To be sick of companies using “because of Covid” by now?!

[Hotair1234]

Ok, light hearted (ish!) but seriously??

AIBU to think that 18 months on, three lockdowns, and a highly successful vaccine program then companies who are brazenly using “because of Covid” are now just doing it because it worked out better for them?!

Example: local bank reduced opening hours to 10-3 because of Covid! So customers had a smaller window to go in and therefore would be more densely together but staff costs were reduced and the bank saw this as public safety?

My latest sighting: Finally got back to the pool which I seriously missed during all the lockdowns - people dipping themselves in bleach, what could be cleaner but hey, that’s a different thread!

Have to schedule the time to arrive, no issue. Can’t go into the building until five minutes before your booking, ok with that. Did mean you then had to pass everyone leaving the pool down a narrow corridor, ok less impressed, but the clincher was getting out of the pool and, having long hair, headed straight to the showers to find they were all taped off - no showers, “because of Covid”!!!

A) they’re cubicles so literally separated, close every other one of it’s a genuine concern but B) you don’t want people to WASH in order to avoid Covid?! How’s that?!

Come on mumsnet, I’m sure there are other businesses who can put stupid that, help me feel sane again.....examples??

I posted the other day about going into my bank and being told by the person stood in front of me that she wasn't seeing people face to face and to go home and make a telephone appointment with her. I took my business to another bank that day and emptied my account, not that they care, but it felt good.

I know it’s not technically a business but I’m sick of the GPs triage system because of Covid. I’ve not been able to see a GP for 18 months now. It’s a phone on the day for an appointment, you have to describe your symptoms to the receptionist who is a horror then she tells you to wait by your phone all day and someone will call you back. At sometime during the day, of course people work, if you can’t answer straight away that’s that. I can sometimes make it and jump out of class and discuss my personal problems in the corridor! My GP wants me to call her every month I can’t take a day off work every month to wait by the phone so what am I to do?

There are still copious guidelines and risk assessments businesses/organisations have to follow

Yep l have been bored of it for a while and cynically think it’s going to go on for a lot longer. Where l work little has changed and we are actually busier

I wonder if showers not being accessible yet in public swimming pools is due to some additional risk? Maybe it causes increased humidity in the changing room environment that in turn aids viability/transmission of virus particles.

In my line of work, I rely on contractors and also volunteers, all of them are still using 'because of covid' therefore I have to.

@Theoscargoesto

But also was cleaning not a thing pre Covid? Surely we were all vulnerable to flu and other viruses (norovirus for one) so things had to be and were cleaned?

Yes but we weren't cleaning in the way that things have to be cleaned currently 'because Covid'. It wasn't/isn't flu or norovirus. All the extra cleaning that has to be done to meet regulations. If it can't be done to that standard then what?

Supermarkets having to take staff away from their usual roles to clean trolley and basket handles, cleaning the self service tills between customers (Wilko's).

Maybe there are a minority who are using it as an excuse, I must be pretty lucky that I haven't been inconvenienced as yet. Vote with your feet would be my advice.

Every company has had to make changes, but as I said hopefully it's not for too much longer.

@ineedaholidaynow

There are still copious guidelines and risk assessments businesses/organisations have to follow

Exactly. And there's also authorities that go round checking up that everything is being adhered to.

@Hotair1234 100% agree with you!

In respect of cleaning an example at schools is that between year group sittings in the dining hall, tables etc have to be wiped down, the next year group don’t just pile in like they used to. Toilets are cleaned more regularly (sometimes by teachers if schools can’t afford additional cleaning costs).

Many resources are not shared between pupils. In Early Years many of the resources are used on a rota so they can be cleaned thoroughly in between uses or quarantined for 72 hours.

In our scout group we have closed off the kitchen. Children bring in their own drinks and snacks. If they were to go into the kitchen and rummage through the cutlery drawer, we would have to wash everything.

All these measures are probably preventing or reducing other things like norovirus.

Summerfun eh?

That wasn't what I meant at all.
I meant totally the opposite.
Loads of companies, organisations and individuals are offering us, Joe public a poorer service and getting away with it, blaming covid.

Some people are inherently lazy and covid has allowed them to do less, blaming it on covid.

Plus, for example, some people working from home are doing less work!
Some mums were telling me they are doing a lot less work. For big companies like Tesco or GlaxoSmith, They are taking children to school stopping off at Costa for a coffee with a friend but still logging on and admit they're doing less work and putting a load of washing on and it's just much easier ride.

I recently had a frozen shoulder operation and my surgeon was absolutely livid and has complained to both the hospital and all is governing bodies about how the NHS physios were not doing face-to-face time work on the NHS. however the same physios who are employed privately would do the face-to-face time paying privately paid and he was complaining how his patients who are having operations were not been seen face-to-face by NHS physios, which they should be. He himself was not happy with this.

There are lots of areas that people have taken advantage. You must've read some of the threads on the Corona topic to know this.

Some GP surgeries still not doing any f-2-f, at all. None. Unacceptable.

My father-in-law had prostate cancer and all Follow-up clinics were cancelled, completely, for 18 months, and my mum complained to to her GP questioning why some clinics could not do phone calls, zoom calls anything, only to be told that they just couldn't.

NHS has been great. But certain areas of it , some of the clinics have simply got away with not doing work that should've been done. and that's a fact.

@StamfordHill

I really feel bad for Barclays Bank employees. It used to be a bank holiday meant a full day's holiday. Nowadays it's what, two hours fewer than their usual work day (of two hours)?

My nearest Barclays is open 9.30am-4.30pm on a Monday.

Exactly how does Covid mean McDonald’s can’t have porridge on their breakfast menu again? I have a real bee in my bonnet about this because I can’t make porridge to save my life.

Maybe some of these employees took a pay cut as not working as many hours. That might have been offered instead of redundancy

@Catswithflamingos

Exactly how does Covid mean McDonald’s can’t have porridge on their breakfast menu again? I have a real bee in my bonnet about this because I can’t make porridge to save my life.

Presumably they can have fewer employees working in the same space (social distancing) so they've reduced the menu to the more popular orders to take this into account?

I think for businesses there are a few issues.

The main one is that every business is bending over backwards to be Covid secure and reduce risk even where the risk is minimal because no one wants to be closed down by the council or sued by a member of the public for not put being Covid secure and as those court cases haven't happened yet it's hard to know how big a risk that is so they're erring on the side of caution.

Showers at public pools are closed because it encourages people to get dressed and out quickly reducing the amount of time people are milling around in the changing rooms. They are booking 1 x 40-45 min session every hour, then they need everyone from that session out before the next one arrives.

Then self isolating is culling huge proportions of a team at once, and when your forecasting your staffing for next week you have no way of knowing if half your team might suddenly call in sick for 2 weeks so they have to plan shorter opening hours to allow for staff cover.

I don't have a problem with a lot of things "because of covid", but what I am absolutely sick to the back teeth of is shit customer service "because of covid" 12 months later.

This is where I think companies are taking the piss. They've had over 12 months to get their acts together and haven't.

My local post office is also a cafe. You have to wear masks and socially distance in the post office but not the cafe

Yanbu its really annoying me.

I’m on a forum for dentists and every day there is a dentist wondering when we will be allowed to relax our incredibly strict standard operating procedure. It is set by the Chief Dental Officer so individual practices have little say.
I dress up like I’m about to do an endoscopy on a Covid positive patient to do a filling on a healthy double vaccinated 75 year old. All but the masks to protect me, also double vaccinated.
Meanwhile I have just had Covid caught from DS who caught it at school. I don’t double mask around him funnily enough.

Why can't I get a Half and Half Pizza from Dominos?

Whhhhhhhy??

@leftout1

Why can't I get a Half and Half Pizza from Dominos?

Whhhhhhhy??

Same reason as the McDonalds porridge I assume. Fewer staff allowed in the same space (social distancing is still a thing)=reduced/simpler menu offerings.

The main problem is that companies have strict rules they have to comply with to be "Covid compliant" but because the rules are very broad and haven't been designed to differentiate between different set ups in the same area then it often appears that rules are arbitrary and or inconsistent when actually they are being universally applied but the impact of the application is inconsistent.

I work in a supermarket and we have a million and one rules that we have to follow to be a covid safe workplace, some of which seem stupid but actually make sense if they're explained, but we don't have time to explain every rule to every customer half of whom don't give a shit and just want to complain that you can't get the moon on a stick for them anyway

Take our clothing department - our changing rooms are closed (and have been for over a year) which means you cannot try on clothes in store but you can buy them and then return them if they aren't right. People were complaining that it was illogical for us to not let people try on clothes in store but they can take them home instead.

The changing rooms are closed for 2 main reasons 1) we do not have the staff available to ensure there is someone there to fully clean down every cubicle between people trying on clothes (which would be a requirement of having them opened) and 2) we need the space to store the clothes that are being returned and if they were open then we would have had nowhere to securely store all the stuff we had to quarantine.

If you buy and return things then we can quarantine the items you have tried on (now only for 24hrs but previously it was up to 72hrs) and they are wiped down with sanitiser (where appropriate) whereas if you are trying stuff on in store then we have to quarantine everything you have taken into the changing room, whether you buy them or not and it basically means all our inventory is being quarantined rather than being available for purchase.

In the summer when everyone was buying uniform, if we let people take the 4/5 pairs of trousers and 2/3 sizes of shirts into the changing room "just in case" then by the end of the day we would have literally had no stock on the floor. People would then complain that we didn't have the stock since we would not be sent new stuff whe we still had the items in store even though they weren't allowed to be sold. By having to buy/return then people were maybe buying 1or 2 pairs of trousers which meant more stock was available and meant that the items being quarantined were staggered so that we had a regular rotation.

It also meant that we only needed to have staff in the clothing department for shorter hours to process the returns into the quarantine, rotate out the items to be returned to the shop floor and put out new stock. This then meant they were available to cover other areas where we were short staffed - due to CEV colleagues who were shielding, those shielding because of CEV relatives in their household, people having to be moved to different roles, people doing different hours due to caring/childcare issues, those who were told to isolate from track and trace etcetc.

All the customer see is "changing rooms are closed" but they don't see all the logistics that have gone in behind the scenes to explain why they have to be closed.

Come on guys, lighthearted fun poking!

Yes of course it’s hard for everyone at work, everyone knows this. Not meant to go over old ground a hundredth time, just looking for examples of piss taking. Showers closed - piss taking. Free toilets closed but chargeable open - yes the virus knows not to infect fee payers! Thanks councils :)

Half and half pizza made me laugh!

It’s been too easy for people to say Covid and expect understanding because we all do understand - mostly! But come oooon! Give a girl a half and half pizza fgs!!!