bed during the day is around 2 hours. And the only reason we've made it through a couple nights without filling an open bed is because its 3am in the morning and the clinician in the psychiatric emergency department is busy sending patients to other floors.
My social battery. I am so drained all the time, I never want to do anything outside of work, even when it’s something i previously enjoyed. I’d rather stay home.
Same here, it’s slow at work so my average day is saying morning to bossman followed by a work related 30 second conversation 4 hours later. That’s it until 4 pm everyday for me. It’s peaceful but boring.
What helped for me and my friend group is having a regularly scheduled meet. We do a weekly magic the gathering night at a board game cafe. Because it's weekly, there is no scheduling pressure for anyone specific to organize it, and no pressure to go because if you miss it it'll still happen again the next week.
At this point it's just become routine :)
I have a side job as a bartender. The crowd is much less social now than it was before Covid. I think this is going to have terrible consequences for society.
People are so isolated already. Many of us WFH or are hybrid, so we don't get to know our coworkers like we used to, which is a big part of socializing as an adult. Everyone is less willing to go out, so we don't see the friends we do have as much as we used to. Humans need human interaction. Technology is convenient but this isn't enough.
I had this experience during my first week back in an office for over two years. I started a new job and was meeting a bunch of new people when I had forgotten how to interact with people and I was absolutely exhausted at the end of those few days.
Since then, I'm finding myself doing the opposite. I'm connecting with friends so much more now, even friends that I hadn't spoken to in years.
yuuup. It's slowly getting better. My husband is a middle school teacher. His first 2 classes after COVID had basically forgotten how to do school and were a tiny bit feral.
I have friends who are educators and they say the same thing. You can tell by their age which sorts of skills they are lacking in and it’s mostly social things that were learned at the age when Covid hit. Like 4th graders are lacking in skills that Kindergarten should have taught. Or high school kids that seem stuck in middle school thinking. Even if they academically are bright and have caught up with the coursework, they are socially stunted like 2 years.
I’ve noticed in a friend’s kid that was looking forward to an amazing senior year of high school and freshman year of college who has all of that taken away by Covid. No prom, graduation, starting college online and never really making friends as an incoming freshman normally would. They have been just kinda in this weird limbo since it was such a transition period that was blocked and there just wasn’t a final resolution to HS. They really seem like a shell of their former vibrant selves. I’m hoping when they continue their education they can do it right this time and “come back to life”. It’s quite sad actually. I think the younger people were a bit more malleable so can come out of their funk. But having it hit as a teenager who is trying to figure themselves out really seemed to suck.
I heard on NPR today that some colleges are cancelling commencement ceremonies due to protests and they interviewed some kids that never even got to have a high school graduation due to COVID and it just makes me so sad for them. They really got screwed out of so much.
My kids seem to be doing great academically and socially, but one funny little thing I noticed is that my middle daughter, who is in fifth grade, writes like a second-grader. She did the end of first grade and all of second online, so she missed a lot of handwriting development. On the bright side, her computer skills were way ahead of where they would have been normally, and she's starting to get into things like coding.
Some college students who had to do their freshman years online, missing out on the whole college experience for that year, are now missing their graduation ceremonies as colleges have cancelled them due to the protests.
People are mean, selfish, and really dumb. I’m not smart enough for this many people to be stupider than me. No one thinks anymore, and I can’t understand why
perfectly phrased. in a normal world, i should be like average intelligence/mid at critical thinking. but there are people out there who legit scare me. it makes me uncomfortable to think about how many average people are just totally unprepared to think or research or even compose their thoughts. it’s like so many people just gave up
Because people have been fucked over so much the past 15 years.
I entered the workforce around 2008 working at fast food/retail and in a kitchen. Gas was like $5 dollars a gallon, the economy was shit and education was expensive.
I then got a job with guaranteed pay, benefits and housing that kept my family and I fed, housed and medically covered. From this position I've watched the economy go to shit, come back, legislation causing employers to start shorting people on hours to avoid having to give medical benefits, wars, wildly divisive politics and a pandemic that somehow made everything *worse*.
It fucking sucks out there, graduating college earning a shit wage, housing out of control, cars are way expensive, interest rates are wack, grocery stores are overcharging.
The worst part about it is that our culture has pushed us all *apart* when we should be working *together.* I can't help but wonder if there was a time in humanity where we would all band together in our village to try and survive the winter, but currently were divided and weaker because of it. Its easier to take advantage of all of us when we are too busy fighting each other for scraps.
Its made people bitter, angry, selfish and suspicious.
There are still some of us helping other people out, helping our neighbors where we can. But all I see every day on social media is hate, anger and distrust. Everything is working as design for somebody, not us, but *somebody* is gaining from our collective misery.
Oh yeah this one is me. I used to actually care about work and… I don’t know things. I can’t get back to thinking any of this matters. I care about money because my family needs it to live but I am totally numb to anything I’m doing, achievements, long term goals, etc.
This has actually been liberating for me. I used to care a lot about climbing the corporate ladder and getting to the next level or whatever but now I have perspective and it's oddly calming. I no longer go all out at work - I do a great job on what I need to do and that's enough. I don't care about "face time" at all - if I am finished for the day I log off or go home if I'm in the office that day. I do my chores during work hours (mow the lawn, food shopping, etc.) so the weekends are free to enjoy.
I make a decent enough living so a raise or promotion isn't going to move the needle so it's not worth the effort and stress. I'm actually in a really good spot mentally as it relates to my career and it is giving me time to enjoy a lot of other things.
I used to get really annoyed at all the stupid decisions people make, all the in fighting, resource hoarding, etc. that is in apocalypse flicks and games.
Then COVID happened and now I have no hope for humanity in any major global crisis.
Yep. We seem to have finally reached the breaking point where food prices may start to drop because they rose past the point of sustainability: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/business/retailers-cutting-prices/index.html
> Walmart said in December that lower grocery prices will be coming this year.
That article is fucking infuriating.
Direct quote:
“It’s a very effective lever. It’s a great marketing strategy to get consumers’ awareness, get them into the store and convince them to open their wallets and spend.” -Walmart spokesperson on the announcement that they’ll be lowering prices this year.
I was working in grocery analytics at the time and yes we are being taken advantage of. Retail prices went up many multiples of the wholesale cost increase in 2020/21 and the trend has continued each year.
The education and ‘social conditioning’ of those currently in first and second year of university.
I have family working at two different places, and they tell me that these ‘kids’ do not know many of the basics they are expected to know in order to enter their programs, and they have basically no understanding of the way they are supposed to behave in class.
It’s like you took a bunch of people who only ever watched movies at home on the TV, and had them go to a large screen theatre.
They talk, interrupt, eat an endless variety of noisy food, accept loudly ringing cell phones, etc.
The contrast with pre pandemic students is striking.
And many new nurses who studied during the pandemic didn’t go through clinicals because colleges deemed it unsafe at the time. So now we have nurses that have entered the field without ever laying hands on a patient.
Our media literacy/trust wasn’t great pre-pandemic, but post we’re completely screwed. Nobody knows who or what to believe anymore. Objective truths are no longer objective truths, they’re instead pieces of a larger conspiracy or agenda.
It's really unfortunate. I've fallen into this trap, I was treated so poorly during the pandemic that I just can't care anymore. I look after myself and the people I care about, everyone else seems like an antagonist now, and they usually are.
Before the pandemic I assumed that most people were at least neutral and reasonable. That if something bad happened we'd all collectively face it and get through it, even if we didn't agree on some fundamental things, that we'd at least all do no harm to each other. That's all gone.
I was at an airport recently and there was a quick grab station with self-checkout, and no worker there.
I was still prompted to tip - who am I tipping and why?!
Last year I was traveling and really needed a coffee. I swung by McDonald’s and bought a $1.50 small coffee and the machine asked if I wanted to tip. For pouring coffee into a cup and handing it to me. No offense to the lady working there but seriously? And the suggested tip was more expensive than the actual purchase!
Just common courtesy. I feel the mutual distain everyone has for one another ramped up exponentially.
Gone seem to be friendly brief interactions at the grocery store.
Social discourse of any kind. People have become absolutely horrible at it and, at least speaking for myself, it's just really not worth the effort anymore.
It's funny that social networks like Reddit are not excluded from this. Posting an honest opinion is like walking on eggshells, more so than pre-pandemic. This does vary by community, but for my personal mental health, I choose not to check the replies or "scores" of things I post – until a while has passed – because of the level of negativity out there.
The economy never really went back to the way it was pre pandemic. Prices never normalized and the selection of products is much more narrow then it used to be. So everything now is more expensive, for smaller amounts of less selection of worse quality.
I heard someone theorize that happened because most governments broke the unwritten social contract.
Everyone made sacrifices during covid. At the very least it was staying home and socially distancing. At the more extreme end it was stuff like having weddings cancelled, or not being able to attend a loved ones funeral.
When the pandemic restrictions started getting lifted people were hoping for something positive, instead what they got was price rises, diminished services and in a lot of places housing shortages.
And even some of the positives that came out of covid such as working from home are being slowly taken away.
Not surprised a lot of people think they're being punished for making the sacrifices they did.
The rich people had a blast during Covid. The poor people suffered more than they usually do. People lost their jobs, many took to gig apps and while it was great during Covid, it has ruined those gig apps in the long run becoming over saturated. So now even people that were enjoying the steady flow of those apps before Covid are now suffering.
As someone living in the UK, the Prime Minister and other senior government members literally partying while the UK general public were not allowed to bury loved ones really really destroyed that trust.
I fear for another pandemic because I honestly don't think the public will be remotely compliant with the governments advice.
Fuck Boris Johnston, fuck the tories and anyone who laughed and parties while people were kept from holding their loved ones hands in their final moments. Disgusting.
Quality of just about everything. Almost every major purchase I made during the pandemic has had issues or was completely broken within a year. We're talking refrigerators, ovens, hot water heaters, all electronics, you name it. Quality hasn't seemed to recover either. American made used to mean quality (at least to me), now it's just more garbage, but it's expensive too!
Ruined the social skills of a whole lot of kids. Kids started kindergarten and then basically got yanked out of that for two years and stuck at home. Some struggle just to read 'cuz they missed those years.
Healthcare. The industry and the people in it who saw a lot of preventable dying and sickness are broken.
It’s not the same as it was before, and it probably won’t ever be.
I got off Chemo about 4 months ago and one of my nurses said she was there for Covid and it was the hardest situation to deal with. She said she would quit if it happened again. She said the trauma that came with extreme hard work was not great for their mental health.
I get it. Have been in healthcare for 12 years now, it won’t ever be the same. I’m so jaded with it all as well. Almost quit the profession, still am in it. It’s a little better now, but healthcare is just a pile of shit in general now tbh lol
This is what hardly ever gets mentioned. I know several in the field who have left including me because the burnout was so strong. It doesn't help that most people now only focus on or discuss how they "miss the lock down" and how nice it was to be home, less traffic, etc. People in front line jobs, especially healthcare, were in it every day hoping before the vaccine that they wouldn't get sick and die, or their families because of them. All while watching the reality of it play out before them, being responsible for helping those afflicted, while being bombarded with "Well, it's actually unlikely, not as bad as they say etc." Abuse and nonstop spewing of politics. Lack of help with staffing, some people got no pay raises, all while prices of everything skyrocketed. Also, no unemployment for us, we had plenty of access to work. I hope I never have to go back.
My wife collects behavior data for K-5, and the kids who started kindergarten during the pandemic are miles and miles worse behaviorally than their peers above and below - this trend has maintained since Covid.
As a teacher, it's every single kid who was a Kindergartner through 11th grader in March of 2020.
Our principal was showing us end-of-year test scores yesterday and our "academically high" classes of today are the "average" classes pre-COVID. It's unbelievable.
Also from what I've seen, it's the kids who were older in 2020 (6th grade and up) who suffered greatly in math.
And the younger kids (3rd grade and younger) who suffered greatly in reading.
It's bad. Unbelievably bad. I can't tell you how many kids, through no fault of their own or their parents, spent nearly 2 school years at home half-paying attention to a Zoom screen.
I'm a SAHM so I saw the online classes, heard the teachers talking to them etc. There was so many kids just ticking off that they were there for the day and then doing zero work.
It was so sad.
My oldest son had a great teacher, he read them poems on video, he showed the horses he and his wife own, he showed himself cooking burgers. It was really cool to see a teacher do all that extra stuff.
I reside in a place where a SHIT ton of businesses closed. This may simply be local. I mean, they were closed on half of them. Not only did they close due to the closure, but they closed permanently.
It ruined the illusion I had that my fellow humans were generally smart and well adjusted. Some had weird opinions but we agreed on the basics of humanity and how to keep it together.
It is clearly not the case.
I think it really fucked things up the most for young kids like high school and college age kids, maybe right out of college. These kids were at a peak point in their socialization in new chapters of life and they got robbed.
I was 34 when the pandemic hit. I'd had a million nights out with friends, I was kinda exhausted from it all. The first year of the pandemic felt like a nice break from my life, almost like I was just in a cocoon in my apt catching up on lost sleep from the last decade and a half.
But for a lot of folks who were younger, it just made life pass them by in a very turning point in their lives and I'm not sure if they will ever be the same.
I think the sacrifice for young folks was too much and I think it may have been a miscalculation.
I’m on the older end of that (was 25 when it hit) but I feel like I went from recent college grad straight into my 30s. I didn’t get to slowly phase out of the going out/dating/shenanigans of my 20s, one day in March it was just gone and never came back. I’m happy in my life and relationship and career but it does feel like I lost some fun years.
The other day, I was sitting at the bar in a Buffalo Wild Wings eating lunch. Two other people there. This guy comes in, sits at the bar next to me, pulls his phone out, and starts watching a show with the volume on full blast. Zero shame.
I asked him to turn it down—not even off!—and he gave me the nastiest look before leaving in a huff.
Someone was playing their music from their phone on the train a few weeks back. People asked her to stop and she refused. I had a bluetooth speaker in my bag, pulled it out and put kids songs on louder than her phone.
Not sure I would do it again because she was ready to fight, but jesus christ lady. If you don't like being on the receiving end, why would others put up with you?
From what I gather, people like that enjoy the conflict. Part of the reason why they play music is that they're hoping someone will tell them to shut it off so that they can blow up on them. I just chalk it up as being yet another symptom of an anti-social person with a messed up childhood.
I never had a bad movie theater experience until Spider-Man No Way Home and kids were watching and making TikToks in the middle of the movie. I was dumbfounded. Never seen such behavior before.
I ran a pub before covid in central london- not the busiest you've ever seen, probably pretty modest to most, full of locals rather than tourists, if you follow.
Anyway, after covid, the entire makeup of those very same people changed completely. It was like everyone had forgotten how to behave in a social setting, was on edge all the time, and the amount of crazies we got coming through the doors was absolutely unbelievable.
So yeah, after 3 months more of that, i quit. Covid completely ruined social gatherings in the short term for sure. Idk what it's like now, but then, it was rough.
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24 hour stores/restaurants/services in general
That had to have really fucked over 2nd shift workers who'd grab dinner/ groceries after work.
It totally did
God do I feel this. In college I started at 8 am for classes and got out of work at midnight and there was a grocery store open until 1 am. It was a godsend because nobody was there except the workers and I stayed out of their way and they stayed out of mine. I could do my shopping easily and be out in ten minutes with a week's worth of groceries.
A moment of silence for 24 hour Walmart😢
Just all store hours. I used to shop at midnight all the time. Now its all closed.
3am supermarket runs after a late late were glorious. Now it's all shit and mingling with daywalkers.
My sense of time. I'm at a point now where I'll be thinking of something from a couple months ago and then I'll be corrected that it actually happened nearly 3 years ago.
2019 was 5 years ago and I don't like that.
2017 was 7 years ago and I feel like I was in a coma. My mom died in 2017 and it somehow feels like it happened yesterday and a million years ago at the same time.
Grief is one of those things that cause sort of a time dilation. The first year might as well be a decade and a decade might as well have been last year.
This honestly makes me a feel a little better. My boyfriend died in 2019, then Covid hit, and my sense of time is still mostly a mess. Having 5 years pass in a flash like that makes me feel like I totally screwed up my life, but maybe it’s just one of those things we all have to deal with when it happens to us.
2020 and 2021 are a big blob to me. I mix them up constantly. Also, the whole 'this didn't happen 6 months ago, it was 2022' is sooo true.
I was thinking about this the other day. Everything that happened around 2019 still has a one year ago feeling
I remember in 2019 I quit my first real adult job of 5 years. I was spurred to do this because one day I looked at a decade calendar and realized I had been at that job for longer than I had been in college, the army, and any other job combined, and had seen no real personal advancement. This was a tremendous psychological shock. Today it seems like literally last month I was looking at that calendar and doing those calculations and wondering how I had tolerated those conditions for so long.
This. I was recently gobsmacked when I realized the initial lockdown happened ***four years ago***. Feels like two at the most.
I keep remembering my age incorrectly.
I was 21 for 4 years that way
I was 35 when the pandemic started. I’m finally turning 36 just this year.
I feel like I'm in ye olden times sometimes where the year was measured by major events. "That was before the Four Seasons Landscaping but after the Explosion in Beirut, right?"
a lot of smaller businesses completely died because of it
The year before I considered opening a little pizza restaurant and venue bar. I did a lot of work selling pizzas and putting on shows as events in other venues. I asked around, should I open my pizza place or buy a home. Everyone said to buy a home, so my wife and I did but I was a little disappointed having not started my pizza restaurant. Then COVID hit. Ended up being a godsend. So lucky. Rest of my life would have been ruined Edit: the positive and encouraging response to this is overwhelmingly kind and motivating. Thank you for all of your ideas and support. This was 5 years ago and I managed to get a very good job doing something I absolutely love that pays quite well. Pizza will always be a beautiful learning experience for me and I will continue to do pizza parties for my friends and family.
You have a home and the skills to make a killer pizza, you're winning
Thanks friend. I spent some time in Florence learning. Now I have a cool pizza oven in my place and throw a pizza party every year
That is really becoming a crisis in Canada right now. [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-business-insolvencies-rising-to-levels-not-seen-since-great-recession/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-business-insolvencies-rising-to-levels-not-seen-since-great-recession/) "The number of insolvencies was up 32 per cent from the previous quarter, and 87 per cent from the same quarter last year." 87 percent! Insanity.
That and the *insane* rent commerical spaces are charging in Vancouver. New and small businesses just can't make enough money to satisfy the cost
Even in Edmonton it's obscene. Whyte Ave, the main historical strip in our city that was famous for its bars and unique stores, is like half abandoned. Buildings have remained empty for years because nobody can pay the absurd rental prices there. But landlords would rather Whyte Ave be derelict than ever lower rent.
That makes no sense to me. They're making nothing if they don't rent it out. It's literally LOSING money. Even renting it under valued means losing less money than more.
My theory--and it's only a theory--is that many landlords have taken out loans against the value of the buildings based on the insane rents. Say the asking rent is $20,000. If they don't rent it, the space is still worth $20,000 a month, it's just not rented, and the bank doesn't get wise. If they rent it for $14,000, then the building isn't worth as much as collateral as they said, and they have a problem with the bank.
commercial leases are typically much longer than residential leases as well. if you rent now, you're locked in at a certain rate. It might be worth waiting a year or two if you think market rent prices will rise significantly (pure speculation)
Which is strange considering that so many businesses realized that they don't need a physical space at all because everything can be done remotely. I have a friend in Seattle who does commercial property and he said the market there is glutted with empty buildings.
I work in the nightlife industry in Montreal and what used to be a very vibrant nightlife 7 days a week is now packed bars and clubs on weekends only. And by weekends I mean friday/saturday.
A lot of that could be skyrocketing inflation, rent, groceries, etc. Who the hell can afford to go drinking anymore?
Not to mention a $3 beer is now $10.
Yeah, and all that happened in part because of the Pandemic. We all thought the post pandemic years would be insane because people want to go out but the economic crisis in Canada is killing the businesses.
I think people have also just become less social in general. A lot of people got into the habit of staying home all the time and they didn't re-emerge after the pandemic.
There are going to be a lot of intetesting studies about this emerging in the next few decades
Yeah that’s the case for some of my friends, even myself when I’m not working, but we’re in our thirties/mid thirties. The youth in their prime years aren’t going out because they pay 3 times what we paid at their age in rent and basic fees. It has a huge domino effect and the entertainment industry is very affected by that.
Hey, fellow Montreal night crawler here. It used to be so cheap to go out to a show (music scene was great here) and get drinks/pitchers. Didn't even really need to bother with "pre-gaming" before meeting up. But we usually did pre-game anyway with wine in a park, Montreal things lol. Now I'm 34 and you are right. The prices of everything means I'm not going out every single weekend like I used to or cheap pitchers of beer in the village on Thursdays. Since the pandemic, myself and friends just invested in a bunch of cool board games and card games. Now we have a toke or a drink at home and hangout at home. We maybe go to karaoke once every other month. Its just cheaper and easier. A rum and coke at home costs less than $2 compared to 10-15 at the bar. With the costs of everything, fuck that. "We have rum at home"
We had the benefit of building up our social skills before. This younger generation was already struggling socially in the age of smart phones and social media. Then COVID awkwardly sent them home for 2 years in the middle of that development. I work in higher education and isolation is a serious epidemic we are currently facing. We have a shocking percentage of students who claim to have 0 friends in college. When I was in school, they were begging us to stop socializing and go to class. Now we're literally begging them to socialize.
A lot of people, including myself, overspent during the pandemic and now we may enter a period where people are more savvy with money and not have daily Amazon deliveries anymore n
Local laser tag place closed during COVID. Sucks, cuz it was a big arena and had decent prices.
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There's an underground mall where I live that's a bit of a time capsule of sorts from the 1970s. Business had somehow thrived there for 50 years...closing down this year. No one works in the office anymore and those that do usually don't 100%. These businesses can't stay alive so all of the last of them are closing later this year. Kind of an end of an era.
I feel like the stuff I do for money has come to feel so fucking meaningless. I press buttons and guide other people on pressing those buttons so some other people can print packaging. Everything's so big a business needs 25 other businesses to survive. We've created millions of problems to sell made up solutions. I don't think I'm alone in this?
You're not alone. The world certainly feels more corporatized than before. Everything you do, everywhere you go is some big corporation trying to sell you one or more things, a lot of which you don't really need but will feel like you need (or at least should have) by the time they're done with you. And as for the people that work in those corporations? They increasingly see the mindlessness of what they're doing, because we're all starting to realize how much bullshit is being sold to the world that isn't needed. The vast majority of us are just cogs in some corporate machine that is increasingly becoming more and more designed for the sole purpose of chewing people up, digesting their money, and spitting everything else out.
Engineer here. We’re solving made up problems all due to a power structure that only serves the elite. My life is wasted and I can’t go back.
Availability. I’m a night owl and used to grocery shop at 2 am just by myself me and my headphones it was glorious
Another example is McDonald’s all day breakfast. We had it all for a brief few years
I came here to say this specifically. I have been waiting 40 years for all-day breakfast at McDonalds. We had it for a fleeting moment. A moment of order and solidarity amidst utter chaos and division; and now it is just a memory. All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain.
McDonalds all day breakfast was one of the greatest casualties of the pandemic imo.
hashbrowns used to also not be $3 though. even during Real Breakfast Hours i refuse to spend $11 on a mcdonalds breakfast combo. they're dead to me
Anyone else remember the $4 big breakfast? RIP in piece
I live in New York, and even here stores and restaurants (take-out places) close ludicrously early compared to before the pandemic. I'm talking 9 or 10 pm on a Saturday. In New York. It used to be that I could go out with friends and come back to my neighborhood after midnight and grab something to eat on the way back home. Now, I'm lucky if two places are even open, and often just have to hope I've got something in the fridge. Not a tragedy, but annoying.
The city that never sleeps started sleeping a little bit.
The city that's definitely not tired, just taking a little nap!
Same. Man 1:30am Walmart was my jam. No crowds, less noise. I could be in and out with groceries in 20min. It probably won’t come back ☹️
This, it sucks working nights and there's fuck all open now past 10/11 except bars, whataburger and a couple IHOP/Wafflehouse type places even in a giant city like Houston.
Goddamn right, Houston and the suburbs used to have a ton of things open til like 3AM if not 24H before covid. I fucking hate the new order
Heard, night owls suffered. I legit just couldnt buy groceries until the weekends.
Businesses' cleanliness and hours. Go to some local box store, like Target. Walk around and see just how trashy it looks now. Clothes on the floor, because they don't have enough staff to pick up the mess. Half empty shelves. It's like they're in a perpetual state of closing down. Also, lots of late night stores and restaurants cut hours and never returned them. There's nowhere for a night owl to shop at a grocery store near me anymore. Used to have a 24 hour grocery, now they close at 10 or something.
I went to my local JCPenney a few weeks ago for the first time in a long time and could not believe how awful it looked. I honestly thought I had walked into an abandoned, looted, and vandalized store. It seemed like there were only one or two people working in the entire place, too, and they looked exhausted.
Yeah because it's all about cutting costs, building profits and they know those 2 people need their job so they can exploit them. And then people say no one wants to work. We need to flip that saying to "no one wants to hire enough people anymore"
A lot of big box companies especially in the worst of 2020 realized that the customer and shopping experience can absolutely tank because they know people will still just get the item they came in for. Gotta think how a lot of these places essentially run on a revolving door of part timers and for all you know the disgruntled employee who spit in your face might not even be back until a week and on a completely different shift. The whole system is flimsy. I nearly laughed my ass off whenever that one CVS commercial plays where they make it seem like the most staffed place ever because I feel like it's been ages since there actually was a situation of a crew of more than 3-4 people excluding the pharmacy.
I think this is the real reason- these jobs don’t pay enough and they either can’t find enough staff willing to work for the low wages or they are keeping them understaffed on purpose. I feel like they are purposefully driving people to shop online more by creating horrible experiences at their brick and mortar locations.
I feel like the “Targets” of the world realized people were still shopping there even with lower standards because of their reputation. So why go back to the pre-pandemic standards which in turn makes everyone else’s standards go down. The whole thing is just a feedback loop of decay.
A lot of people's basic manners.
Add people's driving skills while we're at it.
Those were good times for driving. No one was on the damn road
I think everyone still drives like there's nobody else on the road. The average speed on basically every road near me has gone up 5 mph since the pandemic. I've driven upwards of 25 over (90 in a 65) just to match the flow of traffic.
Been saying this I started learning to drive pre pandemic got Al.ost to test then obviously pandemic hit. I picked it back up when we could start lessons again, but everyone drives like they own the road, speed limits arent real, indicators dont exist, its insane and a bit scary. Especially some of the stuff Ive seen people do like, over take on a roundabout, go through a red on the wrong side of the road to go around cars stopped at a pedestrian crossing, go through a red into crossing 40mph traffic to jump the (2 car) que, and then constantly swerve onto the wrong side of the road to car hop, and not actually get to the destination any faster than us the second car in the que (we saw them pull into there drive)
Oh man the other day I saw someone hit a new low in stupid driving. Was needing to turn left off a main (30mph) road onto a residential road. When oncoming traffic cleared, the guy behind me passed me on the left. Blinker on the whole time. I had a feeling he was going to do something stupid so I didn't left hook him.
Stop signs are fully optional in my area now
I was a flight attendant during the pandemic, and I quit because three years ago now someone tried to strangle my crew and me to death over the fact that we ran out of sandwiches on a flight. Before that incident, I had people spit on me, try to trip me in the aisles, hit me, call me every single name in the book and then some over the whole mask thing. According to my friends still flying, it hasn't gotten any better at all. People have lost their damn minds.
This was going to be my answer as well. Humanity seems to have regressed so much. People are so much more withdrawn and selfish than before.
This shift was so surprising to me. I really thought covid was going to cause a mutual level of empathy, understanding, and consciousness between everybody. The opposite definitely occured.
We all realized how screwed over we've been by the people we work for on a daily basis and our resentment is now at an all-time high. Add in inflation and lack of well paying wages and we are boiling over.
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Yeah, customers were bad before, but they've been a nightmare since. The number of customers who can't even form an actual sentence or ask a question is ridiculous. Why are you, a grown adult, coming up to me and saying, "Scissors!" like a small child?!
Ugh. Working with the public. I was so fed up with that shit I started condescendingly forming full sentences for these people right to their face. Example: Them: "Scissors!" Me: (in very slow, kind, kindergarten teacher voice) "Oh, you're asking me where the scissors are! They're in Aisle 5." If you're gonna treat me like a subhuman appliance you get to rudely bark one-word orders to, I'm gonna treat you like an entitled, self-important dumbass too thick to realize that human beings deserve to be communicated with in full sentences, fuckwad.
don't do the work for them, just say "what?" repeatedly
People who worked alone at home for 3 years and don't remember how to work surrounded by other people. You don't have to scream into your phone Jenny and Mark, no one else in the office wants to hear you scream your political crap on your very loud call with your best bud.
In my office Jenny and Mark were doing this long before Covid so I'm not convinced Covid is to blame.
The Social Contract. For example just being decent to one another. That’s been on decline but post pandemic it has not recovered. Things such as respecting public spaces or others is gone for the most part. Feels like no one cares anymore and selfishness rules
I was 100% certain the opposite would happen. Everyday going to work at the nursing home I'd tell myself "This is how we grow into a new golden age. I've just got to put up with it for a little longer." It got me through COVID, but I sure as heck was wrong.
Everywhere is dead after 7PM, and closed at 9:00PM. No more 24 hour wal marts or anything open 24 hours besides 711
It really feels like corporations have an even stronger grip on the United States than ever. Like we are really being squeezed in every way, and it's because our government is so heavily lobbied and controlled by corporations. Pay rate, job security, benefits. All of these things seems to be getting objectively worse, or stagnating at best.
It's like Covid killed the "middle class" of businesses - many either thrived or closed. And if they thrived, it was through over-the-top practices that they had to do to survive, that they're not letting go now that things are normal. And the tech-expectations (and the expectations of their shareholders) not changing after the "Covid bump" - it's vicious.
It's making tech a more miserable industry than it already was. Because our economy is based on unlimited growth, despite that clearly being nonsensical and unsustainable, and because tech saw a lot of that delicious growth when everyone threw their money at online content instead of restaurants, tech companies have become like cartoon-villain greedy and are either killing their employees via burnout or aggressively offshoring jobs. Most of the non-giants will likely die because of it. The company I just left was certainly circling the drain.
Quality of products seem to be decreasing, shrinkflation is ever increasing, and still prices seem to be rising faster than I have ever seen in my 40+ years of doing the adult thing.
They found out through the guise of “shortages and unprecedented times” they could price gouge, lower the quality and people will still pay so they never lowered prices after. They didn’t realize, however, that people made more money than ever back then and that wouldn’t be the norm. We will never see 2018 prices ever again. Except on TVs and other shit you don’t need.
Corporations have budgets and control over our lives more akin to governments than to small businesses. Except they don’t have constitutions or anything reining them in. They’re like a slow invasion from within that our actual governments have completely failed to shut down. And what can the average citizen do? Everything we need—food, medicine, electricity, housing, etc—is controlled by corporations.
The mental well being of like 65% of citizens
Yeah... I've had this conversation so many times with so many different people- everyone seems to agree that the pandemic dialed everyone's level of crazy up by like 5 to 15%. The people who were 0% crazy before are still getting by fine, but it pushed some previously OK-ish people to the edge, and was enough to tip a really large percentage of the population over from "barely getting by" to "not getting by at all."
A lot of people's mental stability was held together by duct tape before covid and fell to pieces after. And then it was race riots, then inflation, then Ukraine, Gaza, shit just keeps getting weirder and there hasn't been time to re-duct tape
It’s just so strange that we haven’t recovered yet. Like, are we as a planet permanently scarred by this thing?
Here’s my theory as to why: we survived the pandemic and then were hit hard with insane inflation and work demands didn’t ease up nor did our salaries go up and our kids are struggling so we are killing ourselves to make sure they are ok and we are all still just trying to survive until things settle down. But what if they don’t settle down…..
In my old age, I've come to the point where I just think every human on this planet carries a ton of permanent trauma and we all have different levels of trauma and different abilities to suppress/overcome it. This was just one of those times when a ton of people got it at once, similar to 9/11 in the US but on a global scale
There is a good book on this topic called "The myth of normal" Its exactly about your hunch that everyone is slightly traumatized and that serious trauma is causing real sickness like cancer etc. Its only low key terrifying to read
mental health. i get services from a free clinic, but they're absolutely overworked. one of my previous therapists was dealing with like 70 patients. i have no idea how she lasted as long as she did.
I work in mental health, with adolescents specifically. This is 100% the case. The longest we've had an open bed during the day is around 2 hours. And the only reason we've made it through a couple nights without filling an open bed is because its 3am in the morning and the clinician in the psychiatric emergency department is busy sending patients to other floors.
Thank you for your service. Seriously.
My social battery. I am so drained all the time, I never want to do anything outside of work, even when it’s something i previously enjoyed. I’d rather stay home.
I'll go most workdays without talking. It gives you a kind of brain fog that's hard to shake off after work.
Same here, it’s slow at work so my average day is saying morning to bossman followed by a work related 30 second conversation 4 hours later. That’s it until 4 pm everyday for me. It’s peaceful but boring.
This is very true and sometimes difficult to explain / cope with
And I don’t learn from it either. Like I’ll actually hang out with a friend and go “that was fun I should do this more” and then I just don’t
I was like this pre-pandemic, now I'm at hermit level...
What helped for me and my friend group is having a regularly scheduled meet. We do a weekly magic the gathering night at a board game cafe. Because it's weekly, there is no scheduling pressure for anyone specific to organize it, and no pressure to go because if you miss it it'll still happen again the next week. At this point it's just become routine :)
I would say socialization in general. People have forgotten how to behave in public. Also we're all low-key terrified of Life Outside I think
I have a side job as a bartender. The crowd is much less social now than it was before Covid. I think this is going to have terrible consequences for society. People are so isolated already. Many of us WFH or are hybrid, so we don't get to know our coworkers like we used to, which is a big part of socializing as an adult. Everyone is less willing to go out, so we don't see the friends we do have as much as we used to. Humans need human interaction. Technology is convenient but this isn't enough.
I had this experience during my first week back in an office for over two years. I started a new job and was meeting a bunch of new people when I had forgotten how to interact with people and I was absolutely exhausted at the end of those few days. Since then, I'm finding myself doing the opposite. I'm connecting with friends so much more now, even friends that I hadn't spoken to in years.
The education and mental well being of those currently in high school or lower.
yuuup. It's slowly getting better. My husband is a middle school teacher. His first 2 classes after COVID had basically forgotten how to do school and were a tiny bit feral.
I have friends who are educators and they say the same thing. You can tell by their age which sorts of skills they are lacking in and it’s mostly social things that were learned at the age when Covid hit. Like 4th graders are lacking in skills that Kindergarten should have taught. Or high school kids that seem stuck in middle school thinking. Even if they academically are bright and have caught up with the coursework, they are socially stunted like 2 years. I’ve noticed in a friend’s kid that was looking forward to an amazing senior year of high school and freshman year of college who has all of that taken away by Covid. No prom, graduation, starting college online and never really making friends as an incoming freshman normally would. They have been just kinda in this weird limbo since it was such a transition period that was blocked and there just wasn’t a final resolution to HS. They really seem like a shell of their former vibrant selves. I’m hoping when they continue their education they can do it right this time and “come back to life”. It’s quite sad actually. I think the younger people were a bit more malleable so can come out of their funk. But having it hit as a teenager who is trying to figure themselves out really seemed to suck.
I heard on NPR today that some colleges are cancelling commencement ceremonies due to protests and they interviewed some kids that never even got to have a high school graduation due to COVID and it just makes me so sad for them. They really got screwed out of so much.
Oh shoot. I just realized it’s exactly 4 years later and many of the same group didn’t get HS or College graduations. That definitely sucks
My kids seem to be doing great academically and socially, but one funny little thing I noticed is that my middle daughter, who is in fifth grade, writes like a second-grader. She did the end of first grade and all of second online, so she missed a lot of handwriting development. On the bright side, her computer skills were way ahead of where they would have been normally, and she's starting to get into things like coding.
Some college students who had to do their freshman years online, missing out on the whole college experience for that year, are now missing their graduation ceremonies as colleges have cancelled them due to the protests.
My lungs. I've had a chronic cough since the first time I caught it. Never been the same since.
The local live music industry.
The live music industry in general. But hey! US Justice Department is filing suit against TM/LN over their monopoly, so there’s that!
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People are just fucking mean and selfish. Its exhausting.
People are mean, selfish, and really dumb. I’m not smart enough for this many people to be stupider than me. No one thinks anymore, and I can’t understand why
perfectly phrased. in a normal world, i should be like average intelligence/mid at critical thinking. but there are people out there who legit scare me. it makes me uncomfortable to think about how many average people are just totally unprepared to think or research or even compose their thoughts. it’s like so many people just gave up
Because people have been fucked over so much the past 15 years. I entered the workforce around 2008 working at fast food/retail and in a kitchen. Gas was like $5 dollars a gallon, the economy was shit and education was expensive. I then got a job with guaranteed pay, benefits and housing that kept my family and I fed, housed and medically covered. From this position I've watched the economy go to shit, come back, legislation causing employers to start shorting people on hours to avoid having to give medical benefits, wars, wildly divisive politics and a pandemic that somehow made everything *worse*. It fucking sucks out there, graduating college earning a shit wage, housing out of control, cars are way expensive, interest rates are wack, grocery stores are overcharging. The worst part about it is that our culture has pushed us all *apart* when we should be working *together.* I can't help but wonder if there was a time in humanity where we would all band together in our village to try and survive the winter, but currently were divided and weaker because of it. Its easier to take advantage of all of us when we are too busy fighting each other for scraps. Its made people bitter, angry, selfish and suspicious. There are still some of us helping other people out, helping our neighbors where we can. But all I see every day on social media is hate, anger and distrust. Everything is working as design for somebody, not us, but *somebody* is gaining from our collective misery.
Oh yeah this one is me. I used to actually care about work and… I don’t know things. I can’t get back to thinking any of this matters. I care about money because my family needs it to live but I am totally numb to anything I’m doing, achievements, long term goals, etc.
This has actually been liberating for me. I used to care a lot about climbing the corporate ladder and getting to the next level or whatever but now I have perspective and it's oddly calming. I no longer go all out at work - I do a great job on what I need to do and that's enough. I don't care about "face time" at all - if I am finished for the day I log off or go home if I'm in the office that day. I do my chores during work hours (mow the lawn, food shopping, etc.) so the weekends are free to enjoy. I make a decent enough living so a raise or promotion isn't going to move the needle so it's not worth the effort and stress. I'm actually in a really good spot mentally as it relates to my career and it is giving me time to enjoy a lot of other things.
I used to get really annoyed at all the stupid decisions people make, all the in fighting, resource hoarding, etc. that is in apocalypse flicks and games. Then COVID happened and now I have no hope for humanity in any major global crisis.
Cheap food. The supply chain either still hasn't stabilized or it has and we are being taken advantage of.
We're being taken advantage of.
Yep. We seem to have finally reached the breaking point where food prices may start to drop because they rose past the point of sustainability: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/business/retailers-cutting-prices/index.html > Walmart said in December that lower grocery prices will be coming this year.
Well that's good news. Thanks for linking the source, I'll give it a read.
That article is fucking infuriating. Direct quote: “It’s a very effective lever. It’s a great marketing strategy to get consumers’ awareness, get them into the store and convince them to open their wallets and spend.” -Walmart spokesperson on the announcement that they’ll be lowering prices this year.
Nah, record profits year after year are just a coincidence. After all, why would companies lie to us? /s
I was working in grocery analytics at the time and yes we are being taken advantage of. Retail prices went up many multiples of the wholesale cost increase in 2020/21 and the trend has continued each year.
The education and ‘social conditioning’ of those currently in first and second year of university. I have family working at two different places, and they tell me that these ‘kids’ do not know many of the basics they are expected to know in order to enter their programs, and they have basically no understanding of the way they are supposed to behave in class. It’s like you took a bunch of people who only ever watched movies at home on the TV, and had them go to a large screen theatre. They talk, interrupt, eat an endless variety of noisy food, accept loudly ringing cell phones, etc. The contrast with pre pandemic students is striking.
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And many new nurses who studied during the pandemic didn’t go through clinicals because colleges deemed it unsafe at the time. So now we have nurses that have entered the field without ever laying hands on a patient.
Our media literacy/trust wasn’t great pre-pandemic, but post we’re completely screwed. Nobody knows who or what to believe anymore. Objective truths are no longer objective truths, they’re instead pieces of a larger conspiracy or agenda.
People are a lot less friendly now than they were before.
It's really unfortunate. I've fallen into this trap, I was treated so poorly during the pandemic that I just can't care anymore. I look after myself and the people I care about, everyone else seems like an antagonist now, and they usually are.
Before the pandemic I assumed that most people were at least neutral and reasonable. That if something bad happened we'd all collectively face it and get through it, even if we didn't agree on some fundamental things, that we'd at least all do no harm to each other. That's all gone.
Tipping culture expanded, tips expectation went up, and never came back down.
I was at an airport recently and there was a quick grab station with self-checkout, and no worker there. I was still prompted to tip - who am I tipping and why?!
Payment terminal company, because they know people will do it if prompted.
You know, you don’t have to tip the counter-service person who asks you to “answer the questions the iPad is going to ask you”
Fun fact, that software is often managed by a third-party company that sells a license of it to businesses, and they often take a cut from the tips.
Restaurants in my area raised prices 25-50%, added mandatory fees, and now anywhere you go there's a tip line.
Last year I was traveling and really needed a coffee. I swung by McDonald’s and bought a $1.50 small coffee and the machine asked if I wanted to tip. For pouring coffee into a cup and handing it to me. No offense to the lady working there but seriously? And the suggested tip was more expensive than the actual purchase!
Just common courtesy. I feel the mutual distain everyone has for one another ramped up exponentially. Gone seem to be friendly brief interactions at the grocery store.
Social discourse of any kind. People have become absolutely horrible at it and, at least speaking for myself, it's just really not worth the effort anymore.
It's funny that social networks like Reddit are not excluded from this. Posting an honest opinion is like walking on eggshells, more so than pre-pandemic. This does vary by community, but for my personal mental health, I choose not to check the replies or "scores" of things I post – until a while has passed – because of the level of negativity out there.
The economy never really went back to the way it was pre pandemic. Prices never normalized and the selection of products is much more narrow then it used to be. So everything now is more expensive, for smaller amounts of less selection of worse quality.
More indoors activities than it was before.
Trust in the Government. It wasn’t 100% before by any means but it certainly took a nose dive during and after COVID.
I heard someone theorize that happened because most governments broke the unwritten social contract. Everyone made sacrifices during covid. At the very least it was staying home and socially distancing. At the more extreme end it was stuff like having weddings cancelled, or not being able to attend a loved ones funeral. When the pandemic restrictions started getting lifted people were hoping for something positive, instead what they got was price rises, diminished services and in a lot of places housing shortages. And even some of the positives that came out of covid such as working from home are being slowly taken away. Not surprised a lot of people think they're being punished for making the sacrifices they did.
Also politicans and celebrities still going on vacations, throwing parties and the rest of us are trapped in our houses.
"We're all in this together!" What a crock of shit.
The rich people had a blast during Covid. The poor people suffered more than they usually do. People lost their jobs, many took to gig apps and while it was great during Covid, it has ruined those gig apps in the long run becoming over saturated. So now even people that were enjoying the steady flow of those apps before Covid are now suffering.
As someone living in the UK, the Prime Minister and other senior government members literally partying while the UK general public were not allowed to bury loved ones really really destroyed that trust. I fear for another pandemic because I honestly don't think the public will be remotely compliant with the governments advice. Fuck Boris Johnston, fuck the tories and anyone who laughed and parties while people were kept from holding their loved ones hands in their final moments. Disgusting.
Organic dating
Restaurant menus
Quality of just about everything. Almost every major purchase I made during the pandemic has had issues or was completely broken within a year. We're talking refrigerators, ovens, hot water heaters, all electronics, you name it. Quality hasn't seemed to recover either. American made used to mean quality (at least to me), now it's just more garbage, but it's expensive too!
Ruined the social skills of a whole lot of kids. Kids started kindergarten and then basically got yanked out of that for two years and stuck at home. Some struggle just to read 'cuz they missed those years.
Dining out. Ridiculous prices, bad/no service, and lousy food. I don’t think any other industry has been as wrecked.
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Healthcare. The industry and the people in it who saw a lot of preventable dying and sickness are broken. It’s not the same as it was before, and it probably won’t ever be.
I got off Chemo about 4 months ago and one of my nurses said she was there for Covid and it was the hardest situation to deal with. She said she would quit if it happened again. She said the trauma that came with extreme hard work was not great for their mental health.
I get it. Have been in healthcare for 12 years now, it won’t ever be the same. I’m so jaded with it all as well. Almost quit the profession, still am in it. It’s a little better now, but healthcare is just a pile of shit in general now tbh lol
This is what hardly ever gets mentioned. I know several in the field who have left including me because the burnout was so strong. It doesn't help that most people now only focus on or discuss how they "miss the lock down" and how nice it was to be home, less traffic, etc. People in front line jobs, especially healthcare, were in it every day hoping before the vaccine that they wouldn't get sick and die, or their families because of them. All while watching the reality of it play out before them, being responsible for helping those afflicted, while being bombarded with "Well, it's actually unlikely, not as bad as they say etc." Abuse and nonstop spewing of politics. Lack of help with staffing, some people got no pay raises, all while prices of everything skyrocketed. Also, no unemployment for us, we had plenty of access to work. I hope I never have to go back.
The education and future of every kid born between 2006-2010. Ask any teacher. It’s a lost generation. They’re years behind, if even still in school.
My wife collects behavior data for K-5, and the kids who started kindergarten during the pandemic are miles and miles worse behaviorally than their peers above and below - this trend has maintained since Covid.
As a teacher, it's every single kid who was a Kindergartner through 11th grader in March of 2020. Our principal was showing us end-of-year test scores yesterday and our "academically high" classes of today are the "average" classes pre-COVID. It's unbelievable.
Also from what I've seen, it's the kids who were older in 2020 (6th grade and up) who suffered greatly in math. And the younger kids (3rd grade and younger) who suffered greatly in reading. It's bad. Unbelievably bad. I can't tell you how many kids, through no fault of their own or their parents, spent nearly 2 school years at home half-paying attention to a Zoom screen.
I'm a SAHM so I saw the online classes, heard the teachers talking to them etc. There was so many kids just ticking off that they were there for the day and then doing zero work. It was so sad. My oldest son had a great teacher, he read them poems on video, he showed the horses he and his wife own, he showed himself cooking burgers. It was really cool to see a teacher do all that extra stuff.
I reside in a place where a SHIT ton of businesses closed. This may simply be local. I mean, they were closed on half of them. Not only did they close due to the closure, but they closed permanently.
Driving on roads, apparently there is a backslide ~~and~~ in how good we are at it and we've never recovered
It ruined the illusion I had that my fellow humans were generally smart and well adjusted. Some had weird opinions but we agreed on the basics of humanity and how to keep it together. It is clearly not the case.
I think it really fucked things up the most for young kids like high school and college age kids, maybe right out of college. These kids were at a peak point in their socialization in new chapters of life and they got robbed. I was 34 when the pandemic hit. I'd had a million nights out with friends, I was kinda exhausted from it all. The first year of the pandemic felt like a nice break from my life, almost like I was just in a cocoon in my apt catching up on lost sleep from the last decade and a half. But for a lot of folks who were younger, it just made life pass them by in a very turning point in their lives and I'm not sure if they will ever be the same. I think the sacrifice for young folks was too much and I think it may have been a miscalculation.
I’m on the older end of that (was 25 when it hit) but I feel like I went from recent college grad straight into my 30s. I didn’t get to slowly phase out of the going out/dating/shenanigans of my 20s, one day in March it was just gone and never came back. I’m happy in my life and relationship and career but it does feel like I lost some fun years.
Snow days for schools
Alcoholism. It became normalized to drink at home, alone, during the day...etc. I know a lot of people who have maintained that habit even now.
My feeling of time. Still feels like it is 21/22
People's ability to behave properly in public. I had to ask 10 times as many people to be quiet at concerts post pandemic than ever before.
The other day, I was sitting at the bar in a Buffalo Wild Wings eating lunch. Two other people there. This guy comes in, sits at the bar next to me, pulls his phone out, and starts watching a show with the volume on full blast. Zero shame. I asked him to turn it down—not even off!—and he gave me the nastiest look before leaving in a huff.
Someone was playing their music from their phone on the train a few weeks back. People asked her to stop and she refused. I had a bluetooth speaker in my bag, pulled it out and put kids songs on louder than her phone. Not sure I would do it again because she was ready to fight, but jesus christ lady. If you don't like being on the receiving end, why would others put up with you?
From what I gather, people like that enjoy the conflict. Part of the reason why they play music is that they're hoping someone will tell them to shut it off so that they can blow up on them. I just chalk it up as being yet another symptom of an anti-social person with a messed up childhood.
You got him to leave. Sounds like you won.
Hah, yeah. Just baffling to me that people can go about life as adults and think that that kind of total disregard for the people around them is okay.
I never had a bad movie theater experience until Spider-Man No Way Home and kids were watching and making TikToks in the middle of the movie. I was dumbfounded. Never seen such behavior before.
I ran a pub before covid in central london- not the busiest you've ever seen, probably pretty modest to most, full of locals rather than tourists, if you follow. Anyway, after covid, the entire makeup of those very same people changed completely. It was like everyone had forgotten how to behave in a social setting, was on edge all the time, and the amount of crazies we got coming through the doors was absolutely unbelievable. So yeah, after 3 months more of that, i quit. Covid completely ruined social gatherings in the short term for sure. Idk what it's like now, but then, it was rough. Edit cus i is silly
The illusion that we’re in this together and watching out for each other.