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!!

So if you can’t take calls from home, don’t you think it’s time you returned to the office more?

That did cross my mind

Absolutely totally agree, in my job I need to contact many financial companies, some of them still have recordings of "due to covid, it will take longer to answer your call".

Rubbish, it's due to being understaffed and reducing costs by not employing more.

We wanted out of the EU. We want cheap. We want online. We'll this is what these thingsook like in rl. Well done us.

Is it laziness or that they realised that they can manage with shorter hours/less magsnizens/without x and it still doesn't affect the cash flow from the customer?

So get a second line?

These stations are unlikely to ever reopen because of the new biometric passport rules that come in next year where people will have to be finger printed . They can’t provide the facilities there .

DH and I run our own business and we've got several suppliers who've still got the 3 minute "Due to Covid" crap on their phone systems. Drives me absolutely insane, and a lot of staff still appear to be working from home which means they often haven't got full system access and have poor quality mobile phone signals so you get half a conversation. We've actually stopped dealing with a few as their service still hadn't returned to anything like pre pandemic levels.

I’m not allowed to return to the office every day. They’ve turned the two person offices into 4 person offices but there’s only two desks/no space for 4 desks. So we can’t all be in work every day. I’m not paying for a second line. If work want me to have one they can pay. But they’re happy that people email me and I ring them back or teams call them. It’s not my fault!

Why should I pay for that?

I prefer mine to be left on a dry day. I can now only pick up Royal Mail parcels on a Saturday morning as they now shut at two in the week with no evening hours at all.

I assumed its because of staff shortages in hospitality that some things weren't open or service had got worse

I agree with some of these things but I do also love some of the things introduced.
We have a lot of holidays at Haven and I do not miss the check in queue. Much prefer knowing in advance where I am going and not driving round completely lost. The app is also an improvement for booking sessions

Also: if you go back to return items, you're likely to do more impulse shopping.

@QuebecBagnet we have the same. Dh's office has closed permanently, mine had downsized, so he's fully wfh and I'm "hybrid working". Mobile reception is terrible where we live so our work phones rarely have signal. Colleagues have our landline no. but I am not giving it out to clients or the general public - or moving house.

Realistically OP you're going to struggle to tell how much of this is laziness and how much is businesses and organisations having to work with the staff they can get.

I think a lot of businesses likes banks have just brought forward plans to close branches by a few years as they werent making money for them and others are struggling to staff them. Lots of little businesses here are reducing hours because people arent spending as much so its only worth opening on the peak days.

@QuebecBagnet doesn't your line/desk phone automatically divert to teams?

Anyone can call me on my old line, the call comes through to teams and when activated, I have those calls redirect to my mobile via teams.

Might be worth speaking to your IT/Comms team.

My most aggravating example of this is online grocery companies not bringing your stuff inside. I’m especially looking at you, Tesco, with your parallel refusal to do bags, with the result that your customers are scrabbling around with tins of beans and boxes of tampons on their doorsteps. Drives me MAD.

Universities have been absolutely awful during Covid about treating their students with disregard for their emotional health. Making them pay full fees for a virtually online course and pretending most students prefer it that way. Ignoring the fact that many have felt isolated at being many miles from home with so little contact with teaching staff or the normal support systems.
I never said you should return to work every day but if you can’t access phone calls from home then plainly something is wrong with the system. You need to be vocalising that to your employer because the current system sounds disgraceful.

Yes, 100%. A very 'anything goes' attitude. I left the dog into the grooming place one day last week at 11 am, came home to wait for a workman, then got a call at 1.00 to say that the dog was ready and needed picked up ASAP, as they were 'closing at 1.30 today.' No explanation, and not something they normally do, just staff commitments. Had to fecking SPRINT 1.5 miles up the road, leaving a bloke I didn't even know in my house, to get there before they closed. Same with hairdressers, barbers, everyone really.

We have an aging population, so low levels of working age adults (relatively) plus Brexit ( and a toxic rhetoric about "foreigners" migrants that Durant exactly attract non UK workers). And we have massively underinvested in skills training and infrastructure in all sectors. We simply don't invest is this country..we focus on dividends pay puts and asset striping...So yes everything is a bit shit.

I think it’s a mix of things. Some companies slashed too many staff due to covid and cannot recruit due to Brexit, lower wages offered, effect of inflation.

Some employees took redundancy, or left due to covid making folk reconsider their lives. Inflation means some won’t take lower salaries, some folk realised they could live on less income, moved, or don’t go out much.

So IMO mix of covid,Brexit, inflation, change to lifestyle

2 dominos equidistant from my house. One doing full menu of toppings and allow you to order half and half again, the other limited toppings menu and no option to order half and half STILL. Despite offering before covid. I mean…..

My son can't find a driving instructor as they all have waiting lists of 6-18 months (the average is about a year) and some of his friends lucky enough to have one cannot book a driving test as they are currently like hen's teeth.

A cafe at a country park we go to have shut their cafe indoors during covid and literally served from a kitchen window (not even a serving hatch) in takeaway containers.They've never reopened the indoor cafe and accompanying indoor toilets.I'm guessing they use less staff/less utilities/maintenance costs this way.

The holiday park we went to in half term changed its check in and out times to 5pm and 9am for "allowing extra time for cleaning" and I was standing in the kitchen when the cleaners walked in the door at 8:15am and had the cheek to ask how long we'd be as they had lots of u to clean that day.

My local Tesco now has hardly any maned checkouts and trying to find a member of staff for help with anything is really difficult.