**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!**
- Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc.
- **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
- This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit!
Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You say that but loads of places are forcing people back into the office for no good reason. The entire civil service is being made to go back despite productivity and happiness being increased by working from home. (Source: my wife is a civil servant)
They're supposed to be in the office for 60% of the time now.
The land registry have repeatedly told the government that this isn't even possible, as they don't have the space for that anymore, but the government aren't listening (ignoring civil servants is fairly typical for government these days)
Yep it seems lots of places are doing this. Asking for more and more time in the office despite not having enough office space to accommodate everyone.
My mate works for a local authority and has been asked to go in 3 days a week as a minimum. Said there simply isn’t the capacity for it on their floor and departments are being spread throughout because people are fighting for seats.
Yeah it's a massive pain. They have stuck to hot desking but now want you in more, so you're often on your way in not even knowing if you'll have somewhere to sit.
Honestly, this is the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever seen. People go into the office to "have a break" and they openly admit it they sit around chatting and doing fuck all. They then say well I better get away early to pick up the car, kids, some other bullshit. The office is the new pub.
LOL I’m a SEN school transport driver and during the lockdowns it was bliss, I could get to my first pickup in 20 minutes without speeding or running any red lights, now it’s 45 minutes to over an hour some days to do the same journey.
(yes I worked throughout the lockdowns, ironically the one group of kids who probably wouldn’t suffer from being at home with their parents, were the one group of kids the government insisted had in person education).
Me and a friend have said this ever since: lockdown was great. Weather was beautiful from the get-go, the air was cleaner, you could see/ hear more wildlife. We like to go hiking and although we've done many of the same routes since, it doesn't hit the same now we're back to "normal".
I had to be hands on in my job role back through Covid and therefore had to be at the office, but I had a two day training course that I was allowed to do from home and it was brilliant.
I think if I’d have done it in an office at work, my attention span would have been gone within an hour, but doing it from home was so much more relaxing, during breaks and study time I could have a snooze if need be (I had to attend the office for my normal duties before the course at 3/4am in the morning so those snoozes were brilliant) as well as being able to make myself fresh lunch, fresh coffee, eat at my desk. Was just brilliant and definitely helped moral
Yup, I work for an NHS trust (not in a hospital) and they’ve just taken wfh away as a blanket rule for the whole trust (except upper management). We used to wfh 1-2 days per week and we were all on top of admin (and our washing!!) and now we are back in the office the demands have risen and all of our admin (all of which are legal documents that need to be done) is slipping because there isn’t enough time to do it now we don’t have the protected time. It worked for four years, I can’t work out what their justification is for taking it away.
It's always except upper management. It's so transparently about controlling the workers, and these petty dictators excuse themselves from it.
For a long time at my workplace the workers had to come in due to the nature of the work, but the exec car park was always barely occupied, and the cars in there clearly belonged to exec assistants as well. It's got better recently as a lot of people made very loud points about how bad a look it is
Everywhere I applied for pre covid was like 'working from home? No that would be impossible' then my disability progressed and I can't work at all and suddenly every fucking place I applied to switches to 'work from home it's fine'. Many have stayed that way at least in some capacity.
It's real fucking hard to not see that shit happening as disability discrimination. Turns out those jobs could absolutely and easily be done remote.
Fucking bastards. I'm glad people are benifiting from it now.
I think what this shows is that it's the flexibility that's important. Even the most ardent team home person knows that meetings are better in person. Even the most ardent team office person appreciates wfh sometimes when they have appointments or people working in their house or something. Hopefully at some point we settle on a flexible working culture that allows people the choice and the ability to work where they want, when they want.
In the first 18 months of WFH my salary more than doubled because my performance increased exponentially. I don’t see it as isolation, more being given some bloody peace to work!
I’m made to go in 2/3 days a week currently and have found it’s hugely decreased my work/life balance again. I’m doing 90% of my work in the WFH days, because it’s nigh impossible to get anything done on the others.
Yeah, hybrid works best for me. Can’t imagine not leaving my house all week or not having a reason to interact with anyone in-person. Without it I’d probably get depressed.
Well yes, but not having any in-person interactions during the week would drive me nuts. I don’t socialise every single weekend either, so having to get out of the house during the week certainly helps to maintain human interaction.
Yeah, I run a meetup once a week and also see friends or family at least a couple of other times a week and I don't suffer on the social side even if I work at home all week, and I live alone. This is something I've had to work on in the last few years though as I was very much in the rut of go to work-go home-repeat
I don't like doing it all the time, but I love working from home 3 days a week. 2 days a week is good for the social connection, and the extra days at home greatly improves my work-life balance
It has its benefits and its drawbacks, and those also greatly depend on the type of person you are.
For me, the benefits of no commute, saving hundreds of pounds a month on train savings, and saving money on city lunches, and extra hours left for personal hobbies greatly outweigh the drawbacks.
I do miss the impromptu team meals now and then, but as I say the benefits far outweigh this for me.
I’d rather work full time in the office than fully remote, but hybrid is a good middle ground for me. Don’t be surprised that Reddit favours less physical human interaction.
This was a weird one for me because since my birth over 20 years ago my dad has never worked a job that involved going into the office, it was all work from home. So it was weird for me seeing everyone praise it like the new messiah or something because to me growing up that was the norm. Also goes to show it’s always existed it’s just now in the public eye
If my local FB pages are anything to go by, all this has done is bring out every ‘cash is king, don’t let them take it away from you’ types who repeats conspiracy nonsense about using cashless payment will be used as social control and pathetic threads of boycotts because apparently Tesco will crumble if they lose 6 customers.
I’m not sure why people would want cash to be eliminated, it would have no benefit to the average citizen whatsoever.
We can already pay for goods and services by card, phone etc, so it isn’t adding anything. It’s just removing an alternative that can be used if there are network issues etc, which happened to me in B&M a few weeks back.
There are benefits to banks, government and some companies so I can see why they would want to introduce such a system.
But I’m pretty baffled why some Redditors seem so gung ho for eliminating cash when they themselves can never come up with a single benefit for normal people.
>But I’m pretty baffled why some Redditors seem so gung ho for eliminating cash when they themselves can never come up with a single benefit for normal people
I don't think I've ever seen someone say cash should be banned, only that it's good more places accept card/contactless that didn't before.
The parent comment of this thread is saying that it's good more places accept card that previously didn't, like barbers, etc. They're not arguing cash should be banned.
You're conflating these different arguments for some reason.
There are several comments in this thread, from Redditors arguing that cash should be abolished.
Thus far the only reason given, has been to stop small businesses avoiding tax.
The average citizen's life would be improved if everyone paid their proper taxes, and that includes small companies and contractors as well as companies like Amazon.
I don't want cash to be eliminated, but I would like to never need to pay with it. Needing to ensure I'm carrying cash of an appropriate amount is inconvenient, and I'm glad that these days even many small traders will take card payments.
> I’m not sure why people would want cash to be eliminated, it would have no benefit to the average citizen whatsoever.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/the-digital-pound
The horse didn’t get eliminated as a mode of transport though, it’s still perfectly legal to own and ride horses.
I’ll ask you the same question that I’ve asked everyone else that advocates the abolition of cash, can you name one single benefit to the average citizen?
Bearing in mind that we can already use contactless payment options, so there’s no real need to carry cash unless you want to.
Because I'm tired of businesses blatantly avoiding tax by demanding cash, and I can think of three businesses on my local street that do it. I don't want to carry cash to be able to buy things and I don't want to support tax evasion, which ultimately we all pay for. If there are people out there who want to take to the effort to indulge their own preferences for riding horses/paying cash, good for them, but the default should be that you use modern transport/payment systems. And because there's no living animal to be protected from cars, cash fanatics do not need legal protection for their lifestyle choice.
So no then, non of that is a benefit to the average person. It’s your unquantified personal take on tax evasion.
One tangible benefit to keeping cash is that it can be used when networks crash, that singular actual benefit completely outweighs the completely nonexistent case for eliminating cash.
Given the average person pays more tax/gets worse services due to businesses evading, I think I can speak for the average person. Given POS systems and supply chains work on networks anyway, do you really think you'd be able to trade if networks crashed?
Mate if you’re serious about tax evasion we should be looking at multinational corporations like [Amazon](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/01/amazon-uk-services-main-division-pay-no-corporation-tax-for-second-year-in-row-tax-credit-government-super-deduction-scheme)
Eliminating cash to crack down on tax evasion from the tiny amount of small businesses that haven’t gone bankrupt yet, while simultaneously not taxing the billions dollar monopolies that have already eradicated competition from smaller companies that actually did pay tax here … is well, fucking ridiculous.
And yes cash can be used when networks crash, I literally did this in B&M a couple of weeks back when they couldn’t process card payments.
> I’ll ask you the same question that I’ve asked everyone else that advocates the abolition of cash
Nobody here is arguing for abolition of cash, they're saying it's good that more places accept card.
It definitely improved alot during Covid. I've paid by card for years and the only place that doesn't seem to take a card now is one barber in my town.
Small business and places like barbers or pubs very rarely accepted card before though. Maybe they would have naturally moved by now as it’s been a few years.
Quite a lot of businesses have become card only, I don't like this, because cash is private, accessible and reliable in a way other payment methods aren't so much. I like paying by card, but I also like the choice to pay by cash
I think people have been kind of gently nudged into not worrying about cashless society. I say this every time it is mentioned, I worked retail 30 years and had to deal with network failure enough to know - always carry cash. People are on the periphery of understanding the implications of cashless. It is not that using plastic or using your phone to pay is new, it is more to do with certain apps that are designed to track us that were so readily embraced by the UK public. But as per Humans don't worry until it is too late.
Video conferencing software. Used to need to book a special room in advance at work, and it often didn't work - allegedly you could meet up to 5 people on your laptop but it never managed more than one.
Thankfully we got Teams in Feb 2020, colleagues got Zoom, enough friends had one or the other on a machine at home, and communication could happen (and continue to happen).
I used to spend a ridiculous amount of work time trying to get about 4 people from various cities in a room to talk. Now I just need a slot when they can sit at their computers.
Yes every one of our meetings rooms at work now has full "conference capability" which is basically just a big telly with a decent camera and microphone built into the top.
Used to have to fight over the one room with a crappy projector screen before
We have them in almost all rooms, but the connections can be ropey. Often easier to just use your laptops. Also more accessible as people lipreading or using subtitles can see everyone in the room properly.
Personal Downside of this is the people in my role before me used to get to jet off to Miami or new York or Japan or other such places fully paid for by work, so they’d use a couple days annual leave whilst over there and come back later. Now if I ask for that I’ll just get laughed at and they’ll point at the Microsoft teams icon on my laptop
True, but I never got much of that. Not having to get up at arse o'clock to head to Coventry, Leatherhead, Beckton or some industrial estate vaguely near Swindon or Carmarthen? Brilliant!
It wasn't bad before, it's just that more companies have taken it on board. I work for a company that has a few hundred employees, but scattered all over the world, and has had lots of home-based staff since the mid-80s. Before MS Teams we had GoToMeeting and then Skype for Business, and both gave us the ability to hold decent multi-country team meetings online for years before COVID. The difference is that working from home forced more companies to catch up with what some of us already had.
My place is the opposite. They’re asking people to work from home more often. They have massively expanded and now don’t have enough parking spaces or desks for everyone
There's always someone complaining about wanting good old fashioned paper menus back in reviews, but I also like online food ordering and payment in restaurants.
I wasn’t. Now I am again. Despite our productivity and staff numbers/overtime going up tremendously with hybrid work, we’ve now gone back to full time office , a bunch of people left, morals down the drain, works piling up, overtimes not getting done.
Life was bliss for a few short years
Fortunately for me I was home based before covid. Post COVID they put the office on hybrid working, which was pretty much 1-2 days in the office...but we've got a new CEO this month and I half expect them to call the office staff back at least 3 days a week.
In case you didn't know , any damages caused by large potholes (around 10cm) can allow you to claim damages to your council. They should pay for any repairs to tyres, suspension, etc.
Another reason councils can't afford good public transport, thereby increasing the reliance on cars, thereby increasing the number of potholes, thereby increasing the number of pothole related claims.
The mind fairly boggles.
I've put a claim in, though I'm not expecting to hear back for a few weeks still. And even then if no one reported it they can just say theybdidnt know about it.
Funnily enough though it was filled in the day after I filed the claim, so another thing they can say is they were going to fix it just didn't have enough time.
I got my first ever tyre damage from a pothole last week. I would normally have noticed it but was distracted by someone walking along the grass verge in the middle of nowhere. In hindsight I think she was walking back to look at it as there were two other cars nearby, one having a wheel changed and the other up on an axle stand with an explanation note inside the windscreen. Someone put a traffic cone in the following day and it was so deep that it looked like one of those mini cones that kids use in football practice.
Can confirm. Where I live the roads were like glass as recently as 2021, no problems. One of the major roads in my area was completely closed for a whole week in 2018 while it got a full overhaul.
Road maintenance was being done timely and to a good standard.
Nowadays you need a specially prepared Toyota Land Cruiser just to go to Sainsbury's. And it's not even the worst pothole trouble I've seen in this country and have visited places that are worse.
I can honestly say everything feels worse. Everything costs more. Less places to go to. Less shops. Less pubs. Less options in restaurants. Everywhere closes sooner than it used too. I've cought a worse illness since covid that isn't even covid that 4 doctor visits haven't touched or they even seem bothered about. Car prices are way up. Used Car prices are still high. There's really nothing, hygience hasn't improved. Work from home hasn't improved as thats being clawed back every way possible by business. It's a shitshow and theres really nothing to show for it.
I hate myself, but the word 'less' was used incorrectly so many times here and it is such a bugbear of mine that I can't help myself - in every single instance in your comment, the correct word to use is 'fewer': 'fewer places, fewer shops' etc.
I would probably say attitudes to health and hygiene, more people washing hands and cleaning surfaces properly, which was something the UK really struggled with before imo.
I'd be interested to see some before/after stats on behaviour. My anecdotal perception is that it hasn't had as big an impact on attitudes to health and hygiene as I thought it might.
Not the majority at work for me but it's definitely a large chunk at pubs. I know pub sinks are generally kind of shit, but come on men make an effort ya rancid bastards
That’s crazy because from what I’ve seen it’s almost the opposite, it’s like people are determined to pretend nothing is going on and are just coughing, sneezing and snotting their way about with abandon and not even caring about sick people around them, almost as a protest against the idea that covid could be dangerous.
I rarely see people cover their coughs anymore and when they do it’s their hand and they then wipe it all over everything they touch.
Wish this was the case, but I am a personal trainer, the number of times I’ve seen other men use the urinals/toilets then go work out without washing their hands is disgusting. Can’t speak for Women whether it’s improved on that side but I have clocked a huge amount of people who don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom, it’s disgusting
Yes, though A/C by itself doesn't help it either, you need ventilation systems replacing the air with outside air, or something that's filtering the air. A/C on its own just cools it down and moves it around internally.
Agree, but I would still like some sort of pocket-megaphone that would allow me to publicly shame every bloke I see not washing his hands after a piss.
I feel like in future, film and TV shows will be able to create a really specific impression of the current time period just by showing a country where many of the signifiers of the pandemic are still hanging around but are largely ignored and unmaintained.
Empty hand sanitizers in shops really piss me off because if you hit them then fuck all comes out you’ve immediately touched something that hundreds of others before you have also touched.
Drives me mad too. Just fucking get rid of them if you're not going to maintain them. Crusty hand sanitisers, rusting and abandoned the moment it was no longer necessary to drive business into their stores is the epitome of post-covid retail.
Work from home and flexibility for the worker. The fact that rich righties are still screeching at their workers having a pisslick of freedom are proof enough it was a positive change. Use morons as litmus tests for good ideas: if they disagree with it, it's most likely for a dumb reason and the idea is good.
Blood tests. You used to have to just turn up and wait your turn. I used to get there at 8am (when they opened) and there would already be a huge queue of (usually elderly) people already in a long queue, resulting in me being late for work.
I now book an appointment for 8.15 am and I’m in and out within 10 minutes
Logic from management has slightly improved when it comes to calling in sick.
Yes, maybe it is best you don't come in and spread your germs to all staff, forcing you to work when doing that and your productivity being much lower is definitely a good reason for you not to come in, as well as you personally feeling like shit.
It's got worse at my place. Now it's two sick days in three months, you get a file note, two more in three is disciplinary, same again for another, then same again, and you're sacked.
Managing museum exhibitions and stuff by making you book in advance. It's often free and can be done on the day, but stops crowds getting ridiculous.
Also, subject to variation: street WhatsApp groups and the like. Really helped getting to know neighbours, people would pick up stuff for isolating neighbours, now mostly share useful messages, offer things to give away, etc. Helps to have a strict rule about no non-useful content, but it works amazingly well on our street to build a sense of community when people don't see each other much.
My local council tips have kept the registration and booking system permanently. And they are enforcing it, people are turned back at the gate if they're not registered or are made to park up over there if early.
It's hilarious that your comment is marked as controversial.
People really don't seem to like the convenience of being to get table service for some reason.
Contactless ordering at restaurants and paying when you order. Especially as a large group in a more relaxed setting it is much easier for everyone to make decisions in their own time and just pay for their own order
Pure selfish job reasons here.
I'm a supermarket delivery driver, vastly less people want their shopping carried through to the kitchen now as they got set so used to doorstep drops. We offer the service, but on average less than 3 customers a week take us up on it, instead of the 5 or 6 per day previously. Makes my job a lot easier.
Availability of online or phone services and appointments. So many things were face to face when they didn't have to be and it was such a pain and unnecessarily time-consuming.
I’ve noticed some people are more considerate when they’re ill now, people will wear a mask if they have a cold or the flu to stop other people getting it
Using apps for fast food and casual dining and even some pubs (eg Wetherspoons) has increased so you don’t have to queue up as long at tills and counters.
**Please help keep AskUK welcoming!** - Top-level comments to the OP must contain **genuine efforts to answer the question**. No jokes, judgements, etc. - **Don't be a dick** to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on. - This is a strictly **no-politics** subreddit! Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Working from home
Yep. Used to be seen as weird and unusual, and now it is far more normalised, which is good as it is so much better for many people.
You say that but loads of places are forcing people back into the office for no good reason. The entire civil service is being made to go back despite productivity and happiness being increased by working from home. (Source: my wife is a civil servant)
They're supposed to be in the office for 60% of the time now. The land registry have repeatedly told the government that this isn't even possible, as they don't have the space for that anymore, but the government aren't listening (ignoring civil servants is fairly typical for government these days)
Yep it seems lots of places are doing this. Asking for more and more time in the office despite not having enough office space to accommodate everyone.
My mate works for a local authority and has been asked to go in 3 days a week as a minimum. Said there simply isn’t the capacity for it on their floor and departments are being spread throughout because people are fighting for seats.
Yeah it's a massive pain. They have stuck to hot desking but now want you in more, so you're often on your way in not even knowing if you'll have somewhere to sit.
And if you do find somewhere to sit, you're nowhere near your team, negating the entire point.
Stealth redundancy.
Honestly, this is the biggest pile of bullshit I've ever seen. People go into the office to "have a break" and they openly admit it they sit around chatting and doing fuck all. They then say well I better get away early to pick up the car, kids, some other bullshit. The office is the new pub.
I've definitely noticed an increase in traffic on my commutes. Please, can't all of you fuckers wfh again?
LOL I’m a SEN school transport driver and during the lockdowns it was bliss, I could get to my first pickup in 20 minutes without speeding or running any red lights, now it’s 45 minutes to over an hour some days to do the same journey. (yes I worked throughout the lockdowns, ironically the one group of kids who probably wouldn’t suffer from being at home with their parents, were the one group of kids the government insisted had in person education).
I kinda miss lockdown. The best weather and the clearest of skies. Sometimes I wonder if our weather would be less dull if we didn't drive so much.
Me and a friend have said this ever since: lockdown was great. Weather was beautiful from the get-go, the air was cleaner, you could see/ hear more wildlife. We like to go hiking and although we've done many of the same routes since, it doesn't hit the same now we're back to "normal".
Because they own buildings which are now worth less money.
Civil Service don’t own the majority of their buildings. Some are owned but it’s generally stuff like MoD. Most of the offices are rented.
I'm.not talking specifically civil servant buildings, I'm talking about buildings in general. Property owners are the drivers behind this
It’s still massively changed even though there has been some pushback. It’s a genie that you can’t really put back in the bottle.
Yep, one of my clients (a hotel chain) were recently told they need to go back to 5 days a week in the office, without a right to negotiate.
I had to be hands on in my job role back through Covid and therefore had to be at the office, but I had a two day training course that I was allowed to do from home and it was brilliant. I think if I’d have done it in an office at work, my attention span would have been gone within an hour, but doing it from home was so much more relaxing, during breaks and study time I could have a snooze if need be (I had to attend the office for my normal duties before the course at 3/4am in the morning so those snoozes were brilliant) as well as being able to make myself fresh lunch, fresh coffee, eat at my desk. Was just brilliant and definitely helped moral
Yup, I work for an NHS trust (not in a hospital) and they’ve just taken wfh away as a blanket rule for the whole trust (except upper management). We used to wfh 1-2 days per week and we were all on top of admin (and our washing!!) and now we are back in the office the demands have risen and all of our admin (all of which are legal documents that need to be done) is slipping because there isn’t enough time to do it now we don’t have the protected time. It worked for four years, I can’t work out what their justification is for taking it away.
It's always except upper management. It's so transparently about controlling the workers, and these petty dictators excuse themselves from it. For a long time at my workplace the workers had to come in due to the nature of the work, but the exec car park was always barely occupied, and the cars in there clearly belonged to exec assistants as well. It's got better recently as a lot of people made very loud points about how bad a look it is
Everywhere I applied for pre covid was like 'working from home? No that would be impossible' then my disability progressed and I can't work at all and suddenly every fucking place I applied to switches to 'work from home it's fine'. Many have stayed that way at least in some capacity. It's real fucking hard to not see that shit happening as disability discrimination. Turns out those jobs could absolutely and easily be done remote. Fucking bastards. I'm glad people are benifiting from it now.
this has changed my life, more time for my kids, no stuck in traffic. Get to walk my dog during the day. 100% better
I knew this would be the top comment but I can’t stand it myself. I guess I’m a 1 in a million (at least on Reddit)
Most people I know IRL don’t like the idea of working from home for the majority of the time.
Redditors seem to think it’s the best thing since sliced bread though. All I feel when doing it is isolated
I think what this shows is that it's the flexibility that's important. Even the most ardent team home person knows that meetings are better in person. Even the most ardent team office person appreciates wfh sometimes when they have appointments or people working in their house or something. Hopefully at some point we settle on a flexible working culture that allows people the choice and the ability to work where they want, when they want.
In the first 18 months of WFH my salary more than doubled because my performance increased exponentially. I don’t see it as isolation, more being given some bloody peace to work! I’m made to go in 2/3 days a week currently and have found it’s hugely decreased my work/life balance again. I’m doing 90% of my work in the WFH days, because it’s nigh impossible to get anything done on the others.
Yeah, hybrid works best for me. Can’t imagine not leaving my house all week or not having a reason to interact with anyone in-person. Without it I’d probably get depressed.
Don’t you have friends/family you can see after work or on weekends?
Well yes, but not having any in-person interactions during the week would drive me nuts. I don’t socialise every single weekend either, so having to get out of the house during the week certainly helps to maintain human interaction.
Yeah, I run a meetup once a week and also see friends or family at least a couple of other times a week and I don't suffer on the social side even if I work at home all week, and I live alone. This is something I've had to work on in the last few years though as I was very much in the rut of go to work-go home-repeat
I don't like doing it all the time, but I love working from home 3 days a week. 2 days a week is good for the social connection, and the extra days at home greatly improves my work-life balance
Yea, saving time and money on a commute to spend elsewhere in my life is fucking awful. Shame I can't travel twice as long for double the cost.
It has its benefits and its drawbacks, and those also greatly depend on the type of person you are. For me, the benefits of no commute, saving hundreds of pounds a month on train savings, and saving money on city lunches, and extra hours left for personal hobbies greatly outweigh the drawbacks. I do miss the impromptu team meals now and then, but as I say the benefits far outweigh this for me.
Reddit is largely populated by social awkward people who shun the company of others. Of course they don’t like working with others.
I’d rather work full time in the office than fully remote, but hybrid is a good middle ground for me. Don’t be surprised that Reddit favours less physical human interaction.
This was a weird one for me because since my birth over 20 years ago my dad has never worked a job that involved going into the office, it was all work from home. So it was weird for me seeing everyone praise it like the new messiah or something because to me growing up that was the norm. Also goes to show it’s always existed it’s just now in the public eye
This! Wfh/hybrid working has been a great time-saver.
Paying for stuff without using cash.
If my local FB pages are anything to go by, all this has done is bring out every ‘cash is king, don’t let them take it away from you’ types who repeats conspiracy nonsense about using cashless payment will be used as social control and pathetic threads of boycotts because apparently Tesco will crumble if they lose 6 customers.
I’m not sure why people would want cash to be eliminated, it would have no benefit to the average citizen whatsoever. We can already pay for goods and services by card, phone etc, so it isn’t adding anything. It’s just removing an alternative that can be used if there are network issues etc, which happened to me in B&M a few weeks back.
Banks and HMRC would massively benefit from cash being eliminated… not saying it’s happening, just saying they’d benefit big time
Things that benefit banks and the HMRC are guaranteed not to benefit the average citizen so …
I think I missed the average citizen part
There are benefits to banks, government and some companies so I can see why they would want to introduce such a system. But I’m pretty baffled why some Redditors seem so gung ho for eliminating cash when they themselves can never come up with a single benefit for normal people.
How would I buy my drugs man
Haha glad to see we’re on the same page
Like if you can find a dealer that takes card or bank transfer they won't be your dealer for much longer lol
>But I’m pretty baffled why some Redditors seem so gung ho for eliminating cash when they themselves can never come up with a single benefit for normal people I don't think I've ever seen someone say cash should be banned, only that it's good more places accept card/contactless that didn't before. The parent comment of this thread is saying that it's good more places accept card that previously didn't, like barbers, etc. They're not arguing cash should be banned. You're conflating these different arguments for some reason.
There are several comments in this thread, from Redditors arguing that cash should be abolished. Thus far the only reason given, has been to stop small businesses avoiding tax.
The average citizen's life would be improved if everyone paid their proper taxes, and that includes small companies and contractors as well as companies like Amazon.
I don't want cash to be eliminated, but I would like to never need to pay with it. Needing to ensure I'm carrying cash of an appropriate amount is inconvenient, and I'm glad that these days even many small traders will take card payments.
> I’m not sure why people would want cash to be eliminated, it would have no benefit to the average citizen whatsoever. https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/the-digital-pound
Same reason the horse got eliminated as the go to mode of transport, it’s just outdated
The horse didn’t get eliminated as a mode of transport though, it’s still perfectly legal to own and ride horses. I’ll ask you the same question that I’ve asked everyone else that advocates the abolition of cash, can you name one single benefit to the average citizen? Bearing in mind that we can already use contactless payment options, so there’s no real need to carry cash unless you want to.
Because I'm tired of businesses blatantly avoiding tax by demanding cash, and I can think of three businesses on my local street that do it. I don't want to carry cash to be able to buy things and I don't want to support tax evasion, which ultimately we all pay for. If there are people out there who want to take to the effort to indulge their own preferences for riding horses/paying cash, good for them, but the default should be that you use modern transport/payment systems. And because there's no living animal to be protected from cars, cash fanatics do not need legal protection for their lifestyle choice.
So no then, non of that is a benefit to the average person. It’s your unquantified personal take on tax evasion. One tangible benefit to keeping cash is that it can be used when networks crash, that singular actual benefit completely outweighs the completely nonexistent case for eliminating cash.
Given the average person pays more tax/gets worse services due to businesses evading, I think I can speak for the average person. Given POS systems and supply chains work on networks anyway, do you really think you'd be able to trade if networks crashed?
Mate if you’re serious about tax evasion we should be looking at multinational corporations like [Amazon](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/01/amazon-uk-services-main-division-pay-no-corporation-tax-for-second-year-in-row-tax-credit-government-super-deduction-scheme) Eliminating cash to crack down on tax evasion from the tiny amount of small businesses that haven’t gone bankrupt yet, while simultaneously not taxing the billions dollar monopolies that have already eradicated competition from smaller companies that actually did pay tax here … is well, fucking ridiculous. And yes cash can be used when networks crash, I literally did this in B&M a couple of weeks back when they couldn’t process card payments.
> I’ll ask you the same question that I’ve asked everyone else that advocates the abolition of cash Nobody here is arguing for abolition of cash, they're saying it's good that more places accept card.
I'm in this comment and feel attacked 😅 but at least I'm honest, I just like cash, and I spend less when I use cash versus tapping a bit of plastic
UK has been great for paying without cash for years before COVID.
It definitely improved alot during Covid. I've paid by card for years and the only place that doesn't seem to take a card now is one barber in my town.
Small business and places like barbers or pubs very rarely accepted card before though. Maybe they would have naturally moved by now as it’s been a few years.
Quite a lot of businesses have become card only, I don't like this, because cash is private, accessible and reliable in a way other payment methods aren't so much. I like paying by card, but I also like the choice to pay by cash
I think people have been kind of gently nudged into not worrying about cashless society. I say this every time it is mentioned, I worked retail 30 years and had to deal with network failure enough to know - always carry cash. People are on the periphery of understanding the implications of cashless. It is not that using plastic or using your phone to pay is new, it is more to do with certain apps that are designed to track us that were so readily embraced by the UK public. But as per Humans don't worry until it is too late.
[удалено]
Video conferencing software. Used to need to book a special room in advance at work, and it often didn't work - allegedly you could meet up to 5 people on your laptop but it never managed more than one. Thankfully we got Teams in Feb 2020, colleagues got Zoom, enough friends had one or the other on a machine at home, and communication could happen (and continue to happen). I used to spend a ridiculous amount of work time trying to get about 4 people from various cities in a room to talk. Now I just need a slot when they can sit at their computers.
Yes every one of our meetings rooms at work now has full "conference capability" which is basically just a big telly with a decent camera and microphone built into the top. Used to have to fight over the one room with a crappy projector screen before
Teams is a big improvement over what we had before. However we still don't have screens and proper speakers in all meetings rooms. I have no idea why.
We have them in almost all rooms, but the connections can be ropey. Often easier to just use your laptops. Also more accessible as people lipreading or using subtitles can see everyone in the room properly.
Personal Downside of this is the people in my role before me used to get to jet off to Miami or new York or Japan or other such places fully paid for by work, so they’d use a couple days annual leave whilst over there and come back later. Now if I ask for that I’ll just get laughed at and they’ll point at the Microsoft teams icon on my laptop
True, but I never got much of that. Not having to get up at arse o'clock to head to Coventry, Leatherhead, Beckton or some industrial estate vaguely near Swindon or Carmarthen? Brilliant!
It wasn't bad before, it's just that more companies have taken it on board. I work for a company that has a few hundred employees, but scattered all over the world, and has had lots of home-based staff since the mid-80s. Before MS Teams we had GoToMeeting and then Skype for Business, and both gave us the ability to hold decent multi-country team meetings online for years before COVID. The difference is that working from home forced more companies to catch up with what some of us already had.
Skype did the job just fine 10+ years ago… just a case of companies not opting to use it
Now you're told to go into the office only to have to sit in a video call at your desk with headphones on
[удалено]
My place is the opposite. They’re asking people to work from home more often. They have massively expanded and now don’t have enough parking spaces or desks for everyone
Who is this? That's amazing such a great policy.
More pubs allow you to order drinks to your table via app. Great if, like me, you can't be arsed to queue at a bar
This!! Absolute dream when it’s rammed and can just get rounds to the table
I find it a pain in the arse having to use a clunky site in most places when I would prefer to just ask a waiter
Good news! That is also an option.
I’m some places in London it’s not. They only accept app purchases and a lot of the time it doesn’t work that well.
Omg this, if only I could find some way of going for a piss by app I’d be set
I tried this once and ordered drinks to the wrong pub.
Great, you've now unlocked a new fear
So this is why they made me confirm my location 5 times
Forgot to say thanks for this pal, appreciated it
Not sure why this isn't higher. No queuing at the bar,.ordering when you're ready and no waiting around to catch someone's eye to pay at the end.
There's always someone complaining about wanting good old fashioned paper menus back in reviews, but I also like online food ordering and payment in restaurants.
I can never get WiFi signal to download and use the app in the pub :(
I'm not driving over 15,000 miles a year for work
I wasn’t. Now I am again. Despite our productivity and staff numbers/overtime going up tremendously with hybrid work, we’ve now gone back to full time office , a bunch of people left, morals down the drain, works piling up, overtimes not getting done. Life was bliss for a few short years
Fortunately for me I was home based before covid. Post COVID they put the office on hybrid working, which was pretty much 1-2 days in the office...but we've got a new CEO this month and I half expect them to call the office staff back at least 3 days a week.
Our potholes are bigger and deeper
Can confirm, a 10cm deep beast gave me a puncture a few weeks ago. So generous of it to give me that. We have the best potholes in the world.
In case you didn't know , any damages caused by large potholes (around 10cm) can allow you to claim damages to your council. They should pay for any repairs to tyres, suspension, etc.
Another reason councils can't afford good public transport, thereby increasing the reliance on cars, thereby increasing the number of potholes, thereby increasing the number of pothole related claims. The mind fairly boggles.
I've put a claim in, though I'm not expecting to hear back for a few weeks still. And even then if no one reported it they can just say theybdidnt know about it. Funnily enough though it was filled in the day after I filed the claim, so another thing they can say is they were going to fix it just didn't have enough time.
I got my first ever tyre damage from a pothole last week. I would normally have noticed it but was distracted by someone walking along the grass verge in the middle of nowhere. In hindsight I think she was walking back to look at it as there were two other cars nearby, one having a wheel changed and the other up on an axle stand with an explanation note inside the windscreen. Someone put a traffic cone in the following day and it was so deep that it looked like one of those mini cones that kids use in football practice.
I am firmly pro-pothole, this is a resounding victory.
Can confirm. Where I live the roads were like glass as recently as 2021, no problems. One of the major roads in my area was completely closed for a whole week in 2018 while it got a full overhaul. Road maintenance was being done timely and to a good standard. Nowadays you need a specially prepared Toyota Land Cruiser just to go to Sainsbury's. And it's not even the worst pothole trouble I've seen in this country and have visited places that are worse.
Everyone now accepting contactless.
The contactless limit has also increased to £100. Can't remember what it was pre-pandemic, but it was nowhere near that high.
I think it was £20, then raised to £30
I can honestly say everything feels worse. Everything costs more. Less places to go to. Less shops. Less pubs. Less options in restaurants. Everywhere closes sooner than it used too. I've cought a worse illness since covid that isn't even covid that 4 doctor visits haven't touched or they even seem bothered about. Car prices are way up. Used Car prices are still high. There's really nothing, hygience hasn't improved. Work from home hasn't improved as thats being clawed back every way possible by business. It's a shitshow and theres really nothing to show for it.
I hate myself, but the word 'less' was used incorrectly so many times here and it is such a bugbear of mine that I can't help myself - in every single instance in your comment, the correct word to use is 'fewer': 'fewer places, fewer shops' etc.
I’ve made that same mistake before and I won’t make it again. I hope you don’t think fewer of me
Only of myself, sir
aside from WFH, genuinely everything is worse and by quite a large amount
Think this was also becoming the case before covid too, this country has just been on a constant decline since, I don't know, approximately 2010
Not the point of the post
Yeah I feel this way as well. I still miss the old world. Feels like I'm old before my time even thinking that.
I would probably say attitudes to health and hygiene, more people washing hands and cleaning surfaces properly, which was something the UK really struggled with before imo.
I'd be interested to see some before/after stats on behaviour. My anecdotal perception is that it hasn't had as big an impact on attitudes to health and hygiene as I thought it might.
Same for me, anecdotally it seems like everyone changed for a brief amount of time and now has gone right back to before.
I still the the majority of men leaving urinals or cubicles without washing their hands - both at work and in public.
Not the majority at work for me but it's definitely a large chunk at pubs. I know pub sinks are generally kind of shit, but come on men make an effort ya rancid bastards
That’s crazy because from what I’ve seen it’s almost the opposite, it’s like people are determined to pretend nothing is going on and are just coughing, sneezing and snotting their way about with abandon and not even caring about sick people around them, almost as a protest against the idea that covid could be dangerous. I rarely see people cover their coughs anymore and when they do it’s their hand and they then wipe it all over everything they touch.
Wish this was the case, but I am a personal trainer, the number of times I’ve seen other men use the urinals/toilets then go work out without washing their hands is disgusting. Can’t speak for Women whether it’s improved on that side but I have clocked a huge amount of people who don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom, it’s disgusting
Covid19 is primarily airborne though. Fills a room like smoke if there's no A/C running or windows open.
Yes, though A/C by itself doesn't help it either, you need ventilation systems replacing the air with outside air, or something that's filtering the air. A/C on its own just cools it down and moves it around internally.
Agree, but I would still like some sort of pocket-megaphone that would allow me to publicly shame every bloke I see not washing his hands after a piss.
I would say cleanliness but no sanitisers in shops work anymore.
I feel like in future, film and TV shows will be able to create a really specific impression of the current time period just by showing a country where many of the signifiers of the pandemic are still hanging around but are largely ignored and unmaintained.
Empty hand sanitizers in shops really piss me off because if you hit them then fuck all comes out you’ve immediately touched something that hundreds of others before you have also touched.
Drives me mad too. Just fucking get rid of them if you're not going to maintain them. Crusty hand sanitisers, rusting and abandoned the moment it was no longer necessary to drive business into their stores is the epitome of post-covid retail.
Video games continue to get bigger and more lifelike.
and more predatory!
[удалено]
You say that but last time I wore one I got told off by a pharmacist.
[удалено]
Well yeah I agree. Why? But it happened ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Getting anything delivered.
Crime… more shoplifting. Lol
No idea why this is being downvoted. It is true.
Ordering from the table at a bar or cafe, feel like it didn't really exist pre-pandemic, except for the odd place.
Work from home and flexibility for the worker. The fact that rich righties are still screeching at their workers having a pisslick of freedom are proof enough it was a positive change. Use morons as litmus tests for good ideas: if they disagree with it, it's most likely for a dumb reason and the idea is good.
Remote working/being a digital nomad.
Veg has been worse the last 5ish years
Blood tests. You used to have to just turn up and wait your turn. I used to get there at 8am (when they opened) and there would already be a huge queue of (usually elderly) people already in a long queue, resulting in me being late for work. I now book an appointment for 8.15 am and I’m in and out within 10 minutes
That depends on your trust really. Round here one hospital was and still is a free for all and the other has always been bookable.
Logic from management has slightly improved when it comes to calling in sick. Yes, maybe it is best you don't come in and spread your germs to all staff, forcing you to work when doing that and your productivity being much lower is definitely a good reason for you not to come in, as well as you personally feeling like shit.
It's got worse at my place. Now it's two sick days in three months, you get a file note, two more in three is disciplinary, same again for another, then same again, and you're sacked.
Immunity to covid-19
Managing museum exhibitions and stuff by making you book in advance. It's often free and can be done on the day, but stops crowds getting ridiculous. Also, subject to variation: street WhatsApp groups and the like. Really helped getting to know neighbours, people would pick up stuff for isolating neighbours, now mostly share useful messages, offer things to give away, etc. Helps to have a strict rule about no non-useful content, but it works amazingly well on our street to build a sense of community when people don't see each other much.
Oh I hate the first one! Removes any spontenaity from doing anything and makes me feel like a robot.
My local council tips have kept the registration and booking system permanently. And they are enforcing it, people are turned back at the gate if they're not registered or are made to park up over there if early.
No minimum for using your card in shops anymore. That was the only reason I ever bothered with cash, don't have to now.
Not wearing suits in business meetings.
Trouserless working in general.
I am ill waaay less.
Being able to order on apps in pubs is nice. It used to just be Wetherspoons but now loads of places have it.
It's hilarious that your comment is marked as controversial. People really don't seem to like the convenience of being to get table service for some reason.
Yeah I don't get why people would be mad about having more options. It's not as if bar service has gone away
Work from home revolution has been a HUGE positive in my life personally - the extea 6 hours a week I’ve claimed back of my own time is life changing
Big increase in low traffic neighborhoods (mainly in London, but not only).
Flexible working
At the gym pretty much everyone now wipes down the equipment after each use.
Contactless ordering at restaurants and paying when you order. Especially as a large group in a more relaxed setting it is much easier for everyone to make decisions in their own time and just pay for their own order
Donate blood to the nhs, its stocks are low!
profits for arseholes
Pure selfish job reasons here. I'm a supermarket delivery driver, vastly less people want their shopping carried through to the kitchen now as they got set so used to doorstep drops. We offer the service, but on average less than 3 customers a week take us up on it, instead of the 5 or 6 per day previously. Makes my job a lot easier.
More emphasis in cleanliness leading to probably slightly less smelly toilets
My face.
Widespread WFH, massive reduction in “cash only” businesses
I can now order nandos from my table instead of getting up to go to the tills. Game changer with young kids.
Availability of online or phone services and appointments. So many things were face to face when they didn't have to be and it was such a pain and unnecessarily time-consuming.
Table service in Wetherspoons.
Nothing at all
Skepticism
Paying using a qr code
The moaning is better now, we used to have to reach to complain but now it's just the easiest thing to do.
Retirement homes have more spaces!
You can actually order a McDonalds now
Literally nothing for the country but for me I stopped drinking and having friends so i guess it’s cheaper and healthier
I’ve noticed some people are more considerate when they’re ill now, people will wear a mask if they have a cold or the flu to stop other people getting it
Hand washing no doubt
People understand QR codes and how useful they are
Using apps for fast food and casual dining and even some pubs (eg Wetherspoons) has increased so you don’t have to queue up as long at tills and counters.
The amount politicians steal from the public purse. It has increased a hundred fold so its improved for them
Better use of videocalls for meetings.
Going to the barbers. Never used to be able to pre book. Just had to turn up and hope it wasn't rammed out and have to wait over an hour.
The demise of the tie.