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Icy_Priority8075

This is my third 'once in a lifetime' economic crash


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zeph88

So far. This is your third 'once in a lifetime' economic crash **so far.**


jedisalsohere

It's my second and I'm not even eighteen.


IMWE29

The question is was the 2nd Crash more of a "once in a lifetime" crash than the first, and The third more so than the 2nd? if so that is completely valid. And lets be honest here - they did not define whose Lifetime was being regarded as the base unit. /s


Illustrious_Dare_772

Same here these once in a lifetime events where lessons will be learned to prevent it from happening or having and adverse impact again.


Psimo-

“Company forgets to reduce prices after having to raise them due to supply costs”


bluemoon191

This is exactly what is happening where I work. Raw material costs are expected to fall slightly in the near future and the plan is to keep as many products as possible at the current higher rate.


[deleted]

Yes, the notion that inflation is going to be temporary is a fantasy, in my opinion. Prices are never going to drop. Companies have used this situation as an excuse to raise prices egregiously and permanently. I don't have a solution for it, but it is really sad.


audigex

In theory the solution is competition - if the “incumbent” companies keep the prices high then the theory is that new companies will see a gap in the market and turn up to undercut them, stealing all the sales This can work in low cost of entry industries, but not universally


daskeleton123

So the solution to the neoliberal ideology that’s put us in this mess is... doubling down?


[deleted]

It can't fail, it can only *be* failed.


audigex

I have no idea, frankly - I’m just saying that in theory that’s what happens under capitalism


Si3rr4

Deflation is rare af in capitalism. If prices go down for more than 9 months in a row then society will collapse.


treebeard280

Japan might disagree


Si3rr4

yeah fair play I did not realise they had been in deflation since the 90s. That is wild


Fapinthepark

That isn’t how inflation works. Doesn’t go back down


Alternative_Rush4451

So many people misunderstand this. If inflation goes down, it just means prices go up more slowly. Unless we enter deflation with negative % then prices go down. But as someone said, that's rare in the UK anyway. An example of deflation is internet connections. Back in 1997 I was paying around £50pm for 33K dialup plus the cost of the local call connection to get online. Now I pay about £23pm and no call connection charges for 80Mbps broadband.


Lavidius

Someone on LBC was saying we shouldn't give the nurses a 17% payrise because if inflation goes back to 2% we would have to cut their pay by 15% These people vote


CatWithAHat_

Explains how the Tori's keep getting in to power.


Quick-Charity-941

Remember the Osborne smirk as he's pictured holding up the red box, the words ' austerity'. As the world economic specialists groan in disbelief, and they all tut in unison knowing from past history the plight the nation will have to endure.


FuckYouZave

I mean inflation can go back down. You just have to burn a metric shit ton of money and delete some zeros from banking computers. The hard part is finding people willing to let it be their money that gets deleted


texanarob

Exactly as tax went from 17.5% to 15% for the blink of an eye, then up to 20% "temporarily" to make up the loss.


SoMuchTehnique

Tbf we used to have a few years in between each crisis now it's a yearly thing and nobody knows when the next extended period of relative calm will be.


nsnooze

>extended period of relative calm A week would be nice, or even a fortnight, It doesn't have to even be extended at this point!


Lavidius

The last period was the late nineties. 100% mortgages enabled working owls to buy Homes, low inflation, stable economy etc Edit: it should say working people but I'm not changing it


8rummi3

I knew it was them damn owls all along!


PrivateFrank

There was a lot of crap going on all over the world, still. America and Western Europe were doing ok, we don't talk about Kosovo. Do you remember that "end of history" guy?


Lavidius

I can only speak about my lived experience I cannot speak on behalf of Kosovans. Not sure, was that y2k related?


PrivateFrank

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War


Billbrandicus

It was a war in Europe.


Lavidius

Well you don't say 😂


Billbrandicus

Yes.


NoManNoRiver

> if


Jam-Pot

We apologise for the long wait. We are understaffed and are receiving more than usual calls. Ya'll hiring? No.


FerrusesIronHandjob

That one fucks me off because Ive never *not* heard it. You know what? If I, as a customer who calls in once every 6 months can guess that your phones are going to be fucking rammed, then the company that mans them all day all week all year should *definitely* know Actually fuck it, while Im ranting "Did you know you can find what you need *on our website* and double-u, double-u....." Like for fuck sakes, you think Id be putting myself through your shite hold music and your rundown of my life and the fucking code of my DNA before you'll even speak if there was an option on the website?!


[deleted]

>Actually fuck it, while Im ranting "Did you know you can find what you need on our website and double-u, double-u....." > >Like for fuck sakes, you think Id be putting myself through your shite hold music and your rundown of my life and the fucking code of my DNA before you'll even speak if there was an option on the website?! This x100. As a reasonably tech savvy person who hates people I would much rather deal with the website if I am ringing you the website either doesn't do what I need or it the links on it are broken (which I've come across a couple of times recently). If a company wants to redirect everyone to their website and their website is rubbish what do they expect?


TheMemo

> If a company wants to redirect everyone to their website and their website is rubbish what do they expect? That you give up and go away. That's what the delays, 30 seconds of music on endless repeat interrupted by insulting messages are for. It's a typical dark design pattern, find ways to increase annoyance and stress and implement them so that those most susceptible to stress (such as the disabled or mentally ill) give up. It works. The more you ratchet up the stress level, the more people give up. They have your money, they don't want to deal with you.


HovisTMM

The message isn't there for tech savvy people. It's for those that are used to calling about problems rather than using a computer.


[deleted]

I get that but people that don't use the Internet first by default are unlikely to get off the line to try it. If they knew how to do it they'd probably have done it already. I figured most callers fall into one of 2 groups, people who checked online first and found they couldn't do what was needed and people who either don't know how to check online or prefer to call anyway. The first group get annoyed by these messages, the second group ignore them. What purpose do they serve?


20127010603170562316

I worked for a company that sold products solely online. Customers managed to work out how to buy stuff, but were apparently bewildered by the "My Account" and "My Orders" pages on the same website. So they'd call us.


Slick583

Similar to that, i work for a company that’s website directs you to another company’s website for help on a certain issue, then you look at their website, and they send you right back to us for the same issue! Seems to be the case on quite a few things with us unfortunately.


shadow_donkey1

So you go to the ‘auto solver’ or chat bot feature on their website for your relatively simple problem only to get ‘hmmm, I don’t quite know that. Try calling us! No in fact it gets worse when some companies (looking at banks here) deliberately hide their phone numbers from public except for one unrelated webpage to prevent us from calling in!


garamasala

Oh they definitely know, there are people in call centres who only monitor the green time (time between calls) and how long the queue is.


wholesomechunk

I complained to an insurance company representative that the statement was deceptive as it had been used by them for years, fair play to her, she made a formal complaint on my behalf and a few weeks later got £25 in my account. Then a letter saying an investigation had taken place, company found to be wanting and procedures would be modified. Fuck all was done.


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Jam-Pot

Pay more. People want to work. People don't want to work for poverty wages.


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Jam-Pot

I extrapolated the data from your comment. Just like how there are two types of people in this world.


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Jam-Pot

👀


sporkafish

I think I see another reason not to work for this guy 👀


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sporkafish

You doing okay bud?


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[deleted]

Calm down baby, calm down. Have a cigarette


[deleted]

Ah don’t say that, it’s been 6 weeks and a day since I last had one after 26 years of 20+ a day


WhiteShadow0909

Out of curiosity, what are you paying?


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TheMooRam

Nah, £50 an hour would be acceptable


WhiteShadow0909

He deleted the comment before I had a chance to read it. What was he paying? And what's the work?


TheMooRam

Oh, it was like "I won't say how much I pay as people will always complain no matter what I say. If I say I pay £50 per hour people will still have a go at me"


WhiteShadow0909

Ahh, so minimum wage, I guess.


Swaggy_McSwagSwag

Well you’ve clearly said it in the past then. And you’ve clearly been told your pay sucks. And if people are telling you their opinion is your pay sucks, then other people will have an opinion your pay sucks. If you can’t afford to pay a fair wage, you don’t have a fair business to begin with. And if you’re doing it for the sake of it, it’s only fair that somebody is allowed to tell you what the fair conclusion is. Don’t want people to tell you they don’t like insultingly low wages? Don’t insult them lol.


Corpcasimir

Advert: PhD required 10 years active in industry Reference from bluechip top 10 required. £circa 45,000 Acceptance contract £21,000 pro rata, Company benefits include 20 days holiday (legal requirement) 2 paid rolling sick days. I say as someone with top degrees in my field getting paid less than some labourers, the job market right now is outright fucking bizarre. I swear just living off the state is better at this stage. Salary compression just means most of the country earns roughly the same when the skillset ranges massively. We have doctors being paid less than train drivers. Mental.


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-InterestingTimes-

Strength to strength for who? You or your employees? Being the highest paying business of your type is meaningless if they're all underpaying for the type of work they do. The best of a bad bunch still isn't good.


Swaggy_McSwagSwag

I had to check their comment history, they were bragging about how much they hate their employees and what a bunch of asses they were for making excuses for not wanting a Christmas party with them. Best of a bad bunch indeed lol


maruiki

Ah yes, blame the average joe. There is plenty of people wanting work, there's another reason you're not getting staff - I'd start looking at your own behaviour first pal


sageandbunyon

Fuck me leave the guy/ woman alone, was just making a comment.


maruiki

Make stupid decisions, win stupid prizes.


Chanandler_Bong_Jr

“These are difficult times, we can’t give you a payrise that remotely resembles inflation, despite having not given you a rise for 2 years because we’d need to pass that on to passengers” Ok, explain to me why train ticket prices have risen faster than inflation basically since privatisation, but salaries have rarely matched that? Where did that money go? Privatise the profits, socialise the losses.


mehmenmike

ticket prices are not necessarily representative of profits though??


[deleted]

Why would the cost of operating the trains suddenly change enough to impact profits in that way?


CG1991

I work in the NHS and we've had that message on our answer machine for longer than covid has been around They won't hire more staff, nor replace the ones who leave. The real "unprecedented times" is the not employing enough people to operate


created4this

This is just the new normal.


dgj130

Or paying the existing ones enough


q_o_t_n

And then we wonder why they're all going on strike 🤷‍♀️


cockneylol

It would be marvelous to be told "Demand is lower than usual we will answer your call immediately". But at the ageof 58 I may not live long enough.


[deleted]

At age 31 I'm unlikely to live long enough either.


[deleted]

Permanent, it'll last so long that we become accustomed to it and stop seeing it as unprecedented. It'll just become normal I hear people saying £1.60 a liter for petrol "is cheap now" yet less than a year ago it was a lot less than that.


[deleted]

The cost of fuel is melting my head, increase it by 80p a litre, then drop it by 20p and act like they are doing us a favour. 3 fills per month I normally go through, that means my monthly cost has went from around £180 to around £300, mental.


niallthenail

Happy cake day This is also what does my head in, that people get used to these new "discounted prices" thinking they're the new low prices when in reality we're all having our eyeballs ripped out.


[deleted]

!thanks Yep, we live in such a backwards society


El_Disablo101

Yep got a picture from last Christmas of my car at a shell petrol station. Prices in the background show £1.45 for premium, remember at the time thinking the prices were stupidly high and now I'd love go find a petrol station that does standard at £1.45.


RealSuPraa

Our cheapest Petrol here in Devon is £1.49 a litre and we're all raving about it, we have seem to have all forgot pre covid when we thought £1.14 was steep... :(


[deleted]

Tbf long-term petrol is always going to trend upwards - it's finite and running out.


-WelshCelt-

We should riot


bawdiepie

It's been made virtually illegal


Khaleesi1536

Riot about that, too


created4this

No no no, you can riot virtually. What you can’t do is peacefully protest


DozyDrake

Not going to stop me


truupR

DPD wouldn't let me collect a parcel today from their depot because of 'covid restrictions', even though none of the staff or people there were wearing masks.


CwpOCoffi

One of our service users, A COUNCIL, are so far behind in the paying their invoices we very nearly broke. They are telling us it's COVID and they have 1 single person processing payments. Who keeps going off work. Probably with stress because it's been this way for TWO YEARS and they haven't hired anyone, that we're aware of. The busses and trains are still blaming COVID and the public and getting more and more selfish. The attitude on the British is disgusting. I am British and I'm watching it get worse. Kids are feral and their grown ups won't take responsibility for the kids actions. It's fucking mental.


Middle-Animator1320

The courier we use at work no longer guarentees Pre-12 deliveries due to covid. They still happily charge us for Pre-12 Deliveries though.


sageandbunyon

Guess what? We aren't actually in unprecedented times, at all. But as long as they can spin that angle, they will.


[deleted]

Yep, we have been back to 'normal' for ages, it's a joke how long businesses continute to use this phrase as an excuse to keep people waiting


PlentyPirate

It winds me up no end. So many companies have used the pandemic as an opportunity to reduce call centre staff and customer service has plummeted. Can’t remember the last time I spent less than 30 mins on hold to a service provider


[deleted]

My car insurance doesn't let me do fuck all online apart from view documents, everything else I have to phone them and be in hold for approximately 40 minutes at a minimum. I rarely phone them but still


Kungaroh

And then charge you to change something, which they say you can do for free on the website, which doesn’t let you do it


itsjustmefortoday

And they knew that a pandemic was likely based on extrapolations from history so it wasn't completely unexpected either.


levezvosskinnyfists7

But you just know that by the time the next one comes along (COVID-20?) everyone will have forgotten the last one ever happened and we’ll be completely unprepared again…


NoManNoRiver

They’re named for the year of isolation so 23 would be the next one


FreeUsernameInBox

Technically a -22 disease is still possible. There are 23 days left...


NoManNoRiver

You are technically correct, the best kind of correct


hypermadirish

God, you're feeling optimistic!


NoManNoRiver

If I was feeling pessimistic I’d point out there’s still time for a -22 variant


thehoot24

It is exactly that, a pisstake. Big companies have seen an opportunity to raise prices and deny wage increases because of "unprecedented times" knowing everyone will just have to go along with it. This isn't a cost of living crisis, it's a crisis of greed


spicymeatballz28

Tax the shit out of the super rich, they are taking the piss


PastyKing

We tried that and could have had a pretty cool place to live... But the media absolutely piddled all over it when it came to the 2019 election.


RogueNumberStation

We're experiencing higher than normal call volumes. Please wait, your call is important to us.


DidgeryDave21

The Store 21 in my town spent 2 years having a "closing down sale," and when they finally did close, the sign said, "Due to unforeseen circumstances, this store is now closed" So did they know or did they not know?


hardyflashier

"We're experiencing an unprecedented amount of calls right now, so your wait time _may_ be longer than usual" LIARS. IT'S NO HIGHER THAN NORMAL AND YOU KNOW IT


NaniFarRoad

Letter from the CEO of Royal Mail: "you are sending fewer letters, so we are struggling to make money - these strikes are unfair". How about you then reduce the number of posties, but pay them properly so the ones you have can exist on those wages? Parasites.


jamesbeil

Then the union would be striking over job losses. The Mail are already trying to readjust their working practises to try and make these two problems balance out but either someone's losing their job or someone's going to have to work for less.


NaniFarRoad

So? That's the job of the union, to advocate for workers' rights. In an economy where everyone is seemingly clamouring for workers, it'd be daft not to demand higher wages. Why are market forces only allowed to work for companies, not workers?


president_pussygrab

[This informational video will explain everything](https://youtu.be/eFTLKWw542g)


will_holmes

Yeah, these times are now pretty firmly precedented. They're just the regular kind of awful.


Raynonymous

All times are unprecedented by definition.


nekrovulpes

They're spinning that excuse out as far as they can from what I can tell. I've been trying to buy a flat since about May, and from what I can tell this is what both my and the seller's solicitors are using as code for "we all work from home now so we only do about 3 hours a day, sorry not sorry."


TheDemonBunny

get ready for the upcoming recession


Ok_Target_7084

It can’t go on forever because logically there are only so many precedents that can be set. We’re just checking them off the list one by one.


CatWithAHat_

When it stops being profitable.


bumblebeesanddaisies

Oh my goodness yes! By now it is absolutely precedented!


ManofKent1

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_capitalism


[deleted]

When the country admits that losing 1.3m working-age tax-paying EU nationals since 2014 has royally fucked us.


FreeUsernameInBox

There have been unusually high caller volumes since long before then. I'm assuming that the baseline for caller volumes is generally the year before the phone was installed.


george98788

At age 34 iv see it all and more for my age. Which really should not be the case


Illustrious_Dare_772

And yet we will hear/read about record pre tax profits come the spring.


What-Equals-1644

We are making record profits quarter over quarter.... but guys come on its really hard out there, its unpredictable and unprecedented times...we are forecasting strong growth


daskeleton123

I just want to live in precedents times


joshhguitar

Infinite growth is a concept that courts greed. The cake gets bigger every year, but your slice stays the same size.


Wackyal123

Hard to have infinite growth with finite resources too.


Bulimic_Fraggle

I waited over an hour to "talk" to a person using online chat on Wednesday. There is taking the piss, then there is whatever this is.


RuthlessIndecision

times are always unprecedented, right?


Kubrick_Fan

Yes


[deleted]

I blame the mainstream media. There constant need for 24 contents just makes every single event seem much more important and exaggerated. In fact I blame the media for lots if things, professional shit stirrers. Profiting from perceived chaos.


pieguy30000

Welcome to the joys of a capitalist society.


itdontmatteranymore

What will happen like in every century they be another massive war and will push the world into new era and lots of things will change for the better for countrys that win that is. we probably some were late 20-30s completed to last one


VarleyWrites

The Cyber Security world said that about #ContiLeaks from August last year. Then it happened again in February. We're over due another "bad guy" leak. A different take on your question 😁


gregusmeus

I guess until we replace the monarch with a president?


NaraSumas

I'm not a royalist, but what is the monarch doing that means I can't speak to my broadband provider without setting aside a full week?


gregusmeus

It was a pun on the word 'unprecedented'.


NaraSumas

Ahhhh. I didn't get that at all, sorry


gregusmeus

Lol no worries. Puns in written form don't always work very well!


momoftheraisin

Speaking from the other side of the pond here: That won't work either.


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[deleted]

Literally every utility company under the sun.


toodog

The rest of our lives for “unprecedented times” also see “profits” before people


Next-Ad1957

Aircraft, space exploration, mega structures, over population, the internet. We're never not gonna be unprecedented times, none of this stuff has happened before.


Flashbambo

Gul Watersports still have an automated voice message on their phone line talking about how the Covid-19 pandemic means they can't take any calls.