I’m a tad jealous of people who got to do this. My work just got busier. It was like normal except people were dying and I had all my groceries delivered.
Ah yes. As an “essential worker” it was nice that for about 3.5 minutes it was acknowledged that all of us “unskilled” workers were required for society to function and then get nothing for it except more work and exposure to to a deadly disease.
Don’t forget the “Heroes work here” banners! Those were nice
“we spent a ton of money on these meaningless banners, posters and out of touch ad campaigns to get people to buy from us.”
“Sorry, times are tough, we have to lay off a bunch of you, and we can’t afford to give anyone raises. But, to show we are all in this together, I have volunteered my 3rd spare car for a charity raffle. All of you will buy tickets, starting at the low cost of a banana. That’s right only fifty dollars, all proceeds will be donated to the children in need in my house. So please think of the children during these trying time for your chance to win a nft signed photo of my 3rd spare car, and remember it’s for the needy children.”
They put up a big sign thanking all us essential workers. I wanted to torch it so bad. Pay me more you peices of fucking crap!
Now let’s all hang out of our windows and bang some pans together, because we care
Yeah I’m a software engineer so the only thing that changed was I got to wear more comfortable pants and didn’t have to drive to work. I still felt mentally exhausted after working all day and didn’t have the energy to pursue any hobbies
I’m a software engineer too. I’ll tell you what changed. I have a kid. Daycare was shut down, but since both my wife and I can work from home we were expected to do just that. We got to spend a lot of time with the then two year old, but hardly saw each other except for the back of the head because one of us was always working. What was your corona project? Surviving, that’s what!
Consider finding a better workplace. It only gets easier as you have more experience.
Yuuuup. I’ve literally never wanted to leave my house, quarantine sounds like a dream. But nooo…
I still think the most eye opening part was watching the smog clear up in real time in India where the Himalayan mountains became visible again to many parts of the north
Same in Denver. It has never been that clear ever. That’s what I guess it could be like if we actually started to fight greenhouse gases for real.
And then animals started being seen a lot more around here.
Sigh
Went up Lookout mountain and I doubt I’ll ever see that clear and far again towards Denver
It was just nuts. I’ll never forget it. I hope we see that again but i share your doubt.
I saw so much wildlife in my city. Including a deer for once. Drunk ass me: well deer, looks like me the other essential workers and you inherited the earth.
Of course the bankers survived. Of course they would.
Remember when COVID has been used by them to encourage or enforce cashless payments? That was scary.
Dumb attempts to pull power away from governments and federal reserve’s really
Yeps. Banks make no money if we keep it in paper in our wallet and big retailers don’t have to deal with the infrastructure to deal with paper money. Part of the reason why government economists want to ban all non-digital currency.
In the past governments banned people from owning gold. In the future they will ban us from owning paper currency. And pretty much for the same reason. There will be a financial system that you simply can not opt out of. You will need a bank and it will be one of the few remaining banks left after stress tests and corporate mergers finished the job 2007 started.
The later this happens the better, fortunately we don’t live forever.
The visibility in Bangkok was nuts. Normally I expect to see smog rising up by 7 every morning, but the skies were like Montana clear.
From where ?
I worked for the hospital system… I only remember dreading tomorrow and wishing for a moment to catch my breath. I didn’t really get to work from home and I rarely got time off outside of my schedule.
It sucked! I didn’t even get to enjoy other people’s enjoyment 👎
I live in a country where the vaccination rate barely reached 40%, I just remember being depressed and disappointed at the lack of humanity and empathy of my fellow countrymen not to mention the amount of stupid shit being posted online.
Hey thanks for eating it. You sign up and you’re like this will be tough, but you don’t realize how tough it’ll be sometimes right? I’ve always appreciated being able to commiserate with people who did it. I dunno if there’s name for that, but talking to people who walked the walk somehow makes it easier.
I hope you’re part of a system that appreciates the sacrifice. Where I’m from, I see nurses striking, looking for better conditions, and so I hope there are better days ahead, and it shouldn’t take a worldwide crisis to shine light on it.
I was part of a skeleton IT crew, we couldn’t fill positions and ran most of the pandemic with only half of the fte positions filled. I was able to move on to a better position and I’m friends with those folks I worked with. We will probably always be close, we lost 5 employees to COVID and we all bonded from the life and death experiences
Thank you for your service
It was my honor to server in what way I was able to. Thank you.
But hey at least I cultivated kickass sourdough
Must have been nice. I was an “essential” worker so I spent the entire time busting my ass in the middle of a packed grocery store, terrified of being assaulted by some angry dicknosed moron and bringing their lethal infection home to my elderly parents. I started having panic reactions to seeing unmasked faces, even those of close family members I was living with. Meanwhile, I kept hearing all these people talk about being paid twice my wages to sit at home and learn new skills like I had always wished I could afford to do.
And what did I get for all of my hard work? A fancy pin from my employer with a letter patting themselves on the back for protecting us. They didn’t protect us at all! They actively defied the mask mandate and told us it was our own fault if customers threatened or attacked us for wearing one!
I felt with the same thing, god did I hate that shit. Our place opened an hour early to allow seniors to shop, but I’m pretty sure from what I saw we were open an hour early, were we allowed to come in an hour early to get the same work done? Fuck no. Did they hire on additional staff to allow us to get everything done? God fucking no. God I hated that place. I was so jealous of people that got to stay home. I was on my local reddit at the time and some one suggested doing that dumb thing of “he, lets all yell out our windows at 8 or 9.” I replied fuck no, I have to go to bed at that time and get up super early, I didn’t want to hear a bunch of entitled fucks screaming for five minutes and while I’m trying to go to sleep. Yeah people with an office job got a glimpse of the good life, miserable fucks working retail were treated so much worse then working regular retail. I always say I can tell who hasn’t worked retail before.
I was and am still blown away people worked through all that without getting/demanding hazard pay.
I mean, considering all the unions going on strike nowadays I’d have been furious if my union didn’t seize the opportunity to demand better wages and working conditions.
My Union is banned from striking since I work in health care here in Sweden, yay us
You can tell who the introverts and who the extroverts were during the pandemic. For those that got to stay at home:
Extroverts: “My mental health is crumbling! I’ll never be the same after this. Literally the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!”
Introverts: “I just beat a handful of games in my backlog, read 4 books, started learning how to make Chinese food at home, and I just started learning Spanish on Duolingo. I’ll never be the same after this!”
Is there a third thing besides extroverts and introverts? Because I hate being around people and I also hate being alone.
Maybe just don’t try to to label yourself then, that’s great actually
I’m the opposite of you. I like being alone and I like being around people.
Based on my quick Google search, it seems like ambivert more closely resembles your situation than mine. I may in fact be a fourth thing, which doesn’t even have a name: ;_;
Depressed? Antisocial? Grumpy?
In case you actually care, you might look up what those terms really mean. It’s not always simple and takes some effort to understand your own nature. A lot of people don’t bother or care.
Otherwise the advice of not trying to label yourself too much is good.
Ambivert maybe?
Avert.
Welcome to the world of ambiverts! Not always a fun place to be hahaha
As an introvert, I did a lot of things like that. But the tendency to be online more during that time started to result in depression. I don’t have many friends but I do have close friends. Not seeing them kinda ate at me. Things still feel weird.
I never stopped Duolingo. Started in Day 1 of the lockdown and I’m over 1100 days in a row.
Also learned that I have a passion for cooking. I’ve been learning all sorts of fun recipes. :)
I’m introverted but I also hated being trapped inside for months. Am I a freak?
Right? I don’t know what those people are smoking but it’s cool to be able to meet my friends a few times a month and grocery shop normally. Being stuck inside too long makes you go funny in the head.
Guess it depends on how strongly introverted you are. As a strong introvert, I absolutely enjoyed time spent at home; besides general lockdown, I’ve been through three of the strict 2-week isolations (twice as contact person, once as a COVID carrier), and those were amazing times!
I’m an introvert who was afraid to do things I wanted to do outside the house. You are not a freak.
I thought it was more like:
Introverts: Nothing has changed.
I’ve historically been rather extroverted but has spent the last decade doing WFH and years leading up to the pandemic doing so without any of my previous friends group nearby. For me, nothing fundamentally changed, except for managers trying to pressure me into going into the office and be telling them “no”.
And a reminder that the ‘extroverted’ were ‘suffering constantly’ and decided everyone must be so they made going back into the office mandatory
If by “extroverted” you mean middle management that realized that they are largely superflous without offices.
Nah I don’t plan on working in the office, but I certainly do feel the need to go out there and be on a mission, or to feel like I’m progressing, even if only on a personal level, and the lockdowns really killed that vibe, though I do agree that I think many people who have more durable worldviews, and can consistently remain introverted to a schizoid degree, e.g. old people, pets, midwives and anyone on the far end of type B personality spectrum, probably did much better than others over the lockdowns.
Did anyone else read this and not understand the point?
It looks like a chat gpt comment to be honest
ChatGPT has better grammar
Um, the extroverts didn’t want to do more work in office, they wanted to hang out with their friends lol.
The extroverts need to learn how to make friends outside of the office
They have friends outside of the office… That they couldn’t see… because of the pandemic. They didn’t only close offices, they closed tons of stores, venues, even public parks. And even if you could gather at someone’s house, you might not want to because you might have a lot of contact with a vulnerable person. It just kinda sucked overall.
Hey, don’t blame us. It was the money-hungry breathing*-over-your-neck type of managers who tried to make this pushback.
Wow excuse my fucking typo I’m only fucking human*
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Excuse me, is micro-management like a brand new concept to you? Anyway welcome to earth.
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Oh you found a typo, that’s wonderful. Here’s a cookie. I think this is the pettiest I’ve seen on Lemmy so far.
I know for many it was a nightmare, but as an introvert it was amazing. I was an “essential worker” so I still had to go into work a few days a week, but the office was most empty and wfh was amazing. Oh and the no traffic thing was chefs kiss.
When companies decided that COVID was costing them too much in profits, and workers couldn’t be micro-managed from home or on a rotating office schedule, is when things went to shit.
How were you an essential worker but worked in an office?
Not OP but the CEO at my previous company decided that we, software developers, would not work from home. So he used all the legal loopholes to make sure we were at the office most of the time.
“You who only need a keyboard and a screen with internet connection to fulfill your work duties, yes you, stay at the fucking office.”
He clearly wants to end the world with emissions.
All jobs are essential /s
The list of “essential workers” was fairly big depending on how businesses wanted to interpret things. On top of service type jobs, any job that did anything for the government, or any of its contractors or suppliers, were all considered “essential”. Anything that dealt with first responders or the like were considered “essential” as well. And all of those businesses have to some degree people that need to work in an office to support them.
Not OP, but I worked in an office where we had to scan documents off of microfilm, which isn’t something that can be done at home. Also, the office would receive paper mail with paper checks and that had to be open and scanned into the system so that the people working at home could process those documents.
There are plenty of industries where people are generally less productive WFH than in an office with other people. My coworkers distract me all day, but it’s a lot easier to get or give help when we’re in the same place. WFH was nice for a couple months, but I’m glad it’s mostly over. Once we setup the capabilities to WFH we did keep them, so now we can WFH in an emergency or something.
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Engineering design.
Maybe turn your hostility dial down a notch. Lol
“Everyone”
Edit: as a project manager who stayed home for months, I find the ignorant privilege blasting from these kinds of statements enraging. How can someone be so blind to the world around them, that they don’t even realize that other human beings had a vastly different experience?
Yeah, this pissed me off. Covid was nothing more than checking on relatives, making sure they don’t die, and yelling over an international phonecall for my aunts to take my aging grandfather to get a vaccine after they tried to wiggle their way out of it several times.
I also got Covid during the time when no one was being tested, only the elderly, and had to live alone in my dorm room with a pile of frozen pizza, using the shared student kitchen at night so as to not get anyone killed. For a few of those days I was completely bed-ridden, couldn’t even get the fuck up, and the Swedish authorities refused to test me because I’m not a risk group. Later on I discovered I have asthma so I was at risk all along.
It’s great that everyone got to make bread and not work as many hours as they usually would or at least save time on transportation, but for a social person who actually has a goddamn life, this was shit. Pure shit. I would never repeat it. I don’t want millions to get sick and die while I stand by the oven with mittens on taking out my sourdough bread slab, surrounded by all these plants.
Ah yes and also, I already have fucking plants. You don’t need the world to end to go buy yourself a few and spend 10 minutes reading about how to care for them. There’s a few apps for that too.
Edit: typo
I’m curious, why would OP believe that it is only possible for people to have time to learn bread making if a pandemic disease is busy killing 3ish million other people? Wouldn’t they advocate instead for a 4-day work week? More PTO?
Parents didn’t have this experience either. We were busier than ever. My wife and I each did half a day of parenting and schooling and half a day of work during the day, then dinner, more parenting and cleaning, then another 5 hour shift of our jobs, then about 5 hours of sleep before repeating the next day. We were exhausted and not relaxing and enjoying our creative sides.
And this was still a far easier time than many people had, because we had jobs and they were flexible enough to be done this way.
Also people we knew died and there was a constant worry about who would be next. Not a fun time.
Oh fuck. I have borderline PTSD from those days. Working for critical infrastructure and my wife as a medic. We’ve never ever worked so hard.
And people just being paid furlough and picking up fucking hobbies while we were nearly dead from overwork.
Fun fucking times.
I had people telling me that medical workers didn’t deserve extra pay because it was “expected” that they would work in dangerous situations. Fucking called them heroes but couldn’t afford to pay them what they were owed.
I am in infrastructure as well. First few months I worked from home with the kids while my wife the nurse went to the nightmare every day. When things got to the point where I had to come in it got even worse.
I work in a hospital. I continued to commute to work and do my job through all of the shortages and all of the uncertainty. I died a little each day I had to stop my then 3.5yo twins from rushing to hug me at the door so I could change, drop my clothes in the wash, and wash my hands before they touched me. Then they stopped trying. It was a year before I was greeted at the door with a hug. I knelt there crying the first time they did it again.
I saw all my friends doing all the lock down things and knew that society and employers would never make it up to those of us who worked through it all. We didn’t even get pizza parties because my hospital had a no shared food policy for infection prevention.
I walked past maskless protestors outside my hospital accusing of us every ludicrous talking point there was. For the first time in my career I questioned why I did it. Why was I risking my family’s health and my own to take care of THEM.
Yes… #blessed
i worked more than i ever did during pandemic and made less than the people who didnt work :/
As long as you recognize that the thing to be mad at is exploitative labor laws that allow for “bare minimum to support yourself during these trying times” to be MORE than what you normally make.
it just sucks i could have been at home for 2 years instead of going to a shitty job lol
That hits hard. Honestly, from all my heart, thanks for keeping up and doing the thing you did and do. You’re a hero!
I remember my brother suffering from depression because he just no way of getting out of his apartment
I remember people people dying and not being able to go meet/help them
I remember the working class suffering because they just couldn’t work
I am not blaming anyone but it wasn’t “singing and dancing” for most people except the most privileged
The ‘most privileged’ we’re throwing ‘Covid parties’. They were the ones pushing ahead in line for limited vaccines. They were the ones out at ski resorts while sick. They were the ones who denied Covid but went out and got Covid and then demanded treatment, putting more than necessary pressure on a limited and very strained emergency system.
I don’t think the home bodies are your enemy here.
Nah I don’t think anyone is the enemy really, but it certainly wasn’t a very comfortable experience, for myself at least I think that the lockdowns gave everyone a kind of deep empathy for how society can breed a prison mentality at a large scale
Whether it’s to uphold a certain system in society, e.g. drug war, propaganda or to prepare to engage in a hot war or simply to spread a cult dogma, there’s a huge Stockholm syndrome experience for everyone who is born into a society or complex system as a whole
Participating in society isn’t the same thing as being in a prison. There are always rules and consequences in any social organization, whether it’s a prison, a school, a gang or a rave. If the organization is a village, city or state, that is somewhat wealthy and somewhat democratic, most people followed rules to be ethical, rather than out of fear for themselves.
Our society right now is organized in the fashion of 20th century institutions, and in the ways that ideas are validated, rules are made, disseminated and followed does feel like an institutional bureaucracy - like a prison, a school, or an office that generates rules by consensus of a small group of leaders or experts. And it is always a moral good to see the water we are swimming in, whether it’s how our society is organized and its shortcomings, how our thoughts and behaviors are habitualized and unhealthy.
And yes, there are always people who have strong feelings for or against institutional rules, make that a large part of their identity, and crusade for the rules to be adopted or rejected. And sometimes, these people are crusading against their own self interests. For example, a working class individual who fights against progressive or corporate taxation.
So I agree with most of your points. But your framing makes it seem like (assuming you’re American) we live in an oppressive society that uses psychological tricks to brainwash people into following draconian rules. But, relative to much of the world today, and all of history, that is just a wild exaggeration. The kind of wild exaggeration that is used to sell ad time these days, which beggars down votes.
Quarantine was a tough time for large majority people in my country
Everyone wasn’t dancing and making bread at home.
Thats all.
Noted. Still not an excuse to misuse words like ‘privlege’ just so you can start a fight with someone who isn’t your enemy.
What are you going on about enemies?
I just found the post insensitive.
Still had to work myself and ngl I was really envious of people who got to stay home :( in food service we just got more and more yelled at by people
The jumping between “you’re a hero!” (no, just have bills) and how absolutely insane people would get was enough to give whiplash. I mean, there have always been some assholes to deal with, but I swear they upped their game with COVID.
Upped their game and haven’t really gone back down in my experience. It’s honestly frightening.
I don’t get it. I have always tried to be as polite as possible with store staff when I go somewhere. I lost my temper once when a pharmacist was being super unreasonable, but that’s it. For years now. If they’re out of something, they’re out of something. If they don’t know an answer, they don’t know an answer. They’re not getting paid enough to deal with abuse.
Hell no, I was buried in a depression hole and couldn’t leave the house
Yeah, it was a year of hell on earth for me. Isolating, depressing, soul-destroying.
Agreed. I went to work over a short period of the lockdowns and also stayed at home, both times were crappy. Generally speaking, I’m not against the lockdowns or the idea of quarantine, however I would argue that although it may have been the best approach for society at large, it certainly made my mental health much worse in a lot of ways, it really opened up the door for my schizoid independent personality and logic overriding paranoia
It’s almost funny, for me it was really the opposite. Not because i had time to learn new small things, but because i was alone. I had time to get my mind straight, started working out every day and was at peace of mind when going to sleep.
I really tried, but I’m a fucking loner and it feels good to be alone most of the time and just interact with other humans on occasion.
Now I’m again in the office and don’t really have time left, in one day’s timespan, to get my head straight, after 12 hours of non-stop close human interactions. It’s really exhausting.
I love not being alone, but in smaller doses, than being alone.
Yeah I definitely understand that, especially if you don’t get a break from people. Though when I was in lockdown and work from home, I realized those work interactions were pretty much keeping me sane, otherwise I could go days in a row without actually talking out loud. It got to the point where my highlight of the week was leaving the house to go to the grocery store lol. It sounds pretty different for you though, and sounds exhausting on your end. I hope you find more or a balance that’ll keep you more sane and comfortable.
With the “grocery store is a weekly highlight” thing, i may also completely share the same sentiment. I also had exactly this in mind, when it was happening. Like it was the only time, where i got ready to go out, went out and met people, for quite a long time.
Being outside was so eerie. That’s where i felt the complete halt of society and always felt like “the last man on earth”, walking the streets, especially at night.
I sincerely appreciate your sentiment and i actually found balance - even with being back in the office now, i kept working out and to my surprise, it was really life changing, in many ways, it helped me to take on things with a different attitude. I really was ignorant to the real impact on life-quality, a somehow healthy, fit body can have.
The saying goes, healthy body = healthy mind. I think it’s not that easy, but definitely a step in the right direction.
No. I remember ridiculous amounts of work stress, a firehose of constant bullshit coming from the mouth of the president, depression, lack of fitness, and isolation. I harbor no nostalgia about quarantine.
No.
I was an “essential worker”. Nothing changed for me.
Samesies
Even if - as a software engineer - I got the long end of the stick.
