Most pointless covid restrictions you’ve seen by an organisation or workplace?

[Lucidas]

Cordoning off every other toilet and sink in an attempt to enforce social distancing...meaning people are clustered tightly in a queue, chatting for longer

Excuse my appalling grammar, I have just finished an awful overnight shift!

WH Smith’s sign on the door. No more then 12 customers at a time.
How am I meant to know that?

Masks in the playground at school were there's enough space to spread out. All parents then congregating on the narrow pavement outside the front gates without masks to avoid having to wear them in the playground.

The one way systems in shops and shopping centres drive me mad. At my local shopping centre, when stepping off the escalator from the car park, you are immediately walking the 'wrong' way. Stupid.

I have an adult DC with a disability who lives in supported living. I am now allowed to visit, but not allowed to be nearer than 2 metres, can't hug etc. We are both completely vaccinated.

@HelloMissus

WH Smith’s sign on the door. No more then 12 customers at a time. How am I meant to know that?

Yes! I’ve wondered this. There really should be staff at the door counting you in and out. If they’re enforcing these rules anyway.

Definitely condoning off every other toilet - just ends in queues of people chatting to each other

Face masks! I honestly don’t think the bits of fabric slung into bags and pockets and work over and over again have made that much difference, maybe if we’d had medical grade masks 🤷‍♀️

@Wilkolampshade. It’s just one of many issues I have had with them - it’s in Wales and I’m in England so it’s been hard negotiating two sets of rules. My mum has not seen a dentist in 18 months, her dentures are broken so she has to have soft food only and it’s really impacted on her speech but they won’t get the dentist in even though “visiting professionals” are allowed as in their minds it doesn’t constitute an emergency. I spoke to the dentist and he was happy to go and do an outdoor consultation. It’s bordering on abuse in my mind.

Drayton Manor restricting people on rides (so only 50 percent allowed on at any one time). Sounds reasonable but they didn’t restrict numbers on the park. (£££) The result of this is backed up queues where it is physically impossible to social distance. So everyone packed in like sardines queueing. Completely defeats the object and achieves nothing.

But it's the "make parents stay off-site and queue to collect their kids because, you know, Covid" that makes the Gov't feel qualified to say "Schools are safe."
You should see what it's been like inside!

A local charity shop had a sign saying "Only four people in here at once". There were two other customers in so myself and a friend opened the door to go in and were stopped by an officious volunteer. When we said there were only two other people in, she said "There are two assistants in as well, that makes four". When I said the sign should have said "Only two shoppers in at a time", she didn't understand what I meant!

I'm not allowed in to watch my son in his ninjas class, even though it's possible for parents to easily social distance.
But my son can go and mix, non-social distancing, and come out and infect me waiting outside to take him home! 🙈

The swings one is my personal bug bear. Not least because most of our parks only have two swings and they're not that close together. So the kids can all jump on the roundabout together or the slide, but god forbid they should swing 1.5m apart next to each other....

My personal bug bear is a store in our shopping centre. It has three doors next to each other to go in and out in normal times. As you come into the store, on the far left are the tills running along the same wall as the doors.

They've made two doors entry only and one door exit only. The exit only door? The one on the far right. So the two doors there are right next to the exit are entrances only. I keep thinking it was a mistake that someone is going to eventually notice.... button.

But then, to be fair, the staff in that store aren't known for being super on the ball. Sigh.

That I have to clean all shared acrobatics equipment after every single bubble group and encourage my students age 5 and above to dance in a socially distanced box taped on the studio floor. Even though soft play and inflatable theme parks are open with shared equipment, and most of the children I teach are already mixing at school and at each other's houses. When I'm cleaning the
acro mats for the fourth time in four hours I start to wonder why I am bothering in the first place.

It seems everyone just blindly follows all the nonsensical rulz.

We went to an outdoor adventure park type place at the weekend where most of it is outdoor and plenty of space to socially distance, yet lots weren’t compliant but mask wearing in the open air.

@CoffeeWithCheese

University have placed giant yellow arrows every 0.5m apart to implement one way systems around buildings. Fine - but the routing hasn't been worked out properly so it leads you into dead ends (I swear they'll find a skeleton of a Fresher in a lonely corridor at one point who was doomed by the one way system from hell) or the amusing point in the library where all the one way arrows converge in the centre of a room and there's nowhere legitimately to go (one of the cleaners was pissing himself laughing watching the antics from this one going on)!

School - closed playground - so instead of being distributed around different classroom doors (they all open externally onto the playground) and stood distanced on a huge stretch of tarmac and school field - we're rammed onto a narrow pavement.

The university bit of this made me LOL 😂

They've made two doors entry only and one door exit only. The exit only door? The one on the far right. So the two doors there are right next to the exit are entrances only.

Our local Sainsburys is like this. So everyone leaving has to cross through the stream of people entering.

@OliveTree75

I work in a school and we have had our staffroom cordoned off but we still all get crammed into the same room for staff meetings. Also I have to wear my mask to walk to collect the kids from the gate and to walk back to the classroom. I then remove it once we are inside. I mean, why? I don't come close to any parents either. So pointless.

Me too. Have to wear it when not on class/playground.. the number of us who forget (even after a year) and shove our faces down our jumpers!!!

At DS football the other week or so ago it was raining, the kids coats were getting soaked, so we put them on a chair in the club house to dry off so they would have something dry to put on for the journey back to the car. The club house woman threw them out the door screeching about how the coats couldnt be in there because of Covid......

I sat on a fairly crowded train yesterday with other commuters within 2m, yet sitting on a bench nowhere near anyone else on the platform is too risky apparently 🙄

@HelloMissus

WH Smith’s sign on the door. No more then 12 customers at a time. How am I meant to know that?

We get given something when we enter the door as a counter. So for eg, right now they are allowing say 120 per store. So you have to hang on to this ticket while you are in the shop, then hand it back in when you leave. If they have given out 119 and there are two of you, you aint getting in and join..... the queue..... sigh.

It gets given to you from a basket and you chuck in another basket when you leave. I have no clue what cleaning happens to the tickets during this time.

One pharmacy gives out a peg. Which was quite a good idea as I always seem to be faffing around in my bag to find the bloody ticket it got given at the entering door when leaving.

I really think quite often there are way less than 120 people in the store and more than 120 in the queue outside the store. Because there are always a pile in the 'out' basket, so I think someone just runs over to the 'in' entrance, plops them all into the 'in' basket, then the person in charge of the 'in' door just lets everyone in anyway. I doubt very much the runner from 'out' to 'in' does that every single time one or two people leave.

I have an irrational hatred of queues now. I seem to forever be in one.

Premier Inn taping off all their check-in consoles - the ones where you can tap in your booking code and get your room cards dispensed in seconds. So that everyone has to queue in a little reception area to be manually checked in by the mardy receptionist.

A print shop deciding that printing files is OK but using the photocopier is "non essential"
I ended up photographing documents and emailing the photos to be printed out. Then sending the resulting fuzzy mess off with DS's DLA form.
Just.....why?!

Work said we can't fill up our own water bottles from mains water tap.

Coz you know, the chlorine in the tap water isn't good enough to kill covid germs. #sarcasm

Most the staff are microbiologists with infectious disease expertise (!!) 🤷