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!!

What's it to you if home workers want to maximise their opportunity to sleep, and dress in what they find comfortable at home?

It's nothing to me, I was just commenting on threads previously where it's all got a bit heated, that's all. I don't have a job that I can do from home, but if I did I think I'd at the very least get dressed because it would feel weird not to I wouldn't feel the need to wear a suit I don't think, that would be a bit OTT.

There are plenty of threads about all that anyway.

It does feel like customer service has disappeared. I went shopping yesterday, had some money to spend for a change and was surprised at the lack of customer service. It was Saturday afternoon and there was no shortage of staff in the shops I mention. In the following shops with the exception of staff actually serving at the tills the floor staff were standing chatting to each other. I don't want to be harassed but in smaller shops it is usual to be asked if you want any help. In none were the staff engaging with customers. The shops were Whistles, The White Company, Mint Velvet and Hobbs.

In one of the shops, which I won't name, one of the staff was telling another how she'd been given a coat to wear to trial it and how much she hated it and how rubbish it was!

@Untitledsquatboulder I think you know that is not what I meant. Any more than I could prevent my DM's dementia or my DC's autism.

I was making a wider point -as you well know. We can as a society take more responsibility for our health, (drinking, obesity, exercise etc), and our education.

This is not a new thing and I am certainly not the only person to have made it.

The problem is that most 'call centre' work is awful but companies still only pay minimum wage for it. Offering home-working is an incentive to retain workers who otherwise, in this climate of an abundance of min wage vacancies, would be leaving for non-customer facing roles, and ultimately it's cheaper for the companies than offering better wages (with the bonus that they can save money by relinquishing office space).

Until companies wake up to the fact that to retain experienced, skilled staff in this type of role, they need to pay more than £9.50 an hour, what you will have is inexperienced staff doing the job for as long as they can stand being shouted at all day, and moving on asap to be replaced by more 'cannon fodder'. If they can keep them sweet a little longer at no extra cost by letting them work from their sofas, they absolutely will.

I thought the same as you until I had to work in the US for a month in the summer. They have the same staffing issues and it definitely wasn’t brexit for them!

The problem is that most 'call centre' work is awful but companies still only pay minimum wage for it. Offering home-working is an incentive to retain workers who otherwise, in this climate of an abundance of min wage vacancies, would be leaving for non-customer facing roles

Bingo!

People haven't yet woken up to the fact that the modest salaries paid in customer service are no longer sufficient to buy employees who will come into work and pay for commuting and childcare.

Agree that the USA is also having a wage crisis but ours is definitely exacerbated by brexit.

Every country has staffing issues

Brexit is a v convenient excuse for people to use but it's a worldwide problem

You still can't use the toilets in some larger companies because of Covid.

Every country has staffing issues
Brexit is a v convenient excuse for people to use but it's a worldwide problem

It is, but we also have Brexit. We would still have issues stemming from the pandemic, lockdown, Russian invasion of Ukraine and our demographics, but we also have Brexit on top of those things which exacerbates them. It's a global problem with a couple that we created for ourselves added on too.

@SirMingeALot - you are right.I don't know how easy real conversation is nowadays though. Every word is jumped on and taken out of context. People are so eager to make a point or become outraged. And SM doesn't help.

I would actually dispute that there wasn't this conversation and feel the political classes did tell the public.

The issue is the public didn't want to listen to those messages because they were having an emotional reaction to the fear of covid and frankly weren't rational.

@AnApparitionQuipped - spot on about payment, WFH and staff retention in customer facing roles.

Just a different perspective as I work in a contact centre form home
We are busy, busier than we ever have been. If you want to get through quicker, don't ring on a Monday unless you absolutely have to
Everyone rings on a Monday and then complains it's busy and queuing - Thursday afternoon, Saturday morning, either of those are quieter for us (our business isn't one that is you have to ring on a Monday or you won't get an appointment type thing)

We are HEAVILY monitored. My manager knows if I'm on the phone, sending an email, going to the toilet. It's all on a wall board and our screens and calls are recorded, there is no way of sloping off
I take maybe 150-200 calls in 7.5hrs, I can't work any quicker so it's frustrating when I read how shit people WFH are when they don't understand how much contact centres are monitored, and hearing people complaining about the queue when they choose to ring at 9am on a Monday

I think the example in the above post really highlights that customer expectation is so far out of line with reality in many cases it's almost laughable.

What does home delivery cost, a fiver? And for that fiver you are expecting someone to pick, pack and load your order, for the supermarket to always have your items in stock or for someone to make a best guess at a substitute you'll find acceptable, someone to not just deliver it but, to deliver it at a time that suits you and to carry it into your house. If that's what you want you need to hire a personal shopper.

Supermarkets don't really want to offer it as a service, they do it because everyone else does and they don't want risk losing market share. But home delivery is a loss maker for most supermarkets and as such they're not going to resource it properly while it costs them money, so either customers need to lower their expectations or pay more for the service.

I would actually dispute that there wasn't this conversation and feel the political classes did tell the public.
The issue is the public didn't want to listen to those messages because they were having an emotional reaction to the fear of covid and frankly weren't rational.

Do you think? I don't recall much of that at all. The Tories had a vague go at avoiding lockdown, but there was never any explicit spelling out of a we have to eat a shit sandwich now and all we can choose is which one approach.

I would agree that the public wouldn't necessarily have been receptive if it had happened, particularly as it no doubt wouldn't have been done in a timely manner. But when did we ever get the government saying these are the likely negatives of lockdown, sector restrictions etc in the longer term and we need to balance them against the negatives of not doing this and decide what we think is preferable?

The opposition also failed to do this, which meant there was nowhere in mainstream centrist or left wing politics for a restriction questioning approach until the second half of 2021. That's another problem.

And you won't hear any background noise if you ring me as I don't have children. You might hear the buzzer which would be the postman but I can't answer it anyway
Honestly it's so frustrating to read shit when I sit down for 40hrs a week and work like a battery hen to hear people say we WFH to skive

Once you are logged in, you can't log out, you have to use a code which might be admin, personal time, email, offline training
If you spend more than a few mins in personal then it would be questioned. Call avoidance in a contact centre gets you sacked

The Tories had a vague go at avoiding lockdown, but there was never any explicit spelling out of a we have to eat a shit sandwich now and all we can choose is which one approach.

I very rarely defend the Tories, let alone Boris Johnson, but in fairness to them, Johnson did make his 'people are going to die' speech - and there was an immediate, huge backlash, so he quickly changed his tune.

My dentist will no longer do a scale and polish due to Covid. But surprise surprise, the hygienist at the practice can still do her work. And it's exponentially more expensive than the scale and polish!

Agree with this.

A big issue is there's less and less cannon fodder coming through, and there won't be a surplus unless we increase the birth rate or immigration, both of which would have severe implications going forward. So either companies (and customers) pay more to make the job worth being abused, or companies and customers change the way they treat staff to make the job enjoyable/bearable. A third option I suppose is that the companies just go under.

@ChristmasisRuined @Crackof Yes so you'd think at least some basic customer service would be in order!

(It is full coverage international medical insurance, so everything is included and there is no additional salary-related contribution. It's a similar amount to that paid by residents of the country where I'm treated most often.)

I very rarely defend the Tories, let alone Boris Johnson, but in fairness to them, Johnson did make his 'people are going to die' speech - and there was an immediate, huge backlash, so he quickly changed his tune.

Yes. But this wasn't sufficient to explain what the trade off was going to be. It was the choice of the government to have SAGE modelling what would happen without particular restrictions and to be telling the public about this continually, but not to do the same with what the consequences were going to be down the line, for example. We never saw Sunak say yes I accept that whole sectors cannot be closed and preserved in aspic, so we need to make an informed decision about whether we want to choose the consequences of closing them or the consequences of not. That was not spelled out, and that meant that the opportunity to make an informed choice was never available.

There is also the point that by the time Johnson made that speech it was mid March, and things had already been allowed to fester without the government properly addressing them by that point. The discussions needed to happen earlier. It was too little too late.

Sage repeatedly made the point. And Johnson did.

People didn't want to listen.

Perhaps there are things you're aware of that I'm not RTB. Can you provide links?

@AllLopsided I used to get bupa global through work (I run a global company) but we've had to stop it because they upped the costs so much. There have been a few articles if you Google in the Times about how they have outrageously increased premiums for no better service.