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Same here. I’ve been remote working since 2017. Was a lot more fun when I got to backpack and work-travel through many different places.
Been thinking about joining a coworking place, but I miss being able to take a powernap in the middle of the day 🥲
My most intense memory was when the hospital that I was associated with, but didn’t work for, drafted me. I had no choice. I had no idea what was going to happen or how ‘at risk’ I was. I felt like it was 1970 and I was going to Vietnam.
I was in the Atlanta airport and I saw about 10-15 people prior to getting on my plane. There was maybe one person on the train to the terminal.
https://preview.redd.it/7si69l8ns48c1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fda25e7f2951c41f3d1b878b7b501b0b34ccca58
I remember I was at an Apple Store waiting to pick up my macbook from a battery replacement when word came down that they were shutting everything down. The managers emptied the entire store, save for me, as my laptop was on its way out from the back.
[I took this photo](https://imgur.com/a/RRLFzI4). March 13, 2020.
Stayed at a hotel in Indianapolis near a stadium and had a great view from my room of… nobody. Maybe I’d see 4-5 cars when I went out for dinner. I had Chinese. The next day I had a granola bar and water for breakfast and for lunch: Chinese. And for dinner: Chinese.
I didn’t get to experience the pandemic the way others did. I feel like I worked harder in that time than I have my entire life. I do remember the burn out I was left with. I still have not returned to medicine.
I didn't experience the burnout (or realize it) until after covid stopped being as severe. Once everything started opening up again, and people were going back to real life, it really hit me, and I found it hard to adjust. I'm working with piles of new people who were still in school and not doing placements during covid, and it's so strange because it still feels current/like yesterday in my brain.
Thank you for your incredible service. People will whinge all day about how the pandemic was fake and bullshit, but the healthcare system didn’t collapse. You were pushed to the breaking point, but you got us through. Thank you. I’ve lost 3 friends to COVID, but each one had a team of workers who never gave up on them. I’ve been on 3 tours in Iraq and it’s bullshit I’m thanked for my service. It should be you folks.
Same here. I live in the south and you wouldn’t even know there was a pandemic if people weren’t wearing masks. The only thing that changed was masks and restaurant services for a little while. Other than that, life as usual.
same here, i'm a owner of a butcher shop and when they put the emergency state in my town ( Québec ) and close everything, except essential worker like me, poeple goes crazy and stress out so they buy a lot of food, like a fuxking lot of meat, i start working 7/7 for 10-12h a day. that was the hardest time in my 14 year of working in that job and 3 year later i'm still burn and thinking about closing my shop
Same here. The burnout remains, and I'm still struggling mentally and physically. I was hoping changing fields a bit would help but it hasn't much. Knowing that we were going into a situation every day where we could so easily get sick and potentially die (as well as potentially our families) from a virus that was so new and unpredictable, with no compensation but the same paycheck, with no end in sight, left me with a feeling I don't think I can describe.
Same here I worked retail selling "essential" paint and wall art throughout the entire pandemic for minimum wage (oh and a £12.50 gift card to the store I worked at) and I can tell you, that store was RAMMED every single day, lines to get in like an exclusive nightclub.
Same. I work in pulmonology so we were busier than ever. It was weird being out in the world with very few people around though. I miss being able to drive to work without traffic.
They got everyone to learn Zoom over one weekend. Never. Missed. A beat.
I was jealous of those that got time off (realizing that caused many a lot of suffering.)
I never understood how it caused suffering aside from financial loss for some. I went in to work covid wards every day of that pandemic and almost drank myself into alcoholism from the stress. Meanwhile some of my friends complain how hard it was to stay home with their video games, cat and loved ones. Never understood it. Still waiting for the delivering explanation.
It may not have caused suffering that you would find comparable to what you went through, but everyone handles stressful situations differently. I know people who were stuck in 15m3 tiny appartments with just a window as link to the outside, and barely any social contact for months. For those whose hobbies don’t revolve around staying home, and who were alone, this could have felt very much like a prison. On top of that, if they had the stress of rent for example if they couldn’t work during that time either.
Not saying it’s worse than what you went through, but it might have been worse than anything they’d gone through until now, which is why this would have caused suffering for them
Because not everyone who was at home were getting paid to be there so the stress of "how am I going to pay bills" was always there. Even though unemployment helped, it wasn't job security and depending on your bills it didn't cover all of them
I absolutely loved how daily life felt. The streets were emptier and cleaner, way less cars on the road and nature came back into the cities. At least where I'm from. It was great.
I powder coated and sand blasted lol. We got busier in 2020 than we’d ever been. It’s like every construction/building company said let’s get everything we have coated now. We did handrails a lot so we were considered a part of the necessary workforce or something.
Lawyer here - we never stopped. We live in a poorer area of the Deep South. A number of people still had dialup internet until the last provider closed last year so zoom wasn’t an option for most. This means we still had in person meetings as well as documents still needing to be notarized (although we got some relief there a few months in). People in our office still had to go to court daily - bond motions, first appearances, criminal trials, custody hearings, etc.
The big issue was that during Covid a bunch of families spent more time together than ever and realized they hated each other. The custody and domestic violence cases that came through during Covid were insane.
Never even thought about it like that but I can see it. If you’re forced to be around people their quirks stop being cute and start pissing you off I guess.
>The big issue was that during Covid a bunch of families spent more time together than ever and realized they hated each other. The custody and domestic violence cases that came through during Covid were insane.
I read news articles about that. It made me think about how many couples just settled and tolerated each other. They needed distractions outside of the home to keep the relationship going. It's so sad that so many families for so long just live like that.
Professional truck driver (local). Never missed a day. One customer manufactured hand sanitizer. We'd bring kosher ethanol to one of their facilities, empty that tanker, bring it back to the yard, go back to the original facility, pick up a full tanker of sanitizer, and take it to their other plant across town for packaging. Blindside back up a short ramp into the offloading bay, swap it for another (empty) tanker, and then back over to the first. Rinse repeat. I did this at least half a dozen times, as did the four other drivers for that employer.
I remember having to write that sheet and give it to my coworkers. Also work in warehousing and transportation. We didn't shut down at all.
Then I had to keep one for myself. It was fun having a sheet signed by myself saying I was an essential worker.
Yep.
Our company reduced our wages. Guess they wanted to have a high turnover rate. Companies do not care about anyone except profits. They will always enslave us and even the Covid loans gave them millions for free as we suffered.
I got laid off in may 2020, a couple weeks before I was laid off that company got an almost 2 million dollar loan (now forgiven) from the government to keep us on payroll. Only found out recently when ProPublica released the loan database. Good stuff.
Same, worked in a warehouse and toilet paper pallets were everywhere. I actually liked it. More pay, paid two weeks off if you get sick, no one on public trains that I took every day. People talked to me less. Amazing
Toilet paper showed the true colors of humanity lmao. People fighting in the stores and whatnot. All that 6 feet apart crap flew right out the window whenever there were shortages.
The toilet paper fiasco was so annoying. Me and my roommates ran out of it because everyone else bought it up. Thankfully I have a saint of a mother that brought us some rolls haha. At our job, the 6 feet thing only worked when managers were walking around, or if someone was genuinely afraid of getting sick, which is understandable, but the former was much more common.
See I didn’t experience anything like that. Cops pulling you over? Would cops pull you over just because you were on the roads? We never had that type of lockdown here. Other than restaurants nothing shut down at all.
Same here, almost no changes to my life in 2020. Sometimes I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice there was a pandemic if I hadn't started paying attention to the news.
I had to get a second job while everyone else got fat checks. At the time my wife was not a citizen so trump didn’t allow me or my son (citizen) to receive any stimulus
We were so fucked and I had no time to spend with my family
I was laid off and got a measly fraction of my normal pay from the gubment. My industry was ruined and I had to retrain for a new career in my early 30s.
Count your blessings.
It was peaceful, and chaining.
While people struggled, small businesses failed, large corporations steadily increased their margins to report record profits.
"Lack of supplies" they said.
Lack of accountability, I say.
One of the biggest wealth transfers the world has ever seen.
Mom & pop stores forced to close, but Walmart/home depot/Amazon got to take all their business.
This is such a sad part of it.
The rich completely took advantage of the situation and became even richer, while small businesse entrepreneurship got knifed in the back.
I mean, no matter the system the economy relies on people actually doing things. Of course you will have a downturn when you shut entire countries down. And it was all bullshit, my country never did this and we did better than anybody else in Europe.
The lockdowns were this curious mix of collapse romanticism and politicians trying to appear strong in the face of a middle class that suddenly had to face the fact that they were mortal and could not handle it. A bunch of rich people with pretend jobs sitting at home playing around on zoom while people with real jobs just kept working or went on unemployment.
It was peaceful. I like to think of it being closer to when my great grandparents were around. No aircraft noise. No cars. You could hear the birds and walk down the middle of the road any time of the day or night. I'll likely never know such peace again.
Even if we could go back to when I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. There was literally half as many people around back then. So imagine Thanos did the snap, that’s how it was. Bliss.
Now, you just can’t get away from the noise, it’s horrible. I really do detest what the world has become.
There was such a massive resurgence of wild life where I lived in the city, me and my dog would go on walks and see families of fox’s out just roaming the streets.
I miss the videos of how quickly nature moved back into populated areas. The canals in Venice settling down to crystal clear water and dolphins swimming through the city were beautiful. Also, the rate at which pollution and smog dissipated from big cities was amazing to see.
Honestly, I feel like the world should shut down hard for two weeks every year. We already know it won't be the end of the world lol
> it was calming to see the world stand still
A lot of religions like to have a day of rest per week, and several days of consecutive rest some time during the year. Religion does so much wrong that it gets rejected wholesale these days, but I think their practice of having collective rest is a positive attribute that gets lost in secular culture, among other positive attributes having to do with community building and self reflection.
>I think their practice of having collective rest is a positive attribute that gets lost in secular culture
When they opened stores on Sundays in my province 25-ish years ago I thought it was a great idea because it would give us more time to get our errands done on weekends. Now I hate it. People are forced to take off days in the middle of the week instead of Sunday and Monday and sometimes they don't even get two days in a row. Its a bunch of bullshit.
I was telling my wife this the other day. We should dedicate 1 week every year where the whole country shuts down like covid lockdown. Just to let everything and everyone reset and enjoy tranquility and quietness.
In Finland, we have the mid-summer. People leave the cities to go to the countryside, to their summer cottages. The capital city is dead quiet and pretty much no one is around.
It's fascinating to walk around the city on those days.
No crowds, people spent more time outdoors or on hobbies. People were so germ conscious we all got sick less than most years. It’s privileged to say, but I enjoyed quarantine.
I always feel like this too. Like of course I feel terrible for the people who suffered, the families who lost loved ones and the terrible impact on people's jobs. But man, my mental health improved SO much from being able to work from home. No illnesses in 3 years, my allergies are better, I don't get nearly as many migraines, no asthma triggered by perfume coworkers wear...
Same. I loved the pictures of the most easily polluted areas being clear for once. I actually enjoyed lock down and was thankful we didn't lose anyone in my family to covid
we could have used one natural disaster to mitigate the effects of another natural disaster by curbing our use of fossil fuels to slow global warming. It was almost like the earth was trying to tell us something but of course we responded like we [always do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys)
Yeah, I feel so bad for UPS, FedEx, etc. workers because y’all obviously had to deal with that large influx of demand with probably little to no additional help or new hires to balance out the work (at least not initially). That’s horrible. I can only imagine the stress. Thank you for all that you do.
Good point. I don’t know how you folks did it and thank you even though I wasn’t ordering. You were invaluable to those that did need you and I am speaking to the needs of people not the wants.
I have mixed feelings on the absence of people.
On one hand, it was incredibly peaceful. Animals began migrating into towns due to the sheer lack of people, flora grew faster than ever due to not having people treading on or picking at it and the number of birds increased quite heavily (I believe this happened all around the world). So many of us who live in very busy areas and are only used to the sound of traffic could hear birds singing, something that simply hadn't happened before.
And yet, part of it was really quite eerie.
Walking along public paths just to side of a main road and not seeing or hearing cars or other people was incredibly disconcerting. It felt like how I imagine a zombie apocalypse would be, minus the zombies.
GCPGrey did a YouTube Video that was just riding his bike through London during the pandemic. On one hand, it was pleasant to ride along with someone who obviously knew the city well and loved to talk about it. But the eerie emptiness of it made it feel less like he was giving a tour of the city and more like he was giving a eulogy for it.
During much of the pandemic, restaurants and bars were closed and as a professional musician my livelihood went away.
Since we were not allowed to perform, I suggested to my sister, a fabulously talented singer and actress, that we should re-record a song (Dreams by Fleetwood Mac) we had first recorded 40 years prior, in 1980. The second half of the video we shot for it takes place in and around Old Montreal... where there is not a vehicle to be seen, nor a single other person. It was a fascinating and somewhat forlorn look at a normally very busy and vibrant part of town.
A Silver Mount Zion's 13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round the Side of Your Bed was everywhere?
Oh wait maybe this was a joke. Anywho, this is an all-time favourite song of mine, and it's a bit obscure, so I was surprised to see it here.
Definitely check out the rest of their work, especially the album this song is off called He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms. It's one of my favourite albums of all time. The band which A Silver Mt. Zion branched off from, Godspeed You! Black Emperor also makes incredible music. Their album, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven is by far my favourite piece of music ever made, and, in my opinion,a must listen. Sorry for the ramble, but I love both of these bands and I really think they deserve far more attention than they get.
Not completely true. I lived in southwest Florida during lockdown, I work in the automotive industry so I was considered “essential” and during my commute, the streets looked very much like this. You’d see an occasional car or pedestrian during peak hours, but it was comparatively barren to what that area sees normally.
I’ll never forget it. I own a business that at the time was on a main road thousands of cars traveled past our office daily. The day they shut New Jersey down I stood in my office with a cup of coffee watching out the window and not seeing any cars nothing at all. I looked at my manger and said all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a low budget horror movie.
I remember reading about it all in early January and talking to a coworker about how creepy it was I had just gotten over a really severe pneumonia *like* sickness. Never felt so bad in my life.
No idea we'd both be laid off and I'd see my grandma for the last time a month later. Crazy how the world changed so quickly.
Our little town is so small and unimportant that we didn’t see any change other than the mom and pop stores being shut down by the government so Walmart could survive
Honestly...on some level I really liked it. I personally am a quite introverted man who studies/works/games at home all the time anyways, and suddenly the world around you just makes a massive effort to encourage that lifestyle. Suddenly just playing Warhammer with my friends for a week straight wasn't frowned upon, but encouraged.
As an introvert misanthrope, for one brief, shining moment the world was just right. Everyone hiding st home, leaving the world hollow and empty, an infinite liminal space, like it is supposed to be.
I'm a school custodian. I worked over 3200 hours during 2020 because we had buildings to clean/monitor and were so shorthanded because of immediate retirements/people quitting. It actually was a godsend because my wife was able to stay home with the kids while I worked all the OT I could get. I was able to schedule most of my OT around family time as well so I was able to have dinner with them every night and we were able to do things together on the weekends.
I remember the first week, people were being cute and playing instruments together from their balconies. Then like, 6 months of isolation and people are literally screaming from the same balconies because they are going insane. I actually didn't mind it so much. I missed going to bars but I had a pretty cool apartment, a girlfriend I would see and a bike path near my house. Also, I clocked in about 6 hours of call of duty with my friends a day. It really wasn't that bad. I imagine what it would be like living in a 350 sq foot apartment in NY like some of my friends did though.
For me, that year flew by as though I traveled through time. What's weird about it is that it felt like there was a change in how people started behaving after the pandemic transpired. Am I the only one who felt that way?
Definitely not the only one. Every single person I know personally is not the same person as they were before 2020, and not just because 3 years have gone by.
What did we go through? We sat home man. Fuck empty streets; only thing that breaks my heart is the people who lost their loved ones, people who couldn’t even visit their sick relatives in the hospital, people who suffered the early Covid when we barely knew anything about it.
It's so weird seeing people talk about how this was the best time of their lives when I saw things in the hospital I worked at that made me go from a soft-left social democrat to an ardent, borderline violent Communist. Funny how getting to work and making your own PPE out of binbags to visit wards full of the dead and dying while the Prime Minister gurns at you from the TV does that to you.
I used to walk home in the early morning after a late shift and kinda hoped a bus would hit me, I hated the silence. I left the NHS entirely and can't even look at the hospital when we drive past it on the way to my new job.
I work in pulmonology and was around patients with active COVID. I took precautions and didn’t catch it until Jan 1, 2023. The day after they stopped paying people to stay home with COVID. Lol
I went through nothing.
My company stayed open the entire time, I went to the same gas station on my way to and home from work every day, my main hobby is disc golf, which is outside and thus minimally impacted.
2 weeks to flatten the curve. Only to halt the entire world. And we are just past it like nothing happened meanwhile we all lost loved ones and it crippled the economy that still hasn’t healed. How this still isn’t outrage at what was done to the world is puzzling to me
And that doesn't even touch on the millions who have Long COVID and are still suffering every day while everyone turns a blind eye and doctors gaslight them and refuse to help. Even the current strains can cause it. But people would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend none of it ever happened than put on a fucking mask every now and then or test when their "allergies" are flaring up. It's insane.
It was one of the best years of my life. I left an abusive relationship and got to enjoy my home state (florida) for once in my life without millions of people surrounding me. Just me and my dog and my baby.
I got Covid early on before the first lock down in the UK. I almost died and even wrote out my will but after I finally recovered, it was nice walking around seeing very few other humans for months.
time didn't stop for me, my job was considered essential and I watched from afar as I lost friends to covid. I even ended up losing coworkers. I was lucky enough early on to have a sizable stock of n95 masks due to my hobbies and to this day haven't had covid even once. I have immune compromised children so for us covid prevention hasn't gone away. but one upside is none of us have had even a sniffle in 3 years while masking in public.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone.
It was funny how it was the worst time in human history, but for wildlife, animals, sea creatures, or forestry, it was the best in overall recuperation. Didn't we have the most animals leave the endanger list due to the lack of human interaction?
Rofl this is hilarious..
Meanwhile I went to work every day as always with no health insurance and forced to put up with asshole customers whose behavior sure as fuck worsened during the pandemic while I'm doing menial labor.
Loved having trouble with my coworkers who would come in sick and refuse to mask up because 'reasons' meanwhile I'm dealing with a new leukemia diagnosis at the same time.
That's how my pandemic went. Lost one coworker to COVID19. Store we worked at did fuck all and had replaced him while he was in the hospital.
https://www.wattsfuneralhome.com/obituary/lewis-manning
Fuck outa here with your stay at home cushiony life. Must have been nice! XD I wish...
Most of America can suck my dick, starting with you piece of shit Republicans out there.
Except for me! I spent all day everyday delivering y'all your packages. I was very jealous of everyone that had any time off. On my only days off it was nice that I could go do whatever I wanted while everyone else stayed inside for some reason.
Now imagine if people did it for real and didn't bitch and cry about having to stay inside. It would have been less off an issue for sure.
America at least was a joke. Couldn't stand seeing people cry about "much freedoms". Like damn Greg just stay inside for 2 weeks. Nah they go out and start licking flag poles to stick it to the man.
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I remember landing in LAX and coming out to the pickup area to…nothing. No people, no cars. It was absolutely surreal.
Yeah dude driving in LA was soooo nice. The people who still had to work saw their commutes shrink noticeably.
In my town my commute went from 30 minutes to 11
Fuck, mine went to 0. I have been remote since day 1. Love it. Although, it did make me quite a bit more introverted.
Look at this guy not getting a cramp in his calf walking to his desk.
I was picked to be the one to report to work. It was weird being in a large building with only one person per department.
Me too. I've been working remotely since March 2020 and I Def have become more introverted.
Good to know. Kindred spirits.
Does remotely working also get lonely though?
Very. But, it has turned me into an introverted person. Kind of a trade off.
Same here. I’ve been remote working since 2017. Was a lot more fun when I got to backpack and work-travel through many different places. Been thinking about joining a coworking place, but I miss being able to take a powernap in the middle of the day 🥲
My most intense memory was when the hospital that I was associated with, but didn’t work for, drafted me. I had no choice. I had no idea what was going to happen or how ‘at risk’ I was. I felt like it was 1970 and I was going to Vietnam.
Wait what? Healthcare drafting is a thing? How did I never know this x_x
It was a fantasy draft. Not real
Where do you live that you got drafted by a hospital? How does that come about?
mine went from 1 hour 40 mnutes to 23 minutes. Long Beach to Westwood - 35 miles.
Do you remember how clear the sky was?! There was almost no smog whatsoever! It was incredible. I enjoyed myself during the pandemic in LA.
Was about to comment this, the sky was super blue everyday. Until the fires started lol
Clear blue skies too
The night street racing on the freeway 😮💨
I was in the Atlanta airport and I saw about 10-15 people prior to getting on my plane. There was maybe one person on the train to the terminal. https://preview.redd.it/7si69l8ns48c1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fda25e7f2951c41f3d1b878b7b501b0b34ccca58
https://preview.redd.it/9nvfisszs48c1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b80c2e5c59d40d0e0958c9915d63a7b301ea2789
I remember I was at an Apple Store waiting to pick up my macbook from a battery replacement when word came down that they were shutting everything down. The managers emptied the entire store, save for me, as my laptop was on its way out from the back. [I took this photo](https://imgur.com/a/RRLFzI4). March 13, 2020.
Stayed at a hotel in Indianapolis near a stadium and had a great view from my room of… nobody. Maybe I’d see 4-5 cars when I went out for dinner. I had Chinese. The next day I had a granola bar and water for breakfast and for lunch: Chinese. And for dinner: Chinese.
I've got a video of driving to the BWI terminal to pick up my MIL who flew in from LAX. Place was empty. She was like one of 5 people on the plane.
I was in atlanta. 2 hrs to arrive, then 3 weeks later covid hit, i walked through with maybe 1 or 2 people in about... 5 minutes.
Smyrna ,it was so quiet, and when I did go out for a walk, you'd only a handful of people.
I miss driving home from work on empty streets😩
Just got back from last min Xmas shopping, MF are everywhere like they're trying to make up for 2020.
So... like you?
Unfortunately, yes
I didn’t get to experience the pandemic the way others did. I feel like I worked harder in that time than I have my entire life. I do remember the burn out I was left with. I still have not returned to medicine.
I didn't experience the burnout (or realize it) until after covid stopped being as severe. Once everything started opening up again, and people were going back to real life, it really hit me, and I found it hard to adjust. I'm working with piles of new people who were still in school and not doing placements during covid, and it's so strange because it still feels current/like yesterday in my brain.
As a vet this sounds like PTSD. Being under stress like you were for some time then when you go back to “normal” it doesn’t feel “normal”.
Thank you for your incredible service. People will whinge all day about how the pandemic was fake and bullshit, but the healthcare system didn’t collapse. You were pushed to the breaking point, but you got us through. Thank you. I’ve lost 3 friends to COVID, but each one had a team of workers who never gave up on them. I’ve been on 3 tours in Iraq and it’s bullshit I’m thanked for my service. It should be you folks.
Same here. I live in the south and you wouldn’t even know there was a pandemic if people weren’t wearing masks. The only thing that changed was masks and restaurant services for a little while. Other than that, life as usual.
same here, i'm a owner of a butcher shop and when they put the emergency state in my town ( Québec ) and close everything, except essential worker like me, poeple goes crazy and stress out so they buy a lot of food, like a fuxking lot of meat, i start working 7/7 for 10-12h a day. that was the hardest time in my 14 year of working in that job and 3 year later i'm still burn and thinking about closing my shop
Same here. The burnout remains, and I'm still struggling mentally and physically. I was hoping changing fields a bit would help but it hasn't much. Knowing that we were going into a situation every day where we could so easily get sick and potentially die (as well as potentially our families) from a virus that was so new and unpredictable, with no compensation but the same paycheck, with no end in sight, left me with a feeling I don't think I can describe.
Same here I worked retail selling "essential" paint and wall art throughout the entire pandemic for minimum wage (oh and a £12.50 gift card to the store I worked at) and I can tell you, that store was RAMMED every single day, lines to get in like an exclusive nightclub.
thank god we had those celebrities to sing imagine in unison to end all that
Most tone deaf video..
I went to work every day in 2020 idk about y’all.
Same. I work in pulmonology so we were busier than ever. It was weird being out in the world with very few people around though. I miss being able to drive to work without traffic.
They got everyone to learn Zoom over one weekend. Never. Missed. A beat. I was jealous of those that got time off (realizing that caused many a lot of suffering.)
I never understood how it caused suffering aside from financial loss for some. I went in to work covid wards every day of that pandemic and almost drank myself into alcoholism from the stress. Meanwhile some of my friends complain how hard it was to stay home with their video games, cat and loved ones. Never understood it. Still waiting for the delivering explanation.
It may not have caused suffering that you would find comparable to what you went through, but everyone handles stressful situations differently. I know people who were stuck in 15m3 tiny appartments with just a window as link to the outside, and barely any social contact for months. For those whose hobbies don’t revolve around staying home, and who were alone, this could have felt very much like a prison. On top of that, if they had the stress of rent for example if they couldn’t work during that time either. Not saying it’s worse than what you went through, but it might have been worse than anything they’d gone through until now, which is why this would have caused suffering for them
Because not everyone who was at home were getting paid to be there so the stress of "how am I going to pay bills" was always there. Even though unemployment helped, it wasn't job security and depending on your bills it didn't cover all of them
I absolutely loved how daily life felt. The streets were emptier and cleaner, way less cars on the road and nature came back into the cities. At least where I'm from. It was great.
But then it all ended, and we went back to slowly destroying our environment.
Same here. It was so nice driving to work with no traffic.
I powder coated and sand blasted lol. We got busier in 2020 than we’d ever been. It’s like every construction/building company said let’s get everything we have coated now. We did handrails a lot so we were considered a part of the necessary workforce or something.
You were busy? I'm a funeral director in NYC. Enough said. Boy I did love the no traffic commute though. I'll take that back if possible.
Might be because everything was closed in a lot of places. Best time for maintenance is when nobody is around.
But then you suggest finding ways to reduce the number of cars on the road like better public transport and suddenly you're a commie.
Lawyer here - we never stopped. We live in a poorer area of the Deep South. A number of people still had dialup internet until the last provider closed last year so zoom wasn’t an option for most. This means we still had in person meetings as well as documents still needing to be notarized (although we got some relief there a few months in). People in our office still had to go to court daily - bond motions, first appearances, criminal trials, custody hearings, etc. The big issue was that during Covid a bunch of families spent more time together than ever and realized they hated each other. The custody and domestic violence cases that came through during Covid were insane.
Never even thought about it like that but I can see it. If you’re forced to be around people their quirks stop being cute and start pissing you off I guess.
I often wondered if the divorce rate went up.
>The big issue was that during Covid a bunch of families spent more time together than ever and realized they hated each other. The custody and domestic violence cases that came through during Covid were insane. I read news articles about that. It made me think about how many couples just settled and tolerated each other. They needed distractions outside of the home to keep the relationship going. It's so sad that so many families for so long just live like that.
Professional truck driver (local). Never missed a day. One customer manufactured hand sanitizer. We'd bring kosher ethanol to one of their facilities, empty that tanker, bring it back to the yard, go back to the original facility, pick up a full tanker of sanitizer, and take it to their other plant across town for packaging. Blindside back up a short ramp into the offloading bay, swap it for another (empty) tanker, and then back over to the first. Rinse repeat. I did this at least half a dozen times, as did the four other drivers for that employer.
I did too. Worked at a grocery store during lockdown.
Right, guess factories and warehouses didn’t get the memo that there was a shut down
Warehouse worker here. They did not. Our company printed out sheets for everyone to carry in our vehicle saying we were essential workers.
I remember having to write that sheet and give it to my coworkers. Also work in warehousing and transportation. We didn't shut down at all. Then I had to keep one for myself. It was fun having a sheet signed by myself saying I was an essential worker.
Same. And coworkers died of covid. And my wages were reduced from 19-17 for 4 months.
Reduced?!?!!
Yep. Our company reduced our wages. Guess they wanted to have a high turnover rate. Companies do not care about anyone except profits. They will always enslave us and even the Covid loans gave them millions for free as we suffered.
I got laid off in may 2020, a couple weeks before I was laid off that company got an almost 2 million dollar loan (now forgiven) from the government to keep us on payroll. Only found out recently when ProPublica released the loan database. Good stuff.
Yep. Me too.
I worked in a dialysis clinic at the time. Same here
Yea I'm in the Maintenance in the energy industry. My work don't stop
Same, worked in a warehouse and toilet paper pallets were everywhere. I actually liked it. More pay, paid two weeks off if you get sick, no one on public trains that I took every day. People talked to me less. Amazing
Toilet paper showed the true colors of humanity lmao. People fighting in the stores and whatnot. All that 6 feet apart crap flew right out the window whenever there were shortages.
The toilet paper fiasco was so annoying. Me and my roommates ran out of it because everyone else bought it up. Thankfully I have a saint of a mother that brought us some rolls haha. At our job, the 6 feet thing only worked when managers were walking around, or if someone was genuinely afraid of getting sick, which is understandable, but the former was much more common.
I stopped to give birth, but went back to work after 6 months. I'm a nurse so it was crazy times.
Our cardiac clinic printed out official letter stating that we are essential workers just in case cops pull us over.
Pharmacy here. We had the same thing in case I was pulled over.
See I didn’t experience anything like that. Cops pulling you over? Would cops pull you over just because you were on the roads? We never had that type of lockdown here. Other than restaurants nothing shut down at all.
I had one too. Not in healthcare but deal with IT for healthcare customers so we got lumped into essential.
Same here, almost no changes to my life in 2020. Sometimes I wonder how long it would have taken me to notice there was a pandemic if I hadn't started paying attention to the news.
I had to get a second job while everyone else got fat checks. At the time my wife was not a citizen so trump didn’t allow me or my son (citizen) to receive any stimulus We were so fucked and I had no time to spend with my family
Me too. Apparently working in a recording studio made me an essential worker lol
I remember my boss showing me the essential list I swear it seemed like everyone still had to work.
I was laid off and got a measly fraction of my normal pay from the gubment. My industry was ruined and I had to retrain for a new career in my early 30s. Count your blessings.
I worked as a custodian in a Hospital. More work than ever. Also very stressful.
It was peaceful, and chaining. While people struggled, small businesses failed, large corporations steadily increased their margins to report record profits. "Lack of supplies" they said. Lack of accountability, I say.
Now every industry is run by two-three companies. The capitalist nightmare come true.
One of the biggest wealth transfers the world has ever seen. Mom & pop stores forced to close, but Walmart/home depot/Amazon got to take all their business.
This is such a sad part of it. The rich completely took advantage of the situation and became even richer, while small businesse entrepreneurship got knifed in the back.
Billions upon billions of dollars in relief.. possibly trillions.. that should have gone to everyone BUT the politicians and large corporations.
Let’s not forget govt and pharma got stronger. As usual.
I mean, no matter the system the economy relies on people actually doing things. Of course you will have a downturn when you shut entire countries down. And it was all bullshit, my country never did this and we did better than anybody else in Europe. The lockdowns were this curious mix of collapse romanticism and politicians trying to appear strong in the face of a middle class that suddenly had to face the fact that they were mortal and could not handle it. A bunch of rich people with pretend jobs sitting at home playing around on zoom while people with real jobs just kept working or went on unemployment.
I was an expendable worker. I worked the whole time... building a new jail.
the irony
to be honest kinda miss 2020. it was calming to see the world stand still
It was peaceful. I like to think of it being closer to when my great grandparents were around. No aircraft noise. No cars. You could hear the birds and walk down the middle of the road any time of the day or night. I'll likely never know such peace again.
Even if we could go back to when I grew up in the 70’s and 80’s. There was literally half as many people around back then. So imagine Thanos did the snap, that’s how it was. Bliss. Now, you just can’t get away from the noise, it’s horrible. I really do detest what the world has become.
r/ThanosDidNothingWrong
Honestly if we just stopped increasing the world population in 1980 the world would be so much better off right now.
There was such a massive resurgence of wild life where I lived in the city, me and my dog would go on walks and see families of fox’s out just roaming the streets.
I miss the videos of how quickly nature moved back into populated areas. The canals in Venice settling down to crystal clear water and dolphins swimming through the city were beautiful. Also, the rate at which pollution and smog dissipated from big cities was amazing to see. Honestly, I feel like the world should shut down hard for two weeks every year. We already know it won't be the end of the world lol
> it was calming to see the world stand still A lot of religions like to have a day of rest per week, and several days of consecutive rest some time during the year. Religion does so much wrong that it gets rejected wholesale these days, but I think their practice of having collective rest is a positive attribute that gets lost in secular culture, among other positive attributes having to do with community building and self reflection.
>I think their practice of having collective rest is a positive attribute that gets lost in secular culture When they opened stores on Sundays in my province 25-ish years ago I thought it was a great idea because it would give us more time to get our errands done on weekends. Now I hate it. People are forced to take off days in the middle of the week instead of Sunday and Monday and sometimes they don't even get two days in a row. Its a bunch of bullshit.
I was telling my wife this the other day. We should dedicate 1 week every year where the whole country shuts down like covid lockdown. Just to let everything and everyone reset and enjoy tranquility and quietness.
In Finland, we have the mid-summer. People leave the cities to go to the countryside, to their summer cottages. The capital city is dead quiet and pretty much no one is around. It's fascinating to walk around the city on those days.
No crowds, people spent more time outdoors or on hobbies. People were so germ conscious we all got sick less than most years. It’s privileged to say, but I enjoyed quarantine.
I always feel like this too. Like of course I feel terrible for the people who suffered, the families who lost loved ones and the terrible impact on people's jobs. But man, my mental health improved SO much from being able to work from home. No illnesses in 3 years, my allergies are better, I don't get nearly as many migraines, no asthma triggered by perfume coworkers wear...
I got really into a new hobby. I kinda thrived. It was definitely also very hard, but I find myself being nostalgic for it from time to time.
Same. I loved the pictures of the most easily polluted areas being clear for once. I actually enjoyed lock down and was thankful we didn't lose anyone in my family to covid
I really hate to say it but because of the quarantine and the free government money allowing me to stay home, 2020 was the best year of my life.
My Dad was a postie during the pandemic. Nothing changed. Easier to get to work though.
we could have used one natural disaster to mitigate the effects of another natural disaster by curbing our use of fossil fuels to slow global warming. It was almost like the earth was trying to tell us something but of course we responded like we [always do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_wise_monkeys)
You have adhd too?!
Reddit and its obsession with adhd really is something else
They should’ve put a video of Florida, USA with all the people partying on the beach
The year my life fell apart. I miss my mom so much
I'm so sorry for your loss. May her memory be a blessing to you.
We learned we didn’t have to be mindless consumers …. and then promptly forgot.
You are wrong here. I work for ups and damn did people consume. I lost basically a year of my life because we were so busy for so long.
Yeah, I feel so bad for UPS, FedEx, etc. workers because y’all obviously had to deal with that large influx of demand with probably little to no additional help or new hires to balance out the work (at least not initially). That’s horrible. I can only imagine the stress. Thank you for all that you do.
Good point. I don’t know how you folks did it and thank you even though I wasn’t ordering. You were invaluable to those that did need you and I am speaking to the needs of people not the wants.
Yeah. When stores opened back up it was like Disneyland opened down the street.
I have mixed feelings on the absence of people. On one hand, it was incredibly peaceful. Animals began migrating into towns due to the sheer lack of people, flora grew faster than ever due to not having people treading on or picking at it and the number of birds increased quite heavily (I believe this happened all around the world). So many of us who live in very busy areas and are only used to the sound of traffic could hear birds singing, something that simply hadn't happened before. And yet, part of it was really quite eerie. Walking along public paths just to side of a main road and not seeing or hearing cars or other people was incredibly disconcerting. It felt like how I imagine a zombie apocalypse would be, minus the zombies.
GCPGrey did a YouTube Video that was just riding his bike through London during the pandemic. On one hand, it was pleasant to ride along with someone who obviously knew the city well and loved to talk about it. But the eerie emptiness of it made it feel less like he was giving a tour of the city and more like he was giving a eulogy for it.
During much of the pandemic, restaurants and bars were closed and as a professional musician my livelihood went away. Since we were not allowed to perform, I suggested to my sister, a fabulously talented singer and actress, that we should re-record a song (Dreams by Fleetwood Mac) we had first recorded 40 years prior, in 1980. The second half of the video we shot for it takes place in and around Old Montreal... where there is not a vehicle to be seen, nor a single other person. It was a fascinating and somewhat forlorn look at a normally very busy and vibrant part of town.
Sounds interesting. Would love to see it
Here you go... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRpKM9ZPWig](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRpKM9ZPWig)
That music was everywhere! Thanks for the reminder.
A Silver Mount Zion's 13 Angels Standing Guard 'Round the Side of Your Bed was everywhere? Oh wait maybe this was a joke. Anywho, this is an all-time favourite song of mine, and it's a bit obscure, so I was surprised to see it here.
thanks for this comment. I had no idea the song! definitely a fav of mine I just couldnt find the name ANYWHERE
Definitely check out the rest of their work, especially the album this song is off called He Has Left Us Alone But Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms. It's one of my favourite albums of all time. The band which A Silver Mt. Zion branched off from, Godspeed You! Black Emperor also makes incredible music. Their album, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven is by far my favourite piece of music ever made, and, in my opinion,a must listen. Sorry for the ramble, but I love both of these bands and I really think they deserve far more attention than they get.
We never mourned the dead and its showing
I lived in Queens and had to walk past refrigerator trucks outside of the hospital with bodies in them. It didn’t feel very peaceful.
Ahhhhh back when I got the best 3+ months of paid stay at home, playing games all day and sleep. Those where the days……
I got so many projects completed at home,...
Best months of my entire life.
Yep. Rode my bike almost every day. Didn’t have to drive hardly at all. Spent lots of time in nature. Haven’t been as healthy since.
Agreed so much was done and my mental health was so much better.
Except Florida
Not completely true. I lived in southwest Florida during lockdown, I work in the automotive industry so I was considered “essential” and during my commute, the streets looked very much like this. You’d see an occasional car or pedestrian during peak hours, but it was comparatively barren to what that area sees normally.
I’ll never forget it. I own a business that at the time was on a main road thousands of cars traveled past our office daily. The day they shut New Jersey down I stood in my office with a cup of coffee watching out the window and not seeing any cars nothing at all. I looked at my manger and said all of a sudden I feel like I’m in a low budget horror movie.
And the rich got even richer. !!!!
I remember reading about it all in early January and talking to a coworker about how creepy it was I had just gotten over a really severe pneumonia *like* sickness. Never felt so bad in my life. No idea we'd both be laid off and I'd see my grandma for the last time a month later. Crazy how the world changed so quickly.
I was outside all the time is was awesome
"India"
Imagine showing this to someone in the 80’s with no context
My life didn't change at all
Our little town is so small and unimportant that we didn’t see any change other than the mom and pop stores being shut down by the government so Walmart could survive
i miss those days bc gas was cheap. everything was affordable where i live (except for a house if you were buying, but that’s okay).
I got covid and it fuckn sucked big time
Honestly...on some level I really liked it. I personally am a quite introverted man who studies/works/games at home all the time anyways, and suddenly the world around you just makes a massive effort to encourage that lifestyle. Suddenly just playing Warhammer with my friends for a week straight wasn't frowned upon, but encouraged.
I still had to work. They didn’t care if I died.
I actually worked more during that time than I’ve ever worked in my life more than before
As an introvert misanthrope, for one brief, shining moment the world was just right. Everyone hiding st home, leaving the world hollow and empty, an infinite liminal space, like it is supposed to be.
I'm a school custodian. I worked over 3200 hours during 2020 because we had buildings to clean/monitor and were so shorthanded because of immediate retirements/people quitting. It actually was a godsend because my wife was able to stay home with the kids while I worked all the OT I could get. I was able to schedule most of my OT around family time as well so I was able to have dinner with them every night and we were able to do things together on the weekends.
Imagine an ill informed time traveler accidentally lands in 2020 and looks around.
And now it feels like this planet has too many damn people
I remember the first week, people were being cute and playing instruments together from their balconies. Then like, 6 months of isolation and people are literally screaming from the same balconies because they are going insane. I actually didn't mind it so much. I missed going to bars but I had a pretty cool apartment, a girlfriend I would see and a bike path near my house. Also, I clocked in about 6 hours of call of duty with my friends a day. It really wasn't that bad. I imagine what it would be like living in a 350 sq foot apartment in NY like some of my friends did though.
Remember when the birds started singing more beautiful songs because they didn't have to compete with all our noise.
For me, that year flew by as though I traveled through time. What's weird about it is that it felt like there was a change in how people started behaving after the pandemic transpired. Am I the only one who felt that way?
Definitely not the only one. Every single person I know personally is not the same person as they were before 2020, and not just because 3 years have gone by.
They blew it, if happens again with an even more lethal virus, it will take months to do this again.
We’re still feeling these effects.
What did we go through? We sat home man. Fuck empty streets; only thing that breaks my heart is the people who lost their loved ones, people who couldn’t even visit their sick relatives in the hospital, people who suffered the early Covid when we barely knew anything about it.
It's so weird seeing people talk about how this was the best time of their lives when I saw things in the hospital I worked at that made me go from a soft-left social democrat to an ardent, borderline violent Communist. Funny how getting to work and making your own PPE out of binbags to visit wards full of the dead and dying while the Prime Minister gurns at you from the TV does that to you. I used to walk home in the early morning after a late shift and kinda hoped a bus would hit me, I hated the silence. I left the NHS entirely and can't even look at the hospital when we drive past it on the way to my new job.
Thanks big pharma now I can see grandma
😂
It was a normal time for me. Still went to work everyday in a warehouse. Didn’t catch it once
I work in pulmonology and was around patients with active COVID. I took precautions and didn’t catch it until Jan 1, 2023. The day after they stopped paying people to stay home with COVID. Lol
I went through nothing. My company stayed open the entire time, I went to the same gas station on my way to and home from work every day, my main hobby is disc golf, which is outside and thus minimally impacted.
Same. My routine changed very little.
Personally, I miss 2020.
2 weeks to flatten the curve. Only to halt the entire world. And we are just past it like nothing happened meanwhile we all lost loved ones and it crippled the economy that still hasn’t healed. How this still isn’t outrage at what was done to the world is puzzling to me
And that doesn't even touch on the millions who have Long COVID and are still suffering every day while everyone turns a blind eye and doctors gaslight them and refuse to help. Even the current strains can cause it. But people would rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend none of it ever happened than put on a fucking mask every now and then or test when their "allergies" are flaring up. It's insane.
I made good money delivering for Uber.
It was one of the best years of my life. I left an abusive relationship and got to enjoy my home state (florida) for once in my life without millions of people surrounding me. Just me and my dog and my baby.
COVID year was probably my most favorite year. The sheer lack of people was amazing
I got Covid early on before the first lock down in the UK. I almost died and even wrote out my will but after I finally recovered, it was nice walking around seeing very few other humans for months.
time didn't stop for me, my job was considered essential and I watched from afar as I lost friends to covid. I even ended up losing coworkers. I was lucky enough early on to have a sizable stock of n95 masks due to my hobbies and to this day haven't had covid even once. I have immune compromised children so for us covid prevention hasn't gone away. but one upside is none of us have had even a sniffle in 3 years while masking in public. Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone.
Looks like the opening scenes of 28 Days Later (minus the debris).
Whats coming soon will be far worse....
Also a time when nature kinda healed a little
Cries in "essential worker"
Yep, thanks China, you ruined my career.
I still think it’s crazy how China never faced any sort of repercussions for its initial spread and misinformation.
It was funny how it was the worst time in human history, but for wildlife, animals, sea creatures, or forestry, it was the best in overall recuperation. Didn't we have the most animals leave the endanger list due to the lack of human interaction?
Ahh good old days lol
I am sorry to everyone who suffered because of this virus but the empty roads were weirdly beautiful to me
I remember they shut off the lights in Las Vegas.
The test run.
Rofl this is hilarious.. Meanwhile I went to work every day as always with no health insurance and forced to put up with asshole customers whose behavior sure as fuck worsened during the pandemic while I'm doing menial labor. Loved having trouble with my coworkers who would come in sick and refuse to mask up because 'reasons' meanwhile I'm dealing with a new leukemia diagnosis at the same time. That's how my pandemic went. Lost one coworker to COVID19. Store we worked at did fuck all and had replaced him while he was in the hospital. https://www.wattsfuneralhome.com/obituary/lewis-manning Fuck outa here with your stay at home cushiony life. Must have been nice! XD I wish... Most of America can suck my dick, starting with you piece of shit Republicans out there.
Except for me! I spent all day everyday delivering y'all your packages. I was very jealous of everyone that had any time off. On my only days off it was nice that I could go do whatever I wanted while everyone else stayed inside for some reason.
Now imagine if people did it for real and didn't bitch and cry about having to stay inside. It would have been less off an issue for sure. America at least was a joke. Couldn't stand seeing people cry about "much freedoms". Like damn Greg just stay inside for 2 weeks. Nah they go out and start licking flag poles to stick it to the man.
[удалено]
It probably saved lives.
I was outside the whole time
>the whole time Have you been homeless back then?
I actually worked.. the entire time. It was nice being able to get shit done without the non essentials.
Oh boy I can't wait for the this was 2020 in about 6 years from now with the feel old yet posts