To think that since covid happened some businesses have 'got lazy and stayed lazy'

[Ilovechocolate87]

DH and i used to have an expression a couple of years back 'because covid' which we used when we thought a company was just using the virus as an excuse for not doing something properly or making unnecessary cutbacks.

But even now it seems that this is STILL continuing, but for no legitimate reason!

Some examples include;
-Our local bank shutting at 3pm...every day of the week.Crap for 9-5 working people like DH!

• No fireworks display at center parcs, which is a shame as it was really good and atmospheric over the lake.
• Soft play at our local sealife centre sitting there unused and wasted...such a shame as there is nothing wrong with it.
• Fitting rooms have been scrapped at sainsburys and asda (maybe elsewhere too?) so there is nowhere to try on clothes, resulting in either having to order online and have the expense and bother of posting it back if its not right (which it often isn't) or travelling to return it, neither of which are very good for the environment either, with all that plastic packaging and fuel!)

Has anyone else noticed that it just seems like SOME businesses/companies 'can't be bothered' anymore and are just doing the minimum possible? And the most frustrating thing is that as usual, they make the cutbacks, but the prices keep on going up!!

I think a lot of what's happening is down to staff shortages, and that's not due to COVID. It's because of the B word that must not be mentioned.

It does make me think how many people had a really nice customer service office job prior to Covid. With lovely colleagues and a nice desk set up, no distractions.

To now find themselves WFH alone perched on the end of the breakfast bar or in their bedroom, expected to take phone calls etc not knowing if there's going to be a knock at the door or noise from other members of the household.

This is ridiculous, unless the University has cancelled all the phone lines they had. It is not difficult to set up call forwarding to your mobile during working hours.

Definitely!

@RedToothBrush For us this is all towards helping us to get the EHCP as we are still in the gathering all the information and evidence stage. He is even under the bladder team for incontinent issues and that's a joke. The referral was sent in October last yr, was then told would be a 6 month wait for an appointment, that should have been in May. The appointment was then in August after I emailed them about it and was done over the phone. I have another telephone appointment in December as they want to keep the service running, just not face to face which makes it harder if they need to talk to my DS as they have to do it over the phone which he wont give full answers to unlike face to face when it is easier to talk to a child

Totally agree, shit service, nothing seem to matter plus price increases everywhere. We run a business so depend on a number of suppliers and services, it's a struggle. Thankfully our employees -young people mostly - are absolute stars.

But I agree with @nottodaytomorrow the worst one, by far, is the NHS. I don't think it'll ever recover, from a moral standpoint.
(no never banged a pan, and won't come back and argue on this either, I've seen too much)

This is ridiculous, unless the University has cancelled all the phone lines they had. It is not difficult to set up call forwarding to your mobile during working hours.

yep, I just press #9 and then input my work mobile number. And hey presto, all calls diverted! However my colleagues and I are keen to maintain a good service and I suspect that’s not always the case …..

Exactly. It's a perfect storm.

We were already on the brink of a situation (due to age demographics) of having a massive crisis issue with the size of the working population shrinking massively whilst still supporting a huge number of pensioners before there were any other issues that popped up.

All the other crisis have done is make that problem more immediate and worse.

And genuinely its a generational one that is liable to last at least a generation until boomers die out now imho. (and I'm not advocating for this) They were the last generation born before universal contraception became a reality and widely accepted. Its part of the reason its much larger than subsequent generations.

It puts extreme pressures on the working age population and its highly unlikely that standards of living were likely to continue to improve for that reason alone in the UK.

We see the same pattern has already been happening in Japan for some time with there being this issue with younger generations realising they will never have the economic security or opportunities that their parents had. Its lead to stagnation there for a good couple of decades.

There is no reason to suggest we can escape that fate. What's more infuriating is we've had the Japanese model to observe and knew the moment would come to the uk, yet we've done fuck all planning or prep for it. We know there is an issue with the size of the State pension in terms of what percentage it represents treasury outgoings. It dwarfs all over benefits by a staggering amount.

I think we are only JUST beginning to wake up to the reality of it. And i dont think the penny is dropping with a lot of politicians talking about GDP and growth.

Covid and Brexit really have made a bad problem worse and it come earlier. Ukraine has brought forward other concerns about sustainability of energy and resources which was the other big time bomb we were facing but not properly planning for. (this one may be a blessing in disguise tbh).

I don't see how we just take the attitude of 'not accepting it'. It's a force that we can't just object to!

There are definitely issues, yes. Call centre/public sector workers continued WFH isn't going as well as those workers seem to think it is and I think things will have to change, Brexit is causing staffing holes in retail and hospitality, many people apparently left the workforce, GPs (although not other staff working in primary care) have found a way to avoid patients ...but this has pushed hospital A&E departments to breaking point as there is literally nowhere else to go.

There's another thing going on as well. People seem ruder and more entitled when dealing with others. I rang my own bank on Friday. The wait was very much longer than it should be (and ever was before 2020). When I was dealt with it was fine and I was polite about the wait. But the bank had seen fit to put a recorded message on the line while I was waiting, something like "please be aware that it is not the fault of the person taking your call that the wait is so long, and they will be trying to help you". And I found that depressing.

900 a month?
900 pounds a month?

I work in a busy aftersales department and have to liaise daily with the manufacturer of the product we sell, an expensive product!

All staff now work from home! They never returned to the office. It’s an absolute PITA and this has led to poor customer service.

I’m often speaking to someone with poor mobile reception, I can’t get answers straight away, whereas before they could ask a colleague if they didn’t know the answer, now it’s back and forth, it’s a shambles quite frankly but they aren’t the ones dealing with an upset/angry/frustrated customer, so they don’t give a shit!

I don’t want to speak to Diane from her kitchen, who then needs to contact Colin from his timber framed garden office, who then needs to email Mike, who can’t be reached, which they delays an urgently required response!

I miss pre- Covid days!

Covid impacted far deeper than anyone seems to realise.

Something like 2/5ths of people aged 55-66 retired early post-pandemic. That's 40% of a section of the workforce that generally occupies senior positions and/or has decades of experience and knowledge in their role/sector.

Add to that an additional 500,000 workers who are on long-term sick leave since covid and you have yourself a staffing crisis even before the brexit issues are taken into account (and brexit is 100% causing huge issues in certain sectors).

Expecting kids to talk o. The phone isn't just poor service it's incomprehensible and disgusting. There's no justification or reasoning that's acceptable there.

Its not a surprise to me sadly.

Kids caught in the mess will be damaged for life. And it won't resolve in the next 10 years at least.

We've peaked as a nation for at least 20 to 30 years.

The idea that we can go back to pre-covid is utter nonsense we are going to have to come to terms with.

Its not right but that's where we are at.

I agree, I went to a tyre place the other day as I had a slow puncture and had to blow my tyre ups 3 times in a few hours. They told me they could do it in 3 days! Wtaf?
I went to another place it took them less than 10 mins to put me a new one on🤦‍♀️

I would bet money you were first in line to clap for them though...

So what's the excuse for no day time activities then either?

The teachers aren’t paid over lunch time - the amount of incidents that happen require one or two staff to deal with it. The teachers are all working to rule and taking their lunch outside the school buildings so they aren’t called to assist.

This is a regular occurrence for one or two children who can’t behave.

Would you give up your lunch hour to work?

You are joking!! Never left my house once to clap.

found When recently called insurance company, they had a recording saying they were taking longer to answer calls, staff were were working from home to keep safe during the coronavirus pandemic… this was October 2022!

it’s just poor customer service

Fab GP practice

1. He might be a bank robber. Unemployed now as a result of Covid.

1. She's was the getaway driver.

Also unemployed now as a result of fuel prices going through the roof.

On the covid threads on here people are still testing and staying safe

I think there are several sides to this

1. Many businesses have used Covid as a "reset" - our local Tesco is no longer 24 hour, The Center Parcs fireworks were also an anomaly with the wildlife and eco credentials, and it's allowed some businesses to change and adapt.

2. Call centers and home working. definitely a negative negative thing. You often can't get through now or suffer from poor connections. DVLA were unable to answer the phone (took 79 attempts) and when they did no one could answer my question.

@OMG12 - good post. And again @RedToothBrush - absolutely right.

All empires fall eventually. They get fat and greedy and slack. History teaches us that.
How we tackle this, or more accurately, get through it is a complex question. And what the world will look like for the new generation - I don't know.

It is easy to blame individual causes - and to some extent when we're in the middle of it, it's all we can do. (I was raging at the recorded message I had to listen to for 45 minutes last week when all I wanted to do was ask a question).

I do think though that taking more personal responsibility will help. It's not popular - and it might not make a discernible difference - but I believe we should be taking more responsibility for our health (we know what to do), and our kids' education, and our spending and our impact on the environment. We should be thinking hard about how we behave towards others because we're not going to get through this on our own.

It is infuriating

I needed a parking permit for the builders which I used to be able to get in 48 hours. I called the council but was told all the admin staff are still working from home so I can't pick one up and need to wait for one to be posted. A week later still not there and the woman tells me they haven't got the special printers at home and I need to wait for someone to go to the office and no one has been in .

This is not even a small council. It's massive!

Also you read the threads on here and everyone is absolutely convinced they are more productive working from home. I'm sorry but that really isn't the case for everyone!

I don't disagree with this thread

But I also note that people are still dying of covid, certainly in our field. They're are just not dying at the same levels as before due to precautions

There is a time when everything needs to go back to normal but it is hard to see what that is, given we still have CEV and vulnerable populations who work too.
It must feel very annoying for those least at risk to feel they are still being curtailed.
There is a lot of WFH now for business reasons too and very difficult to catch those workers when you need them. No reason that calls can't be direct lines though as if you can wfh with a laptop you can take MS teams direct tel calls in your laptop redirected from a central line