AIBU to think Covid has brought out the worst in a lot of people?!

[carriebradshawwithlessshoes]

Pre Covid we lived a fairly mundane line with very few/ no spats with anyone (certainly not with strangers.)

This morning in our (very quiet) local store I bumped into someone I hadn’t seen for ages. We stood to one side for a brief word (wearing masks.) Suddenly was descended upon by an incensed with purple rage staff member shouting at us NOT to talk in the store and to leave if we wanted to speak and stand in the street.

On walking in the middle of nowhere with my 2 young kids (out in the countryside) and an elderly relative got shouted at by some random middle aged couple ‘did we not understand fucking Covid rules??’ Because as we smiled and stepped back to let them pass over a bridge (how rude of us) we obviously did not stand back quite far enough?

On walking round a corner on a pinch point with my little boy with SEN a young woman coming the other way dramatically jumped into the road away from us so that she was not passing us on the pavement and shouted ‘well thank you very much!! ‘

On going for a walk having to listen to an older couple behind me saying loudly why were all these families out, why couldn’t they stay at home with their bloody kids who had probably got Covid from school etc etc.

Is the world going mad?? I’ve never had a cross word with anyone pretty much then all this!!

Anyone else??!

Yanbu. It's calmed down where I live now but where I live last year the behaviour was just downright dangerous. People would step out into a busy road with lots of corners without looking in order to stay 2 fucking metres apart from each other. As if that's safer than potentially being hit by a car going at 35mph. Absolutely crazy.

I wish I had Worra… I feel like it’s time to 🤣🤣🤣

Swift… sorry, that’s made me laugh! Maybe my experiences aren’t that bad!!

I live in a "village" where covid has just infiltrated some 20 months later. You'd think it was March 2020 here. Last week we had some wound up woman loudly commenting to the post office clerk about my exempt, non mask wearing husband. As it happens, the post office clerk just looked confused and uneasy as he wasn't wearing a mask either. Leaving aside the discrimination and maybe having some consideration for others, what about common sense anyone? We are standing minding our own business a distance away. Does she really think that covid is going to jump off him and infect her just because he isn't wearing a mask? So, vaccination won't protect her but a flimsy cloth mask will? Really?

I have really gone off people during covid.

I go to London a few times a week and breathe a sigh of relief. Where life is normal. aaaaahhhhh.

@carriebradshawwithlessshoes

It is like Covid has given people free range to be as rude as they like to anyone they feel like being rude to! As if things aren’t bad enough anyway! 🙄🙄

The saddest thing OP, is that people probably won’t have an end date for the anxiety or rude/entitled behaviour that’s grown over last couple of years. It’s really sad to have people stepping away from you on pavenments- I have that here because they are wearing masks outdoors in the fresh air and I, the horror that I am, have no mask on and a small child with me who is getting some fresh air and exercise. Sigh.

I am always so disappointed things like this don't happen to me. I flipping love confrontation and would be putting these people firmly in their place.

That's a fair point. I'm always up for a heated debate bit it rarely happens where I live. A one in 10 year event.😂

You two 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣. Come over to ours! 🤣🤣🤣

I also feel like we’re encountering weird people again.

We went to an art gallery, 2 kids and I were looking at a painting and a woman stood alongside us, noticed us and shouted ‘too close, too close!’ while starting to dance on the spot. Ok, whatever. She then proceeded to turn up for the next 15min however and do the same thing at multiple paintings! We were easy to avoid, but no- drama was needed. Pre-2020 I think you’d be asked to leave a gallery if you kept squeaking and bouncing on the spot while clutching at your collar! I ended up shouting at her finally when she suddenly marched across the room to my 5 yr old (we’d started to consciously stand the other side of the gallery, child was stature still studying a picture) and started to tell her she was close. I just said ‘stop harassing the child! You are harassing us!’, she practically flung herself at the door in a flounce at that.
Very smartly dressed middle aged white woman, no impression it was anything more than self-righteous nasty pompous behaviour.

My personal favourite of the whole Covid nuttiness were the two ladies who starting swearing at us for being in the forest. At children. They reckoned 1. We were too close (as I said FOREST, not even on a path, they approached us sitting in a clearing 2. ‘The whole fucking forest will be ruined by people coming to the forest. Fucking spoilt by selfish people. Fucking SCUM’. We live on a road alongside forest land and we’re within a 5-10min walk from the house. This was two otherwise normal looking women in their 30s.

I think a lot of people were arseholes before covid.
I prefer dogs, I know where I am with dogs. 😂

I felt irrationally annoyed at a guy stopping and turning his face away to me on the pavement a couple of weeks ago (so before Omicron was a thing). I was walking, not running, and I just wondered why he thought I was going to give him covid, outside, on a reasonably wide pavement. I didn't say anything, just carried on. Oh well. There's nowt as queer as folk as the saying goes.

away from me

You’ve come across some very rude people!

The couple who think everyone with kids should stay in, wtf? Would they have just enjoyed staying in all the time as kids? Or were they happily roaming about the place in a carefree 1950s world where kids had loads of freedom?

@TheViewFromTheCheapSeats

My personal favourite of the whole Covid nuttiness were the two ladies who starting swearing at us for being in the forest. At children. They reckoned 1. We were too close (as I said FOREST, not even on a path, they approached us sitting in a clearing 2. ‘The whole fucking forest will be ruined by people coming to the forest. Fucking spoilt by selfish people. Fucking SCUM’. We live on a road alongside forest land and we’re within a 5-10min walk from the house. This was two otherwise normal looking women in their 30s.

I'd have just said "if you are referring to us, we live here. Do you?" and carried on.

Well, I felt bad yesterday, (not really) I had to take one of my cats to the vet,he has injured a back leg, I had my mask on in the vets, as did three other people waiting to be seen.. Another woman walked in, with a carrier, she was masked up, she peered into my cat carrier, and frowned. I could see her little dog in his carrier, and he had a mask round his little face and mouth.! I think she thought that I should have masked up my cat too.!

Ok I’m reassured now it’s not just where I live….!

1for… omg!! But you mean you didn’t?? 🤣🤣

Literally NO-ONE has said anything like this to me throughout the entire pandemic. Very bizarre.
But people I know in more 'genteel' and or/ provincial areas report this sort of thing on Fb groups etc I'm in.
Makes me very glad I live in the smoke tbh.

@rhowton

I am always so disappointed things like this don't happen to me. I flipping love confrontation and would be putting these people firmly in their place.

Me too

I’m happy to get flamed on this one but a genuine question (just be polite)… if you are in a shop and bump into someone who says hi Carrie! How are you?? What you up to? On the basis you are not

1. Blocking the biscuit aisle
2. Blocking any aisle and if you are blocking somewhere you are prepared to move on with a polite ‘excuse me can I get to the…’
3. Able due to time or other restrictions to move on to Costa

Is it such a heinous crime to talk (masked, obviously at the moment??!!!). What’s the alternative?? Oh I can’t talk we are in a shop! Step outside in the pouring rain, we can chat there??

I see people in shops chatting all the time it doesn’t bother me at all unless they are in the way in which case you usually get a smile and an apology if you ask them to step to one side so you can reach your biscuits.

Far more things irritate me every day (crap driving, people parking an inch away from my car) and so on. It’s not something I get my knickers in a knot about?!!!!

And if it’s due to Covid obviously we can all sit, currently unmasked, in Costa?!!!

If anything where I live people have started saying hello and smiling at each other even more often since covid. We went for a walk today and on the way up / down the hill everyone just politely stepped aside for each other while saying hello / good day for it.

@fakereview you would engage? We just ignored until they went away 😂