Covid is a gift to the lazy, and it's turning people against restrictions, vulnerable, etc

[tfresh]

More of a rant than anything, but I think most people would agree at this point many private companies, and the vast majority of the public sector are now acting a total disgrace when it comes to covid.

Passports now take 2 months to turn around, the reason.. covid.

Bins still not regularly emptied ... covid

Ring up any government service, sorry we're not answering the phones..covid

None of it makes sense anymore, there are no restrictions, we have a vaccine, etc.

Certain jobs cannot be done from home, it's time to go back to work or move job. Why are companies putting up with staff who are refusing to work? It's crazy.

What makes matters worse is, this is turning people against the genuinely vulnerable. Now when someone says they can't come into the office because they're vulnerable, it's treated with suspicion and eye rolling rather than care. As always the piss takers ruin it for everyone.

If you can get down the pub on friday night, you can get down to work.

@user1497207191 whether it's a one off or not, the OP 'turning against the vulnerable' (OP's words, not mine) because she's been inconvenienced or received poor service is contemptible.

I agree to some extent. There have been many excuses for slow/poor work throughout the pandemic and people are tired of hearing it. Many people have had to crack on regardless, dealing with ridiculously high workloads as a result.

Of course covid hasn’t gone away and many people are still getting it. We escaped it until recently, luckily we had relatively mild cases as we were fully vaccinated. We can also work from home so no days work lost, just children isolating at home. For those whose jobs can’t be done from home the knock on effect is world significant to their work.

“ Yet, accordingly to my phone call log, it took 14 calls, each of over an hour, to conclude the claim. That's because after waiting an hour, most times I was fobbed off by them saying someone would call back (they never did), or them agreeing to do something, which they did wrong, etc., all necessitating making multiple repeat calls until they finally did what was required of them to deal with the claim, which they could have done in the first phone call had the person been remotely capable of doing their job in the first place.”

I guess you just didn’t approach it with the right amount of positivity, resilience and pro activity

I work for a local authority and my department was incredibly busy prior to the first lockdown.

We've lost staff to the private sector and cannot recruit to vacant posts (national issue not just local), our workload is approximately 30% heavier now and shows no signs of slowing down.

We do WFH for the vast majority of the time, because we have adapted our working practices. But, lazy? God I wish...

in the private sector, people have choice, so adapt, evolve or fail. Sadly, the public sector does not need to evolve due to their captive market

Very well said

Nobody pretends the problems are just in the public sector, far less that they're all lazy, but IM(long)E, the fundamental difference is that private enterprise will find a way for things to happen and the public sector will find a way to "explain" that they can't

Unfortunately this ethos can infest the entire workplace, which may explain why so many with real talent and initiative will go nowhere near them

Haven’t RTFT but I agree, you don’t seem any self employed people bleating on re “long Covid”.

The touch points stuff is bonkers, we've known for ages that covid isn't transmitted by touch (especially when those same places are allowing loads of customers in without masks). It's a huge waste of time focusing on that (for covid, it's probably stopping the spread of d & v bugs though).

I do agree some places are using it as an excuse, but it's still a huge reason for staff absence. The pandemic hasn't gone away just because we want it to.

Hmm. The private sector is invariably utterly crap, too, and covid is the excuse there aswell. Think - railways, water, electricity, parcel delivery services, shops, internet service providers, banks, insurance companies, estate agents, solicitors, accountants: all private. Mostly all crap. Anyone would think some private sector workers believe they are somehow superior when the words equally useless spring to the minds of everyone else… 😂

YANBU, it’s a bloody disgrace

Totally agree OP, havent read the rest of the thread but its been so so easy for companies, both public and private to slip back into almost 1970s standards of service, no phone lines operating past 5 or 6pm, cant get through anyway at other times, banks and post offices with restricted hours, people cant way to say 'oh we cant do that at the moment'.

I said right at the start of the proper lockdowns that these changes would put us back decades and be far too easy to use as an excuse for poor service.

The companies I seem to wait the longest for are private sector e.g. mobile phone companies and banks.
Are they all lazy? Probably got too used to baking banana bread and doing yoga on furlough whilst us public sector workers slogged our guts out to keep the country running and putting our health at risk.

^^ I obviously do not think the above is true. I know people in all areas who worked extremely hard and still do. I was just making a generalisation the other way and actually, it’s really offensive.

@Walkaround

Hmm. The private sector is invariably utterly crap, too, and covid is the excuse there aswell. Think - railways, water, electricity, parcel delivery services, shops, internet service providers, banks, insurance companies, estate agents, solicitors, accountants: all private. Mostly all crap. Anyone would think some private sector workers believe they are somehow superior when the words equally useless spring to the minds of everyone else… 😂

Difference is customers of private sector usually have a choice and can change provider. You can’t do that with public sector so you’ve got to put up with crap service.

@user1497207191 - Not much difference when you have a choice of a variety of different types of crap. The main difference is you don’t always need the services the private sector offers in the first place, so the competition element only works because it has to work hard to convince you to unnecessarily waste your money in the first place. When you do genuinely need the services of the private sector, it’s frequently useless because it’s “too big to fail” or just too essential to fail, so can get away with appallingly bad behaviour on pretty much every level.

@DoingsSophie

Haven’t RTFT but I agree, you don’t seem any self employed people bleating on re “long Covid”.

this is just... not true. My brother-in-law (self-employed gardener/odd job guy) has been unable to work for seven months. A friend who is self-employed in the creative industries has been out for a year and is absolutely on the bones of her arse, financially. They're not 'bleating on' about long covid, though. They're suffering.

'If you can get down the pub on friday night, you can get down to work.'

Ah yes. This reminds me of the time in November/December 2020 when it was absolutely fine for me to be mixing with hundreds of pupils every day (with no masks but windows open)but not for me to go to my small local pub in an evening

@Saladd0dger

Dvla has a huge backlog

DS failed his driving test yesterday.

The next available slot is 26th JULY.

It's a fucking joke and no, the "please bear with us as we are working from home due to the pandemic" is getting pretty tired.

I think some people are just lazy. I feel sorry for genuine people who have ‘invisible’ illnesses because you can guarantee some lazy bastard will claim to have it. Fibromyalgia was a gift to the Gods for some lazy women because there is no definitive test. I don’t doubt it exists but it’s a bit of a coincidence that nearly every workshy person I went to school with claims to have it, weirdly they are now jumping on the long covid bandwagon. These are the same sort of people who used to claim they had bad backs years ago. I just feel sorry for the genuinely ill.

Absolutely. Whenever a “new” illness or condition gets publicity, you can predict with 100% accuracy who is going to succumb….

Years ago there was a salmonella in eggs scare. Wouldn’t you know, the most workshy person in the office had to take a week off work the day after the story was on the news “because she’d had a boiled egg”.

I think there is a bit of gender divide, with men liking the bad backs and women the fibromyalgia and long covid. “Stress” is gender neutral. I wish there were definitive tests because having known people with invisible illnesses (and I am cev but look ok) these frauds need putting in the stocks.