Seemingly bonkers covid measures (lighthearted)

[WhoIsH]

Today I went to buy new running shoes. Had to put those plastic shoe covering things over my socks before I could try the trainers on. Because covid is clearly renowned for hiding on people's socks but touching the trainers etc is clearly OK.

Any others?

Many excellent examples. Not being able to have a school photo with a sibling seems particularly annoying

@HerMammy

I’ve been irritated for months by Sainsbury’s system of shutting off the bottom of aisles and channelling everyone down two aisles to checkouts and into a cordoned queue. So everyone is forced into a confined space rather than spaced out 🤷🏼‍♀️

This must be a local store decision because I haven't seen it in the Sainsburys near us.

This thread does show how much restrictions can just be local arbitrariness. No toilers have been closed in our shopping centre and no cubicles blocked off. There is also still seating available.

@WhoIsH

Many excellent examples. Not being able to have a school photo with a sibling seems particularly annoying

And DD is a prefect. The prefects supervise the smaller ones at lunch etc and man/woman the tuck shop. So it’s not like they never encounter eachother at school. It’s a small school, it would have been easily doable

Reduction in toilets. I found this especially last year, mainly at National trusts where they would shut a whole block of toilets and make everyone queue up at just one block. Surely that would have the opposite effect. Found this to be true in a popular seaside town we visited. Had to walk miles to a block of toilets as the one closest to us was closed in the name of covid.

My local Tesco has one very wide entrance/exit, accessed via 2 external doors either side of a sort of foyer. Pre-Covid you could enter/exit through any door. Now they have, understandably, allocated one of the external doors exit and one entry and put barrier in the middle of the internal door so half is entry, half exit.

Unfortunately, the entry door is now on the right, nearest to the tills and the exit on the left. So people leaving the shop have to come from the right, across people entering, to leave through the left hand door. There is a security guard who seems to spend his whole day explaining the system to people using the 'wrong' side of the door. If the entry/exit were reversed everything would run more smoothly, people would be able to distance better and the guard would have an easier time. But apparently this is 'policy'. To make matters worse, the clean trollies are next to the exit door.

A piece of international lunacy - Britain doesn't have a monopoly on crazy rules.
When I live if you want to go in non-essential shops you have to make an appointment AND show a negative lateral flow test from that day. For 'essential' shops (supermarkets, chemists etc) you just walk in, subject to maximum capacity.
But some intellectual type has designated bookshops as essential, so it's really easy to get chick lit and a birthday card, but buying a printer cartridge that I desperately and urgently needed for work was a massive hassle (used click and collect in the end). A children's shoe shop is also apparently less important than books. That's not much help if your DC have had a growth spurt. And our local fancy chocolate shop is also 'essential' because it sells food! Bonkers rules. I have nothing against books snd choccy, just think that other things have a stronger case for being essential.

Every other swing removed and all the seating inside the children's park but all the other benches outside the children's park are still there.

Local shop has a dead end in their one way system so if you go into the alcohol section you can't ever leave. You still get shouted at if you walk the wrong way.

School bubbles (very small school only 2 classes) there is 3 teachers/ta's that have one of their own children in the the other bubble (or both) and a lot of the children have a sibling in the other class. We all stand 2 metres apart on the school grounds with masks and then the parents congregate on the public road to talk without masks.

A mum and dad living together cant stand outside together and watch their child play football yet 6 adults from different house hoods can go to the pub.

You cant catch covid outside only in groups over 6.

Masks work fine for driving lessons side by side but not at funerals.

Kids wearing masks in class then a free for all in the canteen with 100s of other kids.

Tradesmen can go to loads of different houses but no one can have a friend over for a cuppa.

The list goes on and on.....

Another one. Off licenses which just serve alcohol were classed as essential and open but I couldn't go to a shoe shop to get my daughter's feet measured and buy her some decent shoes!

At DS's school they had to wear PE kits all day so they didn't use the changing rooms

Until school decided too many kids were flouting the rules so only year 10's now can use the changing

A PP speculated about the dismantling of bonkers rules once the pandemic is over- I reckon some random rules in random places will just stay the same forever and the "because covid" original nonsplanation will be lost in the mists of time.

@powershowerforanhour just wanted to say I've never heard 'nonsplanation' before but I love it and will be using it in the future

@oppositeofbubbly

My local Tesco has one very wide entrance/exit, accessed via 2 external doors either side of a sort of foyer. Pre-Covid you could enter/exit through any door. Now they have, understandably, allocated one of the external doors exit and one entry and put barrier in the middle of the internal door so half is entry, half exit.

Unfortunately, the entry door is now on the right, nearest to the tills and the exit on the left. So people leaving the shop have to come from the right, across people entering, to leave through the left hand door. There is a security guard who seems to spend his whole day explaining the system to people using the 'wrong' side of the door. If the entry/exit were reversed everything would run more smoothly, people would be able to distance better and the guard would have an easier time. But apparently this is 'policy'. To make matters worse, the clean trollies are next to the exit door.

My local tesco and ASDA do this! It drives me mad. It causes such a backlog and build up of people. Just swap them around!

@SellFridges

I think primary kids wearing PE kit to school is a bizarre one. Does the virus live on unworn shorts but not those already on a child?

I believe in secondary it’s about changing space, but given they’re not distancing in other classes I can’t see how the changing room makes a difference.

As a teacher I love this one! So much easier and it leaves more time for the actual lesson!

I'm CEV so when I go to hospital I wear a properly fitted mask with filter so 3 layers plus filter. I have to take it off and wear a giant paper one with gaps all round it that's one layer
I refused last time and wore the paper one over my mask so 4 layers nearly passed out

DSD (primary age) not being allowed to carry a school bag meaning that she has to carry her water bottle in one hand and homework book in another. Also annoying for not being able to take things she needs for her mums house into school on a day she is with us in the morning and going to her mums after school and vice versa.

Also midwife appointments - have to wear a mask in a small room with the midwife but she still wants me to blow vigorously into a small machine to prove I don’t smoke.

In a shop in our town there's 2 meter markers on the floor for queueing, but there's also two side-by-side tills that are no more than a meter apart and to get to the further one you have to pass within about a foot behind of the person on the nearer till because there is a shelving aisle behind you 🙄

Apologies for the mixed metric/imperial measurements there, btw, it's how my brain now thinks

Our school has a big double gate at the front of the playground.
Always fully open at home time (in pre covid times) it's a lovely big 10-12ft gap.

Then covid happens and they decide from then on that one of the gates need to be shut at all times, reducing the gap to around 3-4ft
(it's one of those with uneven length gates, one side is 2 thirds of the gap and the other is 1 third of the gap, iyswim)

So, that's 116 kids, plus parents, trying to filter through a 3ft gap at home time. Trying to go both in and out too, because of the staggered finish time … absolute chaos.
One day after standing there like a tit for bloody ages and being all polite by allowing parents coming towards me through the gate first, I said sod it and opened the other side myself.
I got told off via the medium of the Friday newsletter and told the gate must stay closed 😂

Closing every other changing room at the swimming pool makes more sense than what they've done at our pool which is just to close one half of the changing room. So increased chance of someone having just vacated the cubicle and increased chance that someone will be changing in the cubicle next door.

Closing all the tills bar one at the supermarket to encourage you to us the self service checkout because its safer, however, the touch screens are never wiped inbetween uses 🤷‍♀️

At our school parents are no long allowed to wait in the big wide open area out the front of the school, but instead have to wait crammed together on the narrow path just the other side of the gates.

The process is that each class comes out in turn and the kids line up. At that time the parents of the child first in line are permitted to approach down one side of the safety tape whilst their child walks up to meet them on the other side. In the middle is a cross over point where the parent meets their child and then walks back. Whilst this is happening the parent of the second child can then approach and so on.

Obviously its total carnage with parents trying to see which class are out and what kid will be released next.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are many advantages to kids wearing PE kit all day. At primary I think joggers and a hoody would be much more practical uniform anyway. But it’s sod all to do with Covid 🤷‍♀️

(Our school don’t do it, but the local secondary does and Year 9 PE day is like a fashion parade).

The pointless Covid theatre of ostentatious cleaning of everything even though we now know the risk of surface transmission is minimal. Fine at the start when no-one knew how Covid was transmitted, but for the love of God drop the pointless advice now! (At my workplace it’s taxpayers’ money being spent on it, and we’re slavishly sticking to the PHE advice to reassure everyone, so till they change the official advice we’re stuck. Can you tell this is really annoying me?)