"I Think This Is The Hardest Part For Me": Frustrated People Are Sharing The Once-Normal Things That No Longer Happen Since COVID
Since the pandemic began in 2020, we've been experiencing a lot of changes. So when Reddit user u/Disastrous-Treat0616 asked: "What is something that still hasn’t gone back to normal after the pandemic?", it made sense that a lot of people provided their own experiences. Here's what they had to say below:
1."Customer service in general. Pharmacy employees are staging walk-outs due to understaffing, hold times for any phone support or just informing you all associates are busy and hanging up. Local social media is full of stories of restaurants closing drive-thrus or part of their restaurants due to employee shortages or having no backups if someone calls out. Tried to call an area business only to find out they have outsourced customer service to a national provider who says, 'We can only give them the message. We don’t know if they read them.' It’s awful."
2."The cost of things."
"The cost of everything has gone insane. Double, triple within the space of a few years. It started with 'supply chain issues.' Obviously, they can get away with it, so it isn't going to change."
3."Airlines: pricing, schedules, number of flights, etc."
"Especially upgrade prices! My husband and I wanted to upgrade to business class on our NYC to Tokyo trip because I’m pregnant, but where one round trip ticket in the economy was $3k/person, the same in business class was $15k!!!!!!"
4."I don't know about y'all but the sense of time is messed up. It's like three years of my timeline is missing."
"Same, I keep getting 2021 and 2022 mixed up. Anything but the most major events could've happened either year."
5."24-hour stores and restaurants. There are probably way less than half as there used to be."
"I honestly didn’t realize this until a month or two ago. I was driving home from work and thought to myself, 'I’ll stop at the Walmart near me and grab a six-pack of beer' only to see that they close at 11 p.m. now. I’ve never been one for late-night shopping, but I always knew most, if not all Walmarts were 24 hours. It came as a surprise."
6."The way many people behave in public truly became unhinged during the pandemic and shows no signs of slowing down."
"I think this is the hardest part for me. It’s not like anyone is okay now that the pandemic is over. I’ve had folks snap on me for no reason, the grocery store is filled with super aggressive people pushing metal carts, people trying to run you off the road because they’re just mad at the world and they don’t want you to get over.
People have changed and I do not enjoy being out anymore. I'm always looking around for the person who’s going to lose it next."
7."Used car prices."
"Yes! This shit is insane! I need to buy my daughter a car, so I can have mine back, but I can't in good conscience spend 10k on a car with 150k miles on it!"
8."These poor damn kids. I don't know what happened but they came back to school different and not for the better. On the bright side, the young ones coming in seem to be doing well."
"Trauma. 'You can’t see grandma or your friends at someone will die, but you have to sit in a room with 30 people' messes with a kid.
And then everyone pretends like nothing happened.
Plus, teaching as a career has reached the tipping point. There is not enough money, support, or resources to do what they’re supposed to, so a lot of people just leave.
We had 40 years of disrespecting education in society, and now chickens come home to roost."
9."Places closed fitting rooms and instead of reopening them, they just tore them out. Clothing brands differ so much in sizes, I need to be able to try them on before I buy them!"
"Women’s clothing is weird. I was in a play and needed to tell the costume maker my shirt size. It turns out I have every size from small to extra large."
10."Friendships and relationships. It’s not that we don’t want to spend time together, but we all seem so collectively exhausted and isolated. I’m working hard to get out there, but we’re all just tired."
"I don’t remember ever being this isolated before. I’ve been finding different ways to cope, but I miss the times when friends were pretty much always around."
11."Getting a doctor's appointment."
"The fact that the only time you can get an appointment is if you’re NOT sick absolutely infuriates me."
12."My mental health."
"I can’t understand why people don’t want to acknowledge it. When I bring this up, I still get folks looking at me like I’m being dramatic."
13."Traffic. Traffic is all day Monday to Friday."
"I really noticed after 2021 or so that a lot of people's phone addictions got waaaaayyyyy worse. My theory is that it impacts driving more than we realize because half the people are also scrolling Instagram while operating a vehicle. They don’t even realize what they’re doing."
14."Buffets."
"I miss the KFC buffets, where I could get chicken, biscuits and gravy, potatoes, a pickle, and 'fluff,' that dessert stuff that I’m not sure what it’s called."
15."The real estate market."
"I bought my townhouse for only 150K in 2014. A comp on my street just sold for 350K and one street over a slightly larger unit for 395K. It’s outrageous and upsetting seeing my friends unable to buy while I have an $850 mortgage. I’m insanely lucky and grateful but I don’t see how I can ever move either.
16."People who flake out of commitments. It seems to be the norm now to simply not show up to things that one has committed/RSVPed to without a good reason, and usually without any kind of communication. In some cases, it's probably not a huge deal and doesn't really impact the world (although still a bit rude, especially if there isn't any communication) but in others, people are counting on them or spending money on the assumption that they will be there and it's sort of obnoxious to just flake."
"COVID sort of normalized this because we were so used to people not showing up if they were exposed or symptomatic or struggling with mental health. All good reasons. However, this created the mindset that it's just okay to not show up to things in general, even without a good reason. Committing to fewer things? Completely on board with that. But committing and flaking for no good reason? Still just as rude as it was before COVID, and I wish we could un-normalize that a little bit more."
17."QR menus. I hate QR menus."
"I went to a QR restaurant where I didn’t have cell service so I asked for a paper menu and they didn’t have any. I asked if they had WiFi I could use, and they said no."
Since the pandemic, is there something that still hasn't gone back to normal? Tell us what it is and why in the comments below
The National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline is 1-888-950-6264 (NAMI) and provides information and referral services; GoodTherapy.org is an association of mental health professionals from more than 25 countries who support efforts to reduce harm in therapy.
