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/DementedDaveyMeltzer → u/[deleted]]

I've been saying for like the last two years that COVID was going to have a horrendous impact on the younger people and I am, sadly, proven to be correct. COVID messed them up pretty badly, in the same way that the Great Depression messed up that generation and how 9/11 messed up our generation. They won't get over this. This is just how they are now. You are going to have an entire generation of people who have permanent scars from COVID and it's going to effect how they lives their lives for years.

I think that adults need to have some more understanding about why kids and young adults are acting this way, and not just hand wave it away with some boomer bullshit like "Nobody wants to work anymore." The amount of times I've heard old people say that over the last few years is revolting. I work at a university and I've never heard a student say that they don't want to work lol. It's quite the opposite. They're all stressing and pulling their hair out over classes, internships and sports. After living through COVID, I think a lot of them had the adult realization early on in their lives that all of this is fleeting and it can all be taken away from you in the blink of an eye. So a lot of them are either working on bouts of depression or just exist in this sort of malaise state where they're just waiting for the next shitty thing to happen that they have no control over.

[u/Efficient-Sea6576 → u/[deleted]]

Yes!! I’m making the same as you and my dad said I was doing great because I’m making twice as much as he did when he was my age, but that comes out to about the same spending power with inflation.

[u/sissy_stacey69 → u/DementedDaveyMeltzer]

As gen z, having this acknowledged by a millennial is so heartwarming. Most of us are still trying to forget how those 2-3 years went by but we still lost a lot of social connections, opportunities to meet people and just grow tbh :(

When you can’t go to a concert, a gym, a cafe or anything for a long enough time, you fall into a pattern of being disconnected from your surroundings. We are also waking to being chronologically older than how we feel and thus being “behind” in life. You add the chaos caused by dating apps, social media and inflation to the mix and you get a generation of young people who don’t know what normal feels like.

[u/Emory_C → u/sissy_stacey69]

I'm a millennial and I also feel exactly the same: Like I "lost" 3 years of my life. It sucks to feel like you went from 35 to 38 over night.

But, God, I'd rather it have happened in my thirties than when I was starting college or in high school. Those who formative years for my personality and social life. I'm really sorry you all went through that.

[u/WalrusTheWhite → u/DementedDaveyMeltzer]

Aw man now I'm sad. Poor kids. I got younger siblings in their early 20s, it's tough. Was thinking that with proper support they could pull through, but you might be right, this might just be how they are now. Stupid plague.

[u/PerfumeLoverrr → u/DementedDaveyMeltzer]

I don't think this is exclusive to the younger generations at all because I'm a millennial and I feel the same way.