To think that customers / members of the public have become increasingly rude post Covid?

Yes, I e noticed this. I wonder if it’s also social media and all the self help that’s out there about boundaries etc and people are also sick of being so accommodating and now feel they have a right to say what they want in the name of self care and exerting boundaries and it just comes across as rude. Also, I think there is a huge metal health fall out from Covid which just seems to be getting ignored by the Government.

"completely transparent about the difficulties our organisation / service is facing"

The reality is your clients don't give a fig if you're down by 80% on team members, they want to know what you're going to do about their service / report etc.

Expectation management needs to be started and up front when your services we are being engaged.

"Thank you for your booking / request / report. At this time, reports are taking x weeks for delivery, which starts from today and the product will be sent out as close to the anticipated date as possible. You will be kept informed of any changes to this date".

It sounds like management of expectations early in this process is missing. Take that up to management - it requires a review and action of some variety.

I wonder if the lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing caused us all to become more detached from each other. The lack of things like casual chat left a void in day to day life.

Some people could be taking longer to go back to normal than others and for some this detachment could be permanent for them.

I think its a number of things.

Firstly, there's a huge loss of social interaction. Partly this is caused by WFH, but its also proximity to people in general. If you live on your own, and work from home, even doing your weekly shop now means that you're not interacting with anyone. Using a self-service checkout means you don't have those face-to-face interactions anymore, which means we're all losing our social skills.

But also, businesses aren't helping matters. Remember back in the day when Tesco (I think) had an entire advertising campaign saying if more than one person was in front of you in the queue they would open another till point? Not to much these days. I went to ASDA a few weeks ago, they only have one regular till open now - they want you to put week shops through their self-service desks. But the volumne of shoppers means that often the handheld devices are unavailable - or charging. When I went, the devices weren't working, so there was 9 of us in the queue for one open till - all of us had done the "big shop"

The lack of care or interest from staff was ridiculous. There were three staff members hanging around - clearly they were the "floating members of staff" who grab things, but it wouldn't have taken any initiative at all for each of them to jump on a till and serve some customers to get that queue down. I assume they weren't allowed for whatever reason, but it does show why customers are getting ratty.

But also call centres are still regularly banging on about "unexpected call queues" - no, they are entirely expected, you just can't be arsed to do anything about it.

I'm not so sure it's covid's fault as much as people having increasingly less patience in an instant gratification world. That combined with more places being short-staffed and it's not a good picture. Of course never acceptable to be arsey to people trying to help you, especially if they are short staffed (I always try to be understanding of that and show it when you can see someone is straggling).

I think people generally have higher expectations/ sense of entitlement for many reasons. Some are very selfish.
I see it myself at work (frontline NHS) and observe it for example in shops.

I very politely call it out if a patient is being rude. I was in a situation recently and I explained (when it had calmed down) that it had been very unsettling for me and this shouldn’t be what I am subjected to when providing a good service. The person was shocked that I had addressed it and apologised. The behaviour they displayed was not due to the health issue I was supporting with.

Blame your bosses for reducing staff numbers and giving no other recourse to complain about poor service except to front line staff.

Yup! I've noticed it with patients too (normally during bank shifts tbf). My husband is a teacher and he's noticed a huge difference!

Covid has definitely changed peoples perceptions od what is socially acceptable now I think.

More complaints because service is worse and more expensive

Definitely. Rude and also less considerate of public sapces in general. People seem to have forgotten that we all need to behave in a certain way in public to make the public space pleasant and tolerable for everyone else.

It's not just rudeness, but other things that impinge on the public space to its detriment. Examples from my daily life in recent weeks: loud music being played on speakerphone on trains; people putting their feet up on bus seats; people strentching out on park benches with shoes and socks off; people eating hot spicy and smelly food in the cinema (this one really flummoxed me; why would you take a hot takeaway meal into the cinema? You can't even see what you're eating!!); queue jumping; pushing past without an excuse me; entire cartons of leftover takeaway food being dropped, food, carton and all, on public pathways.

I think it's a combination of covid, loss of trust/pride in share spaces, and also everyone being on their phones which means they're less aware and therefore less respectful of the physical world around them.

The public are pissed off and angry and need a dog to kick and unfortunately customer facing staff are it because there are little or no concequences for doing it.

There'll be a whole host of "It's never ok to abuse someone but......(Insert excuse here)" justifying it, or deflecting it back and saying that so many customer service people are rude, or over reacting to 'constructive criticism'.

It's mainly because people have identified a target they can vent their frustrations on with no repercussions.

I’m becoming increasingly weary, over four years down the line, of companies still using “staff disruption at this difficult time” as an excuse for their poor service, when it’s really down to WFH arrangements lowering productivity, or understaffing, or just general poor business practices. I’m never rude to employees about it, but I can see how spending up to an hour waiting in a queue and being told their wait is apparently due to Covid-related issues might drive some people to saltiness.