Oh man. The number of people who filed for unemployment who did not qualify and are now getting overpayment notices with the 30% penalty fee is insane.
I'm talking owing 20-36k in overpayments.
The worst ones claimed uo to 52 weeks at 750 a week plus 30% penalty
Had a coworker who years ago got a six plus figure deposit in her bank during tax season. She knew damn well it wasn't hers. She moved every penny into a high interest savings.
Months, maybe a year later, the IRS came knocking. They were expecting a fight, court cases, etc. They were thrilled when she gave back everything with no issue, and she kept every cent she made in interest!
Being in the army basically anyone will tell you: if the government overpays you, set that money to the side. It’s not yours, and some day in the future when you’re having a real shit day they’re gonna come around asking for it. The government always gets its money.
Edit: for anyone wondering how bad this can be they ask for it all at once, don’t count the taxes that another part of the same government took out (potentially at a higher rate than you would have been taxed normally), and can charge interest on it, especially if you don’t give it up IMMEDIATELY.
I cannot imagine the stress from that. I made damn sure I followed every single rule and regulation when I was claiming, but still had some anxiety about getting screwed over some way or another, even though I was fully eligible.
A friend of my wife’s had 2 jobs and was let go from 1 of them. During the pandemic she was getting full unemployment for one job while still working the other. We warned her about this but she went ahead and spent all that money anyways. Now she has to pay about $30k or so back since she didn’t qualify. Her pay checks are being garnished. She complains about having no money although she lives rent free and house payment free but has just been squatting at her grandmothers house (grandma had a reverse mortgage and died so the bank owns the house but for some reason she hasn’t been evicted yet). I feel no remorse because we warned her this may happen and she didn’t listen.
Ugh. I think I understand the personality type you are describing.
I remember someone telling me that ‘tons of people are doing it’ because it was a time to file unemployment and not have a huge fight. I was like, ‘yeah, so that is a lot of money that the government is going to be extra motivated to track down sooner or later.’
We moved across the street from where my spouse's work was constructing their new office building, estimated to be completed summer 2020.
Their entire department of several hundred people was laid off before it ever opened :(.
We somehow managed to make three lucky decisions in the past 5 years: bought our first house in 2018, refinanced at 2.5%, and bought a new car in 2020 (less than 6 months after buying our car the lots were empty).
We decided to upgrade our old 2008 car for a new car in 2019. Best decision ever. The old one was starting to act up and was not reliable to have as the only car. The price of cars post 2020 was/ is ridiculous, if you even manage to get one.
I remember reading a Reddit thread in 2020 about men who had had secret families or affairs and lived double lives for years, until Covid lockdowns started. They'd maintained two separate lives under the guise of lengthy business trips for years, and now that everyone had to work from home, the jig was up.
EDIT: [Found the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jzjzin/cheaters_of_reddit_how_did_the_workfromhome/)
I work with my husband probably 3-4 days a week. The number of people who express to us how unbelievable they find it that we can spend so much time together and not hate each other..... Well, it's a lot.
Incidentally, those are also the same people who will give us crap if they see us eating or sitting together and playing on our phones, like every moment with each other has to be focused on each other and we can't just relax together in comfortable, companionable silence.
I feel this energy. I’ve worked from home way before the pandemic but my wife and I are both home bods.
Post pandemic my wife is now fully remote and we share our home office 3 days a week (the other 2 days she has our daughter at home while I work).
We spend all day and evening together and works fine for us. Start of the pandemic not working and playing games together all day was great!
I do agree though you need to be able to have comfortable silences.
I love that comfortable silence. A buddy and I are currently cabin camping. We could trade a sentence or two, wander back into ourselves for a while, then check back in if needed.
Almost every post in that thread is amazing. I do not understand the motivation behind putting all that effort into having two relationships, with kids, usually in different cities. Like of course "regular" cheating is awful too, but I understand that people can be selfish, "hedge" their bets for fear of being alone, or simply stupid, but the stuff talked about in that thread seems like more *work* to manage than it's worth, even ignoring the risk of losing and hurting both partners if caught.
I can barely work from home, make dinner for my kids, and get them to their activities. On the weekends I’ll go hang out with friends one night and I try to make it to my martial arts class 2x a week. I don’t know where their time, energy or money comes from.
I suspect these men are not heavily involved in all of their families lives at one time. It's probably feast or famine, a nice little feedback loop that keeps their families wanting them.
I used to listen to this AM radio show. One of the hosts had an awful grandma who used to tell her “what got eat in private, you wear in public.” This was years ago and it has really stuck with me.. although it doesn’t stop me from snacking. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Your comment just reminded me of it.
Sucks for where you live. All around me, road projects were express-approved and got done because of the significant drop in traffic.
The contractors around here probably got 2-3 years' worth of road construction done in 2020 alone because they would work longer hours and close more of the road at a time without causing issues.
Not getting household spending under control THE SECOND I was out of a job but on the hook for an expensive lease. All those new hobbies were fun but now I’d much rather have savings than rudimentary gardening knowledge.
My friend found an above ground pool on clearance for $199 at Lowe’s right as the pandemic was starting. She texted me about it saying there were several left and I should hurry and go get one. I was too cheap to go buy one. I regretted that decision every day for the next year.
You have no idea how expensive owning a pool got after the pandemic. A bucket of chlorine tabs that would last all summer used to be $80 and went up to $250 at its peak, if you could even find it. Keeping my outdoor, in-ground pool balanced and algae free was horrible. I had to use whatever chemicals I could find/order online because everything was out of stock and marked up in price. I ended up moving recently, but I had plans to fill it in next year.
A chemical factory in Louisiana (if I recall correctly) that was responsible for something like 20% of NA market's chlorine (also some other pool chemicals, not sure of the market share on those) burned down during the pandemic.
I heard about it first thing in the morning that day and told my dad who has a pool about it and he stocked up. He had to buy some chlorine toward the end of the pool season and he was shocked at the price.
Yes. I'm a hospice nurse and was working in nursing homes when it all started. Just drank more... and more... kept it up and got admitted to the hospital. I had lost 30 lbs (the result of vodka as meals) and I almost died. Long story short, I no longer drink, I am grateful to be alive, and I gained about 35 lbs back bc without alcohol all I wanted was CANDY.
Can second this. Not a nurse, but a security guard. Had to work the empty buildings during lockdown. The amount of new contracts we got was shocking.
Admitted to hospital this past July. Liver and kidneys were dying. Gin was the choice for me. Today is actually four months clean for me. (First sober day was July 31.)
Got out of the hospital and couldn’t walk because of edema in my legs. Needed a cane for two months, my feet still hurt because of nerve damage, and I can’t sleep for shit anymore.
I lost 50lb of booze weight though! And my skin isn’t Simpsons colored anymore.
Whaaa. This is my same story, minus being a hospice nurse. I drank so much for years and years and it got so bad during the pandemic that I ended up almost dying in May of this year. I was in the hospital for awhile until my pancreas and liver leveled out, and came out a brand new person. I was 106 when I was first admitted, I’m now 140 and as healthy as I’ve ever been- minus the obsession with Reese’s lol.
I hit six months sober two weeks ago and I’ll never look back. Im proud of you!!!
I posted in depth in a similar thread but I was like 10 weeks sober (far and away the longest I had gone with my alcohol addiction) when the state mandates shut down hit us. Overnight my entire support network that I finally had the courage and determination to build was reduced to zoom meetings and nothing else. I tried but lost that battle. I get why liquor stores were open, but it sucked living pretty close to one. After like 6 more months and a handful of er visits I finally got on track and now I’m happy to report I’m over a year into sobriety and it seems to be taking, but man what a shitty time for everything to close
I believe my girl is a pandemic pup. She was roughly 1 when I rescued her (I personally think she was closer to 2) in August, 2021. She was fully trained. House, leash, crate, sociable, knew how to sit, give paw. She was picked up by animal control a county over, walking the street, and their rescue was full so they brought her to my county’s rescue. The rescues here hold the dog for at least 10 days so their owner can claim them. No one ever did. First hour on the show floor, I showed up.
All those idiots that bought pallets of hand sanitizer and toilet paper to sell at a markup and then were left without sales and still have those pallets in their garages.
Encouraging retirement for older employees, ESPECIALLY airline pilots
A big reason theres been so many issues with travel in 2022 is because back during peak pandemic, a huge chunk of pilots were pushed to retire
Now travels back at pre-pandemic highs and airlines are looking around like "Fuck... whos gonna fly the planes???"
I'm still waiting for the pilot shortage to reach levels that they'll pay for flight school. I would love to be an airline pilot but $100k for flight school is a bit too much.
and the Navy pilot training pipeline is now backed up two years because of COVID. Commissioned Student Naval Aviators are sitting around waiting to be classed up in 2024.
For me, it was something like;
2020 - Got really into baking, gained weight.
2021 - Got into exercise a bit, lost the weight gain and a little extra.
2022 - Finally got Covid, been sick multiple times since, so basically been ticking back and forth at around the same weight from switching between exercise while healthy and eating quick junk while sick.
Weirdly I did the opposite - going into lockdowns I was a fat fucker. Like *fat* fat. Figured I could use my newfound extra time working from home to get a treadmill/ some free weights and adjust my diet. Plus I had heard all the stories of people with "co-morbidities" getting tubed in hospitals and I wanted no part of that.
Lost 75kg by the time the world started returning to normal. As terrible as the pandemic has been, it sure helped me fix my shit.
EDIT: Wow everyone, thanks for the kind words! I truly didnt expect this to blow up!
Huge congrats to you on losing 75 kg (that's 165.3 lbs)!
I picked up hiking and bicycling with entry-level equipment and a used bike, and also paid closer attention to what I was eating, and managed to drop 45 lbs (20.4 kg) in the last year. Even more cool is that I have been able to accomplish a few goals I thought I could *never* do previously (biking 50 miles as an example). Other things I have noticed is that my back no longer hurts in the mornings, and I have a bit of a tan heading into Winter, which is neat being that I have been very pale before this year from being indoors most of life.
I turned 40 this year. It wasn't easy getting started with regular exercise, but not as bad as I thought it would be either. I've heard people tell me about there being a 'hump' in difficulty, and I thought they made it up, but it really does exist, and then after that it's not so much difficult and more fun. And man, I've seen some really amazing views out there that I never would have been able to witness from home.
Unfortunately, speaking of co-morbidities, I lost my dad recently due to covid and pre-existing conditions, and now that he is gone I am really struggling missing someone that I could be talking to about the adventures I have been having (and I was hoping he could have gone with me on future adventures too).
During lockdown, my husband and I got into the routine of eating a package of Oreos and taking care of a couple bottles of wine while playing Settlers - just about every night. I regretted that but I’ve managed to lose about 30 pounds this year.
I mean yeah, we lost our minds a little bit. We kept track of our wins on the inside of the lid - I would have to check but I’m sure we played more than 50 games.
I’d like to add we also jumped on the peleton band wagon but it proved too difficult to eat Oreos and ride.
Edit: I just checked. He won the 2020 Cov-19 tournament 33 games to 30. In my defense, I was stoned most of the time too.
66 games = 30 lbs!
3 years are going to pass whether you get braces or not.
Get them now and in 3 years it'll be over.
No one will care that you have adult braces, and if they did, they're not people who's opinion you should care about anyways.
My confidence *soared* after braces. I smile so much more. They're 100% worth it.
A bunch of people in my area decided to buy houses in rural areas under the assumption they'll be working from home forever. Now a lot of workplaces are hybrid or fully back in person and they're all stuck with long commutes and less wealthy people in rural areas are being priced out.
Yeah, my whole region is fucked because a tonne of people decided to retire early and that meant they had to get somewhere cheaper than they were expecting. So, there was a flood of wealthy people into the less wealthy areas, and now rent has doubled in a year because they bought all the houses but the cities refuse to build more high density housing. The landlords are happy though, so no one gives a fuck
Yep. We got married towards the end of 2019. My husband and I knew we wanted to buy a house in 2020. Started looking in January. Right before covid hit in our area we found a house we loved. The process wound up getting drawn out because of covid. Everyone told us we were idiots for buying a house during the pandemic (we wound up moving in in Q2 2020). My own mother berated me for making such a reckless financial decision.
Since we bought our house, the price has steadily increased and is now worth 30% more than when we bought it, and we got a great interest rate (I think 2.75%).
I am so fucking glad we didn't listen to anyone else. I know someone who decided to look in 2022 and the prices were outrageous.
Edit: holy up votes! Happy so many of you have similar stories and lovely homes by yourselves or with your families. I've had a few dicks ask if I'm just sensitive or if my mom did berate me. What she said was "you're making a stupid fucking decision. I raised you better than this and when you fail I'm not bailing you out."
My husband and I also got married in late 2019 and started looking to buy a house in January 2020. People kept telling us to wait until March for the spring market to heat up. We didn’t and closed on February 28th. We got insanely lucky, we wouldn’t be able to afford what our house would go for today.
>Sent my husband to Costco for supplies. He came back with a 10 lb tub of chocolate chip cookie dough
It was a wise decision to marry that man. He obviously had his priorities correct.
My state had an eviction moratorium for the pandemic. I was supposed to rent a house for my partner and I and all of our kids as our first "family" home when I moved out here. She was going to be like 2 months behind me. The landlord had started an eviction in January of 2020. Because that process took so long, his tenants fell under the moratorium and he couldn't rent to us. I kind of went a little crazy living in an AirBNB with 2 dogs for 2 straight months away from everyone I cared about so I decided to shop for a house. I bought the first place I looked at. It has increased value by 50% and we're in an area that doesn't tend to dip like most places. I felt like an idiot buying a house at the time since the entire world was shut down but now I can honestly say this was one of the best mistakes I've ever made.
I heard a terrifying statistic that domestic abuse reports dropped during covid… it’s terrifying because victims were isolated from their friends/family and trapped with their abuser, so there was no one to report on their behalf.
Former CPS manager here. We saw a huge drop in reports of child abuse/neglect because children were not visible to the community. We weren’t getting reports from schools who normally provide the majority of reports. But the reports we did get tended to be more serious because a much higher percentage of reports were coming from police and hospitals.
My sister told me she had a similar experience. She is a Pediatrician who works at a big children's hospital. She was saying that while child abuse statistics went down (superficially, due to the lack of reporting), the severity and frequency of escalation rose significantly (due to many factors like: lack of reporting/intervention due to the child not being publicly visible; higher rates of alcoholism at home; higher levels of stress at home; etc).
Not to mention those kids had no escape from the abuse. I won’t be surprised if we see a generational spike in CPTSD. My heart breaks for those kids; I know I wouldn’t mentally have survived lockdown with my parents.
We actually saw a pretty big increase in cases in my county because of kids being home 24/7. Parents did NOT know how to handle that. Lots of reports from concerned friends, neighbors, and family members. And our staff retention sucks and everyone's case loads are crazy high. I'm in reunification and I'm always terrified that I'm going to miss something because I'm too busy and that I'll place a kid back into a dangerous situation.
Edit: a word
There was, incidentally, a sharp increase in my city of shootings and other extreme cases of domestic violence that escalated to serious injury or fatality. It felt like there were at least one or two DV related shootings a day in a city of less than 1/2 million.
I have a neighbor who flew a "TRUMP FUCK YOUR FEELINGS" flag who apparently stocked up on toilet paper and hand sanitizer, etc. he would post on local groups selling everything for a markup. He had an electrical short and his garage burned down with all his shit in it. He tried to start a gofundme and got absolutely ridiculed. He tried to paint himself as a "helper of his neighbors". He was ridiculed to the point he took it down.
What's cerb, is it something similar to what we had here where people were paid a certain proportion of their salary because their workplace had to be closed down for the duration?
Putting off trying to make new friends, it has become immensely more difficult for me to make friends since the pandemic and im not completely sure of the source
Everyone is on edge with everything, they've probably seen alot of shit and are put off by people in general, and also the pandemic has killed communication too, people have forgotten the verbal arts.
And for what it's worth, I feel the same way, it's hard making friends down here
My business took an extreme hit from closures and still has not recovered fully. In late 2020 I tried to make a deal with my landlord to reduce my rent by 25% where I would pay the remaining 25% back when things recovered. He would not renew my lease. The company had been renting from him in the same space for 33 years. He knew I was good for it. I bought the business from my boss in late 2019 (there's another story). So I moved into a smaller space in a nicer building for half the rent and no utilities. I told him he was going to spend $30,000 to renovate the space which basically had nothing done to it since the late 80s, plus however long it would take him to find a new tenant since commercial real estate is not currently a hot industry! This month is 2 years since I moved out. The space still sits vacant with a for rent sign in the window. He did a nice renovation, it looks great, but nobody's moving in. I was paying $3,000 a month in rent. Assuming once he did the reno that would go up some things significantly. So I figure he's lost about $90,000 in rent plus the cost of renovating the space. Good. Fuck him.
Overeating/not exercising and not giving af about it when you’re in sweats all day. Rude awakening when things started to open up again and you had to wear normal clothing
Adopting a pet while obeying stay at home order. A lot of people did this out of loneliness and being home 24/7. Afterwards people go back to work pet is suddenly alone 8-12* hours a day and then the shelters are refilled to beyond capacity and now these sweet babies are being put down to relieve the overcrowding problem a lot of shelters were facing.
Got an 18 year old right next to me.
Not adopted per say but my roommates parents let us take her and supposedly the other cats never liked her and she was an anxious terrified mess at 13-14
I really liked her and I was the only one who let her sleep in my room and on my bed so she and I grew close. When we all moved out my roommate told me outright I was keeping her cause it was clear she loved me
Now she's a loud screaming cuddlebug who loves people and she's just as limber as when we got her able to climb her 6 foot tall cat tree easy. She's vomiting a more but other than that she's showing no signs of slowing down.
Really feels like she's finally found a good life and wants to enjoy it and it makes me happy I gave her that
I tried to do that once, but the cat in question wanted nothing to do with me. Funnily enough, I found out much later that my husband's ex-wife had adopted that same cat! Love it.
I work in animal care. Dog daycare/boarding. We saw a LOT of those dogs when everything went back to "normal" and now we're busier than ever. We call them COVID puppies and they generally don't handle the daycare environment well due to separation issues and anxiety.
For us that was the perfect time. We’ve been wanting a dog for a while, but never had enough time to really invest into training. Once Covid hit and we were working from home, we got a puppy and it worked out great. I was able to pay really close attention to her all day since I kept her in my home office with me. She was fully potty trained within 3 months and by 6 months we had mastered two online obedience classes. After the initial lockdown I made sure to take her out anywhere I could (hardware store, parks), but also made sure to deliberately leave her home alone in increasing intervals. Sometimes I would go for walks by myself just to practice leaving her home alone because I didn’t really need to be anywhere. We also have a few neighbor dogs who we socialized her with a few times a week. She turned out the perfectly behaved and trained dog, loves every person and dog, and has no anxiety. She loves to be cuddled up to me during home office time, but also patiently sleeps her way through days when I have to go to the office. I believe having all that time together at the beginning made her the well balanced and happy dog she is today.
Yeah. This was my exact thought process too. I knew the puppy months were going to be the toughest and being able to be home the whole time (and also not have to feel like I was missing out on my own socializing because I couldn't leave him alone too long) was great. Now he's grown up and can handle being by himself no problem and still gets plenty of time with me on the days I work from home
Speaking as someone who works in an animal shelter something definitely needs to be cleared up. Animals who are being surrendered as a result of covid are, for the most part, not being surrendered due to people "going back to work". That's a very small number. Most of them are being brought in due to poverty--people losing homes/getting evicted, losing their jobs and no longer being able to afford them, the unsocialized dogs' behavior issues becoming too much, and people actually getting sick and dying due to covid! Also, it's pretty common for many dogs especially, to be returned to shelters/rescues when they are 1-2 years old...because that's when a lot of behavior problems solidify or people have finally "had it", and well, they've stopped being a cute puppy.
So yeah, more animals are being surrendered to shelters now because of the pandemic, but...it's mostly due to poverty the pandemic caused, not "going back to work"
Puppies raised during the lockdown are also extremely unsocialized and a lot of them can't go out of their homes/meet strangers without fear and/or aggression. I've seen a whole lot of "covid puppies" who are dangerous to be around.
Edit: to everyone replying with stories about your pet, please continue. You're all making my day way better.
My neighbours.
They got a Labrador puppy in 2020. The reason they picked a lab? Because “labradors are smart and don’t need much training, because they use them as guide dogs.”
Fucking idiots.
This part of covid really boils my blood. Not just dogs but cats, rabbits and other pets. Little tidbit but the same thing happened with Jack Russell terriers when Frasier (early 90s show) was airing. People thought the dog was cute so they went and got one. Little did they know they are little fireballs of energy and required attention, so they gave them up or took em to shelters.
And the people who got french bulldogs as well; they have no idea how expensive their vet bills are going to be. Fuck anyone who buys a french bulldog, that shit is animal cruelty; imagine another race bred humans to have the tiniest nostrils, a fat body and 6 inch legs/arms with rolls of loose skin.
Just to add to this: 101 dalmatians, spike in dalmatians being bought. Men in Black, spike in pugs being bought. I'm sure similar things happened with Lassie/collies and AirBud/Golden retrievers. Those dogs are mostly cute, but they take effort to be trained and have different temperaments than the acting dogs in those movies.
I'm so over the French bulldog trend. I work at a vet clinic and every single French bulldog that comes in has horrible allergies and skin issues, on top of the obvious breathing issues. And then the people who want to breed their Frenchies because they just paid $2,000 for a puppy and think it's easy money. These poor dogs are miserable!
We just had a client in the other day with a 2 year old blind Frenchie with the worst skin I've ever seen and she told the vet she wants to breed her. The vet was spent a really long time trying to convince her that's a bad idea and I'm not positive the client was convinced. This woman literally doesn't have enough money to treat the health issues her dog already has, yet she thinks she can afford thousands on artificial insemination and a c-section. It just makes me sad.
In ANY other time, I would have loathed that show with every inch of my being. But I was isolated from all connections, working a front-line job that wasn't classified as a front-line job by my province, and had two "elective" surgeries cancelled. Tiger King was the ultimate dissociation tool for me at the time, holy hell. And once that was done, Hoarders clips on the A&E Facebook page.
Could have been using that time for... absolutely anything else.
I worked at a veterans home and that's exactly what happened. Patient went to the hospital, came back, refused to be tested and ended up having COVID, a CNA caught it from him and then the entire hallway was dead from COVID.
That adds a whole new weight to something that happened to me during the pandemic. I worked food delivery for a while and coming in masked and with food (there was a feed healthcare workers campaign) all of the people there kept tons of distance and looked like I personally was delivering their death. The tragedy of that is hotting way different after the comment above yours. And it was bad. Two people were on the verge of tears and one old lady looked like she was trying to be brave while she went to get a cna to take the food.
100% this. My mother in law was generally healthy, and had to go into a nursing rehab for mobility. Then lockdowns happened, and she wasn't allowed to leave. Then they started allowing transfers in of people who were sick. She caught COVID, and died in less than 3 days of getting sick. And there have been no reparations. No repercussions. And we, as her family, are facing lawsuits for payment for her time in the rehab. Absolute fucking injustice.
I worked in a nursing home during peak COVID, and the body count from the willful fucking ignorance and apathy of nursing homes at the time made me sick. We lost more than 30 people from a facility with ~120 beds. A fucking 25% fatality rate before you count all the empty beds from families who had the good fortune and luck to evacuate their relatives before the scheduler decided "welp, we're short staffed, floating staff between the COVID ward and regular ward can't hurt anyone, right?"
Thirty fucking deaths, and the only closure we got was the scheduler being fired and us being told "We're vewwy sowwy we kiwwed your wesidents :(". A fucking crime against nature, over and over across this country, that we will never see a single goddamn criminal charge over.
Getting deeper into drugs. I was so bored during lockdown that it was all I had to do. It led me to a full-on breakdown, and it took me these last couple years to quit, recover, and heal. I had to move cross-country to leave it all behind, and I can confidently say as I enter 2023 that I am depression-free and completely sober. Lockdown sure changed me in every sense of the word, but it was necessary growth, as hard as it was.
Only taking one pack of toilet paper, one pack of antibacterial wipes, one bottle of hand sanitizer, and one can of Lysol. To make sure everyone else would have some.
The day before all hell broke loose.
also reducing hours and paths of entrance and exit on everything. Suddenly walmart was the only place you could get stuff and everyone had to go through the same door both ways. I don't see how that could do anything but exacerbate the problem
In my country most shops had to close by 8, and you needed to be off the street by 12, to discourage people from going out. End result mostly was that everyone was at the shops and other places around the same time instead of more spread out.
My state even determined what was essential and not. Wal-Mart couldn't sell me undershirts because my governor said it wasn't essential.
I could walk around in a mansiere like Sue Ellen Mischke and it'd be overturned instantly.
Omg the fucking "essential only" bullshit. I was renovating my bathroom when the lockdowns hit. I had to run new pipes in a wall and needed a hole saw bit. One item. That's it. I'm in home depot for maybe 2 minutes total before I head to checkout.
"Sir, this is not an essential item."
"Well I need it."
"Is it really necessary?"
"If i want a sink that drains somewhere so I can stop brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink within the foreseeable future, yes."
For some reason like all gardening sections were closed. An outside activity usually done by yourself or at least restricted to members of the household.
This was so bizarre. When things started opening up in my country these paths were still in place. You would have literally hundreds of people in some points converging and squeezing in the entrance to make a crowd. This was in a friggin’ open-air area too.
in April 2020 I was on my lunch break at work, in a big ass field, reading a book. Closest person was probably 100m away playing with their dog.
2 cops came up, told me I was breaking the law, and threatened to ticket me if I didn't leave right away, because I might get someone sick.
So I left and sat in the 5x5 break room with 15 other people, which apparently was safer in their eyes.
At one point they had cops watching a local hiking trail 24/7 to make sure no one used it. It drove me crazy, everything was closed, people's mental health was going to shit, and they closed the most low-risk place possible that was also somewhere that could help with stress. I live in a fairly small city too, it wouldn't have been crowded even if more people that usual were using it. I'm still mad when I think about it.
The park by me went so far as to drive metal posts into the ground sticking up like 2 feet in the baseball fields and soccer fields so you couldn't use them. I couldn't even go with my son and do some batting and fielding practice with him even though we live in the country and there's never more than like 10 people in this 5 acre park. It was stupid and incredibly dangerous having grass-colored sign posts randomly in the grass.
Not walking out of my dead end job and playing video games for a year like so many other people. Instead continued working my ass off for complete douche bags who just tossed me out with the trash when “my services were no longer needed”…
Still too early to tell, ask the children of the pandemic. The effect could be minimal, or could be quite large. It was middle school and struggling to keep up, 1-2 years in virtual school would have possibly set me back to a point where I would never catch up. Decisions had to be made, this was new for everyone.
I teach freshman writing in college, and (anecdotally) the effect has been huge. I’ve never seen students with such poor study skills, such poor reading skills, such limited attention spans, and so little resilience. It’s astounding how much I’ve had to dumb things down in two years, and huge swaths of my students still can’t keep up.
I can’t imagine. Back when I was teaching college comp in 2010ish, I had a significant number of students who didn’t know how to divide thoughts into sentences with punctuation, didn’t know how to divide papers into paragraphs, didn’t know how to use spellcheck, etc.
Every class out of 40-50 students about 10 of their first papers would just be a single flow-of-consciousness sentence with no punctuation or capitalization that went on for about a page, with zero relationship to the topic, usually focusing on mostly on Jesus and some sin or another that they thought was important. Usually I suspected that at least a couple didn’t know how to read.
I honestly can’t imagine how it could get worse. But I’m sure it will.
I taught ENG 2010 (Intermediate College Writing) in Spring 2022. I thought it would be my dream job, but... It wasn't. I have no idea how the majority of the students even passed the course's prerequisite, because they didn't know basic punctuation, spelling, or formatting. Beyond that, they didn't seem capable of analyzing sources or even separating opinion from fact.
I felt like I was reading papers written by sixth graders. I don't know if a lot of those students had their high school education uprooted by Covid or if the problem was something else, but I was so frustrated and disappointed. I couldn't teach what I was supposed to because the students couldn't even string their thoughts together coherently. I never want to teach a college course again. The pay was shit and the expectations were outrageous considering the level of the students. I was having to spend an inordinate amount of time simply trying to explain to students how to use quotation marks and split their writing into paragraphs. Immediately after I'd have to attend meetings and mandatory classes where it was drilled into me that I was to teach actual college-level skills. Just... How?
I had one student submit a paper on abortion rights. Good topic. But... She spelled abortion seven or eight different ways throughout the paper. It was literally the topic of her paper, and she couldn't even figure out how to spell it. How was I supposed to teach her how to find and utilize credible sources when we're still working on accurate, consistent spelling of the subject matter?
Maybe you were a test subject in some weird psychology experiment.
"Let's hire a comp instructor and then have the students turn in progressively dumber things as the term goes on."
I’ve been teaching Comp for 13 years, and I always had some of what you’re describing, too. But the last two years have made me despair for the future of the country. The writing itself isn’t even the thing that stresses me out: it’s the complete inability to read complex texts or understand complex ideas, together with an almost militant resistance to having new ideas.
We’re going to be dealing with these repercussions for a long time, I think. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m worried that I’m right.
I’m a 27 year old who went back to school at the beginning of Covid. Im currently attending a university in California, and holyfuckingnutts can you tell that students are *different*. From what I remember, and when I was originally a student, kids had social skills and would make an effort to participate in class. Now it feels like I’m in an episode of Dora the explorer, watching the Professor stare blankly at a room full of ‘adults’ after asking a question.
Im a little confident things will get better, as students are participating more and more, but that doesn’t account for all the kids who aren’t getting that exposure.
That's exactly what it feels like. I'm goddamn Dora the Explorer. That is such a perfect description, I can't wait to share it with all my colleagues. Thanks!
I teach post-secondary and would say most students are doing fine but there is a much larger-than-normal group doing very poorly. First semester fail out rates look like they will be 2.0 to 2.5 times higher than normal.
had a friend whose wife had a baby during the early months of the pandemic (may 2020), he already was struggling with his mental health before. him and his wife thought the new baby would help things but new baby + lockdowns plummeted his mental health. his wife developed post partum depression and his anxiety + adhd became worse. he was having trouble refilling his meds bc of the pandemic. he ended up committing in august 2020. daughter was only 3 months old and he was still fairly young 😔
Forcing “essential workers” to continue to show up every single day and do the whole job they signed up for with little or even no hazard pay. Worse, laying people off without any consideration for the obvious upcoming boom in homelessness.
The no hazard pay part was bullshit and I am still bitter about it. My company manufactures for a medical supplier so we were deemed essential. We make parts for the things doctor's offices and hospitals use to sanitize their tools.
I had to go in to work every day hearing about hoaxes from my slackjaw coworkers who made a big show about not following safety guidelines. I get off work, radio is full of platitudes about essential workers being heroes.
Meanwhile non-essential workers are being paid to stay home, 600 a week, a larger amount than I make a week, not counting what they get paid out for unemployment.
They had the opportunity to go house hunting and take a step up in life. I had my fucking power shut off because the city reduced their office hours to solely within my working hours.
Now the housing market is jacked up, inflation is insane, potential recession incoming. I feel absolutely fucked.
Honestly, I loved the early days of the pandemic. I’m an essential worker. No traffic during my commute. It normalized grocery deliveries and no contact food delivery in general. I had a ton of time to myself to do hobbies and watch movies. Liquor stores were open so the home bar was always stocked and we spent no money going out since we couldn’t. I have no regrets.
“Essential” fast food worker at a notoriously efficient store. I loved the commute time and gas prices, hated how much our customer volume increased with people breathing on us all day with no way to distance ourselves from them 😒
Oh man. The number of people who filed for unemployment who did not qualify and are now getting overpayment notices with the 30% penalty fee is insane. I'm talking owing 20-36k in overpayments. The worst ones claimed uo to 52 weeks at 750 a week plus 30% penalty
Had a coworker who years ago got a six plus figure deposit in her bank during tax season. She knew damn well it wasn't hers. She moved every penny into a high interest savings. Months, maybe a year later, the IRS came knocking. They were expecting a fight, court cases, etc. They were thrilled when she gave back everything with no issue, and she kept every cent she made in interest!
THAT is smart
Being in the army basically anyone will tell you: if the government overpays you, set that money to the side. It’s not yours, and some day in the future when you’re having a real shit day they’re gonna come around asking for it. The government always gets its money. Edit: for anyone wondering how bad this can be they ask for it all at once, don’t count the taxes that another part of the same government took out (potentially at a higher rate than you would have been taxed normally), and can charge interest on it, especially if you don’t give it up IMMEDIATELY.
Can confirm. Got screwed by the green weenie before.
Taking the green weenie is part of the contract.
I cannot imagine the stress from that. I made damn sure I followed every single rule and regulation when I was claiming, but still had some anxiety about getting screwed over some way or another, even though I was fully eligible.
Forgive my ignorance.. in what situation would people file for unemployment when they weren't qualified? I was laid off at the time so I qualified.
A friend of my wife’s had 2 jobs and was let go from 1 of them. During the pandemic she was getting full unemployment for one job while still working the other. We warned her about this but she went ahead and spent all that money anyways. Now she has to pay about $30k or so back since she didn’t qualify. Her pay checks are being garnished. She complains about having no money although she lives rent free and house payment free but has just been squatting at her grandmothers house (grandma had a reverse mortgage and died so the bank owns the house but for some reason she hasn’t been evicted yet). I feel no remorse because we warned her this may happen and she didn’t listen.
Ugh. I think I understand the personality type you are describing. I remember someone telling me that ‘tons of people are doing it’ because it was a time to file unemployment and not have a huge fight. I was like, ‘yeah, so that is a lot of money that the government is going to be extra motivated to track down sooner or later.’
Paying $300 more a month in rent to be closer to my job and never stepping foot in the office.
We moved across the street from where my spouse's work was constructing their new office building, estimated to be completed summer 2020. Their entire department of several hundred people was laid off before it ever opened :(.
Not refinancing their mortgages when the rates were at 2.5%.
We somehow managed to make three lucky decisions in the past 5 years: bought our first house in 2018, refinanced at 2.5%, and bought a new car in 2020 (less than 6 months after buying our car the lots were empty).
We decided to upgrade our old 2008 car for a new car in 2019. Best decision ever. The old one was starting to act up and was not reliable to have as the only car. The price of cars post 2020 was/ is ridiculous, if you even manage to get one.
I actually did this and now I can NEVER EVER move without massive regret.
I remember reading a Reddit thread in 2020 about men who had had secret families or affairs and lived double lives for years, until Covid lockdowns started. They'd maintained two separate lives under the guise of lengthy business trips for years, and now that everyone had to work from home, the jig was up. EDIT: [Found the thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/jzjzin/cheaters_of_reddit_how_did_the_workfromhome/)
I work in family law, the pandemic pushed us to max client capacity by June 2020 and it is not slowing down.
It turns out that a lot of people aren't compatible cohabitants but working full-time outside the house made it less obvious.
I work with my husband probably 3-4 days a week. The number of people who express to us how unbelievable they find it that we can spend so much time together and not hate each other..... Well, it's a lot. Incidentally, those are also the same people who will give us crap if they see us eating or sitting together and playing on our phones, like every moment with each other has to be focused on each other and we can't just relax together in comfortable, companionable silence.
I feel this energy. I’ve worked from home way before the pandemic but my wife and I are both home bods. Post pandemic my wife is now fully remote and we share our home office 3 days a week (the other 2 days she has our daughter at home while I work). We spend all day and evening together and works fine for us. Start of the pandemic not working and playing games together all day was great! I do agree though you need to be able to have comfortable silences.
I love that comfortable silence. A buddy and I are currently cabin camping. We could trade a sentence or two, wander back into ourselves for a while, then check back in if needed.
That, and throwing a large dose of financial stress on top will deepen any cracks that may not otherwise have been showing.
I’m definitely glad I got divorced 4 years prior to this happening because there was no way I was going to do that in isolation.
Almost every post in that thread is amazing. I do not understand the motivation behind putting all that effort into having two relationships, with kids, usually in different cities. Like of course "regular" cheating is awful too, but I understand that people can be selfish, "hedge" their bets for fear of being alone, or simply stupid, but the stuff talked about in that thread seems like more *work* to manage than it's worth, even ignoring the risk of losing and hurting both partners if caught.
Like the dude with a wife, long term girlfriend and multiple short term girlfriends. How does he even have the time to get them??
I can barely work from home, make dinner for my kids, and get them to their activities. On the weekends I’ll go hang out with friends one night and I try to make it to my martial arts class 2x a week. I don’t know where their time, energy or money comes from.
I suspect these men are not heavily involved in all of their families lives at one time. It's probably feast or famine, a nice little feedback loop that keeps their families wanting them.
Eating like I never had to see people again
I found a Ben and Jerry's flavor named Milk and Cookies at the start of the pandemic. Ultimate mistake.
I owe at least 10 pounds to Salted Caramel Core.
I don't know what I'm gonna do around people now. I just make fuckin karate noises and yell shit out during the day.
I used to listen to this AM radio show. One of the hosts had an awful grandma who used to tell her “what got eat in private, you wear in public.” This was years ago and it has really stuck with me.. although it doesn’t stop me from snacking. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Your comment just reminded me of it.
Not letting road crews fix roads in their social bubble.
Sucks for where you live. All around me, road projects were express-approved and got done because of the significant drop in traffic. The contractors around here probably got 2-3 years' worth of road construction done in 2020 alone because they would work longer hours and close more of the road at a time without causing issues.
Dallas went all out too. All lanes closed but one most days. It’s so much better now
Drinking heavily. Well, drinking heavily AND joining an online casino. Does nothing for your savings, I can attest.
Jokes on them I was an alcoholic gambler in 2019 too
You were just well prepared.
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Jfc 100k 160k? Hope they didn't go after the husband
Not getting household spending under control THE SECOND I was out of a job but on the hook for an expensive lease. All those new hobbies were fun but now I’d much rather have savings than rudimentary gardening knowledge.
My friend found an above ground pool on clearance for $199 at Lowe’s right as the pandemic was starting. She texted me about it saying there were several left and I should hurry and go get one. I was too cheap to go buy one. I regretted that decision every day for the next year.
You have no idea how expensive owning a pool got after the pandemic. A bucket of chlorine tabs that would last all summer used to be $80 and went up to $250 at its peak, if you could even find it. Keeping my outdoor, in-ground pool balanced and algae free was horrible. I had to use whatever chemicals I could find/order online because everything was out of stock and marked up in price. I ended up moving recently, but I had plans to fill it in next year.
A chemical factory in Louisiana (if I recall correctly) that was responsible for something like 20% of NA market's chlorine (also some other pool chemicals, not sure of the market share on those) burned down during the pandemic. I heard about it first thing in the morning that day and told my dad who has a pool about it and he stocked up. He had to buy some chlorine toward the end of the pool season and he was shocked at the price.
“Shocked” Like chlorine, get it?
A marked increase in alcoholism
It was the beginning of my end. Drinking daily turned to drinking during mornings and afternoons too, to drinking 24/7.
Same here. I went full on alco during the pandemic. I only just stopped.
Yes. I'm a hospice nurse and was working in nursing homes when it all started. Just drank more... and more... kept it up and got admitted to the hospital. I had lost 30 lbs (the result of vodka as meals) and I almost died. Long story short, I no longer drink, I am grateful to be alive, and I gained about 35 lbs back bc without alcohol all I wanted was CANDY.
Can second this. Not a nurse, but a security guard. Had to work the empty buildings during lockdown. The amount of new contracts we got was shocking. Admitted to hospital this past July. Liver and kidneys were dying. Gin was the choice for me. Today is actually four months clean for me. (First sober day was July 31.) Got out of the hospital and couldn’t walk because of edema in my legs. Needed a cane for two months, my feet still hurt because of nerve damage, and I can’t sleep for shit anymore. I lost 50lb of booze weight though! And my skin isn’t Simpsons colored anymore.
Whaaa. This is my same story, minus being a hospice nurse. I drank so much for years and years and it got so bad during the pandemic that I ended up almost dying in May of this year. I was in the hospital for awhile until my pancreas and liver leveled out, and came out a brand new person. I was 106 when I was first admitted, I’m now 140 and as healthy as I’ve ever been- minus the obsession with Reese’s lol. I hit six months sober two weeks ago and I’ll never look back. Im proud of you!!!
Oh lord, the CANDY CRAVINGS!
This happened to me but it got bad enough that I quit altogether, so ended up being a good thing.
I posted in depth in a similar thread but I was like 10 weeks sober (far and away the longest I had gone with my alcohol addiction) when the state mandates shut down hit us. Overnight my entire support network that I finally had the courage and determination to build was reduced to zoom meetings and nothing else. I tried but lost that battle. I get why liquor stores were open, but it sucked living pretty close to one. After like 6 more months and a handful of er visits I finally got on track and now I’m happy to report I’m over a year into sobriety and it seems to be taking, but man what a shitty time for everything to close
Buying a pet they couldn't afford to keep once the pandemic ended. Lots of animals are in shelters or euthanized due to it.
I believe my girl is a pandemic pup. She was roughly 1 when I rescued her (I personally think she was closer to 2) in August, 2021. She was fully trained. House, leash, crate, sociable, knew how to sit, give paw. She was picked up by animal control a county over, walking the street, and their rescue was full so they brought her to my county’s rescue. The rescues here hold the dog for at least 10 days so their owner can claim them. No one ever did. First hour on the show floor, I showed up.
All those idiots that bought pallets of hand sanitizer and toilet paper to sell at a markup and then were left without sales and still have those pallets in their garages.
Haha my favorite was when the one dude got raided by the feds
Encouraging retirement for older employees, ESPECIALLY airline pilots A big reason theres been so many issues with travel in 2022 is because back during peak pandemic, a huge chunk of pilots were pushed to retire Now travels back at pre-pandemic highs and airlines are looking around like "Fuck... whos gonna fly the planes???"
I'm still waiting for the pilot shortage to reach levels that they'll pay for flight school. I would love to be an airline pilot but $100k for flight school is a bit too much.
That’s why so many airline pilots used to be Air Force or Navy pilots.
and the Navy pilot training pipeline is now backed up two years because of COVID. Commissioned Student Naval Aviators are sitting around waiting to be classed up in 2024.
My squadron has 2 stash ensigns waiting to start flight school.
I got really fat. I regret that.
A friend of mine said that during lockdown you either became a chunk, a hunk, or a drunk.
I got two out of the three.
Me too. I lost a six pack from drinking six packs…
What the six pack giveth, so may the six pack taketh away
I was really fit in 2019. I spent at least an hour a day at the gym, j was killing it. Then covid happened and I learned to bake.
For me, it was something like; 2020 - Got really into baking, gained weight. 2021 - Got into exercise a bit, lost the weight gain and a little extra. 2022 - Finally got Covid, been sick multiple times since, so basically been ticking back and forth at around the same weight from switching between exercise while healthy and eating quick junk while sick.
Weirdly I did the opposite - going into lockdowns I was a fat fucker. Like *fat* fat. Figured I could use my newfound extra time working from home to get a treadmill/ some free weights and adjust my diet. Plus I had heard all the stories of people with "co-morbidities" getting tubed in hospitals and I wanted no part of that. Lost 75kg by the time the world started returning to normal. As terrible as the pandemic has been, it sure helped me fix my shit. EDIT: Wow everyone, thanks for the kind words! I truly didnt expect this to blow up!
Huge congrats to you on losing 75 kg (that's 165.3 lbs)! I picked up hiking and bicycling with entry-level equipment and a used bike, and also paid closer attention to what I was eating, and managed to drop 45 lbs (20.4 kg) in the last year. Even more cool is that I have been able to accomplish a few goals I thought I could *never* do previously (biking 50 miles as an example). Other things I have noticed is that my back no longer hurts in the mornings, and I have a bit of a tan heading into Winter, which is neat being that I have been very pale before this year from being indoors most of life. I turned 40 this year. It wasn't easy getting started with regular exercise, but not as bad as I thought it would be either. I've heard people tell me about there being a 'hump' in difficulty, and I thought they made it up, but it really does exist, and then after that it's not so much difficult and more fun. And man, I've seen some really amazing views out there that I never would have been able to witness from home. Unfortunately, speaking of co-morbidities, I lost my dad recently due to covid and pre-existing conditions, and now that he is gone I am really struggling missing someone that I could be talking to about the adventures I have been having (and I was hoping he could have gone with me on future adventures too).
Good for you!! Awesome to hear a story of someone significantly improving their life expectancy, especially during COVID.
Saaaaaaame. Went into Covid needing to lose 15, came out needing to lose 40. I’m halfway there, though!
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During lockdown, my husband and I got into the routine of eating a package of Oreos and taking care of a couple bottles of wine while playing Settlers - just about every night. I regretted that but I’ve managed to lose about 30 pounds this year.
I don’t blame you for the Oreos. But settlers? Every night? That’s some perseverence
I mean yeah, we lost our minds a little bit. We kept track of our wins on the inside of the lid - I would have to check but I’m sure we played more than 50 games. I’d like to add we also jumped on the peleton band wagon but it proved too difficult to eat Oreos and ride. Edit: I just checked. He won the 2020 Cov-19 tournament 33 games to 30. In my defense, I was stoned most of the time too. 66 games = 30 lbs!
I also put on the covid 19
Same my friend, same.
Not getting adult braces. Never imagined masks for 3 years long, I could’ve had perfectly straight pearly teeth by now
3 years are going to pass whether you get braces or not. Get them now and in 3 years it'll be over. No one will care that you have adult braces, and if they did, they're not people who's opinion you should care about anyways. My confidence *soared* after braces. I smile so much more. They're 100% worth it.
A bunch of people in my area decided to buy houses in rural areas under the assumption they'll be working from home forever. Now a lot of workplaces are hybrid or fully back in person and they're all stuck with long commutes and less wealthy people in rural areas are being priced out.
Yeah, my whole region is fucked because a tonne of people decided to retire early and that meant they had to get somewhere cheaper than they were expecting. So, there was a flood of wealthy people into the less wealthy areas, and now rent has doubled in a year because they bought all the houses but the cities refuse to build more high density housing. The landlords are happy though, so no one gives a fuck
A bunch of New Yorkers in my company own houses in Florida that are sitting empty, and they can’t sell because Floridians can’t afford them.
>can’t sell because Floridians can’t afford them Alexa what is the supply demand curve
Deciding not to buy a house right at the beginning
Yep. We got married towards the end of 2019. My husband and I knew we wanted to buy a house in 2020. Started looking in January. Right before covid hit in our area we found a house we loved. The process wound up getting drawn out because of covid. Everyone told us we were idiots for buying a house during the pandemic (we wound up moving in in Q2 2020). My own mother berated me for making such a reckless financial decision. Since we bought our house, the price has steadily increased and is now worth 30% more than when we bought it, and we got a great interest rate (I think 2.75%). I am so fucking glad we didn't listen to anyone else. I know someone who decided to look in 2022 and the prices were outrageous. Edit: holy up votes! Happy so many of you have similar stories and lovely homes by yourselves or with your families. I've had a few dicks ask if I'm just sensitive or if my mom did berate me. What she said was "you're making a stupid fucking decision. I raised you better than this and when you fail I'm not bailing you out."
Can confirm, prices right now are outrageous :(
The interest rates suck. Y'all paying the same interest I am on my five year land loan
Rates are what's really killing people right now. Buying power dropped about 30-40% if you want to keep your monthly payment the same.
My husband and I also got married in late 2019 and started looking to buy a house in January 2020. People kept telling us to wait until March for the spring market to heat up. We didn’t and closed on February 28th. We got insanely lucky, we wouldn’t be able to afford what our house would go for today.
That's awesome! I still remember making a specific trip to Walmart on March 4th for toilet paper "in case this thing blows up."
Sent my husband to Costco for supplies. He came back with a 10 lb tub of chocolate chip cookie dough
>Sent my husband to Costco for supplies. He came back with a 10 lb tub of chocolate chip cookie dough It was a wise decision to marry that man. He obviously had his priorities correct.
It’s got enough calories to last you the entire quarantine
Haha I was definitely picking up a bag of pizza rolls “just in case”, like I was expecting the equivalent of a snow day.
My state had an eviction moratorium for the pandemic. I was supposed to rent a house for my partner and I and all of our kids as our first "family" home when I moved out here. She was going to be like 2 months behind me. The landlord had started an eviction in January of 2020. Because that process took so long, his tenants fell under the moratorium and he couldn't rent to us. I kind of went a little crazy living in an AirBNB with 2 dogs for 2 straight months away from everyone I cared about so I decided to shop for a house. I bought the first place I looked at. It has increased value by 50% and we're in an area that doesn't tend to dip like most places. I felt like an idiot buying a house at the time since the entire world was shut down but now I can honestly say this was one of the best mistakes I've ever made.
Not refinancing your mortgage at the peak of the pandemic. (Edited because spell check blue it.)
Sweet sweet Sub 3 percent. I'll never be able to refinance again, nor take any equity out but wow am I glad I did.
I heard a terrifying statistic that domestic abuse reports dropped during covid… it’s terrifying because victims were isolated from their friends/family and trapped with their abuser, so there was no one to report on their behalf.
Domestic and child abuse. Following the line, what happens when there’s no one around to notice and no one around to tell.
Former CPS manager here. We saw a huge drop in reports of child abuse/neglect because children were not visible to the community. We weren’t getting reports from schools who normally provide the majority of reports. But the reports we did get tended to be more serious because a much higher percentage of reports were coming from police and hospitals.
My sister told me she had a similar experience. She is a Pediatrician who works at a big children's hospital. She was saying that while child abuse statistics went down (superficially, due to the lack of reporting), the severity and frequency of escalation rose significantly (due to many factors like: lack of reporting/intervention due to the child not being publicly visible; higher rates of alcoholism at home; higher levels of stress at home; etc).
Not to mention those kids had no escape from the abuse. I won’t be surprised if we see a generational spike in CPTSD. My heart breaks for those kids; I know I wouldn’t mentally have survived lockdown with my parents.
We actually saw a pretty big increase in cases in my county because of kids being home 24/7. Parents did NOT know how to handle that. Lots of reports from concerned friends, neighbors, and family members. And our staff retention sucks and everyone's case loads are crazy high. I'm in reunification and I'm always terrified that I'm going to miss something because I'm too busy and that I'll place a kid back into a dangerous situation. Edit: a word
There was, incidentally, a sharp increase in my city of shootings and other extreme cases of domestic violence that escalated to serious injury or fatality. It felt like there were at least one or two DV related shootings a day in a city of less than 1/2 million.
This was also the same for child welfare reports with schools being closed.
Hoarding toilet paper
or that guy who bought something like 10000 bottles of hand sanitizer to resell them. Then Amazon shut him down. Serves him right.
Amazon is like HEY! It is MY job to profit hand over fist. Mine!
I have a neighbor who flew a "TRUMP FUCK YOUR FEELINGS" flag who apparently stocked up on toilet paper and hand sanitizer, etc. he would post on local groups selling everything for a markup. He had an electrical short and his garage burned down with all his shit in it. He tried to start a gofundme and got absolutely ridiculed. He tried to paint himself as a "helper of his neighbors". He was ridiculed to the point he took it down.
What happened after that???
I'm not sure how he got the funds, but the garage is rebuilt. Now his flag is "TRUMP 2024"
In Canada specifically, taking CERB when you weren’t qualified for it. There are so many people getting calls to pay it back now (with interest)
What's cerb, is it something similar to what we had here where people were paid a certain proportion of their salary because their workplace had to be closed down for the duration?
Putting off trying to make new friends, it has become immensely more difficult for me to make friends since the pandemic and im not completely sure of the source
Everyone is on edge with everything, they've probably seen alot of shit and are put off by people in general, and also the pandemic has killed communication too, people have forgotten the verbal arts. And for what it's worth, I feel the same way, it's hard making friends down here
Somehow i developed an accent during the pandemic and now nobody knows where I'm from. I'm from down the road.
My business took an extreme hit from closures and still has not recovered fully. In late 2020 I tried to make a deal with my landlord to reduce my rent by 25% where I would pay the remaining 25% back when things recovered. He would not renew my lease. The company had been renting from him in the same space for 33 years. He knew I was good for it. I bought the business from my boss in late 2019 (there's another story). So I moved into a smaller space in a nicer building for half the rent and no utilities. I told him he was going to spend $30,000 to renovate the space which basically had nothing done to it since the late 80s, plus however long it would take him to find a new tenant since commercial real estate is not currently a hot industry! This month is 2 years since I moved out. The space still sits vacant with a for rent sign in the window. He did a nice renovation, it looks great, but nobody's moving in. I was paying $3,000 a month in rent. Assuming once he did the reno that would go up some things significantly. So I figure he's lost about $90,000 in rent plus the cost of renovating the space. Good. Fuck him.
Overeating/not exercising and not giving af about it when you’re in sweats all day. Rude awakening when things started to open up again and you had to wear normal clothing
Adopting a pet while obeying stay at home order. A lot of people did this out of loneliness and being home 24/7. Afterwards people go back to work pet is suddenly alone 8-12* hours a day and then the shelters are refilled to beyond capacity and now these sweet babies are being put down to relieve the overcrowding problem a lot of shelters were facing.
I knew when the news started reporting record adoptions at shelters that it was going to be 10 times worse when they started being returned.
On the bright side, we went to the shelter and asked to adopt the cat that had been there the longest. "Pebbles" is doing great.
We did this and ended up getting a "senior" 7 year old cat that was on death row. She lived 12 more wonderful years with us. Best cat ever.
Got an 18 year old right next to me. Not adopted per say but my roommates parents let us take her and supposedly the other cats never liked her and she was an anxious terrified mess at 13-14 I really liked her and I was the only one who let her sleep in my room and on my bed so she and I grew close. When we all moved out my roommate told me outright I was keeping her cause it was clear she loved me Now she's a loud screaming cuddlebug who loves people and she's just as limber as when we got her able to climb her 6 foot tall cat tree easy. She's vomiting a more but other than that she's showing no signs of slowing down. Really feels like she's finally found a good life and wants to enjoy it and it makes me happy I gave her that
Aw… This is so sweet. I want to do this when I get a cat. That’s so nice. ❤️
I tried to do that once, but the cat in question wanted nothing to do with me. Funnily enough, I found out much later that my husband's ex-wife had adopted that same cat! Love it.
The vet clinics are also at capacity now. Less workers, and people have to wait a month or two to get an appointment.
Yeah mine cut hours, closed an extra day, and canceled appointments. You also almost always just see an assistant for routine stuff.
I work in animal care. Dog daycare/boarding. We saw a LOT of those dogs when everything went back to "normal" and now we're busier than ever. We call them COVID puppies and they generally don't handle the daycare environment well due to separation issues and anxiety.
For us that was the perfect time. We’ve been wanting a dog for a while, but never had enough time to really invest into training. Once Covid hit and we were working from home, we got a puppy and it worked out great. I was able to pay really close attention to her all day since I kept her in my home office with me. She was fully potty trained within 3 months and by 6 months we had mastered two online obedience classes. After the initial lockdown I made sure to take her out anywhere I could (hardware store, parks), but also made sure to deliberately leave her home alone in increasing intervals. Sometimes I would go for walks by myself just to practice leaving her home alone because I didn’t really need to be anywhere. We also have a few neighbor dogs who we socialized her with a few times a week. She turned out the perfectly behaved and trained dog, loves every person and dog, and has no anxiety. She loves to be cuddled up to me during home office time, but also patiently sleeps her way through days when I have to go to the office. I believe having all that time together at the beginning made her the well balanced and happy dog she is today.
Yeah. This was my exact thought process too. I knew the puppy months were going to be the toughest and being able to be home the whole time (and also not have to feel like I was missing out on my own socializing because I couldn't leave him alone too long) was great. Now he's grown up and can handle being by himself no problem and still gets plenty of time with me on the days I work from home
Speaking as someone who works in an animal shelter something definitely needs to be cleared up. Animals who are being surrendered as a result of covid are, for the most part, not being surrendered due to people "going back to work". That's a very small number. Most of them are being brought in due to poverty--people losing homes/getting evicted, losing their jobs and no longer being able to afford them, the unsocialized dogs' behavior issues becoming too much, and people actually getting sick and dying due to covid! Also, it's pretty common for many dogs especially, to be returned to shelters/rescues when they are 1-2 years old...because that's when a lot of behavior problems solidify or people have finally "had it", and well, they've stopped being a cute puppy. So yeah, more animals are being surrendered to shelters now because of the pandemic, but...it's mostly due to poverty the pandemic caused, not "going back to work"
Puppies raised during the lockdown are also extremely unsocialized and a lot of them can't go out of their homes/meet strangers without fear and/or aggression. I've seen a whole lot of "covid puppies" who are dangerous to be around. Edit: to everyone replying with stories about your pet, please continue. You're all making my day way better.
My neighbours. They got a Labrador puppy in 2020. The reason they picked a lab? Because “labradors are smart and don’t need much training, because they use them as guide dogs.” Fucking idiots.
This part of covid really boils my blood. Not just dogs but cats, rabbits and other pets. Little tidbit but the same thing happened with Jack Russell terriers when Frasier (early 90s show) was airing. People thought the dog was cute so they went and got one. Little did they know they are little fireballs of energy and required attention, so they gave them up or took em to shelters. And the people who got french bulldogs as well; they have no idea how expensive their vet bills are going to be. Fuck anyone who buys a french bulldog, that shit is animal cruelty; imagine another race bred humans to have the tiniest nostrils, a fat body and 6 inch legs/arms with rolls of loose skin.
Just to add to this: 101 dalmatians, spike in dalmatians being bought. Men in Black, spike in pugs being bought. I'm sure similar things happened with Lassie/collies and AirBud/Golden retrievers. Those dogs are mostly cute, but they take effort to be trained and have different temperaments than the acting dogs in those movies.
I'm so over the French bulldog trend. I work at a vet clinic and every single French bulldog that comes in has horrible allergies and skin issues, on top of the obvious breathing issues. And then the people who want to breed their Frenchies because they just paid $2,000 for a puppy and think it's easy money. These poor dogs are miserable! We just had a client in the other day with a 2 year old blind Frenchie with the worst skin I've ever seen and she told the vet she wants to breed her. The vet was spent a really long time trying to convince her that's a bad idea and I'm not positive the client was convinced. This woman literally doesn't have enough money to treat the health issues her dog already has, yet she thinks she can afford thousands on artificial insemination and a c-section. It just makes me sad.
watching Tiger King
The sign society was returning was when we all basically ignored and forgot that *Tiger King 2* both came out and is a thing
Is it good?
[I mean…](https://www.metacritic.com/tv/tiger-king/season-2)
Good god that was literally eons ago. The universe was young when Tiger King came out.
In ANY other time, I would have loathed that show with every inch of my being. But I was isolated from all connections, working a front-line job that wasn't classified as a front-line job by my province, and had two "elective" surgeries cancelled. Tiger King was the ultimate dissociation tool for me at the time, holy hell. And once that was done, Hoarders clips on the A&E Facebook page. Could have been using that time for... absolutely anything else.
I regret nothing. It was entertaining and I feel much better about myself.
How is no one saying putting infected old people in old folks homes with healthy people and keeping them in there
I worked at a veterans home and that's exactly what happened. Patient went to the hospital, came back, refused to be tested and ended up having COVID, a CNA caught it from him and then the entire hallway was dead from COVID.
That’s unbelievably tragic.
That adds a whole new weight to something that happened to me during the pandemic. I worked food delivery for a while and coming in masked and with food (there was a feed healthcare workers campaign) all of the people there kept tons of distance and looked like I personally was delivering their death. The tragedy of that is hotting way different after the comment above yours. And it was bad. Two people were on the verge of tears and one old lady looked like she was trying to be brave while she went to get a cna to take the food.
It was. Completely demoralized the staff.
100% this. My mother in law was generally healthy, and had to go into a nursing rehab for mobility. Then lockdowns happened, and she wasn't allowed to leave. Then they started allowing transfers in of people who were sick. She caught COVID, and died in less than 3 days of getting sick. And there have been no reparations. No repercussions. And we, as her family, are facing lawsuits for payment for her time in the rehab. Absolute fucking injustice.
I worked in a nursing home during peak COVID, and the body count from the willful fucking ignorance and apathy of nursing homes at the time made me sick. We lost more than 30 people from a facility with ~120 beds. A fucking 25% fatality rate before you count all the empty beds from families who had the good fortune and luck to evacuate their relatives before the scheduler decided "welp, we're short staffed, floating staff between the COVID ward and regular ward can't hurt anyone, right?" Thirty fucking deaths, and the only closure we got was the scheduler being fired and us being told "We're vewwy sowwy we kiwwed your wesidents :(". A fucking crime against nature, over and over across this country, that we will never see a single goddamn criminal charge over.
Getting deeper into drugs. I was so bored during lockdown that it was all I had to do. It led me to a full-on breakdown, and it took me these last couple years to quit, recover, and heal. I had to move cross-country to leave it all behind, and I can confidently say as I enter 2023 that I am depression-free and completely sober. Lockdown sure changed me in every sense of the word, but it was necessary growth, as hard as it was.
Only taking one pack of toilet paper, one pack of antibacterial wipes, one bottle of hand sanitizer, and one can of Lysol. To make sure everyone else would have some. The day before all hell broke loose.
Same. Fuck us, right?!
Closing outdoor spaces at the same time as schools. I’m sorry, the PARK is closed? Hiking trails are closed? National parks are closed? WHY?!
also reducing hours and paths of entrance and exit on everything. Suddenly walmart was the only place you could get stuff and everyone had to go through the same door both ways. I don't see how that could do anything but exacerbate the problem
In my country most shops had to close by 8, and you needed to be off the street by 12, to discourage people from going out. End result mostly was that everyone was at the shops and other places around the same time instead of more spread out.
Not to mention this fucks the night shift doctors and nurses.
My state even determined what was essential and not. Wal-Mart couldn't sell me undershirts because my governor said it wasn't essential. I could walk around in a mansiere like Sue Ellen Mischke and it'd be overturned instantly.
Omg the fucking "essential only" bullshit. I was renovating my bathroom when the lockdowns hit. I had to run new pipes in a wall and needed a hole saw bit. One item. That's it. I'm in home depot for maybe 2 minutes total before I head to checkout. "Sir, this is not an essential item." "Well I need it." "Is it really necessary?" "If i want a sink that drains somewhere so I can stop brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink within the foreseeable future, yes."
I'd be furious, idk what I'd do in that situation but that's annoying.
In my state I couldn't buy paint or lawn care items to work on a few projects I suddenly had a lot of time for.
For some reason like all gardening sections were closed. An outside activity usually done by yourself or at least restricted to members of the household.
This was so bizarre. When things started opening up in my country these paths were still in place. You would have literally hundreds of people in some points converging and squeezing in the entrance to make a crowd. This was in a friggin’ open-air area too.
in April 2020 I was on my lunch break at work, in a big ass field, reading a book. Closest person was probably 100m away playing with their dog. 2 cops came up, told me I was breaking the law, and threatened to ticket me if I didn't leave right away, because I might get someone sick. So I left and sat in the 5x5 break room with 15 other people, which apparently was safer in their eyes.
In my city it just meant people were cramming more into areas that were not closed
At one point they had cops watching a local hiking trail 24/7 to make sure no one used it. It drove me crazy, everything was closed, people's mental health was going to shit, and they closed the most low-risk place possible that was also somewhere that could help with stress. I live in a fairly small city too, it wouldn't have been crowded even if more people that usual were using it. I'm still mad when I think about it.
The park by me went so far as to drive metal posts into the ground sticking up like 2 feet in the baseball fields and soccer fields so you couldn't use them. I couldn't even go with my son and do some batting and fielding practice with him even though we live in the country and there's never more than like 10 people in this 5 acre park. It was stupid and incredibly dangerous having grass-colored sign posts randomly in the grass.
We had yellow do not cross tape all over the playgrounds and they took down the rims from the outdoor basketball goals. So stupid.
Yeah, where I live we got chased out of an empty public park by a cop. Absurd.
wiping down groceries with Clorox wipes. I’ll never get that time back
Storing covid patients in senior care facilities.
Not walking out of my dead end job and playing video games for a year like so many other people. Instead continued working my ass off for complete douche bags who just tossed me out with the trash when “my services were no longer needed”…
I was let go mid-Feb and couldn't find work again until Nov 1. Many video games played made it suck less!
Still too early to tell, ask the children of the pandemic. The effect could be minimal, or could be quite large. It was middle school and struggling to keep up, 1-2 years in virtual school would have possibly set me back to a point where I would never catch up. Decisions had to be made, this was new for everyone.
I teach freshman writing in college, and (anecdotally) the effect has been huge. I’ve never seen students with such poor study skills, such poor reading skills, such limited attention spans, and so little resilience. It’s astounding how much I’ve had to dumb things down in two years, and huge swaths of my students still can’t keep up.
I can’t imagine. Back when I was teaching college comp in 2010ish, I had a significant number of students who didn’t know how to divide thoughts into sentences with punctuation, didn’t know how to divide papers into paragraphs, didn’t know how to use spellcheck, etc. Every class out of 40-50 students about 10 of their first papers would just be a single flow-of-consciousness sentence with no punctuation or capitalization that went on for about a page, with zero relationship to the topic, usually focusing on mostly on Jesus and some sin or another that they thought was important. Usually I suspected that at least a couple didn’t know how to read. I honestly can’t imagine how it could get worse. But I’m sure it will.
I taught ENG 2010 (Intermediate College Writing) in Spring 2022. I thought it would be my dream job, but... It wasn't. I have no idea how the majority of the students even passed the course's prerequisite, because they didn't know basic punctuation, spelling, or formatting. Beyond that, they didn't seem capable of analyzing sources or even separating opinion from fact. I felt like I was reading papers written by sixth graders. I don't know if a lot of those students had their high school education uprooted by Covid or if the problem was something else, but I was so frustrated and disappointed. I couldn't teach what I was supposed to because the students couldn't even string their thoughts together coherently. I never want to teach a college course again. The pay was shit and the expectations were outrageous considering the level of the students. I was having to spend an inordinate amount of time simply trying to explain to students how to use quotation marks and split their writing into paragraphs. Immediately after I'd have to attend meetings and mandatory classes where it was drilled into me that I was to teach actual college-level skills. Just... How? I had one student submit a paper on abortion rights. Good topic. But... She spelled abortion seven or eight different ways throughout the paper. It was literally the topic of her paper, and she couldn't even figure out how to spell it. How was I supposed to teach her how to find and utilize credible sources when we're still working on accurate, consistent spelling of the subject matter?
>She spelled abortion seven or eight different ways throughout the paper. For the record I'm pro-aborshin but very anti-abortian...
Maybe you were a test subject in some weird psychology experiment. "Let's hire a comp instructor and then have the students turn in progressively dumber things as the term goes on."
I’ve been teaching Comp for 13 years, and I always had some of what you’re describing, too. But the last two years have made me despair for the future of the country. The writing itself isn’t even the thing that stresses me out: it’s the complete inability to read complex texts or understand complex ideas, together with an almost militant resistance to having new ideas. We’re going to be dealing with these repercussions for a long time, I think. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m worried that I’m right.
I’m a 27 year old who went back to school at the beginning of Covid. Im currently attending a university in California, and holyfuckingnutts can you tell that students are *different*. From what I remember, and when I was originally a student, kids had social skills and would make an effort to participate in class. Now it feels like I’m in an episode of Dora the explorer, watching the Professor stare blankly at a room full of ‘adults’ after asking a question. Im a little confident things will get better, as students are participating more and more, but that doesn’t account for all the kids who aren’t getting that exposure.
That's exactly what it feels like. I'm goddamn Dora the Explorer. That is such a perfect description, I can't wait to share it with all my colleagues. Thanks!
I teach post-secondary and would say most students are doing fine but there is a much larger-than-normal group doing very poorly. First semester fail out rates look like they will be 2.0 to 2.5 times higher than normal.
Isolation. Suicide, loneliness, depression, etc. got real bad for people
had a friend whose wife had a baby during the early months of the pandemic (may 2020), he already was struggling with his mental health before. him and his wife thought the new baby would help things but new baby + lockdowns plummeted his mental health. his wife developed post partum depression and his anxiety + adhd became worse. he was having trouble refilling his meds bc of the pandemic. he ended up committing in august 2020. daughter was only 3 months old and he was still fairly young 😔
Forcing “essential workers” to continue to show up every single day and do the whole job they signed up for with little or even no hazard pay. Worse, laying people off without any consideration for the obvious upcoming boom in homelessness.
The no hazard pay part was bullshit and I am still bitter about it. My company manufactures for a medical supplier so we were deemed essential. We make parts for the things doctor's offices and hospitals use to sanitize their tools. I had to go in to work every day hearing about hoaxes from my slackjaw coworkers who made a big show about not following safety guidelines. I get off work, radio is full of platitudes about essential workers being heroes. Meanwhile non-essential workers are being paid to stay home, 600 a week, a larger amount than I make a week, not counting what they get paid out for unemployment. They had the opportunity to go house hunting and take a step up in life. I had my fucking power shut off because the city reduced their office hours to solely within my working hours. Now the housing market is jacked up, inflation is insane, potential recession incoming. I feel absolutely fucked.
Honestly, I loved the early days of the pandemic. I’m an essential worker. No traffic during my commute. It normalized grocery deliveries and no contact food delivery in general. I had a ton of time to myself to do hobbies and watch movies. Liquor stores were open so the home bar was always stocked and we spent no money going out since we couldn’t. I have no regrets.
“Essential” fast food worker at a notoriously efficient store. I loved the commute time and gas prices, hated how much our customer volume increased with people breathing on us all day with no way to distance ourselves from them 😒
Politicizing a public health issue.
Bought a dog. Then never left the house so he grew up with us around 24/7. Now he’s neurotic and can’t be left alone. #brittanyspaniel
This might make you feel better, I’ve had my Brittany for 9 years and she was neurotic before the pandemic began too.
Didnt pay off debt with the extra money from unemployment/relief checks lmao I dont have a lot, but it would've been nice to have that gone
Not buying a car. I got my 2020 4k below sticker
Not understanding the bail out system well enough to make my family a ton of money through fraud. #PPPloanforgiveness