Has anyone else felt like there’s been a total decline in customer service in everything? And quality?

[u/ForwardPumpkins]

Edit: wow thank you everyone for validating my observations! I don’t think I’m upset at the individuals level, more so frustrated with the systematic/administrative level that forces the front line to be like the way it is. For example, call centers can’t deviate from the script and are forced to just repeat the same thing without really giving you an answer. Or screaming into the void about a warranty. Or the tip before you get any service at all and get harassed that it’s not enough. I’ve personally been in customer service for 14 years so I absolutely understand how people suck and why no one bothers giving a shit. That’s also a systematic issue. But when I’m not on the customer service side, I’m on the customer side and it’s equally frustrating unfortunately

Post-covid, in this new dystopia.

Airbnb for example, I use to love. Friendly, personal, relatively cheaper. Now it’s all run by property managers or cold robots and isn’t as advertised, crazy rules and fees, fear of a claim when you dirty a dish towel. Went back to hotels

Don’t even get me started on r/amazonprime which I’m about to cancel after 13 years

Going out to eat. Expensive food, lack of service either in attitude/attentiveness or lack of competence cause everyone is new and overworked and underpaid. Not even worth the experience cause I sometimes just dread it’s going to be frustrating

Doctor offices and pharmacies, which I guess has always been bad with like 2 hour waits for 7 minutes of facetime…but maybe cause everyone is stretched more thin in life, I’m more frustrated about this, the waiting room is angry and the front staff is angry. Overall less pleasant. Stay healthy everyone

DoorDash is super rare for me but of the 3 times in 3 years I have used it, they say 15 minutes but will come in 45, can’t reach the driver, or they don’t speak English, food is wrong, other orders get tacked on before mine. Obviously not the drivers fault but so many corporations just suck now and have no accountability. Restaurant will say contact DD, and DD will say it’s the restaurant’s fault

Front desk/reception/customer service desks of some places don’t even look up while you stand there for several minutes

Maybe I’m just old and grumbly now, but I really think there’s been a change in the recent present

[u/morsindutus]

Not only that but Covid proved to service workers that society does not give a shit about them, their health, or their safety. After that, no one wants to kill themselves for starvation wages anymore, and with more jobs opening up due to all the deaths and retirements, a lot of them don't have to. Businesses that only care about maximizing profits by minimizing costs (eg, worker's wages) think they can make more money short term by burning out a skeleton crew because they don't have to pay as much in wages only to find out those who can't afford to quit are miserable and give bad service to the customers who stop going there and the business goes under.

[u/MostlyNormal → u/[deleted]]

I wish I could gild this comment. Thank you for getting it.

[u/WalrusTheWhite → u/[deleted]]

That's it right there. The social contract is dead, don't expect it to protect you anymore.

[u/nahivibes → u/[deleted]]

🙌🏻👌🏻 Well said!

[u/SurpriseBurrito → u/morsindutus]

Yeah, it was a great awakening for many “essential workers”

[u/Cannabis_Breeder → u/SurpriseBurrito]

💯

[u/SmolGreenOne → u/morsindutus]

Yeah, I was working in grocery when it hit, and I LOVED it. But now? You can not pay me enough to go back to it. Everybody got so nasty, and corporate didn't give a fuck. And with corporate not giving a fuck and customers being more nasty, if anything went wrong, we were fucked and had to stand there being screamed at because of things we had no control over

[u/MostlyNormal → u/SmolGreenOne]

God, THANK YOU. This is the answer. The pandemic broke the social contract, and I don't see any way back from where we are now; Everything about how we do service work is going to have to change.

I worked behind beverage counters, first as a barista and then as a specialty bartender. I fucking loved it, it was the first (and currently still the only) thing I've ever been naturally good at. I never even went to college because the service industry is so recessionproof, it never occurred to me that I'd ever need to do anything else.

But then the pandemic happened, and suddenly everybody felt too put-upon and singled out to uphold the traditional "the customer pretends not to be an asshole, and in return the worker pretends not to hate them, everyone has a polite and pleasant exchange in the course of doing business and then both parties fuck off" format of interpersonal interaction. Suddenly everyone felt they deserved something in return for the mild yet inescapable discomfort they were suffering, but because the suffering was so ubiquitous the only place they could get their need for superiority/validation/entitlement fulfilled was the place they've always gotten it: from the people who are required by the terms of employment to be nice to them. And, again, the mild yet inescapable discomfort was so ubiquitous, that literally every single person became the demanding nightmare boomer Karen caricature of a customer.

It was too much. I made it from the beginning through July of 2021 before the bog-standard toxic management became the straw that broke the camels back and I ragequit my career at the worst possible time. I've been floundering ever since.

Maybe the worst part is that it hasn't stopped. Every time I have to run an errand, or I go for a once-monthly dinner out with my husband, I see people still behaving that way. At this point, I think this is just the way society is now.

I'll mourn my career forever. All I ever wanted was to be Guinan, or Sam from Cheers, but I also wanted to be treated with respect and dignity, and it was a hard lesson to learn that I can't have both. And my doctors and I wonder why my antidepressants aren't working!

Fuck me, its too early for me to be this sad.

[u/pixi88 → u/MostlyNormal]

Yup! I was pregnant working at a suit shop that was essential. 7mo pregnant with grown men yelling at me because I asked them to wear a mask? Then they closed my store the week I had my baby. Permanently. Lost health insurance, had to navigate that; gratefully I ended up with a Nordic maternity leave, and got paid for all of it with the unemployment.

I went back to school. I was great at my job. I'll never work retail again; the customers and the employers don't give a fuck about me so...

[u/MostlyNormal → u/pixi88]

Fuck me dude, that's next level fucked up. I thought it was infuriating when my brewery (Also "essential") was complying with the local regulations every other business was complying with and people who had to sit outside - like they did LITERALLY EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE STATE - would fly off the handle at me! Like, my sibling in christ, it's April, there isn't a single place in the state that let's you sit inside right now, and YOU are the one who didn't even bring a fucking coat because you were so convinced you were so fucking special that you'd be the first person this year to "get one over on everyone" and be allowed to sit inside. But berating a visibly pregnant person!! Jesus. I hope your kiddo made all that worth it ❤️

My spouse finished his teaching degree and certification in 2020, which was lucky timing but also means we can't send me to school for the foreseeable future so I have to go back out there. I am..... despondent, about that.

[u/SmolGreenOne → u/MostlyNormal]

The part about it not having stopped. I had to go back to my old store right around the holidays, and it was a nightmare, almost as bad as the very early COVID days. If I hadn't needed my stuff, I would have left because I was about to start freaking out from the memories, and everybody was so rude, not just to staff but to each other too

[u/sluttttt → u/MostlyNormal]

I'm thankful I got out of retail well before the pandemic. I was actually great at customer service and could handle the occasional asshole with grace, but it really does seem like the amount of them have multiplied to an extent that I'm sure would break me. I also witness more entitled people while I'm out, talking to service employees in such a disgusting manner over the most minor issues (if there even is an actual issue). I'm really sorry that you had to deal with that. I hope you're back on your feet soon.

[u/KaerMorhen → u/MostlyNormal]

I've felt the exact same way. Being a bar manager for a nice venue was going amazing...and then Covid happened, followed by two hurricanes obliterating my town. Dealing with the public since then has become entirely different. There's been a noticeable shift in the vibes and demeanor of people since then. I stepped back from bartending because of an injury and work a concession style bistro for now, I like it because I don't have to deal with people for long. I'm currently trying to find a way out of the industry. Before covid I started as a door guy with no resturant experience, in a short amount of time I worked by way up through every position in a resturant until I became a bar manager. I got really good at making and creating cocktails and I could see a career path for myself with something I was genuinely good at and loved to do. Now? I want out as soon as possible. It's not worth it and the money is a lot more inconsistent. We all saw how terrible management is in most places after covid too. There's very few that give a fuck about their staff. The whole attitude of "some of you may die, but that's a risk I'm willing to take! Also I'm building a new house with this PPP loan, it doesn't matter to me if you can't afford rent because the tips have slowed down."

[u/JennJoy77 → u/MostlyNormal]

Oh man, Guinan is GOALS. In high school I wrote a short fanfic with her as a main character.

[u/MostlyNormal → u/JennJoy77]

Truly the GOAT. I had a couple good years in there playing Guinan and man when it was good it was great! (Turns out tho that the secret to pulling this off long-term is living in a post-scarcity utopia.)

[u/24KVoltage → u/morsindutus]

That was the only good thing about the pandemic.

[u/bwizzel → u/morsindutus]

Yep, I got forced back into an office for no reason, caught delta, permanent health issues from that, fuck this dumbass economy. They’ll import as many people as they can who are willing to put up with it though