To be so utterly fed up of things being shit “because Covid”?

[Marianne1234]

“Covid measures” just so the organisation in question is seen to be doing something, even if it is pointless? Or just an excuse to reduce the service you get?

Masks in the school playground at pick up. It’s a big outdoor space. We don’t get anywhere near the building or teacher (I wouldn’t know my 7 year old’s teacher if she was in my soup). Forget your mask and you don’t get in the gate.

Hairdresser the other day - no tea/coffee. No magazines. Not even the table thing in front of you. Chair, mirror, with each hair dresser having a wheelie trolley thing.

Morrisons cafe - no menus??? No touch screen ordering at the entrance which saves a lot of time.

I’m so fed up of hearing “coz Covid” to justify cutbacks and crap service. It makes me wonder if little things like this will ever go back to normal. I’m not optimistic.

HUUUGE pools limited to 20 people max in there. When I could take my class of 30 swimming this week for their lesson.

I was saying this in the week to a relative.

Getting a vet appointment is ridiculously hard. It hasn’t got better at all since things have been getting back to normal.

Also annoying that many shops/banks haven’t gone back to their normal hours yet.

Oh and on the changing rooms thing - I volunteer in a charity shop which is part of a large chain. We have been told that we don't have to keep the changing room closed, but that it has to be sanitised and wiped down, top to bottom, every time someone uses it. We just don't have enough people to do that, so it stays closed.

Harvester - can't get your own salad from the cart. Have to queue up with lots of other people and wait ages.

When you'd be there less time and with less people just doing it yourself.

@theusuall

I hate that you can't do anything on the spur of the moment anymore. You have to pre-book absolutely everything, cause Covid.

This too!! I've been out twice in the last month (both unplanned) one a bistro type place and the other a bar. Both times I've been hounded the second I walk in the door DO YOU HAVE A BOOKING????

No? Do I need one?

Ummm. Let me check.

They come back and explain you can come in as if you're doing a massive favour. I've also had to prove to them I've filled in the correct details on track & trace, not even allowed to walk 3 feet so you can sit down and take your mask off to fill it in.

I decided after the second time this was probably "the new normal" and I don't want any part of it. Invested in a naice coffee machine, an air fryer, and an ice crusher and I'll be doing all my socialising at home now.

Hope the lot of them close down. Honestly, fuck them.

This is the thing, businesses are going to put themselves out of business with this nonsense - people will understandably walk away from being treated like this

The never being able to go anywhere near your child’s teacher is so frustrating. You can’t just drop a quick word about your child, you have to email the office, hope it’s got through etc. So tricky.

My GP and Dentist have been totally back to normal apart from masks for months now, my hairdresser was mostly back to normal with coffee/magazines etc months ago and is now mask free unless a customer requests their stylist is masked. However at work this Christmas we weren't allowed a Christmas tree, I'm not sure about anyone else but we don't go around licking or rubbing ourselves up against the tree, we are neither toddlers nor cats!

@Recycledblonde

My GP and Dentist have been totally back to normal apart from masks for months now, my hairdresser was mostly back to normal with coffee/magazines etc months ago and is now mask free unless a customer requests their stylist is masked. However at work this Christmas we weren't allowed a Christmas tree, I'm not sure about anyone else but we don't go around licking or rubbing ourselves up against the tree, we are neither toddlers nor cats!

It's just the bizarre random and unscientific nature of all these stupid little piddling random restrictions which are neither needed nor justified that has to stop

As far as I am concerned life has been pretty much back to normal for a long time.
Not in Wales unfortunately. Our rule of 6 only finished on Friday, and my children's sports class is only just restarting next week because of indoor restrictions.

I agree the lack of spontaneity has been really annoying. Not being able to just decide on a farm park or museum trip in the morning!

@DrMadelineMaxwell

A lot of stuff seems to be more normal, despite being in Wales where masks are still a thing, and we've just been back to the rule of 6 in hospitality etc.

But DD's provisional license took 5 months to come through.

And there's no way to go swimming here if you just want to go for a swim. None of the local pools are open in the evenings and if they are open in the weekend then it's for family pod swimming so they don't want single swimmers.

We’ve found the opposite with swimming - our local pools are just open for lessons and lane swimming only. If you want to take your child along to have a bit of fun in the water you can’t do it around here.

@2holibobssofar

My DH was caught and fined driving into a ‘bus gate’ which is a barely noticeable notice on the road, where previously you could always drive over. Over 30,000 people have been caught and fined so far over a few months. It’s not a permanent feature and will be removed. It’s in place currently ‘due to covid’.

@2holibobssofar that wouldn't be in Derby by any chance would it?

@Lilifer

Of course not so easy to do that with public services such as councils etc

That's where the main problems are. My son still has few F2F lectures ar Uni "due to covid", fewer buses & trains, shorter trains and taped off areas, ticket offices closed, waiting rooms/toilets closed, our town hall is closed, fewer skips at our local tip, council pool on reduced opening hours, local GP surgery barely ever open. It's relentless. At least businesses, especially small ones are mostly back to normal-ish - public sector seem months behind the curve of getting back to providing services (no doubt because they get paid whether they provide the services or not) whereas small businesses have to work to earn the money.

@JassyRadlett. If it wasn't an events venus that did this for a living, then I'd have more sympathy.

But this guy was covered in tattoos, had the outfit on back to front, was wearing trainers and had a black bin liner.....'coz Covid'

I waited five months last year for a refund for an event that had had to be cancelled due to covid. The refund apparently took so long ‘because of covid.’

This was just a few weeks ago at Harvester. I booked a table for 9- I phoned ahead before we set off to ensure it was still ok.
When we got there the hostess led us to two tables, by themselves in an alcove the shape of a T with a huge gap in between. She said we couldn't join them together "because of covid." It was ludicrous (and the tables would have fit together fine with plenty of room around them for servers to manoeuvre).

@Proudplantowner

I've been trying to make a joint account at Barclays with my partner for about a month. For some reason they can't verify his identity online, despite him having held an account with them for over 20 years. You are told to go into a branch, only to get there and be told you have to queue to make an appointment. After an hour you give up and go back the next day at 8:30am, for them to say they don't make appointments in advance. Whoever you speak to in the chat feature tells you to go into branch or use video banking, which cuts off whenever you get to 20th in the queue. It is an absolute joke. I just want to see a human for 20 minutes who can help!

I got locked out of my Barclay's account and it was a complete nightmare trying to speak to an actual human. I was holding listening to 'your call is important to us, please bear with us in these challenging times' for 45 minutes or an hour at a time, and then my phone battery just gave up. When I did finally get through to a human, my issue was resolved very quickly, which made it all the more frustrating.

Mind you, this was more or less at the height of the pandemic, so maybe understandable. If they're still like that now, then that's really rubbish. Previously, I had found Barclay's service to be pretty good.

Vets have been particularly ridiculous ime - Christ knows why - getting through the doors is harder than fort knox and the pay machine has wrapped in elaborate plastic coating - Christ knows how the people in supermarkets have coped

We went to one of the first big football matches after crowds were allowed again. Online booking system was for every alternate seat to be bookable, so we booked 2 seats, with an empty between, and an empty seat each side of us. We travelled down in a car together, stayed in a hotel room overnight together, had a meal together, got the tube together, but the crazy stewards in the stadium wouldn't let us sit on adjacent seats. Even more stupid that they were completely ignoring the crowd behind the goal who were standing rubbing shoulders - not only should they have been seating (it wasn't a standing area), but the stewards made no effort to get them to even stand in their right place, so it was a huge mass of people in the middle, surrounded by completely empty areas of seats. Just the stewards doing their usual laziness of picking the easy targets (i.e. a middle aged couple) where sitting together had no increased risk at all (because they spent the rest of the weekend together!). It was just covid pantomime at it's height.

McDonalds had a reduced menu during lockdowns which is fine but my daughter enjoyed fishfingers with her happy meal pre covid and they are still not back on the choices. WHY?

@Nosquit

I dunno with hotels - I quite liked it when I went to a hotel last year and they didn’t clean the rooms every day - there wasn’t a “do not disturb” sign I could put on my door so them not cleaning meant I didn’t have to worry about my “special friend” and I getting disturbed during the afternoon.

The worst case of ‘cos Covid’ I have come across recently was a kids museum, that is advertised as for kids and being interactive having all the interactive bits closed or turned off or taped over!! I mean what’s the point?!?!
Oh and having a waitress serve you at Harvester salad bars!!! No matter what your thoughts on the hygiene Members of my family have autism and specifically choose Harvester because they can control the ratio of how much of each salad ingredient is in their bowl and also what is touching what. They have had to go without salad because of this stupid rule!

Though to be fair that pales in comparison to a visit to Toby Carvery when they first started letting you go up to the counter yourself again: You were allowed to go up (masked) and tell them what you wanted on your plate and how much, but weren’t allowed to serve yourself - ok that was kind of fair enough under the circumstances at the time - BUT HERE IS THE CLINCHER… you had to then wait for a waiter to carry YOUR plate to your table as you were not allowed to carry it yourself!! The plate that you would be touching when you ate off it and would then get one extra pair on hands touching it than was needed all because of covid regulations!! Luckily you can now carry your own plate and serve yourself again but even the staff at our local thought it was ridiculous at the time but had to do it in case the inspectors or secret shoppers arrived.

I actually complained to Toby Carvery about this new covid rule as more people touched my plate post covid then before.

I stopped going until l could do it all myself.

Harvester STILL won't let you serve your own salad so l avoid there now. Plenty of other places to go!

@samsalmon

Specsavers no longer recycle glasses cos Covid. I can take whole bags of donations to the charity shop next door but can’t leave my old glasses with Specsavers. If they are saving money by opting out of what used to be a charitable activity for them, they should just say so, I agree.

Specsavers have pissed me off so much that I won't be a customer anymore, after 20 years!

They're stupid covid theatre "procedures" are just ridiculous and I am still not over the fact that they made me stand outside the shop in the rain waiting for someone to adjust my new glasses, and then use the shop window as a mirror. Coz covid.

My worry is how does normality resume?

Yes vets are ridiculous. We’re still not allowed in (except to pay!) and if they need to talk to you they come out to the car. My theory is they like animals a lot more than they like people.

We’re still not allowed into my DS’s nursery- he has had around 20 different illnesses including covid since starting 9m ago but apparently this policy is “keeping children safe”. Meanwhile the parents meet up as normal at the local toddler group, soft play etc.

I had to sign a declaration that I had “never had any symptoms of covid” at the dentist last time. If people answered that honestly can’t imagine they would have any customers.

A lot of things round me are quite normal so when you come across somewhere which has kept a load of crazy rules it really jars. I avoid these places if I can.

Yes vets are ridiculous. We’re still not allowed in (except to pay!) and if they need to talk to you they come out to the car. My theory is they like animals a lot more than they like people

My vets allow people in, but only one. On one of my recent visits, someone was having their dog PTS in the car park so all the family could be there.

Yanbu I'm sick of "coz covid" for shit service especially when it's a thing where you've had 22 months now to think of a solution. It's very much an excuse to hide before to either make more money or to cut corners

@user1497207191 it's beyond infuriating. Don't get me started on the universities that are still trying to get away with remote learning, that is an utter disgrace and really lecturers are just putting themselves out of jobs when Uni managers realise they can pay someone in China or Eastern Europe a fraction of the salary they pay their uk staff to do online lectures from their countries.