is rudeness and hostility on the rise in your profession?

by Alison Green on April 28, 2022

On last week’s post about the person whose clients have have started becoming abusive after she gives them feedback, several people wrote that they’ve been seeing the same change in their own professions:

  • “I’ve been in retail over ten years and there has been behavior from people in the last few months I’ve never seen, even in pandemic times, where it seems the convergence of war, rising energy prices, ongoing pandemic, etc. has resulted in some of the crappiest behavior from the public en masse I’ve been subjected to yet … People all over are really being their worst right now.”
  • I’m in libraries, so a different field than the OP, but people have been particularly more rude, aggressive, and hostile over the past … 6-ish months? My colleagues and friends in other jobs have all noticed it too.”
  • “It used to be that a rude student stood out to us, but these days there are so many people who are rude not just in a tense situation but as a baseline of behavior, and it has been noted by faculty and staff alike. It was on the rise for many years, but the pandemic seemed to accelerate things.”

Are you seeing this in your own job? And if so, what do you think is behind it — pandemic fatigue, increasingly bitter partisan divides, something else?

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  1. Ask a Manager* Post author

    It’s very likely that I could end up quoting responses here in another piece, so if you don’t want me to do that with yours, please note that when commenting!

  2. Emily*

    I haven’t noticed this so much in my job, but I have seen a general reduction in the quality of social interactions especially with relative strangers. The simplest explanation is that people are finally emerging from isolation as things go back to ‘normal’, and have lost social skills during their isolation. If they spent a lot of time on the internet and social media, I’d say rudeness is the norm there rather than the exception. They might have forgotten that unlike the situations protected by the anonymity of the internet, there are real-life consequences for being rude in person.

    1. Person from the Resume*

      I do wonder if the rise of incivility and rudeness on the internet has now tansferred and transformed our face-to-face interactions. Not that people have forgotten how to behave in person (because of the pandemic), but rather they don’t care about being polite any more becuase they’ve decided if it’s okay on the internet, it’s okay in real life.

      1. anon-beaver*

        I totally agree with this. I feel that on the internet, it’s become normalized to address disagreements confrontationally, or at least to argue without caring about the other person’s feelings.

        Similarly, I’ve noticed that people can often act really entitled to other people’s time on the internet – for example, lashing out at an Instagram fan account or artist for not consistently producing content, for posting the “wrong” content, or for expressing any personal views instead of just serving up their work for consumption. I feel that this kind of entitlement to other people’s generosity has likely expanded to real-life interactions. The person saying “Seriously??? I don’t follow your Instagram to see ugly pictures of your face, go back to your old content” is probably also someone who is entitled and abusive to service workers in person.

        1. fposte*

          I think also internet discourse is strongly geared to a win-loss mentality–there’s lots of approbation for anecdotes where somebody served up petty revenge or a scorching riposte or a devastating monologue because the other person “deserved it.” There’s not much internet approbation for anecdotes where somebody deescalated a situation.

          3. Mrs. Weaver*

            This is very true. I also think media is involved as well. So much of “reality” tv involves not-very-nice behavior, either to win a game (Survivor, Big Brother type shows) or just because it’s edited to show just the drama or dirty-dealing (Real Housewives of where ever type shows). It starts to feel like people are being taught to be rude, instead of being taught to be polite.

            1. some_coder*

              Thats why i like the series “Bridgerton” so much. They all speak so politely to each other (even if many things are not polite at all in their historic setting ;) ).

          4. kicking_k*

            That’s interesting and casts some of my experiences in a new light. While I haven’t seen an excuse in rude ways of speaking, I have seen an increase in clients who think they have been wronged and who seem to want revenge rather than compensation: they want my organisation to shut down the service they find unsatisfactory, for example (which is not going to happen over one complaint). And they often seem to have no awareness that they are not the only client I serve, and complain if I can’t get back to them right away (although our target timescale is in our acknowledgement emails). I wonder if this is because they never see me or any other service users in person.

            1. Jaydee*

              Oh man, the “target timescale is in our acknowledgement email” and “they don’t realize I have other clients” comments resonate with me so much right now! Thank you for making me feel less alone in the world.

          5. Verthandi*

            Oooh the petty revenge stories! The ones I have seen have usually featured small women as the targets, and I’m curious if that’s across the board or just my small sample size.

            1. Reluctant Mezzo*

              Small women are an easy target, after all. People who would never rude to a large man are fine when ranting as a small woman in person. On the internet, women in general are told to suck it up when they report bodily threats online, and then told they are cowards for not wanting to post on a platform where it’s apparently ok. (of course, these same individuals are usually not the category who gets those threats).

              1. Verthandi*

                Several years ago, I called out someone who gleefully told the story of how he got back at some woman at the supermarket. I asked him if he’d have done the same thing if the other shopper were built like Conan the Barbarian.

                He went silent because the answer was no, and had never considered it.

        2. Rabid Child*

          Yes to this. Also, people see this rudeness on television all the time coming from politicians and pundits, so naturally they think it’s okay, but so much of that is performance they’ve lost track of what’s appropriate.

          1. Not a cat*

            Politics, absolutely. Plus a certain former President’s behavior sets an example and makes it OK for shitty people to act shitty.

            1. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

              This! SO much this. I could write a book, but I will resist the temptation to elaborate further.

            2. lilsheba*

              That’s what I was going to say, that it started with him, he made it appear ok to be rude and loud in public, to be racists and harass people in public, and then the pandemic with mask mandates and all that “tyranny” against their “freedoms” it just got worse.

            3. TinLizi*

              I had to tell 4th graders on my field trip program that it was inappropriate to quote the president.

        3. anonanna*

          I see more attacks on people for *not* sharing their personal opinion or commenting on an issue. I’m sorry, but I don’t go to an influencer to learn about a social issue or geopolitical crisis & it’s ridiculous that we blast them for not ‘addressing’ these topics. I think this goes back to our society’s general conflation of entertainment and news– why are we expecting to get them both in the same place?
          & on a personal level, I like having news-free safe spaces. My spouse is in the military & let’s just say the situation in Europe has affected us in dramatic ways, to the point where I’ve been physically ill and mentally unwell from stress. I hate not being able to escape the news anywhere I go- even if I go to the gym, it’s still on every TV screen. So I personally appreciate spaces that are free of that content and are truly for escapism, so I’m not going to be reminded of something deeply traumatic everywhere I turn.

          1. SpiderLadyCEO*

            Yes, this. People definitely get pressured to talk about specific topics that are “important” and get dragged if they don’t. Of course, not everyone is able or wants to speak about whatever is going on in the world – and that should be fine! But there is definitely an air of “if you don’t say something you don’t care” – which of course is not true. And people might be speaking out about the topic, or doing all they can do to help – in a different forum.

      2. Cedrus Libani*

        I think it’s that, and it’s more general than that: there’s been a shift towards one-time interactions. In a “small town” context, everyone knows each other, and rudeness has ample opportunity to be returned. If you’re mean to the butcher, expect the baker to greet you with “you made my sister cry, get out of my store”. There goes your ability to buy groceries in that town ever again. There are consequences. Now? You’ll never see these people again, so it doesn’t matter.

        1. Theo*

          This actually inspired me to unblock a couple people from my town, for the sake of community conversation, who are Unpleasant but not like, Bad People — but also it’s good to remember that this goes both ways, and online interactions now means you don’t have to go to the butcher who posts weirdly off-target rants about trans people or masks. Sometimes even in a small town people deserve consequences to their rude actions.

      3. pope suburban*

        Also, like…all too often, it IS okay in real life, at least in the sense that you still get what you want and people are still pressured to be nice to you when they are working. Sure, there’s the court of public opinion, but if you’re not concerned with that, there’s often no downside for acting antisocially. My agency has been really bad about this- after making it work for two years, with most of that hit being taken by those of us on the bottom rungs of the ladder (You know, the least able to bear it), we’re constantly getting these chirpy, scolding little reminders to “be nice to the public!” Like we’re not getting abused more than ever, like we haven’t been trending toward that while dealing with shutdowns and our own personal hardships for two years, like there would be anything fundamentally *wrong* about being empowered to tell someone, “I understand you are upset, but we will need to continue this once you have stepped out and taken some time to regroup.” Right now, the consequence of acting a damn fool is that we will bend over backwards for you. Not the tack I think we should take for dozens of reasons, not least is how we’re ever supposed to establish a better baseline if we keep rewarding these people.

          1. 2Legit*

            When I worked in a call center, one of my FAVORITE lines when someone was getting verbally abusive with me was to calmly say, “I won’t tolerate your profanity or abuse.” I LOVED saying that! I have rights too! Just because I’m a worker doesn’t mean I don’t have rights! I’m a human being, too! Working with the general public in those jobs really put me in a position of having to put up with a lot of crap- & that was before the pandemic.

        2. cranky vet*

          Yes, a big part of the problem is that the rude or obnoxious behavior is tolerated and even awarded. A large part of society has become increasingly narcissistic. Some people are only going to do what’s best for themselves, to hell with the people they step over to get what’s theirs. God forbid you trample on “their rights” and expect them to do something for the good of society. Yes, I resent always doing the “right thing” and making sacrifices for the greater good while these selfish jerks flout the rules and even benefit from bad behavior. Sick and tired of the entitled attitude. Yup, I’m bitter….

          1. Quiet Liberal*

            Narcissistic, that’s the word! I’ve noticed a lot of aggression on the freeway. I try to just stay out of those people’s way, but it seems there are so many drivers who wish you just weren’t on “their” road. I can’t get out of their way fast enough. It’s dangerous and very nerve wracking. Just got home from a long drive and need a drink or two!

            1. Chauncy Gardener*

              OK, since we’re talking about driving…. OMG!! I have seen probably ten plus people in the last month stop at a red light, look to see if it was clear and the RUN THE RED LIGHT LIKE IT WAS A STOP SIGN.
              I just don’t even know what to say here, people. Help me out?

              1. Your Oxford Comma*

                I’m a road cyclist and there’s a “thing” that (generally) men in large pickups do, called “rolling coal.” The driver shifts the truck in such a way that it belches a large, black cloud of toxic diesel fumes that you can’t immediately escape. It’s obnoxious, obviously bad for the environment, and dangerous for the cyclists (not to mention other motor vehicles following or driving in the immediate area). I’m used to close calls — not a fan, but jerks gonna be jerks — but this is another level of anger and bullying I’ve not seen in the last 10 years.

                1. Quiet Liberal*

                  Yeah, in my extremely red state, it’s a thing. They even put smokestacks behind the cab of their lifted pickups (kind of like a semi) and the smokestacks bench out black smoke at every intersection. It’s illegal as hell, but I’ve yet to see a cop pull one of them over after they’ve engulfed all the Prius’s and Subarus next to them. *eyeroll here*

                2. JSPA*

                  Also directed at drivers of electric and hybrid cars. (Which luckily accelerate much faster than coal rolling pickups.)

                  I blame curated / served up video content. When an app serves you 20 videos of people coal-rolling [redacted-“tards”], it normalizes both coal-rolling and treating groups of people as disgustingly sub-human, and not worthy of basic human rights (let alone respect).

                3. Verthandi*

                  Several years ago, I was biking to a friend’s house. Some *^$@# slowed down to pace me, and threw water on me.

                4. Reluctant Mezzo*

                  Yes, it’s called ‘dieseling’ where I live and wonder of wonders, some people actually get tickets for it!

              2. CrinkleCut*

                Im from Melbourne, Australia, and since the pandemic several people have observed drivers
                – forgetting how to drive like civilised people.
                – Refusing to indicate when turning or merging.
                – Not turning on headlights in dark grey weather (which is especially dangerous in dreary grey Melbourne)
                – Drivers running into cyclists
                – Drivers being impatient with pedestrians trying to cross the road

                Its like most of humanity went out the window!

                1. Canterlot*

                  NYC here, and drivers are out of control since the pandemic. It is frankly scary. It’s a pedestrian city, and you get people barreling through residential areas of Brooklyn doing 55 and ignoring stop signs.

          2. Canterlot*

            This hits the nail on the head. I am no longer in any kind of public-facing role or industry, and people at my work are very polite and friendly and keep politics to themselves. It is all very civilized. But even so – there is a really weird level of – I don’t know – grandiosity and entitlement and prickliness and lack of empathy – that is grinding a lot of us down.

            I would buy the idea that growing narcissism is the core of what’s gone wrong, but class and region and context affect how it is expressed.

        3. SloanGhost*

          Yeah, we (very general “we”) have really rewarded and reinforced this behavior as a society and it has come home to roost. And the people who reinforced it aren’t the people who suffer from it.

        4. CorruptedbyCoffee*

          Yes. Our company used to take a really hard line on things like hate speech, but a lot of our tools for dealing with problem interactions that escalate have been informally dropped, and the org is so desperate to get people back in the door that we are being encouraged to tolerate things we wouldn’t have before the pandemic.

      4. Mallory Janis Ian*

        That’s what I tend to think. It started with internet anonymity and now the norms have just bled over, and apparently people like not having to monitor themselves.

        1. All+the+words*

          Internet anonymity and reality TV competitive terrible behavior. They seemed to develop and gain popularity around the same time.

      5. Burger Bob*

        I really think this is a large part of what’s happening. Most of the people who have been increasingly rude to me and my coworkers haven’t seemed like they were just simply stressed out and having a hard time or something. It’s more that they think the way they are behaving is perfectly normal and acceptable. Sometimes you feel like you’re in the Twilight Zone when it’s happening, because the behavior will seem so obviously not okay, and yet there they are, acting like it’s completely fine for them to be treating you the way they are.

    2. Office Sweater Lady*

      Yes, I think many people (myself included) who were working from home and isolated from people they didn’t know got out of practice with socializing, doing business out in the world, and traveling/leaving the house, all things which involve a certain amount of friction. This includes things like: putting on real clothes, packing a lunch, dealing with bus schedules, etc. It also includes interpreting and responding to other people’s actions. After months or years of spending time mainly with your household and a limited circle of outsiders, I think the ability to read and respond to the actions of strangers is reduced. The combination of forgotten difficulties like when the bus is late and now you’ve spent an hour of your day just getting somewhere (when you could have been home, being productive or even just relaxing) with being uncertain of others intentions, leads to short fuses, rudeness and under it all, a low-level fear. Hopefully as the world opens back up, we will be able to adjust to the routine and dealing with strangers again. I know for me, going back in person has been a process of many months adjustment, something I didn’t necessarily expect going into it. I have noticed it in my friends and colleagues, too – not that everyone is rude, but social interactions just aren’t smooth. Everything feels more awkward and disjointed than it used to.

      1. Hlao-roo*

        After months or years of spending time mainly with your household and a limited circle of outsiders, I think the ability to read and respond to the actions of strangers is reduced.

        You’re on to something here! There’s a category of relationships called “weak ties,” which are the people you interact with who aren’t strangers and also aren’t close friends and family (strong ties). These are the waitstaff at the restaurant where you eat every Friday night, the friends you only hang out with twice a year (or the quasi-friends you only see when a mutual friend hosts a party), etc.

        The pandemic basically gutted everyone’s weak tie relationships. People mostly kept in touch with their close friends and family and everyone else fell into the “stranger” category. But now we’re seeing the effects of losing all of those small, surface level relationships: we (collectively as a society) have become a lot ruder, a lot less able to deal with frustrations, a lot less able to generally be part of society.

        1. Yorick*

          And we’ve also lost a lot of weak ties because of turnover in retail and service industry jobs. The waitstaff that I used to know at my favorite restaurant or the cashier I used to know at the grocery store are gone and there are now strangers working there that I have to interact with.

        2. kicking_k*

          I strengthened a bunch of weak ties – in specific areas (parents at my children’s school, close neighbours) because during lockdown I communicated with them much more than normal. We spoke more to people on local walks, though at a distance. Now those ties are hard to maintain because we’re not spending so much time physically near home any more. I’ve got a number of people who I planned coffee dates with when we could actually meet for coffee…and we haven’t.

          1. Radical Edward*

            This is an excellent point – for a lot of people in walkable areas, and/or people like me, who had large groups of long-distance friends (who would normally interact passively on social media and only communicate on birthdays and Christmas, for example), the last two years created this weird surge in closeness… which has been subsiding over the last few months. While I can count on one hand the indoor unmasked interactions I have had since March 2020, I have never in my life had this many friends *at once* who are willing to call or text me for real conversations. And as soon as they were given permission to stop being cautious, so to speak, most of them abruptly forgot I exist.

            It’s almost like the Upside Down version of what everyone else is describing, but I think it probably has the same results – people feel unmoored and shaky, and that makes us defensive and snappish. It takes real effort to override all these emotions and Be Considerate In Public, and it makes sense that everyone’s internal regulators are just shot.

        3. AcademiaNut*

          That weakening had been happening in some areas before the pandemic too – the ability to order stuff online, for example, means you don’t need to interact with staff in stores and restaurant, the ability to use email to communicate means you don’t need to communicate on the phone in real time. The early stages of dating/meeting people has moved more and more online, and a lot of other socialization has moved into social media/apps which are not real time interactions, and where it’s easy to leave or block someone who is upsetting you, or just put the phone down and walk away if a discussion gets heated.

          I think back to when I was a shy kid – I hated things like phoning for information, or having to approach strangers for shopping. However, there was a constant stream of necessary small scale interactions that were necessary, and I gradually got better at it. A kid in the same position now never even needs to learn to answer the family phone line, so they don’t develop a lot of the lower level skills, which makes the higher level ones harder.

          1. Reluctant Mezzo*

            Although I will admit it was nice to downsize my Sirius subscription online without having to hear a quarter hour’s long sales pitch about why I should keep it where it is…

      2. Ace in the hole*

        Interesting. This would also explain why I haven’t noticed much of a change… I work in garbage, which means we’v all been working on site through the whole pandemic. But more generally speaking our regional economy is based on essential labor that can’t be done from home: timber, agriculture/aquaculture, fishing, public infrastructure maintenance, etc. Throw in that we’re in a rural area with lots of space, low population density, and mild climate, so meeting people outdoors is not only a safe option here but was already common pre-covid.

        I wonder if the increase in perceived rudeness/hostility is regional, with a bigger effect in places where more people were working from home or otherwise isolated.

        1. Stunt Apple Breeder*

          I think you might be onto something. The people I have encountered have been friendlier, more polite, and even openly relieved to interact with others. The few exceptions really stand out.

          1. Ace in the Hole*

            Yes, I actually noticed the most rudeness and hostility (especially at work) in the first year of the pandemic. I think that was because a lot of people were very scared, overwhelmed, and suddenly lost most of their ordinary support structures.

            Customers were hostile to us because they were terrified of getting sick but still had to come to our site to get rid of their garbage. Other customers were hostile to us because they were upset that some of our services had new, sometimes significant, barriers to access. And finally there were those who were hostile to us because they were angry about the overall political situation and we were convenient targets.

            On top of that, my colleagues were all more reactive than normal too… for all the same reasons as customers, plus an extra dose of burnout, safety concerns, and feeling abused/abandoned by society. We’re no strangers to rude customers or heated interactions, but I noticed most of my colleagues had a much harder time shrugging things off than they used to.

            Now that things have calmed down some and people in our community have more physical and economic security, I’ve noticed everyone is back to normal levels of politeness.

        2. Katie Impact*

          Conversely, I haven’t noticed a change either, perhaps because my job has been online and remote since years before the pandemic started. The worst people our industry has had to deal with have been about as bad as they’ve ever been, but not particularly worse than before.

    4. Lab Boss*

      Yes! At my actual job there’s not much change (we don’t interact with the public and we’ve never been able to be fully remote, so no huge changes on the inside). But I work with a student group at the local university that’s been online for the better part of the last 2 years- not just my group, but university operations. As things have come back to more in-person over the last year we’ve had some friction. Nothing particularly malicious but like you say- it’s like they’ve lost the knack for interacting face to face rather than the more abrupt and anonymous online version.

      One thing I’d add that I’ve noticed is that when interaction is online it’s more focused, even when it’s social/for fun. A lot of perceived rudeness and offensiveness seems to come from the fact that they’re making small talk and interacting the entire time they’re together, instead of just via focused text posts. When you’re standing there listening to someone hem and haw you get more impatient than if you go grab a coffee and come back to a reply message.

      1. ophelia*

        Yes, this – I feel like the first few times I saw my coworkers in person, I kind of defaulted to like, my Enthusiastic Facilitator persona? Everything felt a little too bright and forced. It’s gone back to normal now, for the most part, but it was like, “ok, I am used to having to directly manage conversations, what do I do now that we can just…talk?”

      2. whingedrinking*

        Pre-pandemic, I struggled immensely with doing an online master’s degree in a way I never did with my in-person bachelor’s, and I put a lot of it down to just this.
        When you spend time with people in the same physical space, there are those little exchanges – hey, how’s it going, crap weather we’re having – and the chance to form relationships outside the classroom. Even in strictly class time, you have a chance for micro interactions and reactions. Small things like laughing at jokes, nodding when a classmate says something interesting, etc. Whereas in an online asynchronous environment, while instructors did their best to create a sense of community, it’s very hard when almost every interaction consists of text on a screen or maybe a video/audio recording (which you’re also intensely aware is going to be read/heard/watched by the prof), with the occasional Zoom call thrown in. It gets stripped down to “I read this, and this was my takeaway from the assignment.” “Interesting. I also read that, and I had the opinion that…” It began to feel like I was interacting with a bunch of education-bots, instead of being part of a cohort.
        Perhaps ironically, I was studying education, with a particular focus on the effects of isolation on anxiety and motivation in learners.

        1. kicking_k*

          Yes! I had this experience too.

          We were supposed to foster a collegiate atmosphere by participating in online text chats (I think we Skyped twice and it didn’t work very well; this was 2006). I was a keen Livejournaller/forum poster at the time and so this wasn’t difficult for me, but a lot of the time I would post something… and nobody would respond. Or one other person would post and only I would respond. And then I’d feel like the weird kid who never shuts up, so I’d feel shy about posting. It was a vicious circle.

        2. Louise B*

          I’m currently taking online courses and I feel exactly the same. I have trouble even remembering I have a class because there’s just no connection with any of the students and only barely with the professor. Some of my former in-person professors are now very close friends or employers of mine, but online? I feel like I’m teaching myself, and I can’t bring myself to care about the 16 posts all saying that they’ve read the same thing I read.

      3. EngineeringFun*

        My sibling has been a university instructor for 2 decades. He teaches in and maintains a technology based classroom and workspace that students work in after class (class based and personal creative projects). Starting this semester, the workspace has been vandalized several times (broken desks & chairs, food left in the room, removing light bulbs, computer screen broken…). This is beyond the normal student stuff like “borrowing” equipment, leaving things not put away, and unplugging equipment. He’s asking “what’s changed?”

        1. ElenaSSF*

          In our local neighborhood chat app reports of theft are through the roof. This may be just better reporting but seems to me to be based on lack of risks (the police don’t bother with property crimes) and a sense that after 2 years of isolation youth just don’t view their victims as quite real.

        2. 2Legit*

          What’s changed? TikTok.

          TikTok challenges are a huge problem for K-12 schools. ie- knock out your teacher challenge. destroy the bathroom challenge. it’s terrible.

          And those K-12 kids… well, not all of them go on to college, but they’re growing up to become adult citizens.

    5. Sloanicote*

      I feel this in myself! I feel that I am impatient and untrusting of other people as I emerge from the pandemic. While obviously I am not abusive to staffmembers, I feel like people are dangerous (breathing droplets!) and that I’m out of practice accommodating the little inconveniences of public life like waiting (while people breathe on you!! Perhaps standing too close or not wearing a mask or not wearing it correctly – and who knows their vaccination status!!).

      I also feel the partisan divide thing far more strongly than ever before. It seems to me now that it’s not possible to be on the opposing side from me politically and still be a good person. I don’t think I used to feel that way.

    6. Velocipastor*

      I like to say people came out of lockdown “feral.” I’ve noticed a general rudeness/impatience/unhelpfulness everywhere I look whether it’s at work or at the supermarket. This also seems to manifest itself as total disregard for spatial awareness — both walking and driving. But as I read back what I’ve written here, I have to wonder if I’m the one who came out of lockdown with less patience for my fellow humans navigating the world. Perhaps we are all just burnt-out from 2 years of pandemic related anxiety, 2 years of realizing some of our fellow humans don’t care who lives and who dies as long as they get to do what they want, on top of 6+ years of noxious political turmoil

      1. Hats Are Great*

        Our kids’ school’s teachers and counselors have repeatedly reassured parents that all our kids are “a little feral” after lockdown and missing out on “normal” school for almost two years. They had two very unusual years of social/emotional learning, so they’re completely missing some skills that are “normal” for their age, but are advanced at others compared to non-pandemic peers. For example, the fifth-grade teachers say their kids this year are a lot more independent about tracking time and doing homework than they have been in the past, because of all the time they were remote and had to track a lot of that themselves before they typically would be asked to do that. But they’re struggling a bit to resolve minor playground disputes or self-organize games, especially in larger groups, because they went two years without really doing that, and they need some adult prompting to figure it out.

        I said something very socially-awkward in an interview, and I blushed and said, “I’m sorry, after two years of pandemic life, I’ve clearly forgotten how to talk to other humans.” The interviewers laughed and commiserated about similar gaffes, and totally excused me. (I got the job.)

        I’m trying to be similarly understanding when people are weird or awkward … none of us have had a normal two years, and we’re all bound to have gotten a little weird.

        1. Bee*

          I think going a bit feral is a good analogy. Here’s hoping we can successfully re-domesticate ourselves!

  3. A New CV*

    I work in retail and what I have always said to my colleagues whenever a customer is particularly disrespectful or rude is that many people have stresses in their lives with bosses, kids, partners, that they don’t feel safe to express, so they let it out on customer service workers because they know we have to be polite to them. I can’t “fight back” so I’m a safe person to take their stress out on. It’s gotten worse and worse over the last few years, definitely. People are caught up in their own misery and sometimes they let it out on people that they know they can get away with it.

    1. Kowalski! Options!*

      Experiences such as these are why I’m killing myself to be super-gracious to retail and restaurant workers, maybe even to the point of being weird. I hate the idea that someone is, essentially, bullying someone with little power to push back.

      1. Gray Lady*

        This is what I have always tried to do. Whatever is going on in your day, I am not going to be the one to make it worse if I can possibly help it. And if I can make it .0001% better by being extra nice, I know that won’t make up for all the garbage, but it *might* just help you get through it.

        1. A Feast of Fools*

          This is me. When it comes to retail workers — whether that’s in a store, restaurant, or a delivery driver — I do my best to make sure that their interaction with me is either pleasantly neutral or the highlight of their day.

          Even when, say, an online order has gone wrong and I have to call customer service to get it straightened out, I apologize to the rep who my call has been routed to and try to make a joke out of it (“Congratulations, you have just drawn the short straw and get to deal with the customer who has a problem!”)

          Because, yeah, I’ve noticed an uptick in crappy behavior towards folks in the retail / service industries.

      2. nancy*

        I have a part-time job in retail, the other day a customer was being SUCH A JERK to one of my co-workers (one of the nicest by the way) that other customers told him he was a jerk.

        1. 2 Cents*

          I can’t say I’ve been able to stand up to a fellow customer like that, but I do tend to apologize for other strangers’ behavior, like “I’m sorry that person was so impatient” or be overly gracious, like “I’m in absolutely no hurry! How is your day going?”

          I think the masks made it harder to see smiles and people forgot to smile.

        2. cardigarden*

          Having worked many years in retail, I’ve gone out of my way to call out the jerks because I’ve been on the receiving end of that garbage and now I have the ability to call it out like I wasn’t previously able to.

          1. Highered Escapee*

            I have done exactly the same thing. There is a general lack of respect for people, particularly female presenting people, in service jobs and it’s amazing how fast it stops when someone else calls out someone behaving badly. I spent a lot of years in the service industry trenches so I not only go out of my way to be kind and patient to people I’m working with in those jobs, I also suffer no fools on their behalf.

            That is part of what we’re seeing as a social trend, I think. We have politicians, famous people, and other folks who influence society who stopped with the dog whistles and started saying the quiet part out loud. They faced no consequences for doing so. Now every idiot everywhere followed their lead and we’ve got people behaving without any regard for others and those of us willing to step into the breech to defend those who can’t defend themselves. Combine that with COVID and it’s social chaos.

            1. kicking_k*

              Yeah. I’m a professional now but I’ve been a waitress and a retail salesperson and a data entry clerk and a temp on the end of a phone. I don’t come from a culture of Pollyannas, but if I can smile at someone or say thanks for being so helpful (in a sincere tone) I will. I don’t care if they didn’t go above and beyond. I have no idea what kind of day they had prior to helping me.

            2. Hats Are Great*

              I live in a pretty progressive area, and I’ve noticed that middle-aged mom-types have gotten very vocal about speaking up when someone is being a jerk or racist to retail workers or service people, whereas in the past they might not have. Now some guy will be a jerk and a 40-year-old lady is up in his face going, “SIR, THAT IS A VERY RACIST THING TO SAY AND YOU SHOULD LEAVE THIS STORE” and if he objects then six other middle-aged parents jump in to agree he’s a jerk.

              This used to be a community where people “politely” did not talk about politics or religion, to avoid creating drama or exclusion. But then one part of the country became all about exclusion, and from watching my community change as it happened and reading local social media, my impression is people have gotten relatively radicalized about speaking up for progressive values and defending community values (dare I say “family values?”), and a lot of people who might not have spoken up in the past feel like they HAVE to speak up to create the community they want their children to live in. Like, to be inclusive, you have to exclude the excluders, if that makes sense.

              (It’s also pretty clear a lot of parents in the community have done bystander intervention trainings, and I don’t know if that’s via their workplaces or maybe through the high school (my kids are younger) or maybe just their own political activism in the past several years? But, um, it’s amazing to watch in action.)

          2. Not a cat*

            I do that too as I have spent time in the retail dungeons. My niece works at Target (in a really rich area) and she’s getting really beat down.

        3. Gumby*

          My mother and I were once behind someone being a complete jerk to the person working the cash register at a department store. We didn’t say anything to the customer (but of course the perfect zinger came to mind after he left) but were super nice to the sales person. And asked when her break was coming up and delivered a fresh hot chocolate a few minutes before it. Because he was *so* *bad* and that woman deserved a medal for keeping her cool.

      3. Joanna*

        My goal, when I’m shopping in a retail environment is to be pleasant and respectful. Last night I had to provide a birth date when I bought some long matches for my grill. My first thought was “really. I’m clearly middle age”. But the cashier was just doing her job so I politely gave her the information she needed and then cracked a joke about it.

        As for rudeness and hostility in my profession, I have not seen any increase. Which I was a bit surprised about. I work in a large engineering company. There are a lot of anti maskers in my office and many of my coworkers think Covid is just the flu. I was concerned about what kind of comments I might get about wearing a mask in office, but no one has said anything. Everyone has been very polite interacting with me in a mask. I’m starting to think that everyone is just so happy to get out of their houses finally, that everyone is genuinely happy to see other people.

      4. skittish*

        +100,000
        I’m so nice it is a little ridiculous, but I’d rather play the fool than BE the fool.

    2. This is a name, I guess*

      I think this sounds right. It’s the same psychological impulse that leads to road rage and reckless driving, too, which has also been extremely high during the pandemic.

    3. Swiss Army Them*

      This quote from The Grand Budapest Hotel kept me sane in my retail and restaurant days: “Rudeness is an expression of fear. People fear they won’t get what they want.” Helps me keep some empathy for awful people.

      2. emmelemm*

        While I think that’s true (rudeness is partially an expression of fear), it doesn’t give me a lot of empathy. Of course you’re not going to get what you want sometimes! Deal with it!

        1. Kimmy Schmidt*

          I see it more as people fear they won’t get what they need. Almost everyone I know is dealing with some kind of anxiety-inducing situation. Skyrocketing medical bills, scrimp and save and still can’t afford a house, food insecurity, businesses closing, relatives sick or dying, cost of living exploding, people who want children but can’t afford them, people who want children and spend tens of thousands of dollars on IVF treatments to get them, lack of childcare… it’s all just so much. And there feels like no end in sight.

          People have always been people, and some are rude, entitled, jerks. But there’s a layer of fear too.

    4. anonymous73*

      I hope you also back them up to walk away when the rudeness reaches a certain level, because I don’t care what stresses you have in your life, abusing a customer service worker is not okay. When I worked in a call center, we were told that if someone started cursing you out or yelling at you, you were allowed to warn them once and then disconnect the call if needed.

      1. GlowCloud*

        I’ll never understand the mentality of being aggressive with people whose job is to offer help with things.
        Aside from the fact that absolutely noone deserves that kind of treatment, it’s super counter-productive to getting whatever it is one wanted in the first place.

        I still interact with customer service personnel as politely as I ever can, because getting people to help solve a problem for me is a collaborative effort.

        1. anonymous73*

          I was on the phone for an hour and a half with Verizon once, after having called them on 2 prior occasions, trying to figure out why they were charging me for something I was no longer using that had been sent to collections and was affecting my credit. This was 20 years ago and while the issue was eventually resolved, to this day nobody could tell me why the charge existed. Only a saint would remain patient and kind throughout that entire process.

          1. SpiderLadyCEO*

            Honestly, things like this might be CAUSING an uptick in upset/angry customers. It’s now really difficult to speak to the person who can actually help you – every single time I have had to call about my insurance, my phone bill, my internet service, my banking…I have been routed through so many calls to so many people and no one can help OR knows who can. And you just sit there in tears because what are you supposed to do?

            Companies are cutting down customer service to save money, and then the few customer service reps are treated poorly, paid poorly, and not empowered to actually aid the customer, so the company wins and the customer service rep and the client both lose.

          2. NeedRain47*

            This is def a contributor, I think. There’s no payoff for being polite. I’ve had this exact scenario with AT&T, Apple, United Airlines…. I was on the phone for ages and they were clearly NOT going to help me. Why should I be nice if I know for a fact they’re not going to do what I need? Also, I now dread just about any customer service interaction b/c it might be literally impossible to get help.

          3. CommanderBanana*

            I spent, no exaggeration, 9 hours in total on the phone last weekend with Comcast trying to get a service outage resolved (that is still not entirely resolved). I don’t think my blood pressure has ever been higher in my entire life.

        2. Zan+Shin*

          Yes 100%. Before placing the call I think, what is my goal, and how can I get the stranger in customer service to invest in it?

        3. Yorick*

          To be fair, sometimes it is SO FRUSTRATING and you can genuinely forget that your problem wasn’t actually caused by this person. Of course, you should still strive to be the most polite when dealing with something difficult. But now and then it’s understandable that someone snaps a little.

          But I’ve been seeing videos of huge tantrums in public and that is just something else.

      2. A+New+CV*

        Being able to accept a certain amount of disrespect and rudeness is just part of the job of customer service, unfortunately. It’s dehumanizing but it’s the reality. Obviously when it gets out of hand we can walk away. But both the casual disrespect and the egregious rudeness have increased lately.

      3. Kowalski! Options!*

        To be honest, I don’t do a lot of shopping (once a week, and quickly, at that), so I don’t witness a lot of client interactions. Most people I’ve observed just want to pay and get the hell out.
        My bigger concern is that, in defending a customer service worker, people’s pandemic frustrations would boil over and all hell would break loose.

    5. JanetM*

      My husband worked retail for 35 years and he concurs with your position — he has often said, “They are miserable people and abusing employees is the only power they have in their tiny little lives.”

    6. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      I remember reading a list of user suggested stress relief activities somewhere, probably Bored Panda.
      One woman posted that she has learned a way not to go home and “take it out on her husband and family.” My lazy, chubby self was curious, but also braced for something like, I go to the gym, I bicycle home, I drink tea or something else anathema to me.
      Not even close.
      “I go straight from work to the grocery store and yell at the staff there so when I get home it’s all out of my system.”
      None of the responses recommended that her highness check Craig’s List for whipping boys looking for work, they mostly pointed out that she was an absolute trash human being.
      But like most unwelcome beings, if there is one, there are more.

      1. Robin Ellacott*

        Good lord. It never occurred to me it was actually anyone’s STRATEGY.

        Decades ago when I managed a local store there was a woman in town famous for complaining and making people cry, boasting that she just got someone fired, and so on. Maybe that was her deal.

        I ran into her years after I had moved on and she started haranguing me about signage in the store I used to work in. I told her I didn’t work there and for a moment I almost told her what I thought of her behaviour, but concluded she wouldn’t be able to hear it and walked away. I’m still not sure if I regret not saying anything.

        1. Scarlet Magnolias*

          Like Dorothy’s Auntie Em who wanted to tell Elmira Gulch what she really thought of her

    7. Aggresuko*

      In my experience, service workers are there to be abused, especially since they can’t stop people from doing it or defend themselves. If your job is to help people, it’s also to take their stress and abuse.

      1. Try*

        No one’s job is to be abused. No one’s.

        (… unless you’re a sub for hire, I guess? But even they have safe words.)

        1. Red Light Specialist*

          Not even then. We draw a firm bright line between consensual behavior and abuse, and even have community discussions about how to tell the difference. When it’s doing harm it’s not okay – and in this context, not your job, even if the client thinks it is.

      2. Nopetopus*

        It might just be that your phrasing is off here, but it is certainly not my partner’s *job* to be abused just because he is a server at a restaurant!

      3. The Last to Know*

        No. Absolutely not. Anyone coming into my place of work with that attitude will be asked to leave and not come back. I will reserve every right to deny you service.

      5. Bob-White of the Glen*

        I guess if you’re an employee it’s your job to take your boss’s stress and abuse too?

        Nope. It’s no one’s job to take (unwilling) abuse from anyone. And employees should be empowered to walk away from someone doing it.

        Thinking people are there for you to abuse as part of their job is gross.

      6. Bucky Barnes*

        I actually gasped when I read this. I hope this just came across differently than how you intended.

        1. Librarian of SHIELD*

          A prominent figure in American library training sent out an email to this effect just last week, it really is the way some people feel.

        2. SloanGhost*

          I suspect they did. I think what they meant was that this had been their experience AS a service worker. Not that it’s correct, but that it’s expected by the PTB. Which has been my experience as well.

      7. DrRat*

        I’m hoping this ended up coming out differently than you intended, because if this is actually your attitude, one day a restaurant server is going to stab you with a spork. (Kidding but not kidding – when an old boyfriend was a waiter and one of my grad school professors came in who had been making my life a living hell, boyfriend “accidentally” poured an entire pitcher of ice water over him.)

      8. Lenora Rose*

        No.

        They might not be able to stop people from doing it, and they might have to tolerate a certain amount of it to get their actual job done, and they are often served by learning de-escalation tactics to work around it or defuse it.

        But if a customer is too abusive, they also have the right to tell them to leave, not to put up with it (Which is a form of defending themselves). And it is management’s job to have their back, not to say “Take it or else.” (Yes, some management does the latter. That management is bad management.)

      9. Unemployed*

        As a former 911 dispatcher…this was a lot of the attitude in my center. Unless there was foul language or threats….. we’d have to be as nice as possible to the rudest and worst people.

      10. EmmaPoet*

        WOW.
        I am so glad my manager disagrees with you and will kick out people who are rude to staff.

      11. Chirpy*

        Oh absolutely no. Service and retail workers are there to help you find a product, not work through your therapy issues. It is definitely NOT a part of their job to take abuse or be someone’s punching bag.

      12. RedFraggle*

        No. No, it’s not my job as to take whatever abuse my patients think they need to heap upon me.

        It IS my job to help them in regards to their eyes. I’d strongly recommend NOT being abusive to people whose job it is to put things in your eyeballs.

        Just like it’s a really bad idea to piss off the guy who’s about to start an IV on you. Don’t. Just don’t.

      13. Not Tom, Just Petty*

        I don’t see the sarcasm in this Because of the experience I posted above. If there is more to this, please finish this thought.

      14. Gravitational*

        Apparently I have a wildly different read on this than the rest of the commentariat – I thought Aggresuko was saying this is how it works out *in practice*, not that it’s good, correct, or actually in anyone’s job description to be abused.

    8. Librarian of SHIELD*

      Yesterday someone got mad at me for telling her where the bathroom was. Apparently, telling her where the bathroom was meant I thought she didn’t know where the bathroom was, which meant I was calling her stupid and she’s not stupid how dare I insult a customer like that.

      I wish I was exaggerating. I really do. But almost every customer I work with now is on the worlds shortest fuse and I don’t know how much longer I can do this.

        1. Librarian of SHIELD*

          I was helping another customer at the time and she came over to interrupt and complain that the bathroom in the lobby was being cleaned. I apologized for the inconvenience and offered the key to the family restroom and said “it’s just around the corner there.” And in her view that was extremely rude of me. *shrug*

          1. DrRat*

            How dare you insult me by trying to be helpful, peasant!

            Honestly, so sorry you are having to deal with that.

      2. Meep*

        This was in 2012 when I worked at Safeway, but I had a female customer who just straight-up disliked me for some reason that I never fully understood at the time. We would always come into my lane specifically just to stand there glowering at me and making snide comments. One late night, it was another cashier and me. I was bagging for him because it was dead and she was forced to come into his line. Per usual, absolute pill towards me and absolute angel towards him. So I left to put baskets away as I wasn’t tethered to the register. I had no idea what he said to her, but the next thing I know she is screaming at me demanding if I thought it was funny and for my manager to lodge an official complaint. (Who came running upon hearing it.) All because I had the audacity to SMILE despite her being an absolute crab towards me for no reason.

        What actually happened: Apparently, my male coworker cracked a joke about how she seemed to be in a bad mood when I was across the store and clearly out of earshot. Her internally misogynistic* butt decided to take it out on me because /I/ was the one mocking her.

        My manager was a cool dude so he knew it was BS and whenever she ended up trying to get in my lane if he was there, he would send me on break and take over. Whenever he wasn’t and I had to deal with her, I just smiled my biggest smile at her and didn’t say a word to her.

        *At the time I didn’t understand it was because I was a woman, but now with more wisdom, I can see that it was. She was never sh*tty to my male coworkers – just us gals. Which is real sad when you consider the majority of the staff weree half her age so she must’ve really been stuck in that mean girl high school mode.

    9. Shiba Dad*

      People in customer service are “the help” to these folks. It is the closest these folks will get to having servants.

      These folk suck.

      1. ACanadian*

        When I retired from my full time job, I took a job at a pub and winery. I take no abuse and have the full support of the business owners. Angry customers are amazed when I won’t have any off their nonsense and the threat of telling my boss doesn’t seem to terrify me. The incidence of rudeness seems to have increased with the onset of COVID, as some people push back against any attempt to enforce COVID safety precautions.

        1. Shiba Dad*

          I wish more bosses backed their employees like yours does. No one should have to put up with abuse.

    10. AnonCaregiver*

      I’ve noticed this in myself when I have to call health insurance, elder care relevant phone lines, etc – anything that’s slightly emotionally weighted in an already tense situation on top of a pandemic, war, and financial difficulty and I feel like I’m always on edge. One time during a particularly difficult call I had to hang up because I knew I was going to lose my temper and I thought hanging up was the least rude thing option. It’s not been bad with retail or anything but slogging through the health insurance phone tree is so hard.

      1. megaboo*

        It does feel like things are more complicated. Trying to fix a medical bill you were mistakenly billed for can take a whole day.

      2. Joielle*

        Yes! I’ve looked into hiring a concierge doctor for this exact reason. It would be worth almost any amount of money to be able to call a doctor’s office and get the doctor on the phone, who knows exactly what is going on and has talked to all the specialists. And their staff would deal with the insurance phone trees and appeals and everything. My spouse has a complicated chronic illness situation and insurance and clinic phone menus are the thing that raises my blood pressure the most.

        1. Splendid Colors*

          A friend of mine tried One Medical and they did not deliver the higher level of customer service to justify the membership fee.

    11. People just suck*

      I cannot agree. I have worked retail on and off for more tham 40 years amd also worked in public-facing professional roles. Most bullies do not act out of low self esteem or life stressors. They are just belligerent jerks who ENJOY abusing those who cannot fight back and that is often retail amd CS staff. Sometimes they also deliberately behave badly in the hipes of intimidating staff to get their way (always breaking policy) or to get discounts. In fact on only one example, a friend of my husband was married to a woman who bragged about being a bully in every monetized interaction wih the goal of getting discounts/free stuff such as when she got free flooring in a kitchen reno. She bragged about never paying for a restaurant meal.

      .

      1. Dragon*

        Agreed. Many people who’ve behaved badly during the pandemic, aren’t acting like jerks because of the stress. They are jerks, period.

    12. knitcrazybooknut*

      I think it was Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickled and Dimed who talked about the women with children who would come to the local Target and basically trash the entire clothing section, pulling clothes off hangers, and leaving tried-on items all over the floor. Her theory was that they were picking up after kids and partners all day, so this was their chance to be messy without consequences to themselves.

      1. Burnt Out and Needing Relief*

        As someone working retail, this is so not okay ugh. We are drowning between customers being complete monsters and colleagues calling out. Literally no one benefits because you can’t shop a trashed store. It has absolutely gotten worse the past few weeks, but the pandemic as a whole has been rough with entitlement. I think with COVID cases rising again, people are lashing out because they don’t want to believe it’s not really over

    13. Chirpy*

      Same, customers have definitely been getting worse. My store has a popular seasonal item that has to be pre-ordered, and this year’s shipments have had problems. Thankfully I’ve only had a couple of customers who didn’t get their order, and they were nice about it, but I’ve heard someone from another store that had their whole shipment just inexplicably not show up that people screamed at them more in one day than in the 8 years they’d worked there.

      Over the whole pandemic, I will say it’s been nice that customers almost stopped trying to grab me, but they absolutely are taking their frustrations out on retail workers. People will cross the whole store to scream at someone in a totally different department if they don’t immediately find something.

    14. Burger Bob*

      I work in sort-of-retail (pharmacy), and I just plain won’t take it. I’ll be polite to a point, but if someone is being actually abusive to me or my staff, I call them out on it. If they start swearing at us, I tell them to leave and not come back. I can’t for the life of me understand why that isn’t the norm for all retail. I just don’t think that companies should require their employees to accept outright abuse. Do you really want someone’s business if it comes with a heaping helping of mistreating your staff? (Of course, the sad truth is that some people at the top of big businesses are all too happy to sacrifice their staff in the name of one more dollar of profit.)

  4. Ihmmy*

    admin/office person in academia: very definitely people have shorter fuses, anger more easily, and hear each other less and less. Especially faculty in my nook, but some students too. People are burnt tf out and are taking it out on each other, which of course just exacerbates the whole issue

    1. OrigCassandra*

      Instructor and service-provider in academia: Very much same, and I’m not entirely innocent myself, though I am genuinely trying not to take out my megrims on others.

      I shut down the (free to the campus community) service I used to run entirely a little while ago because of overentitled faculty and emeriti. One trash-talked my work on the service to my face, and that was just — it. I was done.

      I’m currently job-hunting because of two other pieces of the picture: student needs have soared yet my capacity has not, and online and hybrid instruction modes just aren’t enjoyable for me, yet they’re devouring my work life. I’ve been a finalist for one job, gotten to phone screen for another, so I hope to have a Friday anecdote for everyone soon.

      Though I’m sad. I do love teaching and I think I’ve done good and useful work. I’m just… all the way out of gas and need to do something else.

    2. AGD*

      Academic advisor/instructor/miscellaneous-research-person here: a small number of people have been extraordinarily rude (at one point I had to deal with a senior faculty member who was acting like an angry three-year-old), but everyone else is doing their best and trying to be patient.

      As far as I can tell, the reasons why the students here are unhappy have the most to do with pre-pandemic concerns that I think are well founded (social equality issues, patchy/clumsy mental-health support strategies on campus). I think students have been very patient and understanding about online learning for the most part.

      1. Butterfly Counter*

        As an instructor/lecturer, the students are absolutely having a hard time, but it’s bleeding into a lot of entitlement as we have been as accommodating and flexible as we can be.

        Right now, with finals and papers due, I’ve had probably a dozen students asking for extensions… for no reason except that they haven’t done the work yet and want the extra time. Again, we have been flexible, but there needs to be a point that things are actually due and when I tell students that, tantrums ensue. (I absolutely still give extensions for genuine need.) The transition from online back to more regular schoolwork has be incredibly rough. I also think part of the problem is that a lot of students aren’t familiar with how school used to be before the pandemic, so the increased expectations and harder deadlines don’t feel fair to them.

        1. bleh*

          All of this. I don’t even get explanations for why assignments are late. It’s awful, and yet, I feel for them. They are going to feel climate change effects long after I’m gone.

          1. Sam I Am*

            Interesting! I never gave a reason for wanting an extension in academics unless asked for one. I was really on top of assignments in general, and often they didn’t ask for a reason. I figured they didn’t want to hear an excuse unless they asked. They would often ask when I would have it done by, or say something like “you can hand it in at the next lecture.”
            I wonder if this is a change? Undergrad conferred back in 2001, so it’s been awhile. I’m sure lots has changed.
            Anyhow I’ve told some of my own students (private, individual instruction) that “generally people don’t want to know why you didn’t get it done, they want to know if you can get it done and when that will be.”
            If someone else is holding up a part of the process that’s a different animal, I’m really asking about individual assignments.
            Do you think this is a bad approach these days?

            1. FromasmalltowninCanada*

              When I was in undergrad (graduated in 2002), I managed to get maybe on extension in the entire 4 year degree. They absolutely wanted a reason – with documentation. In fact based on the syllabus and the academic calendar you couldn’t get one without documentation – it was all clearly outlined. I knew up front what the penalty was for even a day late (normally a whole grade).

              I still work in higher ed, I don’t teach but I work in an academic department. Our faculty would not allow for an extension with out documented reasons. There’s a whole process for that. I’m kind of shocked that you would tell people that no reason should be required. It’s not work, it’s very, very different.

              1. Here we go again*

                The only time I asked for an extension for a paper in college was for the death of my mom. My professor took my word for it and was very understanding.

                1. FromasmalltowninCanada*

                  I’m so sorry. My mom passed when I was in grade school but I can only imagine dealing with that during college… I missed one exam in my life – I was so sick during my masters that I fainted and I had to get a doctor’s note for it (I didn’t have to pay for the note – or the appointment, Canada). When I brought the note into the Dean’s office in I still had the black eye.

              2. Anon for a Moment*

                I am the exact opposite of your faculty: I tell my students I didn’t need a reason but that I do need advance notice. I don’t want to spend my time trying to judge the moral value of different reasons/needs, and since I teach in a field where any kind of help was perceived as weakness, I want my students to ask for what they need to stay healthy without asking them to disclose more than they are comfortable, whether the actual reason is the death of a close family member or sheer exhaustion.

        2. HigherEdAdminista*

          This is what we are seeing too. No reasoning, not even an excuse. When people do offer their reasons… they aren’t things you would give an extension for. “I don’t check my planner so I forgot.” “I went away for a long weekend and didn’t get to work on it.” We’ve had people tell us they didn’t bother to read something that contained important instructions because it was too long; we aren’t talking about a 50 page document here, we are talking about a couple of pages. They do these things and are absolutely floored when they are told they aren’t being professional or will lose points on something, or that they can’t be recommended for certain opportunities.

          It feels like the expect nothing from themselves, but everything from us and they are angry when we turn out to be humans with limits or when their interest and participation is required to succeed.

          1. bleh*

            To answer Sam I Am: Oh I tell them details are none of my business if they start down that path, but I do like at least an attempt at something came up at work, home, other class, etc. I guess it’s the expectation that they just *can* turn things in whenever, and I will just grade them -deadline be da**ed – that seems rude.

            But HigherEdAminista is getting to the crux. Students expect us to be there constantly and they can just drop every ball. It’s exhausting, and colleagues with more classes/students are spending hours a day just tending to student messages, issues, and excuses.

            1. Sam I Am*

              Thank you, thos is good to know.
              I had a student tell me they didn’t get an assignment finished because…..they then listed off each day of the week, and told me they rest on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I suggested to them that while that may be true, it’s probably better to skip the reasons and tell me when they thought they could finish instead of listing off all the reasons it wasn’t finished. But most of my instruction is 1-on-1 so I often know if there’s been some sort of disruption in their lives.

          2. Meghan*

            I had an incredibly embarrassing situation last spring semester when I was about to graduate with a 2nd bachelor’s. I had done well in the class (online), done my assignments early, gotten A’s on everything and when I looked at my early final grade it was an F and I was floored. I went back and reread the syllabus and I had completely skipped the part about how you had to do 6 tasks from a certain section or you would automatically fail and I had only done 2 because I had earned enough points for my A and didn’t do anything else. So there I was, 34 years old, e-mailing my teacher to say “I somehow skipped that part of the requirements.” For that section you could either take a quiz, post a discussion or write a 500 word paper on the subject and my teacher agreed to let me do the work to make up the grade, except I had to write 4 of the 500 word papers, I couldn’t do the discussions or quizzes. I’m not even sure she read my papers because shortly after I sent them she was like “great you get an A.” It was just so embarrassing and such a head-slap moment because all I had to do was post 4 discussions or take 4 quizzes and who cared about the grade because I had enough points for an A, if only I had paid attention to that part of the syllabus.

    3. LunaLena*

      I am a staff member in a higher ed institution (though I don’t interact much directly with faculty or students), and I’ve definitely seen an increase in rudeness from students this year. There have been more incidences of littering, damage to school equipment and property, and vandalism. And it’s a very noticeable escalation too; earlier this year we had an ongoing issue in which students were deliberately causing thousands of dollars worth of damage to elevators. I don’t know if it’s related or if it’s just the Great Resignation or both, but staff turnover has been through the roof too.

    4. After 33 years ...*

      Yes, same here – from all groups – faculty, students, staff, even some in administration… I am finding myself counting days until retirement.

    5. Hall or Billingham*

      I work in academia (student affairs at a community college). Our faculty and staff have never been the pinnacle of kindness and gentility, which in my opinion stems from the fact that our institution is “only” 50-something years old and a not insignificant number of my colleagues have been here since the College’s first decade of operation. We are still fighting bad habits and entitlement from our “wild west” days. It felt like we were getting somewhere just before the pandemic moved us remote; now everyone is burnt out and exhausted. Morale is terrible and while people do rightly place a lot of the blame at the feet of leadership for this, I’ve increasingly noticed that we are less patient with each other and with students. It’s gotten pretty toxic!

    6. Rachel in NYC*

      (finance/admin in academia.) I’ve found possibly the opposite.

      my job is unique in that I’m quite literally giving people money. and we’ve long joked about how surprisingly hard that is. with the pandemic, we’re much more popular. I get a lot more emails with “thanks” and smiley faces and just general useful answers. (I love a useful response.)

      and even if something is taking months, people have generally been incredibly patient. they’ve understood that it takes as long as it takes and I’m not holding it up to be mean to them personally.

      1. KatieP*

        Also finance/admin in academia. It’s been a mixed bag. I got a really rude email from an undergrad yesterday, mad at me for asking his professor to nudge him to submit some legal paperwork for a trip he’s about to go on.

        On the other hand, if they need me to reimburse an expense, they couldn’t be nicer. Or faster with the paperwork.

      2. kicking_k*

        That is lovely.

        I did notice a definite changeover point when “This is delayed because of the pandemic” stopped being seen as a good excuse. It is still sometimes the reason, though. I’ve had tasks delayed a few times because my helpers got Covid and I had to find someone else.

    7. AdmissionsAmy*

      I also work in higher ed, but on the undergrad admissions side. We have noticed that parents of prospective students are so much more rude/hostile now compared to 5+ years ago. This behavior started before covid, so while some of them lash out due to mask mandates or vaccine checks, I think it goes beyond that. Many parents come into an interaction suspicious and looking to catch us in a lie. They believe that colleges are out to mislead them. Could it be because of broader suspicion of media/fake news? Could it be because of the varsity blues college admissions scandal? Could it be the increase of websites/discussion boards like College Confidential where misinformation is often spread by other students/parents who think they know what they’re talking about? I would love to hear other theories too!

      1. Nutella Versace*

        Interesting…I’ve put two kids into college in the last five years, and probably acted suspicious towards university staff, although hopefully not rude. Much of my suspicion was due to experiences that I had as an undergraduate, with unwritten university policies and practices that affected me financially. It may be that you are interacting with the generation of parents who were misled about eligibility, financial aid and transfer credits in the 1990s and paid dearly for it.
        I’ve found that universities have gotten so much better in the past 20 years. Now I’m maybe 75% less suspicious than I was in the beginning. Progress!

      2. Higher Ed Kitten Party*

        As I mentioned in a separate comment, I do believe there is this greater narrative that college is “already” free/”everyone already gets everything for free”/lots of students just live on grants alone/etc. and if a student doesn’t get something for free, they feel like its a personal slight. In fact, very little exists for free (and I would argue that living in poverty is not worth a Pell grant).

        Often the people leading these narratives (some who even received Pell) learned about financial aid and need-based funding when Pell alone covered 70% of cost of attendance. 70%!!!! Pell doesn’t even cover tuition at most colleges, let alone rent or food or other vital needs.

      3. Kate*

        I just came back from visiting colleges with my 11th grader, all small liberal arts colleges. When registering to visit it was clear that all visitors needed to be vax’d and boosted, two colleges required masks indoors, one required masks for visitors indoors, and the fourth had been masks optional for a few weeks, but the day before our visit (based on an uptick in area cases) they had moved to masks required indoors and had sent texts to everyone confirming the change the day before.

        YIKES. As a parent, I was thrilled to see all these schools prioritize the health of the staff, students, and community. But there were a couple of people on our tours who were angry that they were being asked to wear masks, and some intentionally put it on their chin and glared at the poor student guides who requested they put it over their nose and mouth. Their kids were visibly bored, rolling their eyes, and it seemed as if mom or dad had signed them up for this visit. I felt so badly for the admissions staff – they were doing their jobs, and some visitors really behaved in ways in which they should have been asked to leave.

        I imagine the population that visits each school varies by the nature of the school, but it was sad to see prospective parents/kids really be rude to the admissions office staff and student guides.

        1. AD*

          As someone who works in higher ed, I think a lot of the hostile media coverage of mask requirements in schools has really impacted how rude and hostile (mostly white and upper-middle class) parents have become towards educators (faculty, staff, administrators, etc.). During the last year in particular.

          Students (at the college and graduate school level) are burnt out across the board — and yes, there have been more instances of entitlement and rudeness that I’ve seen, but parents have just been flat-out nasty. I think many of them (that I’ve observed) think it’s fair game to take out their pandemic fatigue on teachers and educators.

    8. Chili+pepper+Attitude*

      Academic librarian here at a small private school. Pushes you would think toward incivility = all the usual COVID stresses and about half the student body come from incredibly wealthy families used to very high service levels.

      But I’m not seeing it. Everyone seems to be of the, “we are in this together” mentality and I’m grateful to work here. I greet tours of parents and students when I see them and everyone is kind and interested. The worst I see from students is they email again later if they don’t love my answer (no, I won’t do it for you).

    9. JMR*

      I don’t have to deal with members of the public much (lab scientist), but the biotech company I work at has a volunteer program where the scientists give Bill Nye-type science demonstrations for elementary school kids, particularly in underserved/underfunded schools or school districts. We encounter rude kids once in a while who call us dorks or sit and pout instead of participating in the lessons, but lately we have been encountering far more rudeness from parents and school faculty members these days. One teacher was an absolute raging dick to a group of volunteers that had gotten lost en route and showed up about 10 minutes late (these things happen, and they had called the school to tell them they were running behind schedule); one parent was irate because her child hadn’t been chosen to come up and assist with a demonstration (the scientist doing the demo had asked for a volunteer from the audience, and her child didn’t even raise her hand, but even if she had, she might not have been the one who was picked); another parent was furious at a volunteer for some perceived slight against their child, and when they didn’t know how to reach the volunteer directly (our direct phone numbers aren’t public), they called the general company phone line and yelled at the admin who answered. The head of the volunteer group has even received LinkedIn messages from school admins who wanted to complain about some aspect of our program they don’t like. It’s not worth it, and a lot of our volunteers are dropping out.

      1. DrRat*

        Unfortunately, it sounds like if your company wants to keep its volunteers, it’s going to have to establish some hard line-in-the-sand rules with this stuff. A teacher is a raging dick? Fine, walk out, report to the principal why they are leaving, pack up and go, and leave the teacher with the consequences. School admins want to complain? Block that school and let them know why. Parent starts yelling over the phone? Hang up and block.

        I had to deal with something like this at a museum I worked at years ago and we were draconian. The schools realized quickly that if they treated us badly, they weren’t getting our help.

    10. Nannerdoodle*

      I work in admin at the intersection of academia and healthcare. Everyone is just burnt out. People working directly with patients are dealing with shorter fuses on the patient/family end and bringing that back into the rest of their work. Grad students and PIs are frustrated because the incredibly long shutdowns for things pushed back timelines for research, which makes their lives more difficult because grants, publications, and potential graduation timelines didn’t really change, so they take it out on everyone who they see as “delaying” them.

    11. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

      I’m an admin and the students seem fine with our mask requirements but its the outside community members that have the fit. There has been more tension with students with other problems on campus, and I’ve notice more remarks made than before.

    12. AA*

      I’m a burnt out academic and definitely feeling this. I’m in the UK and my union has been in an ongoing dispute with the employers over pensions and conditions since 2017. At this point I’m so totally exhausted by the way workers are treated in this sector that I’m leaving academia. My notice period is unfortunately 3 months so there’s a bit more to put up with but I instantly felt lighter for having made the decision to leave.

  5. CaffeinatedPanda*

    I’m a teacher, which seems to already be addressed above, but…1000 times yes. There have always been students who are rude or just don’t care, but it’s definitely on the rise. In the past, whenever I had conflict with a kid, it wasn’t constant – there were kids who were really stubborn but also very funny, or who didn’t want to do their work but would happily have a great conversation with me about their own interests. This year is the first time I have had students where every single interaction is marked with their blatant disrespect toward me and the entire school experience. They’re kids, so I know this behavior isn’t coming out of nowhere – their school experience has obviously been trashed for the last couple of years, and we’re only starting to get back to “normal” while administrators scramble to figure out how to make things work again. But it’s really freaking hard to deal with on a constant basis.

    1. Johanna Cabal*

      I’ve heard a lot about this from my friends and family who work in education. Even the better behaved kids act two grades behind. In one case, the third grade teachers at a school had to take an online course in managing tantrums. Third graders throwing tantrums has never happened before.

      (I hate to say it, but I think peer pressure kept my classmates and I from throwing tantrums. I still remember when the fourth grade bully threw a full on crying tantrum because he missed his turn at kickball and the teacher made him wait. He never lived that one down.)

      1. HeretoRead*

        Also a teacher, here. I’ve noticed it from families and guardians as well. I wonder if the pandemic +online learning + various school closures has caused a widespread shift in people’s perception of the education system and educators. Ive felt totally beaten down by kids and families alike this year.

        1. elizelizeliz*

          This is what I was coming here to say–the difference in how families are acting, the general level of anger at teachers and schools, and the resultant fear and stress of educators all feel VERY notable this year. I have probably had more parents be hostile toward me this year than my previous 12 years as an educator, combined.

          1. Not Your Mother's Principal*

            +1000 So.Much. Hostility!

            And related: COVID really made it apparent that many parents see us as babysitters, not educators. The vitriol that was spewed because we weren’t willing to risk teacher/staff lives pre-vaccinations is a major reason for my upcoming retirement.

            1. J.B.*

              I’m sorry you feel like that but I really feel like that phrase is part of misinformation. None of us got any support and most parents (or at least usually moms) are utterly burned out. I respect teachers as professionals but since I have to advocate for my special needs kid I will disagree politely in writing when necessary. The AP has decided that means I don’t respect staff as professionals, so then escalation is inevitable.

            2. NancyDrew*

              Let’s not do the whole “parents think we’re babysitters” thing again, please. The truth is teachers are indeed in charge of children during the school day. Our entire professional system is built around the concept that kids are being cared for at school, and yes, that was ripped away from families, to great detriment (to parents but also especially to children). So unless you’re trying to make a case for having in-classroom professional babysitters in addition to teachers, this argument doesn’t hold water.

              1. AnnieB*

                Well, I think parents who don’t think teachers are babysitters but rely on school so they can do their own work would have found online learning stressful and struggled to keep everything going, but accepted that it was just how things had to be. It’s when they start demanding teachers put themselves in danger to be able to teach in person, accompanied with profanity, disparaging remarks and suggestions of firing teachers who won’t teach in person – then I think yes this is probably someone who doesn’t respect me as a professional.

                1. Sam*

                  I think parents (especially those who were themselves working in person) could respect you as a professional and still think the distress their children were suffering in full-time Zoom meetings outweighed the COVID risks to the under-55 cohort (and yes, some teachers are older or otherwise more vulnerable, but that’s a reason to assign them the remote classes not shut the whole school district down).

                2. Sam*

                  Wanted to add – there’s no excuse for the profanity and so forth. But as a (non-threatening, non-swearing) parent my frustrations with the school closings were precisely because I see teachers as professionals. I don’t expect the entry-level person on minimum wage to go above and beyond in the hardest of times; of course many did, but I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation. But a professional should understand that their value is in the results they provide not just the hours they put in, and so hearing from many teachers that remote school was almost as good because they were still working really hard… that was hard.

                3. whingedrinking*

                  @ Sam: Saying “I respect you as a professional” is not really compatible with “I get that you could die and all but my kids really hate Zoom classes.”
                  Teaching is not only notoriously low paying, but highly infectious. Teachers of young children in particular get sick *all the time*. This is crappy but tolerable when it’s a cold and you really love teaching; not so much when it’s a disease that is ridiculously contagious, debilitating and often fatal.
                  Also, saying “we can’t shut the whole school district down” – with respect, what exactly do you think would happen if schools had been left open throughout the entire pandemic? School districts are understaffed at the best of times. A lot of them are already functioning with the bare minimum they can. Teachers would get sick; some would die. A whole lot of other ones would say “eff this” and quit. I cannot imagine that children would be less distressed or getting a better education under those conditions than learning at home.

                4. Sam*

                  @whingedrinking – It’s true that teaching is in some places low paying; in Boston (near where I live), though, teachers earn on average $105,000. Not a penny too much in my opinion, but enough to be held to the kinds of expectations workers in other sectors meet.

                  And respectfully, for the under-55 group without serious preexisting conditions, COVID is not “often fatal”… for a healthy person in their mid 30’s, for example, even if you catch it, your risk of fatality is less than that of dying in a car accident in a given year. Not too say that as a society we should not take it seriously, but for an average (age, health) teacher on an individual level, the risk was always very small.

                  And it’s not just about hating Zoom. We’re now starting to see the effects – massive learning loss and mental health issues.

                  And if you take all of the above – that many (by no means all) teachers, even in areas where they are quite well-paid, pushed to stay remote, greatly understating the impact of that choice on the vulnerable people (children) they are paid to serve, while greatly overstating the impacts to themselves of in-person – well, you will get some very frustrated parents. Parents, who might, to be blunt, feel that these particular (again, by no means all) teachers are behaving in a less than professional manner.

                5. AD*

                  @Sam

                  Without getting into your points about teacher pay and learning loss and whether they are in fact accurate, you seem to be missing the point that people are taking out their frustrations — from the pandemic, from lack of childcare, from a host of issues — on teachers and educators.

                  Those frustrations are valid but using individual teachers as focus of hostility does nothing to solve or eradicate those issues. They are societal issues and need institutional or government oversight to address and to solve. Your comments show a notable lack of empathy for teachers, who have been dealing with their own challenges. And if you seriously believe that primary school educators in the United States in 2022 are generously paid, I simply don’t know what to tell you.

                6. Squirrel Nutkin*

                  Yes, I agree with AnnieB and whingedrinking–the entitlement of demanding that teachers put their lives on the line to teach in person, and then further demanding that students not be forced to wear masks is staggering. I have several colleagues out with covid now, and several who have brought covid to their families, after our school dropped their mask requirement and over 80% of the students stopped wearing them. I don’t think our school would have done that if entitled parents hadn’t called up the upper administration and whined. Like, no, your kid’s enjoying not wearing a mask is NOT worth more than their teachers’ lives and health.

        2. Jules the 3rd*

          I think in the education and library systems that it’s the political / social atmosphere. The effort one group has been making to undermine public education through budgets / charters / vouchers didn’t go fast enough, so this past year the group has switched to a public opinion campaign. Schools are the current focus of the culture wars, and the additional focus in the media is excusing more aggressiveness from a certain group’s students / parents.

          2. Shiba Dad*

            The media is all too happy to report on the controversy and makes little to no effort to provide clarity about what is really going on.

            Theoretically parents involved in their child’s education is good. However, that requires parents to know what the f**k they are talking about, which isn’t happening in a lot of cases.

            2. HigherEdAdminista*

              Not to mention actually being the parents of the district. A lot of those very sensational school board meetings contained people who weren’t parents or even from the area coming to stir up trouble. It doesn’t mean that there were no legitimate parents doing that, but there was a widespread social media campaign to get “concerned citizens” out there to cause a ruckus.

        3. OtherBecky*

          I’m in higher ed, and I’ve been seeing a drastic uptick in unpleasant interactions with parents as well as with students. So many of them are CONVINCED they know better than we do about virtually everything and especially about pedagogy.

          Fall semester of 2021, we went back to having all the lectures for our large intro class in person. Because we record classes and make those recordings available to the students, attendance has always declined at a predictable rate, and that happened that semester too.

          Spring semester 2022, there was an uptick in Covid cases, the number of students enrolled was at the fire-marshall-imposed limit for our assigned classroom, and our lecturers had high-risk family members, so we moved lectures back online. Attendance declined at the exact same rate it always does, but we heard from SO MANY students and parents that the decline was 100% due to classes being online. The level of indignation and incivility in the emails and phone calls we got was really distressing. It left me feeling awful for people in jobs where the client/customer has more power than they do, because if people were being this rude and demanding to the folks who determined their grade in a required class, how must they be treating cashiers?

          1. OtherBecky*

            (To clarify: we would NEVER retaliate against a rude student by decreasing their grade, but it’s still a relationship where we’re the ones with more power, and that didn’t seem to matter to them.)

          2. Aggresuko*

            Another fun thing about working at a college: getting a stalker. People will harass the bejeezus out of you until they get what they want.

        4. I dropped the internet on the floor*

          I agree. I think the pandemic closures (and openings and closures) probably accelerated what was already happening – the deprofessionalization of K-12 teaching – coupling it with a kind of creeping economic thinking that seems to affect how we now think of education. Not that teachers aren’t professionals, or don’t require lengthy education, training, and continuing ed, or that they don’t need to be certified – I know all of that is necessary. But teaching as a profession has been so devalued at least over the last decade, by local school boards and state legislators and folks at the federal level, all of whom want to improve schools but repeatedly fail to ask THE VERY PROFESSIONALS trained to understand it, what they need and want, in order to provide for their students’ success.

          Those repeated interventions, along with the constant reminders that the educational system in the US lagged behind other developed countries, including some of our geopolitical adversaries, also trained all of us, the public, to think about US education as something we needed – and were all entitled – to have opinions about. I am not saying some of the innovations that resulted weren’t helpful, nor that the intent behind mass testing and No Child Left Behind wasn’t noble and right, but the implementation and the fallout from those attempts at school reform have in some instances been fairly disastrous or resulted in a culture of policing teachers and students in a way that made me, as a student teacher, recoil from ever standing before another high school classroom. (I have since (and prior to that experience) only taught college students.)

          But the devaluation of teaching intersected during the pandemic with a subtle but growing market logic affecting the roles of teachers. It is right, of course, to be concerned for the well-being of students and their parents, but it alarmed me that there seemed much less concern for teachers and staff and their concerns. Most of the depictions of teachers and staff with, to me, reasonable questions about safety and health, conveyed those worries less than sympathetically. School systems that simply required teachers to show up, whether they felt safe doing so or not, seemed to be following this thinking. It goes like this: teachers are required to provide a child with the agreed-upon product or service (for many, an education; for some, the education might matter less than the GPA). And when the product cannot be delivered, complaints will be directed at the teacher, at the school, at the principal, at members of the school board, or others. If an online vendor fails to deliver my gardening tools on time, I might leave a scathing product or customer review. (Honestly, I probably wouldn’t, but I might.) Listening to the ways in which teachers have been pummeled in public over the last two years, their concerns about whether work would expose them to a potentially fatal disease often painted as an individual recalcitrance and not a legitimate workplace issue, some of the worst complaints have sounded like one-star reviews for the product Education, in much the same way I might review a vendor’s failure to deliver a product. I imagine many of the complaints teachers and staff are getting in person are perhaps due to this shift in how we think about the vocation.

          1. 1LFTW*

            Listening to the ways in which teachers have been pummeled in public over the last two years, their concerns about whether work would expose them to a potentially fatal disease often painted as an individual recalcitrance and not a legitimate workplace issue, some of the worst complaints have sounded like one-star reviews for the product Education

            The number of people in my area who complained about the teachers’ union “not wanting to work” because they didn’t want to return to classrooms where the windows didn’t open was horrifying. You’re totally right; teaching has been de-professionalized over the course of the last few decades, with parents re-cast in the role of “consumers” who are “purchasing” a certain level of test results for their children. Teachers have been remade into the “vendors” of these test results (or GPAs, or college acceptances, or whatever the commodity) who are getting one-star reviews on Amazon. If teachers want better reviews, I guess they’re supposed to lower their “prices” and deliver more commodities while working longer, harder hours with fewer breaks, I guess… just like Amazon warehouse workers.

            1. singularity*

              And the loudest complaints of all typically come from people who would never tolerate the same working conditions for *themselves.*

      2. Hlao-roo*

        It makes sense to me that students are acting two grade levels behind socially. I think your peer pressure explanation is spot on. Kids who are in third grade this year haven’t had “normal” school where they see their peers every day since they were in first grade, so they are lacking ~2 years worth of peer pressure to act their age.

        1. Princess Xena*

          I don’t think it’s just peer pressure – it’s also that they’re lacking ~2 years of normal social interaction. No clubs, no sports, fewer or no playdates with friends, libraries closed, restaurants limited, churches limited, school moved online – every place where a child would normally learn social interactions has been closed, limited, or restricted. Younger kids in particular have never gotten any experience in how they should act in public spaces.

          1. the_scientist*

            Indeed. My seventeen month-old has lived his entire life in “pandemic mode” and has been utterly deprived of many of the normal social interactions he would have had while I was on parental leave that would start to teach him how to behave out in the big, wide world. He’s never been to a story time at the library, or to a play group, for example. We’ve never taken him to a restaurant. He’s unaccustomed to large social gatherings and interacting with a number of people at once. Obviously there’s a limit to what you can reasonably expect from a young toddler in terms of public behaviour, but I think when you start taking kids to things when they’re young, they learn both from experience and by watching their peers, and in our case we’re sort of starting from scratch at nearly 1.5 years old.

            1. Princess Xena*

              I have several friends who are a little older than I am and have 1-3 year olds and they’re reporting similar things. I’ve noticed their kids are super clingy, do not handle stimulus well, and struggle with social behavior. They are all doing their absolute best and I’ve also been able to see things improve for them but my heart goes out to them and all the parents that have to figure out how to socialize small children when there’s not a lot of places where they can.

      3. Scarlet Magnolias*

        I work in a library and went into the elementary school in March to portray Molly Brown from the Titanic for Women’s History Month. Haven’t done it in 2 years and always enjoyed it. Visited 4 classrooms and made my speech. At the last class a second grader stood up and screamed “You’re old and fat!” at me. “And you are very rude” I replied. So yes on all counts that people are not all behaving well.

    2. This is a name, I guess*

      My sister got Google Certified coincidentally right before the pandemic. Even having to troubleshoot at the curriculum delivery issues for her coworkers and teaching students with chaotic home lives (limited internet, sharing one device with multiple siblings, no privacy in multigenerational houses) remotely in 19-20 and 20-21, she says 21-22 has been the absolute worst year she’s ever taught in 11 years.

    3. Y'all Come Back Now, Ya Hear?*

      Consistent, constant disrespectful behavior from students is definitely on the rise. It’s exhausting and really hard to deal with. And the parent emails and comments on district Facebook posts are exhausting. But you’re right – their school experience has been trashed for the last couple of years.

      I’ve though about getting out. But then we have a great day and I realize why I’ve stayed in teaching for a decade. I’m applying to places for corporate jobs but I just don’t know. I’m tired of getting disrespected, getting yelled at, and being called awful names for asking a kid to put up their phone or to stop filming their classmates.

      1. Clorinda*

        High school teacher here: my juniors are on odd mix of “I’m almost grown and you can’t tell me what to do” and “I’m still basically a ninth-grader, help me”–usually the same student at the same time. Even though we’ve been back in school five days a week since December 2021, it’s like they are frozen in place in March 2020, and I’m really struggling with how to help them.

        1. Princess Clutter*

          Parent of 3 teens here, and my two in high school have definitely expressed this feeling of being behind 2 years in growth. For the little kids who have never experienced a normal school year, it’s hard. It is equally odd for students in their final high school years to feel like they are really having those growth experiences. I also work in higher ed, and our most recent crop of first year students were struggling to a level not previously seen.
          The number of high school students I’m seeing that are planning a gap year, or university students taking a break from studies feels much higher than it had been previously

        2. Annie*

          Yep, 25+ year high school here. The students are needier than ever, and my tenth graders act like eighth graders, and I’m scrambling to figure out how to help them while feeling exhausted and without tons of coping mechanisms myself, while administrators insist on clinging to old schedules and tons of pointless meetings and procedures. I also think there’s a lot of delusion that somehow in September everything will be “back to normal,” as if we won’t be playing catch-up for years to come (and is if the trauma is magically over).

    4. anonymous73*

      Kids who have no respect for authority have parents who exhibit the same behavior and since there are no consequences enforced, there’s little you can do to fix it. My kid is in his HS marching band, and they play at football games on Friday nights. The parents wait in the school lobby after the game for them to be dismissed, and we are the only ones allowed to be in the school building at that time. After one game this past fall, some students were banging on the door to let them in to charge their phone. When we told them no, they started banging on the door so hard I thought they would break it while screaming obscenities at us. Thankfully another parent had the principal’s number and we knew he was around so we called him to handle it. And the mouthiest one was mouthing off to him too. It’s sad, and I can’t even imagine what teachers have to put up with on a daily basis.

    5. singularity*

      Yep, I teach high school and everyone is on a short fuse. Students are either blatantly disrespectful and rude to their classmates, teachers and other staff, or they just ignore you completely as you they don’t care at all about anything. So many of my colleagues this year are quitting, and quite a few of them are leaving the profession altogether. The combination of added job duties and expectations, chronic discipline problems not being handled, having to give up conference/planning time to cover other teachers who are out due to staffing/substitute shortages, lack of community and parent support, have all converged to create a perfect storm of terrible behavior that’s caused a lot of new and veteran teachers alike to throw in the towel.

    6. Middle School Managment*

      Fellow teacher here, and it is spot on. Students seem to vacillate between apathy and angry at the drop of a hat. Every single correction, whether from an adult or a peer, is seen as a personal attack, and their immediate defensive mechanism is to go on the attack. Emotionally, kids are closer to 3 and 4 years behind “normal” than the 2 years we have lost thus far. Similarly, parent attacks are on the rise, too. We seem to have gone from signs in teachers yards, lauding them as heroes, to every single interaction being hostile. I can’t even call a parent for a proactive behavior chat because I get challenged and blamed for every little thing. Overall, it is exhausting, and it is going to lead to a huge teacher shortage way sooner than I think school districts are anticipating.

      1. Alison M*

        The counselor at my son’s school described it as being like “having a school full of kids on the autism spectrum”, which is probably not the most tactful way to put it, but she is completely besieged with kids who were doing very well socially before and now are struggling with emotional regulation and social interaction.

        My son’s paraprofessional and special ed teachers are so burned out, though, that they’re taking it out on him the last couple months, and I’m starting to lose my sympathy. They’ve taken to calling any behavior they don’t like “babyish” and telling him he’s “going to be a baby his whole life if he doesn’t grow up”. And this is for behaviors that are expected and have management plans detailed in his IEP. He’s gone from loving being back in person the first semester to begging every day not to go to school since “he can never be good enough for Mrs X”. After fruitless meetings with his special Ed teacher and IEP team, I have elevated it to the principal with a meeting on Monday.

        So, yeah, teachers are burned out, and I support anything we can do to help out, always voting for property tax increases or school bonds, making careful choices in my school board votes, and supporting pay raises and volunteering in any way needed. But it breaks my heart to see my little guy cry because some 40-year-old staffer took her temper out on an 11-year-old who couldn’t fight back.

        1. fleapot*

          I’d say that “having a school full of kids on the autism spectrum” isn’t just a tactless comment; it’s totally unacceptable. It frames autistic children as a burden, and demonstrates an understanding of struggles with emotional regulation and social interaction as pathology, not as a part of *all* childhood development. This counsellor has managed, simultaneously, to stigmatize neurodivergent children while trivializing their disabilities.

          As an autistic adult, your first paragraph made me intensely concerned for neurodivergent kids at your son’s school. The second paragraph made it clear to me that mistreatment is happening.

          I can tell that you’re advocating for him (more than anyone advocated for me at 11!), and that you know that this situation is unacceptable. But please understand that his teachers aren’t just burned out and taking their stress out on him in a general way. There is no way that these people were not ableist before the pandemic. If I had to guess, I’d bet that they used to pull off an act along the lines of “I love helping these special angels!”. Scratch the surface, and the attitude underneath that act is intensely ableist—authoritarian, dehumanizing, othering, and (again) trivializing. Under a bit more strain, it’s harder to perform that kindhearted helper role, and the authoritarian becomes more apparent. The “special angel” is now infuriatingly “babyish,” and the teacher demands that they “grow up”—which is code for “obey me, because it’s my job to make you normal.”

          This situation makes me think of the recent letter from a PA who was in an abusive situation with her boss/CEO. Alison advised her to get out immediately. Many readers rightly expressed concern for her safety—especially commenters who’d experienced abuse and could *feel* the danger.

          With my own experiences as an autistic person, I feel the danger here. The stuff your hear about—and that breaks your heart—is the tip you should of the iceberg. Your son is not safe. If it’s at all possible, you need to get him out of there.

          1. Alison M*

            Thank you so much for the reply! Your perspective is extremely valuable to me as a spouse and parent of people with autism (and someone who has many of the same traits myself). I will say things have been excellent until the last two years, when almost the entire support and special Ed staff rolled over.

            In the past, we had no trouble setting up excellent IEP strategies and getting them followed — he had made enormous progress prior to the pandemic. Next year, he will be moving on to the middle school for 6th grade, and I have already discussed the transition planning with the excellent staff there who also supported my daughter during her middle school tenure. We are really hoping he will have a similarly good experience there.

            I don’t really have the option to pull him out right now, but I will be taking this issue as far as it has to go. Your comments added some urgency to my mission, so thank you! I think I will try to loop in the middle school special ed team to what’s going on to see if they can provide some kick in the pants, as well!

          2. a good mouse*

            “This situation makes me think of the recent letter from a PA who was in an abusive situation with her boss/CEO. Alison advised her to get out immediately. Many readers rightly expressed concern for her safety—especially commenters who’d experienced abuse and could *feel* the danger.”

            Do you have a link to that story? I missed it and couldn’t find it looking back through the recent archive.

    7. Not Tom, Just Petty*

      Quarantine blurred boundaries across the board. Work, home, school, parent, child went from overlapping circles to one big blob.
      Parents working and monitoring school. Kids doing school work and living kid lives. All in the same place and time. Seems like it should defy the laws of physics – instead, it just destroyed the rules of behavior.
      Kid is frustrated school, complains. Parent is frustrated with work, kid and school. Complains, too. Slowly, the kid’s perception changes:
      Parent talks about school and teachers like this, therefore I can, too.

    8. Siege*

      I work for a teacher’s union. Labor can be much blunter and ruder than other industries, but there’s a shocking rise in violence in the classrooms from students. We have a couple members who’ve received permanent injuries. Since they work in programs with at-risk youth it’s not the biggest surprise, but I kind of wonder how much of it is caused by parents being ruder and worse-behaved where kids can see or feel it.

    9. Just Your Everyday Crone*

      I feel for teachers now (and for the past few years). I wonder if any of the disrespect is attributable or encouraged by disrespect at the government level? My state set up a “hotline” to report teachers for …anything you don’t like? “Divisive” content etc. Other states are sort of waging war on teachers, too, it seems.

    10. Dobby is a Free Elf!*

      It’s not better as the parent of a kid who is *genuinely trying* to do his best and who is, as far as I know, not incredibly rude in the classroom. I’ve heard over and over this year “fourth grade is just hard.” No…no, it’s not this kind of hard. These kids are…rough. They’re disrespectful. My kid has been bullied all year, in part, I think, because he actually likes to learn and finds it frustrating that so many of his peers just…straight up refuse to work, or want to copy off of him, or spend their days doing things like cracking other people’s passwords so that they can screw up their online platform scores. I don’t think they’re all like that, but there’s a very vocal bunch. I do not envy his teachers.

      1. HigherEdAdminista*

        This is true too! We saw this even at the college level. Students privately spoke to professors to say actually they found the class to be a good class or appropriately challenging, but that they were afraid to speak up because their classmates would ostracize them.

    11. A+Teacher*

      The expectation of taking work whenever students feel like turning it in– like weeks or months later and students and parents upset when told “no.” Parents upset their kids aren’t getting the grades they should be getting: work is done IN class, I don’t expect homework, I also build in extension for all students to turn it in without a late penalty. Students that expect me to take the missing code off their work because they don’t want parents mad at them. Countless excuses or justifications for late work or no work turned in. Escalation in behavior when you ask someone to stop doing x or y. It has been a hard year.

      High school teacher and adjunct at a junior college

    12. Math Counts*

      I’m a teacher in a prison system. I don’t have problems of entitlement. I have strict boundaries & rules for behavior with strong consequences if they aren’t followed.

      I don’t have the problems the teachers in the public schools have AT ALL!

      Teaching here is GREAT!! Much better than anywhere else. 8 hours a day & you are done! No homework!!

      Hey! Come join me “inside the fence”!! Seriously, it is much nicer here!

      1. learnedthehardway*

        I think you’re on to something there – it’s a lack of consequences that fosters bad behaviour. Put in consequences, and suddenly people start behaving a whole lot better.

        1. J*

          I would absolutely agree with this! Since the beginning of the pandemic we’ve been “giving the students grace” and cutting them slack everywhere – behavior, classroom expectations, late work. It’s not doing the students any favors, and now we’re dealing with overwhelming behavior issues and apathy around schoolwork. Students know that there are no consequences. My high school is doing “Summer School Now” where students can complete grade recovery before the school year has even ended. They slack off for the whole first semester then complete a packet to bring their grade up to passing. It’s ridiculous.

    13. Unkempt Flatware*

      What about the teachers? Are they taking it out on kids too? I come from a time and place where teachers treated us like livestock. Yelling, pushing, controlling. I always think about how I would react to my old teachers if I were a kid in this pandemic with them.

    14. J*

      YES. I’m a high school teacher and the attitude, apathy, and disrespect this year are crazy. At my school it doesn’t help that our administrators either can’t or won’t support us the way that we need to curb this behavior. There are so many teachers with one foot out the door. We even have a teacher on leave pending an investigation because he was pushed too far and his reaction was inappropriate. This is a veteran teacher who has plenty of behavior-management tools in his toolbox, but we are all feeling a bit powerless in our own classrooms.

      1. Elf*

        Yeah, the administrators not having your back is the worst part. My high school has a terrible problem with students not bothering to get to class on time. I was recently in the hallway about 5-10 minutes into my prep period and came across a small group of students standing in the hallway having a conversation, having not yet gone to class, and when I said “You’d better get to class” I got “You’d better mind your business” back – and there was nothing I could do about it. No administrator in my building is going to back me up on something as straightforward as telling the kids to go to class. Next time I probably won’t say anything, because you shouldn’t start something you can’t finish.

        1. Math Counts*

          Which is why I no longer teach in the public schools. Admin doesn’t have your back & a good portion of the students don’t pay attention to rules. I tried and tried, but admin did nothing except blame me and the other teachers. I got out 10+ years ago. I teach in a prison & it is so much better. The need is great and the students deserve an education & are willing to work hard at it. If they don’t, I can’t worry. They lose privileges and opportunities. The ones that study & work hard… they don’t come back.

        2. J*

          It’s so sad because my admin absolutely had our backs when I started here 3 years ago. Idk what happened to change that part of the equation. But there’s so much that i ignore now because nobody else will care, so why should I? I had a student who skipped my class (and most of his others?) For 4 straight weeks. I kept writing him up, but there were 0 consequences. Now hes back in class and his case manager is telling me she’s going to help him get his work done from the time he missed. And I’m just supposed to accept it? It’s BS.

    15. HS Teacher*

      I’m a high school teacher and haven’t noticed any worse behavior from my students (although some colleagues have had more issues this year than in the past.) However, the parents are nuts right now. They either completely ignore calls and emails or they’re the extreme opposite with no regard for my time or personal life. I don’t work 24 hours a day, but I think remote learning and how accessible many of us were during it has spoiled them.

      I’m using out of office replies when I’m on PTO, which is something I’ve never felt the need to do before. In the past, I think the attitude was that people will get back to you when they can. Now, the attitude is that everyone wants a response immediately, and if you don’t respond you’re not doing your job. I’m passive-aggressive, so rude, demanding people go back to the bottom of my pile. I don’t need to aggravation.

  6. Eeyore's Missing Tail*

    I’m in higher ed and almost exclusively work with current graduate students and applicants to our graduate programs. I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of applicants and students getting upset with decisions that they don’t like. It’s ranged from applicants upset that we require the GRE or can’t give them a TOEFL waiver to current students upset that not all classes hand out A’s just for showing up.

    1. anon e mouse*

      I’m now ac-adjacent rather than in higher ed proper, but I still have a lot of academic friends and acquaintances, and oh man have I seen a lot of “worst year of my career” posts and tweets lately. I think it was Paul Musgrave who recently hypothesized on Twitter that essentially student relationships have historically been non-monetary compensation for underpaid faculty, and those relationships are on average bad right now, so lots of academics are feeling bad about their careers.

      1. This is a name, I guess*

        I also think the pandemic laid bare the full authority that the ascendant high-level administrator class has at the university, to the detriment of faculty, students, and lower-level admin. Students don’t understand this relationship, so my guess is they take out their frustration on faculty and not the greedy trustees and 2353425 Deans and major individual and corporate donors and (in some cases) state legislators, who have essentially financialized higher ed and who have made financial decisions/investments that were dependent on in-person instruction and student loan dollars. Therefore, you see universities make decisions about Covid that don’t align with students’ best interests, faculty’s best interests, or the community’s best interest. They were more aligned with university’s financial interest.

        All of this was already there, but the pandemic made it more obvious.

        1. Ally McBeal*

          Yep. I worked in higher ed when the pandemic hit, and I was dismayed at how many institutions prioritized their finances over everything else. I am firmly in the camp of “if there was ever a time to dip into the endowment fund, a global pandemic is it” – particularly for the universities with huge endowments, which was not the case at my institution – and no one will ever change my mind on that. Students were already fed up with administrations to begin with, and experiencing the hypocrisy first-hand made it so much worse.

          1. hs*

            As an adult in my 30s who has gone back to school during the pandemic (and also works), I will say that I have only a single instructor who has mentioned that a pandemic is happening, and absolutely zero of my instructors have taken into account the massive amount of stress students have been under for the past several years in terms of course design. Which is also because my instructors are overworked and underpaid! I think there is a bigger systemic issue where we are all continuing on as normal while mass COVID death continues to occur. We might all have more capacity for empathy if there were any allowance for grief or reprieve.

            1. This+is+a+name,+I+guess*

              I mean, I’m in the exact same position as you and all of my college instructors have been incredibly compassionate about the pandemic’s realities. So, I’m guessing it’s really dependent on the institution.

          2. This+is+a+name,+I+guess*

            That’s because their endowments are financialized. It’s not a huge savings account. It’s an investment fund that’s highly restricted, thanks to donor-centric fundraising practices and thanks to the financial regulations. Universities are essentially operating their endowments like investment funds. And, many of the people running the financials on endowments are actually former finance execs who received golden parachutes during the 2008 Recession. Go look at senior leadership at many large universities. It’s all business school people and bankers. My university lauded itself for hiring a female president, but she’s still a business school shill. Her being a woman doesn’t make it any better.

      2. Cece*

        Worst year of my career (in higher ed, non-US), partly because we’ve been going flat-out without a break for two years now, in an already-crumbling sector. Staff have left after the first hard year and aren’t replaced due to financial strains and hiring freezes; some students enjoy being back on campus and others think of lectures/seminars as optional and then get frustrated when they don’t do well on assignments. Masks not mandatory so only a few of us comply, meaning negotiating the risk of daily interaction falls on our own decision-making.

        And yeah, I thought teaching to a bunch of camera-off students on Zoom was alienating. That was until I had a semester of 30% classroom attendance at best, but never the same 30% so there’s no way to build community or cohesion in a class week-on-week.

        1. Squirrel Nutkin*

          Yeah, the lateness and attendance issues are off the charts this year, especially for first-year students. They’re just not going to learn as much as students during previous years.

    2. rural academic*

      Also in higher ed, and I have heard of way more parental complaints this year than in previous years. The students I’ve encountered have generally been polite enough (though I’ve heard some much less pleasant stories from colleagues), but I’ve definitely seen more stories of parents going to the administration with grade complaints, etc.

    3. Medievalist*

      I’m in higher ed as faculty and running a department, and have seen both increased hostility and increased grace across our campus. Colleagues have gotten increased grade complaints from belligerent parents, usually citing the pandemic as grounds for appeal (even when the case in question was usually thoroughly documented as having no pandemic connection, and simply an outright violation of the academic code). Faculty complain loudly about students’ distraction and atrophied skills, and staff complain about faculty missing internal administrative deadlines. Offices around campus are short-staffed, and more mistakes are happening in the administrative work that have major consequences for faculty and students, and fray tempers and trust further. Everyone needs more help, and there’s less help available… so anger, snapping, and complaining are all growing. There’s a disconnect between what we expect from one another and what we are capable (both mentally and physically) of giving one another right now.

      But I have also seen some wonderful moments of grace. I have seen colleagues step up to offer independent studies, unpaid, to get students to graduation after the pandemic disrupted their planned paths of study, and administrators support students impacted by war/displacement. I have seen administrators get extremely creative to find ways to begin hiring more faculty and staff again, to relieve some of the burdens. I’ve appreciated the offering of free meals to ease workday stress, and public recognition of student/staff/faculty work on behalf of the campus community. These moments don’t necessarily offset the general mood of exhaustion and frustration, but it’s a glimmer of hope.

      1. After+33+years+...*

        +1000
        Thank you for reminding me about seeing the positives, along with the problems!

    4. Monty*

      As a graduate student and TA, this year has been pretty tough.

      I’ve noticed that first-year students this year have had generally worse writing skills than other first year cohorts I’ve taught (obviously because education has been so scattershot the last 2 years). This means the class does poorly compared to prior years, leading to backlash from both my students and professors/admin who want to know why I’m being so hard on them. The reality is that I try as hard as I can to have grace with my students and to offer thorough feedback and support on their assignments.

      At all levels of instruction, we are noticing that students are angrier, more ready to lash out, and much more willing to call into question the instructor’s qualifications when confronted with adversity. I have had students grill me about my qualifications and then complain to the prof that I shouldn’t be allowed to grade their work as I have not earned a PhD yet. It feels like there’s a constant urge to escalate situations towards conflict and admin involvement, even over something as small as a B instead of a B+.

      One of the other things that teaching staff at my university have noticed is that there’s been a huge uptick in no-shows, where students will book a zoom meeting and then not turn up at all. We think it might be that zoom feels so ephemeral that it doesn’t carry the same weight as standing up a ‘real’ person. This factors into the problem with writing/grading because it’s hard to provide support to someone who doesn’t turn up to the meeting. It’s also hard to make someone feel like I’m listening via email.

      1. F.M.*

        Another grad student and instructor to an intro class here, and it’s been…odd. Last year, when I was TAing/grading for lecture courses, I had a small number of students who were excited about the material, and a lot who were there to get a gen ed ticky box ticked, and didn’t care beyond that. Lots of people not showing up to class, blatantly cheating, et cetera.

        But as an instructor? My students are largely great, and if anything, the main change I’ve noticed from previous instruction years is just how stressed they all are. Half of the discussion of grading with my supervisor and colleague this year was about how to reduce student anxiety, because the students seem so overwhelmed, and they’re dealing with a lot. Lots of ‘drop the lowest grade’ stuff in categories, being flexible about due dates, that kind of thing.

        So on my side? I have my own pandemic stress to deal with, but my students have all been great. I do worry for them, though. They spend so much time apologizing every time they miss class or need an extension on an assignment–even if they have a documented accommodation that should make it automatically no problem!–or, heck, even for coming in a few minutes late. I’m not sure why I’ve been so lucky, compared to others here. But in general my students have all been great, and I just feel so bad for whatever else is going on that makes them uncertain and anxious and stressed. Especially when they’re so apologetic about asking for things I’m more than happy to give them. A few days of extension on an assignment, excused absences… It’s all fine. But they’re clearly very worried.

        I do know from some fellow grad students that there are professors who are really grouchy about documented accommodation requests (despite all the hoop-jumping and paperwork and work required to get the darn things), or missing class for issues like “I actually have covid and am laid up with a fever,” but they’re ones outside my department. Maybe I am just really lucky, both with my advisors & profs on the one side, and students on the other.

  7. Justin*

    At my recently-ended job, I wasn’t in a purely-public role, so I can’t speak to rudeness, but there was a whole lot of nastiness and low morale among colleagues and clients. Mostly I assume people are stressed but management wasn’t good about supporting folks’ needs so it spilled over.

    And so I left.

    1. Hawk*

      Seconding this. We’ve had more union drama in the past six months than we’ve had in the 7 years I’ve worked in my job. It’s like the people I’m working with never worked in customer service before, and some of them started with me or before me!

    2. Wolf*

      Good point about the management. Some still haven’t realized that they need workers, and they still act like the workers depend on them.

  8. OrganizedChaos*

    I work in an office setting and I have noticed a recent sharp difference in the attitudes of those staff who do not have children/families having to pick up more slack for those that do. It is like there is a lack of empathy or understanding. I am also seeing some of those with children/families displaying more of a sense/attitude of entitlement, automatically expecting that others would “naturally” pick up the slack. Its a balancing act. A sad one that both parties can’t/won’t realize that everyone needs to work together.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      It’s been two years and counting of picking up slack. We’re exhausted, too. That it’s for a good cause doesn’t mean it’s not extra work and no end in sight.

      I’m not saying parents aren’t suffering, but they’re not the only ones and the fact that people without kids don’t have kids doesn’t mean they have endless capacity to make up the difference.

      1. Frankie Bergstein*

        Agree. The entitlement is real. I’m not saying parents act entitled – not at all – I’m saying that entitled people use their kids as justification.

        1. Lab Boss*

          Good distinction. Entitled people will always find a way to justify their entitlement- and when they have kids, they’ve got a legitimately strong justification that it’s almost impossible to reject without doing more harm to the non-entitled parents.

    3. Bagpuss*

      I think that this has been a bit of point of tension for a long time – not by any means everyone in either group, but I think there has always been a sub-set of parents who do expect those without to work round them, and others who don’t demand it but do start to take it for granted when it happens, and I would say that this has been made worse by the added demands on the time of people with children when the schools were closed , and the knock on effect on the people without, so it’s burnout on top of existing patterns and feelings of resentment.

      1. mp*

        I would frame it differently… I would say that children have become the only “acceptable” reason to advocate for your own work life balance… so parents use it (maybe on occasion too liberally) but there is no equivalent for the childless that doesn’t come with some blowback (maybe MAYBE some charity commitments)

    4. anonymous73*

      The bigger problem isn’t so much with each side having empathy for the other, but the company being supportive on both sides. If a company is willing to support parents by piling on the non-parents then it’s going to create a lot of resentment.

      1. EarlGrey*

        Exactly – as a kidless person I don’t get the sense that my parent colleagues feel entitled to my time, i get the sense that the *company* feels entitled to my time more so than theirs.

        1. A Feast of Fools*

          Yep, this is mostly an issue with the companies, not the parents.

          In my 20’s thru my 40’s, I seriously contemplated making up children with each new job I took, just so I could get company-sanctioned, company-paid-for time off to take care of my “kids”.

          Now my elderly mother and disabled brother live with me. I’d honestly prefer to not disclose that at work but when I don’t lie about having children, the companies I’ve worked for since they moved in with me start encroaching on my time to pick up parental slack.

          It’s dumb that I have to have “acceptable” family responsibilities to not be expected to take on other people’s work.

      2. n.m.*

        So much agreement. The burden to accommodate parents should be on the parents supervisors, not the parents coworkers.

    5. Really?*

      Im so done picking up slack because “i dont have a family.” I may not have children but I still have parents and a spouse. People with kids who weaponize having kids as a get out of jail free card have really worked my last nerve. I dont care if McKayden or Braylon has sports and you need to leave early. Im not working until 7 to pick up your pieces every night.

      1. thisgirlhere*

        I think this is a huge part of it. I was caring for a dying relative during the pandemic but everyone assumed I couldn’t possibly have anything to do because I didn’t have kids. And as soon as I mentioned other responsibilities, it became about one upping. Lots of people tried to prove that it couldn’t possibly be as hard as they had it (not just parents).

    6. Dobby is a Free Elf!*

      Honestly, I think this is a systemic problem that needs to be addressed by the organization(s) as a whole. Yes, non-parents are freaking tired. It’s been a hard couple of years, everyone is stressed, and I think a lot of them picked up a lot of slack in the early days of the pandemic, when we brought our kids home with no childcare options and no idea what we were doing next.

      Parents are tired. Not only are we dealing with the same pandemic-era stress–and little reprieve, no time to sort ourselves out–but now, all of the activities that we weren’t doing are suddenly opening back up again. Sports are back on. Activities are back on. And we’re feeling the pressure to get our kids back involved even when we’re already struggling to keep up. On the same note, we know our kids can still end up at home for a minimum of five days and up to two weeks or more without warning. Mine are vaxxed, and literally within weeks after it should have taken full effect, they both caught Covid. Luckily, my husband (who also caught it) and I both work from home.

      Organizations need to acknowledge that. I am sick of organizations posting record profits and then insisting that they can’t increase staffing to account for their actual needs–including these needs that “someone has to pick up the slack” for. I know there are industries where overtime is kind of the norm, and I know there are things that come up, but if things are coming up every couple of weeks or more…it’s time and past to hire someone else to help take on some of the load.

    7. Nanani*

      Well, they don’t though, now do they? -Management- needs to actually manage and staff appropriately so that no one is pressured to take on extra. Pitting workers against each other over a demographic difference like parent/non-parent is a diversion from the real problem, that being the higher ups picking barebones staffing and inadequate cross-training in the first place.

      Understanding is nice but it’s not the real problem.

    8. Turingtested*

      I’ve noticed that some people use their kids as a frequent excuse and it gets old. I worked with two parents in the past. One could never work as scheduled due to issue after issue with her child, her house, her parents. (None health related or personally disastrous, always like the plumber is coming over, my childcare is unreliable, etc.) She never sought back up baby sitters etc. The other parent was careful about scheduling PTO as needed and had rock solid child care and never used her kid as an excuse.

      It was very hard to have sympathy for the first person. I got the impression she was disorganized and expected everyone else to deal with it.

      I was taught that if something happens more than every 90 days it’s not an emergency it’s a part of life you need to anticipate and plan for.

    9. NewPuppyMom*

      Yeah, I mean, it has been two years of picking up the slack. We’re tired. I don’t think I lack empathy or understanding, I just…don’t have anything to give anymore.

      I got to work early last week and realized I’m the only one who actually works 8 hour days. My coworker who told my boss she works 8 to 4 rolled in at 8:45. My other coworker usually works 10 to 3:30. We all get paid for 40 hours. We’re paid hourly.

      I just got a new puppy, and now I’m also getting there later and leaving earlier, as well as actually taking my full lunch break to go take care of the puppy. I’m usually the one to pick up the slack, and it’s probably going to cause a problem some day when I actually can’t just skip lunch to do someone else’s work because I have to go take care of my puppy.

  9. Wisco teacher*

    I’m in k-12 public education and holy cow, there are a lot of parents and community members out there who now see us as the enemy. Add simmering tension between pro-mask and anti-mask staff and the general burnout in our profession and it’s rough right now

    1. Hollywood Handshake*

      Also in K-12 Ed. We had the most number of parent complaints (including finding our administrators’ personal cell phone numbers and calling them on weekends/vacations, calling federal agencies to get administrators fired for following state mandates they felt I cringed in their freedoms, etc.) than ever. This was also paired with the lowest rate of parent volunteerism and positive engagement with the school. School has changed from a part of the community to the enemy to be fought with. So discouraging. Everyone seems to have lost the ability to see others’ perspectives and show compassion. The isolation of the pandemic paired with surrounding ourselves with media that makes it seem our worldview is the only one and everyone else is wrong must be a large part of the problem.

    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      I am so scared we’re going to lose some of the wonderful teachers to those folks. My kids teachers are certainly hit or miss, but the good ones are excellent and I would hate to chase them out of the teacher profession. I’m the child of a former public school teacher, too. In talking to my kids’ friends’ parents, a lot of us are trying to make sure that teachers know we appreciate what they do, will support them outside the classroom, and expect our kid to behave like civilized human being (to the extent teenagers can) in school. I’ve written a lot of thank-you notes with CCs to the principal and school board district rep as well.

      I also live close to Loudoun Co., Virginia, which has also become the poster-child for anti-“CRT” (NOT PART OF THE CURRICULUM TO START WITH) and their school board is the target of the current governor who won based on the whole parents-should-have-a-say-in-public-schools platform. It’s wild to me that just two counties over, things are so markedly different than my school district where most kid are still voluntarily wearing masks and enjoying being back in the classroom with their friends and having activities.

      1. Insert Clever Name Here*

        Also in Virginia, with a teacher spouse. I think for SURE teachers are going to leave. And my husband’s experience trying to find out about getting certification without an undergrad teaching degree (short story: it’s practically impossible) makes me very concerned there aren’t going to be enough teachers to fill their spots.

      2. Susie Q*

        As a LoCo resident, I’m exhausted by our inept school board. We’ve had school board members make insanely racist remarks along the lines of “slaves should have been grateful”, complete mishandling of on-campus sexual assault of students by a fellow student. The superintendent gave everyone a bonus last year EXCEPT the poor teachers who got a commemorative coin. Then we have a PE teacher funded by a megachurch sue so he doesn’t have to respect students’ pronouns because of freedom of speech and Jesus. Tons of Youngkin supporters middle-aged white moms who have never had formal training in education or curriculum development try to determine curriculum because they don’t understand what CRT is and realize that it’s never been a part any Virginia curriculum. Also masks bad because of freedoms.

        This county is exhausting.

        1. Cat+Lover*

          I’m a LoCo resident as well- I was a student until 2013. Thankfully I don’t have kids so I’m not involved in the school system anymore- but still watching it all unfold is….. quite something.

    3. Isben+Takes+Tea*

      A close friend is at a K-8 private school and while student behavior has been a little escalated, she says there has been a stark increase in the entitlement, rudeness, and antagonism on the part of parents towards teachers and administrators. From the start of the pandemic, there has been an increasing attitude of “You’re not doing your job properly because you’re not doing it the way I think it should be done,” and not just about pandemic-related issues: even down to how they’re arranging chaperones for field trips and modifying the hot lunch schedule!

  10. Lana Kane*

    Healthcare has always had its share of rudeness, and I thought it would abate as the mask mandates lift, but I sometimes think its getting worse. Clinics are having staffing shortages that are extending the amount of time between available appointments, and more patients are verbally abusive to staff when they hear how long waits can be. This is breaking a lot of suport staff. In my opinion, aside from all that is going on in the world, we keep seeing our leaders behaving in appalling ways and facing little to no consequences. I think it emboldens people to vent frustrations that they would have otherwise never thought was acceptable.

    1. Princess Xena*

      I have friends in healthcare and one thing that has made things more challenging (in my specific area at least) is that during the worst of the shutdowns hospitals really limited their elective and nonemergency procedures. Which was a reasonable decision at the time for infectious disease control purposes, but one of the side effects is that my friends have been saying that the patients they get have been much sicker and the staff are stretched much thinnger. And patients have to wait longer, often in pain, which does not make them display their best selves. Not to mention that our local hospitals got called out by the Washington Post as having some of the worst staff policies in the country during the pandemic which has driven away a number of staff which makes everything worse.

      None of this excuses people venting their frustrations on staff. That is entirely unacceptable behavior. But there’s a definite thread of frustration with the system going on now.

    2. Lauren Kennard*

      I’m in healthcare too. I never expected people to be at their best when they come to the hospital, after all, if you need my services, you probably are frightened, or in pain, or feeling so sick that maybe your manners aren’t on point. However, the amount of general rudeness to staff has increased, the entitlement of some patients and their visitors (and honestly the visitors are the WORST) and the level of actual verbal and physical violence has reached an untenable degree. The pandemic certainly accelerated things, but it has been growing for some time. And the worst part is: administrations accept it! Have a punch thrown at you, or a patient claw you with their dirty nails? The response from leadership will be: and what could you have done differently in that situation? The blame gets shifted to the front-line staff rather than the systemic issues which lead to a situation where violence and abuse occurred.
      It is very demoralizing, and has changed the narrative of what I tell people when they say “I want to be a nurse”. I’m no longer bright and encouraging, and I miss the part of me that was passionate about mentoring new and prospective healthcare providers.

      1. HigherEdAdminista*

        Wow. You know, last year I had a procedure that I had to go into the hospital for. I made sure to thank people frequently and to be flexible, and the healthcare workers were so incredibly nice to me. Even the ones who started off guarded, seemed to quickly let down their guard. I assumed this facility must just an excellent employee hiring and training, but thinking now that I might have stood out just for trying to be decent to them makes me really sad. They certainly deserve better.

      2. Burger Bob*

        I feel the same as a pharmacist. I hope to avoid any conversations with people considering pharmacy as a career, because I’m so burnt out by all of this that I just can’t recommend it. I used to love it. I’m still good at it. Now I want to get out as soon as I am financially able to do so. I’m tired of being treated so badly by patients and the company.

    3. the+cat's+ass*

      YES TO THIS. Many of us continued to work through the pandemic and are toast. Abusive behavior to front desk staff results in a revolving door of employees who don’t want to take it any more and who can find other better paying jobs. And we are STILL dealing with the unvaxxed and the unmasked or the unwilling passive aggressive maskers who take the mask off, don’t wear it appropriately etc.

      And I’m not even talking about the driving behavior in the parking lot; WTF is up with THAT?!?

      1. ThatNeuroNurse*

        Yes 1000%. I work in Healthcare and changed hospitals at the start of the pandemic. One of the reasons I left my last hospital was that patients expected a lot of coddling…which I’m less than great at. But a coworker who had been on my new unit for 15 years or so said that patients were getting sicker and coming in with way worse symptoms than before due to the pandemic.

        And now things are getting harder/worse because so many of our staff are leaving for various reasons, mostly work/life balance related ones.

    4. AnonForThis*

      I’m not in healthcare. I have been reduced to tears in a conversation with my doctors receptionist and now have huge anxiety about calling them. I am sure from the receptionists pov I was a rude patient.

      In my case, I tried to book an appointment through an app that I’ve used previously with this doctors, but it was showing no appointments. I then spent some time on the website clicking through various pages, but found nothing on how to book an appointment online. I then phoned up, where before you join the queue you get a long recorded message about how you shouldn’t phone unless you absolutely have to, and how the pandemic has made everything much harder. By this point I’m already thinking ‘ok maybe my migraines aren’t *that* bad and they’re going to think I’m wasting their time’. When the receptionist picked up they said no of course there were no appointments on the app because that wasn’t the system any more (fine, but not sure how I was supposed to know that), and then said ‘yes you can book an appointment on the website, you need to go to x subpage’. I was then basically like ‘ok I couldn’t find it from the homepage but I will look again’ (If I know something is there, I will find it!) and tried to end the call, to which the receptionist was like WAIT LET ME FINISH (clearly annoyed at me) and proceeded to go over in great detail how to click through to the page. I’m sure I was short in what I said but the whole situation of ‘don’t contact us unless absolutely necessary’ had made me feel guilty and panicky before I even started. None of this is intended as an excuse for being rude to healthcare workers. But there’s a lot of anxiety and other mental health problems going on and some of those who come across rude may really not intend that at all.

    5. Kat*

      I got my BSN in 2020 (yikes). I was so, so excited to find this second career for myself and I really believed I had found my calling.

      Fast forward to 2021 and after being abused not just by patients, but by administration at my hospital – I now only work per diem very, very occasionally. My love and joy for nursing is gone. I’m no means the only nurse this is happening to. My hospital is now 75% contract nurses and I fear for the safety of patients. But, administration doesn’t care. They’d rather pay a traveling, contract nurse 4x my salary than increase my wages and benefits to keep me full time.

      I worry for the future of healthcare, but I’m grateful for my first degree and that I don’t have to be a part of it. And when nurses like me, who were passionate and GOOD at their jobs, are feeling this way – we are in trouble as an industry and as a nation.

      1. Kat*

        edit – 2022, not 2021. But I went per diem at the very end of 2021. After beginning to work as a tech in January 2020, it only took about 18 months to fully kill my spirit. Every other nurse I know, and every tech, and most doctors are struggling with burnout, depression, and grief. I’m not unique by any stretch of the imagination.

  11. The Lexus Lawyer*

    I’m a lawyer, so hostility has always been a part of the profession.

    Even though being able to negotiate with opposing counsel is an important skill.

    I do think high maintenance clients have been becoming more de rigueur though..

    1. Ainsley Hayes*

      Also a lawyer and yes, definitely.

      In our jurisdiction, the courts are still backed up. New protocols make it so every county is doing things differently both from one another and from how it was done pre-Covid. Clients are frustrated, lawyers are frustrated. All that frustration leads to rudeness, hostility, and other negative adjectives.

      1. Lorelai*

        This is the case here in Florida. It’s madness. I get the frustration – it makes planning a challenge – but don’t take it out on us. (Also, I heart Ainsley Hayes).

      2. Delta Delta*

        Also a lawyer. I sense a lot of tension between people, generally, lately. I’ve seen a huge uptick in certain kinds of filings. I’ve also seen a lot of abusive language in pleadings that I’m sure is there just to make the writer feel better.

    2. NotAnotherManager!*

      I also work in legal, and I’ve seen a lot more hostility between parties and overall frustration, but the associate (and experienced staff) markets are so tight that the partners can’t afford to take their frustrations out on them or they will walk for substantially more money and filling their positions will be a nightmare. I know we are having a terrible time getting responses from the courts, which frustrates the attorneys – it took me three days to locate a human being to verify someone’s US District court membership and renewal date recently (put that online consistently, US Courts, and it will cut down on calls), and the attorney was fit to be tied at the situation (not us) by the end of it.

      The client tension, in a lot of cases, precedes the pandemic – we were seeing a lot more commoditization, competition, and rejection of the billable hour. In my experience many lawyers struggle to see what they do as a business service instead of a form or art and are struggling with being treated like just another “vendor” or having hard budgets or AFAs.

    3. Bagpuss*

      Also a layer, and I’ve seen more aggressive behaviour from other lawyers. I work in family law where there is a huge emphasis on being able to work collaboratively, negotiate etc . There are some among the lawyers who I deal with on a regulars basis who have never been very good with those skills but I’ve seen more aggressive behaviour from people I normally have a good working relationship with . I don’t know if it s that they are burned out, or that they are being pushed harder and more aggressively by their clients or both.
      we’ve got issues with a change over to a new, mostly online system for certain types of pleadings but they’ve axed a lot of the old facilities before clearing off the backlog of old system cases – I just today got a response from a letter I sent to the court in October, and have had automated response saying they are currently dealing with correspondence received in December , which is ridiculous. I’ve got several cases which are stalled because we can’t proceed without a document from the court which is backed up by 4 months , and of course clients can’t understand why we can’t finalise things …

      (And on a personal level, I’ve definitely had a few moments where I’ve drafted a letter or e-mail and then decided I need to put it to one side and edit in the morning because I’ve let my irritation bleed through too much)

      1. Kotow*

        Also in family law and the increased hostility from both clients and attorneys is definitely noticeable. I think I really started noticing it in the past 8 months or so. A lot more parties are fighting just to fight, it protracts the litigation, then they get mad at their lawyer for charging for the time spent. The lawyers aren’t even doing much to reality-check their clients about what’s reasonable and what isn’t and the number of all caps emails has skyrocketed. It’s almost as though people have forgotten how to interact with each other!

    4. Crater May*

      No idea if this relates to Alison’s question but I was recently a party in a small claims case. The disputed amount was $1800 for a terrible job a handyman did at my house.

      Mine was the last of four cases.

      I was sick to my stomach by the time we got called up front. The first three cases had lawyers for the side with the most money (a veterinarian, a property management company, and the same property management company countersuing).

      All cases boiled down to some simple points (Is it a veterinarian’s duty to catch illnesses in pets that pet owners wouldn’t catch because the owners haven’t been to medical school and the vet has? Is a property management company responsible for a renter’s loss of money when the renter didn’t file a claim with his own insurance company when his apartment flooded?).

      But the attorneys made it personal.

      They made the opposing side out to be willfully malicious and evil.

      The attorney for the veterinarian made the pet owner (an elderly woman with a disabled adult daughter) sob-cry because the attorney accused her of hating her dog since she didn’t take it on daily walks. The woman got *yelled over* when she explained that she lives on an acre and throws tennis balls for her dog’s exercise every day. It was so gross. (“Admit it! You never cared about that dog! Stop saying it was like family to you!! You were happy it died so you wouldn’t have to pay any more veterinary bills, weren’t you?!”)

      The attorney for the handyman did the same thing to me.

      I used to be fascinated by the law and our legal system and now it just sickens me.

      1. Delta Delta*

        The attorneys should not have done that and unless the points were relevant (which they might have been) the judge should have cut that off. While courts can’t help pro se litigants, neither should they tolerate behavior like you described. If you don’t like what happened you can make a professional responsibility complaint.

    5. J*

      I’m a paralegal but also was going to say it’s always been a hostile industry. There was enough of a shift, between the labor market changing, firm layoffs at the beginning of the pandemic, and many other things that I completely shifted roles in the industry once again. It’s better but I definitely am dealing with people who already hated the timelines of the legal system pre-Covid and they cannot understand that things like court backups, limited capacity of outside counsel, and USPTO/IRS issues mean things take longer. I can repeat it 30 times at every step of a project and I will get messages daily to check in on a status that I already told them had a 90-day update window and I’d tell them as soon as I heard something.

  12. Meow*

    I work in IT where our “customers” (if that’s the right word) are other IT people, not the general public. The people I’ve worked with for years seem mostly the same as ever, but there’s a weird trend of new employees coming on at our clients organizations and just being… needlessly rude to us. They break things on their end, immediately put in a ticket for us to fix it – always at high priority of course – and then downright refuse to provide us basic troubleshooting information. It might just be a coincidence, but the timing does seem to coincide with… all that.

    The more disturbing trend is how many times my husband and I have had McDonalds or Starbucks workers tell us we’re the nicest customers they’ve had all day, when we’ve literally just acted like we always have.

    I don’t think there’s any one single cause. I think every person on the planet right now is just being pushed past their stress threshold, and unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who take their stress out on others.

    1. Lab Boss*

      I feel your comment about being called “nice” just for not being rude. More than once over the last year or so I’ve walked out of a restaurant feeling sad, because some poor server or cashier was visibly relieved that I hadn’t thrown a giant tantrum over some minor inconvenience like an item being sold out. I can’t imagine the treatment they’re getting if they’re so happy over so little.

      1. Brihanne le Marre*

        Exactly this! I’ve actually made it a point to be extra kind to anyone in retail, specifically, now. It takes me literally nothing to ask them how they’re doing or have a short conversation with them while they ring up my cat food and it truly hurts me to recognize that may mean I’m one of the only good things about their entire shift.

        Also sad-making: the number of “we will not tolerate abuse of any kind” in medical offices/hospitals. Who the hell are these signs for? What has been going on in these offices? Actually, nevermind. I don’t want to know.

      2. Yes, this*

        Same. And not just service providers like cashiers, colleagues I only work with occasionally profusely thanking me for my kindness, or promptness, or thoroughness when I’m just … doing my job in a pleasant way.

    2. RC+Rascal*

      Same thing is happening to me. I worked as as cashier in high school and gave always had a general habit of being nice to people working with the general public. They are especially grateful these days.

    3. Reboot first, please*

      I work in IT, doing internal support at a small company. In the past, folks usually gave me the benefit of the doubt about any problem they faced. These days I’m much more likely to get an all-caps accusation that I broke something. Everyone demands to be my top priority. One internal client asked why he was designated as VIP in our system, saying he wasn’t needy at all; not a day later, he called me at the crack of dawn to ask for something we don’t give people, then he called our IT vendor and abused the poor tech assigned to the ticket. He got his way by the end of the day and will face no consequences for his bad behavior. I wish this were a rare example of what I experience on a daily basis, but it is not.

      The amount of emotional labor I do has skyrocketed as the number of stressed out coworkers who take it out on me has increased. I’ve been tempted to add “De-escalater and mind-reader extraordinaire” to my resume. I’m exhausted and looking for a way out.

      1. Sarcastic+Fringehead*

        I also work in IT, and my job is so much harder now than it was in 2019. Between supporting hybrid work, MASSIVE employee turnover, and the entitlement our users have toward our time (sure, I’ll sit in this conference room for three hours with no notice because you’re worried there *might* be tech issues in your remote meeting), I’m pretty much done

        1. Reboot first, please*

          I’m chuckling at your example only because I too have been asked to sit in on meetings waiting for something to go wrong because the meeting host is anxious. Then that same host turns around and tells me our company is growing, but I won’t get any help to support all these extra people.

    4. Chai Latte*

      High school teacher here (on a break, so don’t @ me for Ask a Manager on the job)
      Called a ****ing cu** yesterday by a random child in the hallway. The reason? I said, “Our class is taking a final, so can you please hold it down?” and it escalated from there. Administrative response? “Well, that happens.”
      No wonder so many people are quitting. Kid behavior I can deal with; lack of administrative support? Nah.

    6. Shoney Honey*

      My 20-year old works for Starbucks and I am horrified by her customer stories on a daily basis. People literally screaming at college students making $12.50 an hour because they asked for a SPLASH of cream, not LIGHT cream, or something similarly silly. People throw drinks, they call them insulting names. I thought I had bad experiences from my days working customer-facing jobs, but her stories are unreal.

    7. Viva*

      I work at one of the restaurants you mentioned. Omfg. I cannot describe to you the chaos. I stepped down from a management position and now only work 4 days a week because I just could not anymore. Every time the phone rang or someone asked for a manager I just wanted to throw up. The real turning point came over the summer when our store opened for dine-in again. Just pure, unadulterated chaos. Our staffing guidelines are for every hour, you need 1 person for every $50 you do in sales. Our reality was we had 3 people in the building on a Saturday afternoon. It was hell. Things have improved since then, thankfully, and other things in my life have changed too to where I’m hoping I’ll be able to find another job later this year (I needed the flexible schedule for childcare reasons.)

    8. DrRat*

      About the McDonalds/Starbucks thing – I have definitely noticed 1) service people telling me about the most minor problem like they are an animal that expects to be beaten and 2) an almost over-the-top fawning appreciation when I don’t lose my s**t over it. It really drives it home to me how other people are acting.

      Just an example: I placed an order for Korean food online. Main order was something else but I also ordered a salad. Paid online but as I was in the car about to leave, I got a call from them. Caller says in a hesitant, trembling voice that they ran out of salad supplies. Okay, I say, I’ll just pick up the rest of the order. They say they will refund the amount to my credit card, but they explain in a terrified voice that I won’t see the refund for about 3 days. That’s okay, I say, in the voice I would use with a rescue animal, I’m not worried about it.

      When I showed up they were so pathetically grateful that I was cheerful and fine with the whole thing that they insisted on giving me a freebie (HUGE container of pickled radish.) I felt so bad for them because it was clear that most customers were losing their minds over minor stuff like that. I gave them a monster tip.

    9. Burger Bob*

      The thing about being the nicest customer just because you aren’t being rude is very true! I work in retail pharmacy. Some of my favorite customers don’t do anything particularly special. They’re just consistently not rude to us. During the height of omicron, pharmacies were massively backed up and things were terrible. When I posted about it online, some of my sweet friends would ask what they could do to support their pharmacy. I would say, “Honestly, just try to be patient and don’t be mean.” It’s remarkable how refreshing basic politeness can feel these days.

  13. You're on Mute Janet*

    I work in Housing and Residence Life at a university, and this has absolutely been my reality, as well as the reality of so many of my colleagues. Working with young people who so often are living away from home for the first time and building a new set of interpersonal skills has always been challenging and rife with conflict, but it’s been dialed up to 11 the past year especially.

    Students have been in a state of arrested development the past few years, and they missed so many developmental milestones (prom, sports, etc.) that aid in their development. Our students across the board seem to be 2+ years behind maturity-wise. They can’t engage in healthy conflict resolution, they demand problems are solved for them immediately, and they are so quick to jump 20 rungs up the ladder and complain to the president if they experience any friction.

    I like to say now that when our students hit speed bumps, it’s like they’ve crashed into brick walls.

    1. Meghan*

      Agree with this SO MUCH. I work in academia and the students have been so frustrating. I’m trying to approach each situation with empathy, but it can be hard when it seems like every student has problems.

    2. Monty*

      This is very much my experience as a grad student and TA. Students seem to have very few problem-solving skills outside of escalating the issue and asking someone else to fix it. They also seem to think that every small issue is going to set them back enormously (e.g. getting a B on a paper in first year will torpedo their chances of going to law school). I know a lot of them have been unbelievably resilient and selfless over the last few years (and most of them are still an absolute pleasure to teach) but it feels like they’ve also been kind of sheltered. It’s almost like the pandemic has forced us all to cocoon with all our anxieties and worst impulses and now we don’t really know how to override them anymore, especially for those of us just stepping into the “adult world.”

      1. HigherEdAdminista*

        This is another great observation. My colleagues and I are often shocked when students have not tried a single thing to solve a fairly normal problem, and right away escalate the situation. I noticed that before the pandemic, but the pandemic kicked it into hyper drive. Everything feels life or death to them, but they also feel/act like they are completely powerless to change anything.

  14. Claire*

    The Atlantic recently wrote a piece about this: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/03/antisocial-behavior-crime-violence-increase-pandemic/627076/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cr&utm_campaign=The+Atlantic+-+General+Content+Promotion&utm_term=The+Atlantic+-+Why+People+Are+Acting+So+Weird+-+Subscriber+Lookalikes&utm_content=The+Atlantic+-+Why+People+Are+Acting+So+Weird+-+Subscriber+Lookalikes+-+What+on+Earth&fbclid=IwAR3qjrJ-15V7M-XRyH3RLYv7-_65InHPMBP1BzWNuAlZyEsamPCOFgsr_Ls_aem_AZuCZafa-dJmLVez-HfSpFETJTVhhhjuo6DBuM9WVmbed98m6yMtLHelBKUNl9l2zEMN03MUwxSizYnPfjHkqYX9Vt_RyswJNHz0kGC8ghqDtjJcPlrgUsng39hRWkWjCV4

    2. Princess Deviant*

      That was a great read, thanks for posting. I especially found the concept of anomie and what it had to say about mental health really fascinating.

  15. Essentially Cheesy*

    I work at a production facility in the front office. We have no customers in the retail sense – although we do have contractors come in for repair work or new equipment installation. I am not aware of any issues that way.

    However – our (extremely valuable!) production employees are burnt out and are losing patience with each other and with management. Production management is also notably burnt out. This is all fueled by abscenses, staffing shortages, supplies shortages – and among other factors, I’m sure. I have witnessed at least one meltdown and there have been others that get to the point that they just walk out.

    It’s still a very stressful time for a lot of people. And for us – there is no “work from home” option. I’m sure that has only added to the stress.

    1. Paris Geller*

      I don’t see how not wanting to tolerate verbal abuse, rudeness, and plain meanness is equal to “old person yelling at kids to get off their lawn”, but ok.

    2. Keller*

      In what way? In my experience people of any age are equally likely to give and receive rudeness.

      1. Irish Teacher.*

        I think that’s why. People tend to look back and believe things were better in the past. I personally haven’t noticed people being any ruder than in the past – which isn’t to say it’s not happening – but it is definitely true that people always perceive society as getting less respectful. There are quotes from Roman times complaining about the current lack of manners.

        Now, of course, the fact that every generation has had people who thought there was a recent increase in rudeness does not mean it can never happen for real, but it can be kind of hard to bring it up without sounding like the stereotypical older person complaining that people are so rude nowadays; they were never like that when I was young.

        1. Antilles*

          Nostalgia is a real thing and there’s definitely generational stuff with “kids these days”…but two of the examples Alison’s post are people who are talking about things changing in the past few months. For someone who’s commenting on a site for professional adults, stuff that happened six months ago is still pretty recent – not like eons ago or anything, but recent enough that most people’s life today is not *that* different than it was back in November 2021 or whatever.

        2. Lab Boss*

          I wonder, too, if there IS an increase in rudeness but it’s only an increase relative to the past two years. As things ramp back up to pre-covid levels of activity and crowds, there might be more rudeness than there was 18 months ago when things are quieter. That, plus some rose-colored glasses about the “before times,” could be making a regression to the mean look like a vast novel increase.

        3. Two Dog Night*

          Yeah, but… I think it’s one thing to say “people were so much more polite when I was a kid,” and another to say “I’ve noticed a marked increase in rudeness over the last year.” This post is about the latter, and IMO it has nothing to do with “kids these days.”

        4. Nameless+in+Customer+Service*

          This is well said. I studied history and archaeology, and used to keep a copy of a Babylonian letter from 3700 BP where a father complained about his son’s haircut, clothes, friends, and habit of ditching school.

          But as you point out, these days are not victims of the usual “people are so much ruder now than when I was young” nostalgia, but really are showing a marked increase in hostility amidst society.

        5. Eff Walsingham*

          When I worked in retail, I didn’t feel that more people were acting rude, out of the total number of customers. It was that the rude people were getting exponentially ruder. Like, screaming toddler meltdowns to deal with, on a regular basis, over a pulled thread or an expired coupon. The good customers (normal, kind, polite, reasonable) were just as pleasant to deal with as ever. But it couldn’t counterbalance the rudeness upswing. I got out.

    5. cubone*

      Is that because several of the responses are higher ed/education in general about students? When I read about experiences in retail or other industries, I definitely don’t get the impression there is an age element to it (and if there is, frankly I think most people tend to steer type that it’s more likely to be older clientele behaving poorly, not younger)

      1. Burger Bob*

        It’s definitely not limited to any particular age bracket in retail. There are wildly rude people in all age groups these days.

    6. Julia*

      The idea of “kids get off my lawn!” is that the kids aren’t actually doing anything negative. The yelling person is mad at new ideas/behaviors/trends. They’re angry for no reason.

      This is describing an increase in negative behavior and it’s not generational. I work in a public library and the hostile patrons are all ages and they’re directing their behavior at people of all ages. I’ve had people younger and older than me be angry about library fines, computer issues, the book they want being checked out and movies not being released on DVD/Blu-ray (CODA I’m looking at you). Living through a pandemic is stressful and one way that’s manifesting is an increase in people lashing out. More people lashing out also means those are the receiving end are getting burned out faster. Dealing with an occasional jerk is one thing. Dealing with them every day is exhausting.

      I’ve worked a variety of public facing jobs and there will always be people who are mean because of something else going on in their life. I know that I’ve done that myself and I apologize when I realize it’s happening. The volume of mean has increased.

      Recently I’ve had a few deeply bizarre hostile interactions at the public library where I work. Someone has come in several times looking for hard to find books about Buddhism. Every time she is rude and hostile. She’s been mad that we can’t figure out what the particular text is that she found on Wikipedia at home. She was rude to someone for not immediately being able to spell Sanskrit words. She is consistently angry that a public library doesn’t have academic works on Buddhism. It is wild that every interaction I have with a Buddhist is awful. (She isn’t doing pure research. She self-identified as a Buddhist)

      1. GlowCloud*

        Buddhism is a thing you do, not a thing you are. If she thinks it’s ok for a Buddhist to act with such hostility towards another person she clearly *really* needs that book!

        1. Julia*

          She should be out here trying to reduce the suffering in the world not increasing it. So far she hasn’t internalized the content of the books she’s reading but I remain hopeful.

      2. Eff Walsingham*

        Our libraries have been awesome through all of this, and their staff have been amazing. Our local library has stopped charging overdue fines during the pandemic, and say they are looking at whether they can do without the revenue indefinitely, as it’s been so appreciated. The Big regional library has not stopped charging overdue fines, causing my husband to say they’re opportunistic chiselers, and me to suggest that he find some kids to order off his lawn! ;)

        Seriously, libraries? Doing wonderful stuff under trying conditions. Much appreciated!

        1. Julia*

          Library fines don’t actually generate much revenue for public libraries. There is also evidence that eliminating library fines actually gets people to return materials more. My library has no fines but if you never return an item you get billed for it. People aren’t abusing the policy and it has increased library use.

          If you want to make your local librarians extra happy write a letter to your mayor saying how much you appreciate the library. We can always use extra support.

    7. Just Your Everyday Crone*

      I think there’s some data supporting this, like number of flight attendants assaulted and that sort of thing.

    8. Stuckinacraxyjob*

      Some are helpful. Some aren’t. My personal pet peeve is exaggerating how long things were ” closed “. They were closed for 2020. Open in 2021 and it’s 5 months into 2022 almost.

      1. Rebeck*

        For you that was the experience. My workplace had buildings closed far more in 2021 than in 2020. And we didn’t reopen in 2022 after closing the buildings for Christmas until February.

        My pet peeve is people who think their experience was everyone’s experience.

        1. Stuckinacrazyjob*

          Yes I didn’t elucidate that its an ideological thing. Like they claim schools were closed for 2 years and ghe school building was wide open but maybe one kid wore a mask or a company is open until the disease outbreaks they were howling for close them and then they are surprised.

        2. Burnt Out and Needing Relief*

          My workplace has been open to the public since May 2020. Seconding that we all have different perspectives and experiences

    9. DrRat*

      Really? Maybe read up about the ENORMOUS uptick in assaults on flight attendants over the past few years. Or the fact that attacks on medical personnel have increased drastically during pandemic. If you were in a job where a customer physically assaulted you, I doubt you would feel this way.

      But my guess is you’re just a troll.

    10. Anima*

      This post is a perfect example of the underlying hostility Alison meant.
      A simple question of experiences gets muddled up with generational conflict for no reason. And just like that emotions swing high. That is uncalled for.
      I personally feel humans in general need to learn all our discussion skills we had developed since the ancient Greeks and Romans and whatnot again because handling a simple question like that is not useful or fruitful.

  17. Shelley Levene*

    I’m in inside sales, I’ve done phone work for several decades. The hostility and vitriol I’ve experienced in the past six months has been worse than in all the prior years combined.

  18. Swiss Army Them*

    Oh my gosh, I’ve noticed the same.

    My roommate has worked in grocery stores for over 30 years (she’s in her 60s). She said in the past year, she has gotten more horrible, rude, and nasty customers than in the past thirty years combined. Customers yell in her face, call her names, and go straight to the manager. She’s said that there are not only more awful people, but they’re getting more mean and incisive – she ended up quitting because a lady screamed and called her a c*nt because she wouldn’t honor an expired coupon, and then that customer wrote letters to the shift supervisor, branch manager, and corporate saying that my roommate had screamed, yelled, and thrown her groceries around (which she didn’t). And of course, the managers stood up for the customer, not my roommate. That’s the worst part; companies don’t back up their employees at all. Rude customers are learning that they can get away with being assholes.

    My husband works as a chef and weird, entitled customers are on the rise, too. One story stands out:
    They were baking a bunch of sourdough loaves for an event, and a guy came by and asked to buy one. My husband told him they’re not for sale and are reserved for an event. The guy immediately starts yelling “the f*ck you mean they aren’t for sale?! Everything’s for sale. You telling me I can’t buy bread at a g*ddamn restaurant???” and starts literally waving cash in my husband’s face. My husband says “man I just work here” and walks away. So the guy goes to a manager and throws a fit about the bread and she acquiesces and just sells him a loaf of bread (which left them short for the event, but I digress). Well, the guy stands at the counter and rips into the loaf of bread right then and there – just tears into it with his bare hands and shoves it in his mouth. Completely animalistic. The restaurant was full, too, so he had an audience. The manager had no idea what to do, so she did nothing. He ate about a quarter of the loaf staring right at my husband while he was trying to cook. He then leaves the mangled bread on the counter and walks away. My husband and I are both pretty seasoned restaurant workers and have never ever seen anything like that.

    1. Swiss Army Them*

      As far as what I think has caused this? *getures vaguely* uh….the state of the world?

      Genuinely, though, I think the narrative around the Great Resignation and “no one wants to work anymore!” has fueled this change. People have an even lower view of service workers – even the ones that stay – because there’s such a widely popularized narrative of people leaving the service industry. A lot of customers who would previously be rude to customer service workers are emboldened & annoyed by the idea that people now think they are “too good” for customer service work, and therefore see anyone in a customer-facing role as someone who “doesn’t want to work anymore”…..despite the fact that they’re right there, in front of you, working. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance at play.

      I also think the widespread protests against mask mandates, anti-vax rhetoric, etc has emboldened people to be more stodgy, authoritarian, and contrarian. The whole world is against them – even the clerk at the grocery store – and no one will understand just how much the world is against them until they scream and yell and get their way!! It’s….saddening to see.

      1. Lab Boss*

        I love your insight there, that a chain of narrative-fueled assumptions lead to the attitude that all service workers don’t want to work, even the ones working, and the ones working must be put in their place.

        1. Swiss Army Them*

          Thanks! Honestly, I’ve really hated the “Great Resignation” media coverage, ever since fast food places started posting those “we’re hiring please help” signs that went viral. So much of the narrative has been controlled & pushed by people who have never had to work a demeaning, exhausting service job (because they think they’re too good for them!) and has caused a real shift in the way that service workers are viewed by customers. It’s been made into a Discourse Piece for white-collar workers and media makers, instead of a cry for reexamining the service industry. On the whole, media coverage of the Great Resignation has made things worse for service workers.

          1. Captain Swan*

            And the really insidious part of all the Great Resignations media coverage is there are plenty of people that would work those retail/food service jobs but they can’t get hired.
            My daughter is 19 and has Asperger’s. It took her 6 months to find a part time job. She wasn’t being picky, had reasonable availability, and was willing to start at entry level. Took 6 months for her to get a job at a local restaurant and that’s with plenty of places advertising that they were desperate for employees. This is a familiar story that I heard alot on various social media groups.

      1. Swiss Army Them*

        It shook my husband to his core. There is something deeply disturbing about a 40something grown man throwing a tantrum because someone told him he couldn’t have bread.

        1. irene adler*

          I have to wonder: if your husband had just said “Sure!” and sold him the bread, would the man have acted like he did? Or would he have put on a more spectacularly boorish display (Yikes!!)?

          Dang. This is exactly why I am overtipping every chance I get. Mind my manners too. No one should have to take this behavior.

    3. A CAD Monkey*

      “companies don’t back up their employees at all. Rude customers are learning that they can get away with being assholes.”
      I think that’s the biggest part of the problem. Corporations have decided the adage “the customer is always right” is a hard and fast rule and if they don’t cater to every customer whim that they’ll lose money. which, in turn, has caused a rise in the entitlement of customers. now these “customers” think that by abusing low level workers, they can get what they want whenever they want and management will just fold and give it to them. those managers that don’t, get pushed out by corporate when complaints are made.

      the full adage: “In matters of taste, the customer is always right”

      1. anonymous73*

        100% If a worker follows the rules and tells a customer no, then their manager tells them yes, the customer knows all they have to do is throw a hissy fit like a toddler to get what they want. If more managers would have their employees back and stand up to irrational customers, things would change.

      2. Antilles*

        The most ironic part is that by doing so, you often end up losing business. Let’s break down this bread story from a cold-blooded profiteering perspective:
        1.) The guy who flipped out over bread isn’t going to be lifelong, loyal customer. You may have sold him his bread, but he’s walking away thinking it’s absurd that a bakery ran out of bread and he had to complain to multiple people to just get a single loaf of bread.
        2.) The other paying customers in the full restaurant were undoubtedly uncomfortable with the whole spectacle. Some of them will be sympathetic, some will write it off as one bad apple, but others might put the blame on the restaurant for not handling the situation better. Obligatory reminder that these are customers that paid for full sit-down meals.
        3.) Running out of bread for an event later means that the other paying customer who ordered your catering might not be thrilled with your services – either because you ran out early and/or because I ordered 10 loaves and you only delivered 9.

        So to sum up: The company did not gain a new customer from mollifying Angry Bread Man. They may have actually lost business. And it’s not even like you made a sizable amount of extra money off the deal – best case scenario, you made the extra $5 from selling the loaf, but it’s also possible that Event Planner who ordered 10 loaves but only got 9 is now only paying for 9 and it’s a total wash.

        Corporate might say “customer is always right” (and certainly would have if the manager had held firm, then he’d complained), but this a case where helping this jerk was clearly incorrect from a business perspective.

        1. Swiss+Army+Them*

          This is such an apt analysis!! You hit on a lot of really good points here, and identified a pattern of dysnfunction/bad mgmt that very much exists there. Unfortunately, the managers of his restaurant have a history of being pushovers – they’re very much the Dysfunctional Trendy Startup of restaurants – and the manager’s thought process was probably “this will get him off my back, we’ll just make an extra loaf real quick before the event starts” (which, as a baker, don’t even get me started on…)

          1. Monty*

            That’s… not how sourdough works.

            Source: a loved one asked if my spouse could make a loaf of sourdough for an event this weekend and my spouse answered, “yes, but you’ve caught me in the nick of time.” With our starter, it takes about 36-48 hrs to go from gooey starter in a jar to a cooled loaf of bread (so you’d want at least 3-5 days’ notice).

        2. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

          100% This.

          I ran a wine bar. I taught everyone — including the teenagers cooking appetizers and pizzas – about the customer quadrant system. Dogs, cash cows, question marks, stars. I would quiz them about which quadrant a customer went in.

          Dogs (low revenue, low growth potential) aren’t customers you want to have. Do not go out of your way to give them above-average service, because you’ll never make that money back. And the worse dogs are actually negative revenue – they drive other customers away.

          This guy was the biggest dog you could possibly have.

          1. Swiss+Army+Them*

            This is a great method!! Very clever. Will definitely use these quadrants in the future. I’ve worked too many places that seem to think all customers are created equal and that’s just not true.

        3. wittyrepartee*

          Having run a vaccine clinic: sometimes you give in to crazy because otherwise they stick around for 3 hours making everyone else there miserable. Which, really upset me while I was working vaccine clinics…

      3. DrRat*

        I work for a company that actually holds customers accountable and will blacklist them (more info below) and we can tell by the way they are so shocked when we tell them we won’t be doing business with them that few few companies do this.

        These people will write to/call every possible person up to the CEO and the state boards, ranting and raving and lying, which never does them any good because all we have to do is say, “We have them on a recording calling one of our employees *fill in the racial/sexual/homophobic term*” and we’re done.

      5. Eff Walsingham*

        This… misappropriation of “the customer is always right” is reaching ridiculous proportions.

        A friend of mine worked at a coffee shop. They had closed for the day, but she’d unlocked the door briefly to let someone out.

        A woman wanted to come in and use the washroom. My friend said, “I’m sorry, but we’re closed.” The woman said, “Oh, I don’t want to BUY anything. I just want to use the washroom!” And my friend said, “I’m sorry, but we’re closed.”

        The woman said “You people have the worst customer service!” and stomped off. My friend said (to me, later) “I couldn’t figure out why she thought she was a customer.”

        Yeah, lady. You didn’t buy anything. You didn’t ask to buy anything. You showed no interest in anything they were selling. But you still felt quite free to hassle the staff and complain about shop policies.

        So I guess now it’s supposed to be “the potential customer is always right”?? Because maybe that woman might, one day, want a hot beverage or a pastry?

    6. Just stoppin' by to chat*

      Wow Swiss Army Them…that restaurant incident was scary! Not sure if you’re in the US, but I am, and since it’s so easy to acquire firearms here, people that behave like that guy about the bread really scare me when I think about how easily they can get a firearm and do significant damage! Was your roommate able to find another job where they were treated better? Hope so!

      1. Lizzie (with the deaf cat)*

        The original phrase re customers being right was:
        THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT – IN MATTERS OF TASTE.
        That’s all – so if the customer wanted a garish, awful combination of colours or flavours or whatever – no problem. Their taste was their choice, not an issue at all.
        It saddens me to see how the idea that “the customer is always right” has led to so much poor treatment of workers. I wonder if the ‘right’ (as in correct) has become conflated with the idea of “my rights” in the USA. I am in Australia, where employees are not dependent on tips, and have health care which is not dependent on employment, which obviously makes a difference to what kind of treatment staff are obliged to tolerate.

      2. Swiss+Army+Them*

        Yep, in the USA. This happened in a major city, too, where there is a not-insignificant amount of gun violence. And my roommate was actually able to retire this month!! :D

  19. bee*

    I do Interlibrary Loan and I would say yes but only slightly. I work with a lot of professors and there’s always a few of them that are jerks, but now most of our grad students are online and they aren’t always the nicest when I explain that I can’t scan entire books for them, because copyright law is a thing. However, my circulation colleagues have DEFINITELY had an increase in hostility. They were all pretty relieved when our campus mask mandate lifted, because even though it’s less safe they didn’t have to fight with 90% of the students approaching the desk. The students have been awful about masking for basically this whole academic year — our campus is majority male and 19 year old boys are pretty convinced of their own immortality, even when talking/breathing on my 70+ year old colleagues.

    (Also, we’re a Jewish university and apparently the students have been calling one of our library directors who’s Very strict about mask usage the “Mask Nazi” which??? There’s just way too much to unpack there)

    1. megaboo*

      I’m a librarian as well and I was relieved when I started working behind the scenes in technical services. My colleagues experienced some pretty terrible things. Like folks coming in to directly challenge mask mandates by saying their freedom of speech was curtailed (unable to access materials?). One of my friends was doxxed online by a group like this. She actually got death threats. The mask mandate made people insane.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      Another academic library employee here: I’m in the archives, which has always been a very controlled environment and pretty much only used by [doctors and historians, in our case]. Plus, we’ve been limiting visitors so we can keep people spread out, although we’ve never been high-traffic. Some of our patrons have always been egotistical a-holes.

      So my department has been about the same but I would guess that our coworkers in the more public-facing departments have Seen Some Things lately.

    3. Dunno, I usually just read AAM...*

      I used to work in academia and heard a male senior academic call a female professor, who was Jewish, a “rules Nazi”. He resigned shortly afterwards for ‘unknown reasons’.

      1. Just stoppin' by to chat*

        I hate when people use the term Nazi like this. And calling a character in Seinfeld the Soup Nazi didn’t help! I’m an ashkenazi Jew, and that term always rubs me the wrong way

    4. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

      I have to say at our campus our students have been awesome about masking. 95% of them still wear masks even after the mandate lifted. Faculty and staff have been not as good about it.

  20. MiningEng*

    I work in salt mining, and I really feel like even our employees are more hostile to each other than previously. There is a lot more infighting/pettiness. I think a lot of it has to do with the Powers That Be implementing weekend work to catch up on production. It seems to be destroying morale, even on my team (engineers) that don’t have to work weekends typically.

  21. Goose*

    I work in customer service with an audience of parents of teens, and have found that over email parents are nervous and aggressive. There is a disconnect that it may take us more than an hour to get back to them, and that we may need to spend time looking up an answer. Over the phone though, even though it takes more time, I’ve been able to have nicer conversations because they realize I’m a real person.

    1. Jam*

      That’s interesting, because I used to (pre pandemic) work in a ticket office, sometimes at the counter and sometimes in a call center. We always found people were much nastier on the phones in a way they weren’t in person and it made me very nervous about phone related tasks at subsequent jobs. I guess it’s all relative.

      1. Goose*

        Everything is remote so we’re not interacting with people in person, so maybe that’s why. Phone calls are as “in person” as we get.

        1. Nanani*

          Could also be a self-selection effect between people who pick up a phone and people who show up at a counter?

    2. Sloanicote*

      I think this has been somewhat exacerbated by companies having cut their customer service down to the bone – if you need help it seems like it is always hours now or there’s simply no phone option available. This leaves you feeling very frazzled and unsupported long before you ever get to a person. Obviously this is no excuse for being abusive though. But I feel like I have been more on-edge and desperate when trying to work with insurance, utilities, airlines, or product suppliers during the pandemic.

      1. Nanani*

        THIS.

        People are upset because the website directs them to call, the hold message kept reminding them about the website that doesn’t do the thing they need, the phone menu is confusing, and they got disconencted twice before they talked to you.

        Sure it’s not ok to take it out on you, but the real problem is all the aggravation being offloaded on both staff and customers by bad (cheap) decisions up top.

  22. MI Dawn*

    I have very little face to face communication in my job, but I’ve had some emails from people that I looked at and said “rude” out loud (I work from home, thankfully!)

    I think that maybe the arrival of Alexa and Google Home made a difference. People laugh at me because I use “please” and “thank you” to my requests to them – “Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes, please”. Using those words are habitual for any request (human or AI), and I think people who use them a lot with out those words have forgotten that humans are not AI and have feelings.

    I hear people ordering at the drive through and I’m always appalled at how rude they can be. I always thank the person who takes my order and the person I pay at the window who gives me my food. It’s 1 second and one or 2 words to say. Not a huge deal to do.

    1. OutofOffice*

      I do this with our Google Home requests. “Okay, Google! Please turn on the lights! Thank you!” It used to respond positively when you did that, but sadly stopped. I keep doing it 1) because it’s a habit and 2) when the robots take over, I’m in good standing. ;)

      1. SpicySpice*

        That’s awesome, my husband says the same thing! That they’ll remember his politeness when they take over!

    2. Bronze Betty*

      Agreed. And I will try to make a habit of including “please” and “thank you” in my requests. I do that already most of the time, but will step that up.

      Side note on food orders, fast food or even food at sit-down restaurants: For some time, I’ve found it bothersome to hear the way some people place their food orders: “Gimme X” or “I want Y.” No, not downright rude, but just . . . not nice. I’ve always tried to say something like: “I’d like . . . ” or something like that.

      1. Eff Walsingham*

        No, “gimme X” or “I want Y” are both downright rude. I too am astonished at the way some people act in restaurants. Please and thank you should always be used, and it’s nicer if you speak in short, clear sentences, and pay attention the first time if they rattle off a list of sides or salad dressings. Don’t make them repeat it for every member of the party because you were nattering away.

        Last week when we were out with 2 family members, a food runner actually said, “Look me in the eye and say Thank You when I bring you delicious food!” We were scandalized but burst out laughing, and agreed that he was right and our person was rude not to acknowledge the runner in some way.

    3. Sloanicote*

      Drive through is a great example of something I’m struggling to articulate – the wait times have gotten longer due to staffing shortages, staff seems to be more inexperienced when you get them, and prices have gone up. The overall experience is less pleasant than ever. Obviously this is in no way intended to excuse people being rude or abusive in any way, but does mean I’m more stressed and the situation more fraught before I ever reach the counter.

      1. Sloanicote*

        Oh and also the gas prices are up as your idling longer in the car, so you’re feeling coins drop out of your wallet. And if you’re high risk you can’t go inside if the drive through line is too long because there’s unmasked people in there. But you need to be nicer than you’ve ever been to the staff because they’re exhausted, underpaid, and at more risk than you are already.

    4. Mitford*

      I was a bank teller in college, and we all dreaded working the drivethrough window because the customers were so much more unpleasant than the ones who came in the lobby. And that was literally decades ago. I can’t imagine what it’s like today.

  23. fposte*

    I think it’s a combination of lingering pandemic stress, loss of social skills due to the pandemic, and increased exposure to the more peremptory tone common to online spaces. We’ve been immersed in a discourse where it’s rare to find people championing a measured response and a walking away; instead either you’re an idiot or you deserve everything and some punitive damages to boot.

  24. ThinkQuicker*

    There was an article recently (I think in The Guardian) about how theatre and comedy audiences had forgotten the etiquette of watching a live show (i.e. don’t carry on a conversation when the performers are on stage; don’t jump on stage to interrupt the performance etc.) . Honestly, I think the lack of social interaction for many of us has done a number of our manners. These things are habit and practice as much as anything. If you’re not socialising with people outside of your immediate household as often, the skills of how to interact with strangers get weaker. Oddly enough I’ve noticed it from colleagues more than clients – people are passive-aggressive and stroppy in a way they never would have been previously. Burnout and general (pandemic) fatigue are also contributing factors, I feel.

    1. Roscoe da Cat*

      I haven’t noticed this – what I have noticed is that the audiences are so happy to be back that it makes even the cast almost drunk! True, the only two performances I went to were musicals so maybe it might be different for other types

  25. Widget*

    I work at a library and we absolutely saw an increase in hostile patron interactions over the course of the pandemic generally: it was not uncommon for staff to have regular invective spewed in our direction, especially when asking people to comply with masking and social distancing rules. ‘Nazi,’ ‘bitch,’ and ‘cunt’ were all regularly thrown in our direction. We also took a cut to our number of staff, meaning we have fewer people having to sponge up that amount of abuse, even if there had been no increase in that behavior overall.

    But we’ve seen a general rise in poor behavior over all. A lot of it seems to be that people (teens especially, who lost out on important social development) went, for lack of a better descriptor, semi-feral as they became more isolated and are, essentially, having to re-learn how to be around other humans in the world. There’s also been a marked increase in addiction and mental health issues in our community and that feeds into problematic behaviors. Our chief of police told us that 80% of their calls now have a mental health component.

    Also, weirdly, a marked increase in adults leaving food messes in the library.

    I expect that this behavior will persist for a few more years as we re-train our patrons on behavioral expectations in the building.

    1. Tech+writer+by+day*

      I imagine I speak for many folks here: I love librarians! Thank you for your incredibly valuable work, and I’m so sorry about the abusive patrons.

    2. Sariel*

      I’ve worked in libraries for more than 15 years (and that’s my second career) and I had already noticed an uptick in rudeness, and especially impatience — and that was before COVID. I agree with your comments about a general rise in poor behavior for a number of reasons.

      But, considering I have seen a rise in impatience/rudeness, I have another theory — and that is the lack of patience due to a shortened attention span (for people of all ages). As the Internet connections got faster, streaming became a thing and phones got more sophisticated, people seem to be more and more impatient. Website takes more than 5 seconds to load? “Your computer is broken.” “You don’t know what you’re doing.” “Your printer is broken” — actually, this is almost always a no . . . it’s just out of paper.

      1. Julia*

        I also work in a library but had previously done tech support. The impatience level with technology has been ongoing for at least the last 10 years. I think part of it is that the idea computers speed things up has created the expectation that if it’s not instantaneous then it’s broken. Urgh. I am very thankful I haven’t been doing tech support the last two years. Stories from friends doing it are nightmarish.

        I also notice that many people are convinced something is wrong when they get a message that a digital item is checked out or there is a wait list. Ebooks aren’t an unlimited resource! On a side note, at my library increased ebook usage hasn’t caused a noticble decrease in paper book use. Ditto for adding streaming video services. People are still checking out DVDs at a fast clip.

        I definitely agree on the impatience problem. People are getting irritated waiting for a few minutes while I look something up or put an item on hold.

    3. TheDisenchantedForest*

      I was at a library as a patron, and witnessed a man, who was standing on the mezzanine, scream at one of librarians on the ground floor. He wanted to know where the restroom was, but he was screaming at the top of his lungs. She ignored him, and he came down to the front desk and – now screaming profanities – threatened to come back later that day and shoot her and the other librarians. She immediately called the police and I left, because this man was clearly unhinged and I did not know what he would do. I can’t imagine working in an environment where you or your patrons are not safe, and have to endure verbal abuse and threats.

    4. Miss Katonic*

      The teens at my library have been great. The adults though… Over masks and other pandemic changes, we were nazis, idiots, and assholes. Now that we’re dealing with a transphobia moral panic, we’re pedophiles and perverts. The last two years have been miserable for my (and my staff’s) mental health. Every time someone walks through the doors, it’s like playing abuse Russian roulette. No one wants to engage with patrons, myself included.

      1. Burger Bob*

        “Every time someone walks through the doors, it’s like playing abuse Russian roulette.” I feel this so much. As a pharmacist, I’m the manager on duty. Any time someone asks to speak to me/the pharmacist specifically, I am immediately anxious wondering if this is going to be a normal interaction about a medical question or if it’s somebody who’s going to abusively complain at me because of some perceived slight by a technician. It makes you hope that nobody will want to talk to you that day. When I started this career, the direct interactions with patients was one of the things I liked. Now it feels like a daily risk.

  26. OutofOffice*

    I’ve noticed this amongst colleagues in my office; in-fighting and nastiness amongst groups within our own division and between our division and other colleagues. I’d attributed it to all of the changes the company is going through, but reading some of these really resonated with me and now I’m wondering if the issues we’ve been seeing are part of a universal trend. That feels even harder to combat, so I hope not, but it’s looking like that’s the case, unfortunately.

    1. Meow*

      My coworkers aren’t downright nasty to each other, but it seems like we’ve completely lost all sense of camaraderie. To be honest, we never had the best teamwork in the first place, but I swear the instant they sent us to work from home, everyone gave up every pretense of trying to work together. Even now that we’re back in office, it hasn’t really come back.

      I don’t mean this to be used as an example that working from home = bad, we had deep-seated issues to begin with. It’s just like once the stress piled on, and we no longer had a manager pushing us to collaborate, getting along was the first thing everyone gave up on.

      1. OutofOffice*

        That’s an interesting perspective, and working from home is definitely a possible factor! I’d say for us, we were fine working from home and good with collaboration, but had a lot of transformational shifts start up well into the pandemic and lots of new leadership, so that might be part of it, too (especially as new staff/leaders didn’t have a good pulse on our established culture when onboarding remotely). It’s probably many, many factors all rolled into one impossible-to-untangle ball.

      2. AFac*

        I’ve seen this, too. We are allowed flexibility to work from home as allowed by our jobs, and some people have been mostly at home. In some cases, those people have also basically checked out from the group. Whether that’s because of the overall pandemic stress or that working from home means they can be in their own world and ignore any collaborative duties because they never see anyone in the halls, I don’t know.

        I also think that having online meetings have resulted in people saying things I don’t think they would have said if we were all in person. It’s like if we’re in zoom boxes we no longer are people who have feelings.

    2. cubone*

      It could also just be specific to my workplaces (or the non profit industry, unfortunately) but I’ve noticed a serious change in the stock placed in hierarchies and status. Obviously this has plagued labor for years (The Important Boss vs The Lowly Employee) but I found the eagerness with which people are yielding power as a force against their colleagues to be .. markedly different to say the least.

      The in-fighting over promotions and titles and status also went from an occasional background thing for a few people to being like, the primary conflict issue in the organization. It feels like people are REALLY clawing over each other to be recognized as the “best”. On one hand, I see some of this as an overall positive trend towards employees setting better boundaries about their worth, but to be honest, the vast majority and most hostile/rude ways it’s played out are the people who have already proven the Peter Principle screaming for more, and putting down others to get it.

  27. Emma*

    No, I am not seeing increased rudeness or hostility. I have witnessed people be generally more tolerant, respectful, and humane over the last year.

    2. misspiggy*

      Me too, especially at work. But just generally in public, except the inevitable minority of arseholes. I’m in the UK.

      1. RandomUser (UK)*

        As a fellow UK-er I’ll be watching with this with interest to see if it’s a trend here as well. The number of ass-hats has been pretty stable in my area and I work in education.

        1. Rufus Bumblesplat*

          I’m a key worker in the UK and I disagree that people have been behaving better. Earlier this month I had to call the police out due to being threatened at work. I’ve never had to do that before. The general public can be truly horrible.

      2. Media Monkey*

        i would agree (also in the UK). maybe some sort of blitz spirit or something? i feel like people are just happy to be out and about. i have been tipping more to people like my hairdresser who i know has missed a lot of income in lockdown.

        work wise we are just all happy to see each other – workloads are insane though! all the extra stuff we all picked up over lockdown when we had no in person meetings is still there plus the in person meetings!

    3. elizelizeliz*

      All right i am ready to stop working in k-12 schools and switch to your job! What field do you work in? I am truly happy for you.

    4. Extroverted Bean Counter*

      My husband runs a tutoring center and he has also generally had much better rapport with the students/parents in the last year or so than he had before.

      My speculation is that the service he offers is essentially a luxury, and the nature of the transaction is that people are coming to him for non-essential help. Kids have been struggling especially hard since 2020, and the attitudes have shifted from entitlement (“I’m paying you good money to get my kid into a good college”) to gratitude (“Thank God your service exists, kiddo is drowning with the hybrid model, can you really help him?”)

    5. Gina*

      How wonderful! Can you share the field and your (general) location? It seems you are very much in the minority here, and it would be nice to see if there might be a cause of that.

      1. Emma*

        Mental health, as I said above, and in the the U.S. I appreciate the numerous others I’ve seen who have shared their positive interactions as well.

    6. Banana*

      This has been my experience too. I’m in the midwest and I work in manufacturing supply chain (super challenging times in the last year especially) in a business-to-business market (no lay customers). It might just be my specific org, not sure. I have seen some of my colleagues lose their tempers over perceiving they’re not getting the flexibility they need with the dumpster fire they’re dealing with, but even when those conversations get tense, the communication is open and honest and mostly respectful and we end up on good terms at the end of the day.

    7. As per Elaine*

      I have a fairly isolated job/life (wfh, rarely interact with customers, and don’t even have that many internal clients), and would agree that I personally have not seen an increase in rudeness — and I have seen some efforts in the direction of being extra-nice/polite to people.

      That said, I have seen less… I would say resilience, in myself, my friends, and my family. Things become overwhelmingly difficult quicker. Something that might have been a minor annoyance before makes one grumpy for hours, or even the whole day. I try really hard to not take this out on other people, because the fact that I’m lower on coping energy shouldn’t be someone else’s problem (not least because they’re presumably also scraping the bottom of their resilience barrel). But it does not at all surprise me that for some portion of people, this sort of emotional brittleness turns into rudeness and short fuses.

      As some other people have noted above, the service people I interact with do sometimes seem very happy to see me — and that might be because they’re still hurting for custom, and it might be because I’m still making an effort to tip really well, or it might just be because I’m reasonable and pleasant.

  28. Alex the Alchemist*

    I work in church communications and started a new job July of last year. While I’ve always dealt with disgruntled folks (as anyone in comms does I think) I’ve definitely seen an uptick of angry emails, social media comments, etc. I think part of it is that I started this job mid-pandemic and when our worship was still mostly remote, so community members don’t know me yet and I’ve always found that folks are quicker to anger when they haven’t personally met who’s on the receiving end. I also think it’s because doing digital ministry work is representative of a fundamental communications change that happened because of the pandemic, and so my job’s existence is already proof that there likely won’t be a “back to normal,” or at least there won’t be anytime soon. I’m glad the folks I work with are supportive though, and I hope that this shift dies down, since I know there are also people in professions that aren’t paid as well who have to put up with even more hostility.

  29. Odyssea*

    I’m in academic libraries, and while we haven’t been as busy in person, we’re handling a lot of chats. I have noticed that patrons are a lot ruder and a lot more dismissive than before. There are certain things we can’t do over chat (usually involving library cards and student IDs) and people get very upset when you tell them they need to make a phone call or come in person, in a way they didn’t pre-pandemic. I haven’t gotten anyone outright abusive, but I have gotten a lot of entitlement as well as “shopping”, where the person will close the chat and then chat again immediately to try and get someone different who might give them a different answer.

    I’ve also noticed that students who chat with us about finding sources for research papers are expecting us to do their work for them. Sometimes they come at it a bit obliquely, but I’ve had several students out right type that they expect me to find the specific articles for them and send them to them, which is not my job! That’s their job, and I’m there to guide them. Again, I’ve had students like that before, but it’s gone from one or two a semester to one or two a week.

    1. D. B.*

      As a customer of telecom companies, I do the “shopping” thing sometimes. Customer service is so sketchy now, it’s become a necessity. You really do get different answers from different representatives, and a lot of the answers are wrong.

      Obviously an academic library is not Verizon or Comcast; your institution isn’t outsourcing customer service to undertrained, underpaid call center workers … but I think your patrons are behaving the way they’ve been trained to behave by big businesses.

      1. Odyssea*

        The problem is that we have strict standards of patron privacy we have to adhere to regarding giving out things like ID numbers and barcodes in the chat, so they’re not going to get what they want. It just ends up frustrating everyone in the long run, especially if they don’t let us explain the situation.

    2. Dust Bunny*

      I think students below a certain age (younger than I am) have been acclimated to expect to be able to find everything online for awhile now, and having to do it so much of late has reinforced that, and now it’s hard to go back to the idea that they have to do a lot of virtual or literal legwork themselves. We’ve always gotten those, too, although we mostly don’t see undergrads so by the time researchers need our help they already know the drill, but we do occasionally get someone who, regardless of age, is inexperienced enough at research that they expect us to have their data processed and on hand when they call.

    3. alessa*

      SAME! Some of my colleagues have received actual abuse. My library has been doing chat reference for almost 20 years. There have always been some trolls or rude/entitled patrons but it has never even approached the situation now. To the point that no one wants to answer chats anymore and we have to bribe people to take a shift. Thank god we’re almost at the end of the semester and everyone can take a deep breath.

      1. Odyssea*

        Yeah, the vibe has definitely shifted over the last couple years. I didn’t even mention the crap we got when the libraries were closed and we were working from home, especially since two of our locations are joint public academic libraries and patrons got mean about the fact we weren’t open. (I guess I blocked that out!)

        I try to always get on and take the chats, though once in a while I just can’t face it and don’t log in that day. One of our campuses had someone on chats for a while who would accept the chat and then just close it without responding. They ended up with a one star rating in our system.

    4. LaFramboise*

      I agree with you on everything, especially students not doing their own research occurring more frequently. When I explain that they don’t want my research because it might not align with theirs, however, then the light bulb goes off.

      But that person who has the same chat question all evening? I’ve taken to alerting the other librarians and the student gets the same spiel from all of us. Cuts down on the repetition.

    5. Banana*

      Oh we’ve seen the shopping thing with our salespeople and customers, but that’s always been an issue. It’s funny when they do it in a call center phone queue that only one person is logged into. Gina will tell Sean in sales that we can’t do X for a customer, end the call, next call is Sean’s area code again and a hang up, then two more hang ups from Sean’s area code in the next fifteen minutes, then Sean calls or emails a manager directly, who consults with Gina and then once again tells him no. They don’t realize how close people sit and how well we know them and each other, lol.

  30. Lizabeth*

    It’s not only affecting one-on-one personal interactions, it’s affecting strangers too. I’ve been working remotely since Fall 2018 and have been watching the street and subway crime reports for NYC (where I used to work) scale up with the pandemic. To the point I’m glad I’m not commuting into the city and give serious thought about whether to go into NYC at all for any reason. The randomness factor makes it not worth it to me.

    1. Justin*

      You are under no obligation to come in, but no, NYC is not the hellscape the news pretends it is. And if you’re driving you’re in far more danger from randomness on a given day.

      (Sorry, this can be deleted if it’s not appropriate, just… the narrative is not true.)

      1. JenFromQns*

        Yeah not to pile on but to hopefully be reassuring – I take the 7 to Grand Central every day, through the whole pandemic. 2020 was eerie, 2021 was tense, now it’s…really pretty much back to normal. The outlier cases are obviously horrifying, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of daily riders. (I will make an exception to the area around 14th St/7th ave, but the 1/F train station and surrounding blocks are BLEAK).

        Aboveground as well – a few of my fave Midtown lunch places are gone, and there’s definitely less people around than 2019, I’m pretty sure my office doorman has gone full Qanon, but overall vibes are very “resigned back to normal”, not Murder City.

        1. Mockingjay*

          “I’m pretty sure my office doorman has gone full Qanon”

          I don’t know whether to laugh or commiserate.

          1. Eff Walsingham*

            I learned about Qanon in March of 2020 from our painter. (My company had its own tradespeople who went around to all the locations.) For the rest of my time there, I was alert to avoid him if I smelled latex paint. The man who filled our Coca-Cola machine was more of a generic conspiracy theorist.

      2. Elec*

        same. I work there, and have felt as safe as ever. I don’t know where the “this is the 1970s” narrative is coming from but it’s been fine.

      3. bee*

        Yeah, the trains have been as normal as they ever were, IMO. I’ve been back on the train since August 2020 and sure there’s some occasional weirdness but mostly I just read, and now it’s empty enough (and my commute is early enough) that I always get a seat.

        (i do agree with Jen about the F at 14th st though! idk what’s up there, but it is sketch city)

        1. voluptuousfire*

          Oof, yes. I used to get off my bus at 14th and 6th in Manhattan and I’d even say anything past Union Square West and 14th Street was a bit sketch.

      4. Syzygy*

        You’re not kidding about the driving. I used to commute to work by bike, in NYC. I don’t anymore because of the aggressiveness on the roads. Some of it is the tremendous increase in delivery people, who tend to run red lights and go the wrong way on one-way streets. But I’ve never seen as many vehicles run red lights and drive recklessly as since the pandemic. A few days ago I saw a car drive on the sidewalk to make a turn after the light changed and the car in front of him stopped. Accidents are up significantly

        1. EchoGirl*

          I live in the Chicago area and my husband says the same thing. In the early days (he was still going in in person) there was virtually no traffic because no one was commuting, but since it’s picked back up he says it’s been worse than ever. His working theory is that so many people sat at home for so long that they partially forgot how to drive; I suspect people driving to avoid exposure on public transit was another factor.

          1. Tired in Illinois*

            Uuuuugh, traffic is such a mess. I was GLORIOUS through June 2021 though. My hour-long commute took 20 minutes. Also, people smoking on trains has become a thing again? Not so fun for us with smoke allergies.

    2. Princess Xena*

      I’m on the other side of the country but in one of our local cities there’s been a 120% INCREASE in the number of trauma cases the local hospital has been hit by.

      1. Rara+Avis*

        We’re up to 6 or 7 concussions at my middle school. Kids have forgotten how physics/gravity/bodies work.

    3. Lizabeth*

      Okay, granted I follow the ABC 7 app to keep tabs on what’s going on in NYC area. And they report all.the.bad.stuff.

      But I don’t remember reading about people getting pushed off the subway platforms by strangers until these past couple of years.

      The Port Authority area has at best, been okay, to down right sleezy at times over the years (talking from 1998 onward – the 70s was entirely different beast).

      1. Princess Xena*

        I think I remember hearing a Forensic files episode about this so it might be an unpleasant trend that pops up every few decades or so.

  31. Fluttervale*

    My personal experience in retail is that it’s not much worse than it was before. But I think that as employers have put more work on fewer employees, things have had to slide through the cracks. It teaches customers that in order to get what they need, they need to throw a fit. So people aren’t necessarily ruder but the rules have changed.

  32. D. B.*

    My customers are mainly teenagers and their parents. As far as I can see it’s the same as it ever was: the majority are perfectly nice but a few are rude or hostile (and unfortunately, those ones are hard to forget). I have not noticed any recent increase in bad behavior.

  33. Generic Name*

    Oh no! My heart goes out to anyone whose job is made more difficult by people being awful. Fortunately, I haven’t experienced that in my line of work. People are actually a bit more understanding, if anything. I work as a construction industry-adjacent consultant, and there are a TON of projects going on, and there’s lots of churn in the industry at the moment. Every company is short-staffed, and people have been really understanding about workloads and for the first time in many years, we are having to ask clients to push deadlines back whenever possible.

  34. UnoriginalToast*

    I worked retail-adjacent for a retail software and it was AWFUL! Many of my clients were wonderful people trying to keep their business afloat but with others it felt like all the rudeness they received from their customers was passed onto me. It didn’t help the product wasn’t great and the product, dev, and support teams were also rude and combative back to the clients. Just a mess. I’m glad to be where I am with respectful coworkers, great teams, and wonderful clients. My new manager asked how my first few months were going a while back and I replied “pretty good, no one’s screamed at me yet!” And she was shocked and quickly let me know that just doesn’t happen here. Phew!

  35. The Prettiest Curse*

    I work in events and haven’t noticed an increase in rudeness from event atendees so far. But over the last few years, I have noticed an increasing trend to only fill in event evaluations if the feedback is negative. Negative feedback is really useful, but it’s also good to know what people liked about an event and what keeps them coming back to our events. (Since we do have a lot of repeat attendees, these folks clearly don’t hate us!)
    It’s also very helpful to know the kind of topics or speakers that people would like to see at future events – because we might not know about something that people would really enjoy and/or find useful.

    1. OtterB*

      As someone who’s been doing data gathering, including event surveys, for almost 20 years, it’s a thing that people are over-surveyed. Our response rate is much lower than it used to be, even though, like you, our past attendees are engaged and don’t hate us.

      Heck, as someone who believes in Survey Karma I always felt like I should respond to other people’s surveys, and I’m much less consistent about it than I used to be.

      As far as the overall problem is concerned, I think in part people are responding to stress and the general feel of having too many unmeetable demands. I am close to 100% wfh and have found myself reacting to a ringing phone with “What do you want? Go away!” (To be clear, before I answer it, not after.)

      1. Princess Xena*

        Our IT department has an automated ticket thing that pretty much has you fill out a survey for EVERY SINGLE ticket. Which would be fine except I often have to put in a ticket to get access to some specific information (lots of client data with limited access). It starts getting irritating after the third ‘were you satisfied?’ survey. Y’all just added me to an access list, you didn’t recreate the Turing Test. Fine-tune your survey filters please.

    2. EarlGrey*

      I blame the trend of every interaction I have with any company, however small and mundane, being followed up with a survey! Even when I do have worthwhile feedback my immediate response to seeing one in my email is “ugh what now.”

      1. Robin Ellacott*

        Agreed! I’ll often go out of my way to pass on a compliment for good customer service, but if I buy a thing, and it arrives, and it is the thing I bought… I’m not sure what to say.

        1. kicking_k*

          Yes. I often have no comment on how my package was delivered – especially if I wasn’t home, or it was a gift for someone else and wasn’t delivered to my house…

          Amazon did buy us a new letterbox the time the delivery person broke ours. That is the only time any delivery was really remarkable…

      2. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yeah, I totally agree with the online survey fatigue, so we only do an evaluation for our one large annual event. My in-person events have sometimes done paper surveys filled in on the day of the event, which does seem to work better. (And also, someone once drew cartoon cats to indicate their responses instead of checking the boxes, which was totally delightful.)

      3. Gumby*

        Yes! Buy something from an online store? Survey. Buy in person and use a cc that they have somehow connected to your email – probably because at one point you had a receipt emailed rather than printed? Survey. Eat at a restaurant? Survey. Attend an in-person performance? Survey. (I am a season subscriber to the ballet. I have been sent surveys for 4 performances so far and an overall ‘season subscriber’ survey. I responded to one; perhaps I should respond to another and mention that the surveys are out of control.) Oh, and also the “you haven’t responded to our survey yet” emails that also come on occasion. I have those from a couple of stores in particular, my car insurance company, and a certain government organization that really really seems to want feedback on their Phase I SBIR proposal process.

    3. Elle Woods*

      I definitely agree; I wish attendees would give more positive feedback too.

      Your point about what kinds of topics and speakers is an important one as well. I served on a planning board for a group that planned monthly events and even though there were people from a variety of fields and job roles, it became a struggle to come up with ideas at times.

      1. The Prettiest Curse*

        Yes, it can be a bit of a downer when you spend 10 months out of 12 planning an event, work a 12-hour day on the day of the event and then you don’t get much feedback either way. It’s a lot better than having hordes of angry people yelling at you, it’s just deflating in a different way!

        And I always want to get speaker and topic ideas from attendees. Even if it’s something we can’t use immediately, we can take it into consideration for the future.

  36. EventPlannerGal*

    So I work on corporate events which are a bit less fraught, but my friends/contacts who do social events (weddings, birthdays, engagement parties, that kind of thing) have seen some shocking behaviour from clients recently. I think the explanations are fairly obvious: people have been delaying these events for years at this point, the rules have been so changeable (can I have 50 people at my wedding? 10 people? 200 people? Can I HAVE a wedding?), sometimes it’s the first big family/friend reunion they’ve had since 2020, and everything just represents more right now, emotionally. So for many clients it has to be PERFECT, even more so than usual – “high pressure” doesn’t quite cover it.

    I do understand it, but from a planning/supply POV the issue is that there’s this enormous backlog of events that people have been putting off (particularly weddings) and the venues and suppliers are in such high demand that a lot of things just aren’t possible to organise, or won’t be possible for literally years out. It’s a hard thing for people to hear, but it doesn’t excuse the way some of them react.

    1. JenFromQns*

      Also in corporate events, and yes it’s hard to explain outside the industry how much of a supply crunch there is, and how everyone wants to do all the events they skipped RIGHT NOW, and also somehow have it be exactly the same as 2019.

      1. J*

        I really think part of the issue is this presumed “return to normal” and people refusing except that things are not 2019 normal even if you drop all the Covid restrictions. A lot of people don’t adapt to change well and they also don’t know how to verbalize where their anger comes from so they just lash out. Which is unacceptable but I doubt to some extent they realize they are throwing a tantrum despite that being exactly what we all see.

    2. The Prettiest Curse*

      Most of the companies I know of that do non-corporate event services has been having a challenging time. One of the caterers I worked with last year said they were doing 15 weddings a week during the summer! And a lot of caterers have had difficulty staffing events due to staff testing positive for Covid.

  37. DarthVelma*

    For some of us, myself at least, we’re short-tempered because we’re really tired of the world not giving a shit whether we live or die.

    Seriously, every time I have to leave the house I’m faced with people who just cannot be bothered to take minimal precautions to protect other people. I try really hard not to take it out of people who don’t deserve it. But I’m at my breaking point with some of my work colleagues who know I’m at elevated risk and still can’t be arsed to wear a mask between their office and the restroom.

    2. Ashley*

      I think this is very much the other half of the entitled people equation. It is exhausting still trying to protect yourselves and others and being told it’s no big deal.

    3. Mockingjay*

      I’m fortunate that my industry fell under the federal mandate for vaccination (now rescinded). As a government contractor, the companies I’ve worked for have always had to comply with a plethora of government regulations and rules. Current Company’s workforce is well trained and educated; we research, design, and repair highly technical systems and interact with high-level government officials. I figured vaxxing would be a non-issue. Smart people would follow the science, right?

      Boy, was I wrong. Most employees vaxxed ONLY because they didn’t want to lose a lucrative job and benefits. I couldn’t believe how much misinformation and ‘I don’t care’ attitude flew around, including our president and founder, who felt that individual rights ‘trumped’ public health, but complied with the mandate anyway (lest he lose millions in contracts and billing).

      HR bore the brunt of everyone’s ire. I sent a personal note of thanks to the head of HR who handled employee communications (explaining the mandate and why we had to comply, etc.) and irate individual responses with grace, dignity, and unswerving professionalism.

      I work cordially with these people, but I’ll never respect them again.

    4. Stuckinacraxyjob*

      Nod. The moral injury of knowing work will do things in the most harmful way possible and be surprised when there are bad effects makes me cranky. They wanted me to take FMLA because I needed a week off for COVID despite me having plenty of sick time!

      And of course there’s useless in office stuff so we can be hit by outbreaks at the same time and leave ourselves scrambling.

    5. HigherEdAdminista*

      I hear that too. It has made me feel like I’m on my own in most of my larger social circles. I’m the weird one who still cares about the pandemic and doesn’t want to get sick.

    6. MeepMeep02*

      Yup. During this pandemic, a lot of people have shown us who they are, and have shown that they are not deserving of common courtesy.

      A friend of mine just told me this story. A friend of hers has a kid who had to quarantine due to a COVID exposure at his school. Despite that, she still attempted to go on a bike ride with my friend without telling her about the COVID exposure. My friend is asthmatic and high-risk in other ways. Thankfully, someone else told her and she was able to avoid the bike ride.

      How much common courtesy does someone like that deserve?

    7. J*

      Yes, and it’s also that we know our friends and family have made those same choices so why/how can we trust strangers? I try so hard to be nice right now but I know I’m more rude than pre-pandemic because I can’t humor most people with small talk and making them feel better in roles where I used to anticipate people’s needs before they vocalized them. I just don’t care. I’m courteous, I say please, I don’t mind waiting in lines or paying more but I just can’t play pretend. My husband went into work two days this month and both times people shamed him for masking. He can blame it on me as I’m high risk so he does (when he’s the one who had a sibling die) but I’m so angry every day that people feel entitled to encourage him to take off his mask and somehow quiet me is now ruder than them.

  38. Meow*

    Yes, 100%. I work in HR and have either operated as an HR Manager and/or Employee Relations specialist for most of my career (12 years) and it has always involved difficult conversations, sorting through interpersonal conflicts, emotional situations, etc. but it has gotten so much worse. I’ve seen it on the rise for the past 5 years or so but even more so in the last 2 years. It’s not just increased rudeness and hostility from employees but also from leadership, including increased pressure to act as a shield against employees so they don’t need to take responsibility for their unpopular decisions. I fully understand and empathize with employees, it’s been an especially difficult few years between the political climate, the pandemic and social justice conversations and I know so many people have faced serious difficulties in their personal life, but, it’s gotten to a point where it’s almost impossible for me to maintain my own mental health because no matter where I turn someone is telling me I don’t know how to do my job or I’m too slow or I’m not doing enough or I don’t care or I’m heartless. On top of the general rudeness and passive aggressiveness that we’ve seen, I’ve also over the 4 years: had an employee call me a fat b*tch, had an employee call me a stupid b*tch, had an employee threaten to kill me, had an employee stalk me on social media and send explicit messages (in a rude way, not as a come on) and had an employee key the side of my car. I transitioned to a remote role about a year and a half into the pandemic because I no longer felt safe working in an environment where not only was I frequently exposed to COVID but where I was also around people who had no trouble threatening coworkers or starting verbal altercations. The unwritten expectation for HR is that we won’t be just another complaining employee so speaking up against any of this as seen as not being competent at our jobs or not being a good fit for HR (and yes, I have been told this specifically.) On top of this, my own personal values have shifted a lot over the past 12 years and I’ve become increasingly employee friendly which frequently butts up against what I’m asked to do or represent in my role and I no longer feel my job fits my personal values. I’m considering what other fields I can move into because I’m incredibly burnt out but I’m also scared of trying to make a change.

  39. Happy*

    The people I work with are generally lovely. I have not experienced any rise in hostility or rudeness in my profession, but I don’t work with the public.

    2. Hlao-roo*

      My experience has been similar. I haven’t noticed a rise in hostility or rudeness at my office during the pandemic. For context, I’m an engineer at a manufacturing company so I do not work with the public. My team was fully working from home between mid-March 2020 and June 2020. Over the past two years, we’ve slowly transitioned from hybrid (WFH most days) to hybrid (work from the office most days).

      1. Happy*

        I’m an engineer, too. We’ve been working from home for the past 2 years and are just now starting to transition to getting back into the office. So not too far off.

  40. Kowalski! Options!*

    Definitely cracking open the personal laptop to comment on this one…
    I don’t know about hostility, but I am seeing people’s nerves get frayed to the point where people can’t even be bothered to be passive-aggressive to each other: it’s all aggressive and damn little passivity. As Ihmmy points out above, people are burnt TF out and that burnout has taken away any need for social lubrication that we have with each other. And I’ll cop to having my moments, too: my overworked supervisor has basically taken on a lot of our work, (which she used to do before she was promoted) because it’s like a comfort zone for her, so there are a lot of times when I’ve gone completely monosyllabic with actual voice conversations. What would have been a gentle reprimand before March of 2022 from my grandboss became a full-on dressing down, complete with gritted teeth, and she hasn’t reached out to me in the three months since to see how I’m doing.
    I will say this, though: it’s taught me to disengage emotionally from my job. Not in the sense of “I’m going to do as crap a job as I can”, but in the sense of “you get my mental bandwidth between X am and Y pm, and not a minute more.” I seek validation in hobbies and discovering old passions. I don’t take it personally if people don’t like my ideas at work because no one is up for liking much of anything, anymore. And I am seeing glimmers of kindness as people try to regain footing in relationships or reach out to people to create new connections. That gives me hope, to a certain extent. But I do wonder if people are willing to put in the hard work to get that civility back so we do have interactions with less friction. I know, personally, there are times when I’m for it and times when it just seems like so. much. damn. work. for. nothing.

    1. Kowalski! Options!*

      (Forgot to mention: I work in corporate training within a large government department.)

    2. H.C.*

      Yeah, the bulk of my career has been in nonprofits & government, and I take the “mentally disengage” advice to heart – esp. after witnessing quite a few impassioned colleagues burning out and/or become overly cynical.

    3. DrRat*

      A. So sorry for what you’re dealing with
      B. From someone who channels “Rico/Kaboom”, love the name

  41. Not So Super-visor*

    OMG. I work in the freight industry, and it’s been terrible. Between the driver shortage, COVID, and manufacturing delays & shortages, everything is delayed, and people are just awful. We had an entire center closed because 75% of the staff had COVID, and I literally had a customer yell at me that COVID had been going on for 18 months at that point and we should have figured this out by now. I’ve been called names, sworn at, and just SCREAMED at. I’ve worked in this industry for 15 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve had good staff just get up and quit after a bad interaction because they’re just over it.
    The worst have been people who are expecting luxury items and insist that because they spent a certain $$ amount with a vendor/retailer that they shouldn’t have to deal with a delay.

    1. Lady_Lessa*

      I can appreciate your problems, because I hear about it from our shipper. We ship hazardous materials all over the world, and she is having trouble getting responses.

  42. kat*

    Weird, I was just thinking about this the other day. I notice it in a prevalence of rude comments on social media, and I had a theory that it started around the 2016 election. Trump was always praised by the people that supported him for ‘saying it like it is,’ or something along those lines. And I don’t know, I feel like that’s just continued on and on and gotten worse and worse because he never really had any consequences for ‘saying it like it is.’ So the more people saw that, the more emboldened they were to say and do whatever they want. And the more people that saw other people saying and doing whatever rude things they wanted without consequence, the more they felt that they could do the same. Like a snowball effect.

    1. LadyAmalthea*

      I worked in retail from 2004-2019, and I noticed that too. We always had rude entitled people, but the level went up in 2016, and it was the first time I noticed lots of people from outside NYC coming into the Manhattan store over the holidays and saying “Merry Christmas” in a specific tone that indicated they wanted a reaction from us, and getting seriously mad when we wished them a happy and healthy New Year in return because they couldn’t actually get mad at that response. Years of being demonstrated that rudeness is acceptable mixed with a pandemic is a scary situation, and I am so glad I am out of retail.

    2. batcat71*

      I very much agree! The divide between people who are just kind natured, and those who just want what they want and they want it NOWW! is ever increasing. I believe that values have changed, what was once unacceptable, is standard. The main thing, EVERYONE is right. No matter how odd, how bad, how abusive, how illogical, all views have to be ‘considered’ and no one is ever wrong, so the loudest wrong voice wins, the calmer people keep to themselves and bullies win every day. I love my job, but half the admin staff just stopped talking to me, they were great when they got their way all the time but now that i am beyond exhausted and have stopped catering to them, well, i don’t exist.
      If feels like the Dump has given licensee to the worst behaviors.
      I have seen things, we all have, in the news that don’t even feel real. I have been called so many names, witch being the main one, for standing up for retail workers being abused by non maskers.
      I am so so discouraged. I feel like I am losing faith in humans. We are not good, we are terrible right now.
      And I do not believe that lack of social interaction has made teens / youngs rude, I think it has been the pandemic wearing us down to not saying no to them, at all.
      I was raised in a tiny farm community. We hardly saw anyone, but we learned kindness.
      I feel like if anything it is the privilege we are seeing unmasked. IMHO

    3. Stop It Sven, Try to Focus!*

      I was thinking the same thing! My company is chock-full of tree-huggers, but the few employees who lean (very vocally and obviously) to the right of center, are the rudest! One of our supervisors asked a PM whether he was a “f-ing idiot” for voting in favor of the minimum wage increase – even though the majority of the state (as red as it is) voted in favor of the measure, which means it garnered support from both parties. Anyway, most of my employees have been wonderful – and the only ones that have been rude have been the ones that were pro-Trump.

      (Don’t come at me, I know there are all kinds, but I’m calling it as I see it. Many of my neighbors are pro-Trump and they are the nicest people – I think it depends on a lot of other factors.)

  43. Owlette*

    I’m an assistant to an accountant. We’ve always had clients who get upset and rant to us about politics (I’ve had several say “If the president doesn’t pay his taxes, why should I?” during the last administration), but it seems to be getting worse. Most of our clients own their own businesses and are losing their employees and customers to COVID, or they can’t get inventory, or their vendors just can’t afford to pay them anymore. It’s compounding stress upon stress upon stress, and sometimes I just catch them at a bad time when I call. Which seems to be all the time now.

    1. Tax Lady*

      I’m an accountant and I can say without a doubt that rude, aggressive, stressed out, and anxious clients are more the norm than the exception now. Clients expect immediate callbacks and if they don’t get it, will proceed to bury my receptionist in calls, texts, and emails. It doesn’t matter that I’m booked solid from 8am to 6pm at the busiest part of tax season, they demand attention NOW! I’ve grabbed the phone more than once between appointments to explain my crushing schedule and that their repeated calling, texting, emails, etc, are delaying the process significantly and that if they can’t wait for a callback or can’t accept their place in “line” (everything is worked on in the order it came in), then they can come get their paperwork and find another accountant. That usually scares most clients into apologizing and trying to explain their anxieties. Those that double down get fired. I know I’m in a privileged position in that I can fire the true jerks, but it’s shocking to me that I’ve had to threaten/follow through on this so often this year.

  44. Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss*

    Not so much rudeness but a lot of entitlement from those who are reaching out via our Contact Us page.

    I take the time to answer everyone fully and I get a nice thank you about 10% of the time and even when I ask a follow up question, I get ghosted.

    I know that our switchboard has been getting a lot of rude callers and it’s impacting the morale of those who man it.

  45. Beth*

    I’m relatively insulated in my own job, but I’ve noticed a knock-on effect from the rise in rudeness.

    My wife and I both tend to be polite and pleasant whenever possible, especially when we have to call any customer service for any purpose. During the pandemic, I increased the attention I pay to being pleasant and supportive over the phone when I’m calling to ask for support, whether it’s making appointments or straightening out a billing or administrative snafu.

    I’ve been getting an increasing number of service people thank me for being “so nice and polite”, “the nicest person I’ve talked to today”, etc. It breaks my heart — sometimes all I’ve done is say please and thank you. I’m glad to be helping make their day a little less miserable, but damn it, I shouldn’t be so unusual.

    It’s just . . . NOT THAT HARD TO BE POLITE, sheesh, I’m asking total strangers over the phone to help me, of course I say please, why isn’t everyone doing it?

    1. cubone*

      Same here. I tipped a server 40% once when the place was completely chaos and they were the only staff member and they just … burst into tears on the spot. They were so grateful and I’m glad it made a bright spot in a bad day, but honestly when I got back to my car I burst into tears too. It just shouldn’t feel that… much, you know?

      1. Eff Walsingham*

        I used to tease my husband and call him “Mr. Rockefeller” due to his very generous tipping habits. But I notice that during the pandemic and as things have reopened, my own previously standard percentage has wandered up to join his. We’re very grateful to have the option to eat out again, and this is a high cost of living area. We would rather have fewer meals out and tip better, than not show our gratitude in the most useful way we can think of.

    2. Elle Woods*

      I’ve noticed the same thing. I had to make a midnight trip to the ER about a month ago. (Turns out it was nothing serious, thank goodness.) When the nurse who treated me was walking me back to the lobby, she thanked me for being so patient and understanding during my visit. I said “you’re welcome and thanks for the great care and explanations you and the care team provided.” Honestly, I was flabbergasted when she said that because it never occurred to me to be anything but polite or pleasant during my stay. A little kindness goes a long way.

    3. Bagpuss*

      Yes, being polite does seem to come as a surprise – and I have a lot of sympathy for anyone doing a call centre / customer support type job.

      That said, based on my recent experience I can see why people reach the CS person in a bad mood . Whether due to staff absences due to Covid, or the great resignation, or what, but a lot of places seem to be hugely under-staffed – with one I gave up and wrote an actual paper-and-ink letter because I had been trying for 3 days to get through via chat or phone (the company doesn’t seem to email as an option). If I had got through after an hour of listening to lift music with interjections every 90 seconds telling me how important my call was to them and that lots of information was on the website (which was where I had looked first, and it wasn’t!) I would have been feeling pretty irritated, although I would not have taken it out on them.

      I’ve notices that an awful lot of service companies seems to be moving to apps and chat bots and making it harder to contact them in other ways, which I don’t think helps. You have to jump through so many hoops, often, to get to a person, so often you’ve already spent a fair bit of time and mental energy before you ever get to speak to someone.

      none of which excuses being rude or aggressive to the employees you speak to, but I think it does mean that a lot of people are already frustrated by the time the conversation starts.

  46. Dust Bunny*

    Academic library: We serve a medical school population and a certain percentage of those have always been egotistical a-holes. I’m in the archives so we’ve always been pretty low-traffic and had a lot of control over who visits, and I don’t feel like anything has changed.

    I would guess that my coworkers in the more public-contact departments have Seen Some Things, though.

    1. Dust Bunny*

      Retired surgeons, especially, are high-maintenance. Not rude, necessarily, but they seem to be very accustomed to having people anticipate their wants and do things for them without much explanation. Sometimes getting them to explain what they want is a pain in the neck and they get impatient and rather toddler-ish.

  47. Velomont*

    In no way do I mean to politicize this but we’ve also just recently finished a four year period where it’s been demonstrated that once-normal, visible, rules of civility have been thrown out the window and that histrionics, abuse and violence are now considered acceptable by a large portion of the population.

    1. Astromanthe*

      This is a very good point. I think the other stressors, the pandemic and the subsequent shortages of labor and goods, and high prices, would have been borne with much less anger, had that four year period gone differently.

  48. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

    Yes, although in my line of work (IT services for a company) it’s been concurrent with a rise in what I’ll generously call ‘alternative beliefs’ – people believing Covid is a planned event, that vaccines are wiping out thousands of people, that LGBTQ people are routinely abducting children to forceably change their gender, that being white is about to be outlawed, that Jewish folk are bringing in a new world order….etc.

    It’s not all at once, but there’s been a staggering increase in this coupled with intense rudeness and hostile behaviour if told that they are wrong or they can’t say that. I’d hazard a guess that a lot of people wanted to find a single cause of all this chaos and when told that actually no it wasn’t created to win an election they just don’t have the skills to cope.

    Yesterday I had a request come in to the queue for a social media site to be unblocked for a user – it was one of those..errr..let’s say notoriously anti-fact places, I am not listing the url – and when denied I got back a long email of abuse, calling me a threat to free speech etc.etc.

    I just forwarded it to HR. I really do not have the time, patience or spoons to consider the feelings of rude people.

    1. Keymaster of Gozer (she/her)*

      Oh additional thought – people spending a lot more time on the internet due to being stuck at home may have led to some of this. Especially if they’re prone to being convinced by those kind of websites/Twitter posts etc.

      I know it’s been really hard to find any forum during this that hasn’t had an invasion of antivaxx, antimask, antimandate stuff.

      1. Colette*

        I think that’s part of it – and a lot of those sites encourage people to think of those who are different in any way (i.e. are not straight, white, able-bodied men) as the enemy.

  49. AMH*

    I work in the construction industry which is plagued with major supply shortages and delays. Clients are understandably frustrated, especially when something that wasn’t previously short suddenly has an 8 week backorder. I find their frustration completely understandable and let it generally roll off my back. What I’m struggling with is the rudeness and anger of my coworkers who are burnt out from 2 years of this — everyone is on edge and quick to try and deflect blame. I’m tired of being sniped at, of the passive aggressive behavior, and of being the blame soaker for clients. I am not sure how much longer I can last.

    1. EarlGrey*

      I’m in architecture and while i feel personally pretty shielded from outright rudeness since I’m not usually the one delivering the bad news of cost increases and delays, it sure seems like clients expect things to work like they did in 2019. The budgets and deadlines are the same and now we have the impossible task of fitting a project with 2022 pricing, staffing levels, and hourly rates to them. It feels like in 2020 we tried to be sympathetic with one another about how much has changed, and now we’re refusing to accept than anything has.

  50. Rara Avis*

    My husband and I both teach in middle schools, and disrespectful, unkind behavior is definitely way, way up. I think there are several factors: kids are out of practice relating to each other. They have terrible role models in the media/government/etc. And the counselors at my school say that the ability to have empathy is cut down by constant stress.

  51. Anon in Midwest*

    This is a based on my experience at a fast growing Silicon Valley tech company during the past few years.

    The employees of this company are FERAL about company swag/merchandise. We have a limited amount of stock each quarter that gets released to an online store where people can buy their favorite branded items (shirts, hats, keychains, whatever).

    People actually crash the store (via thousands of employees trying to login all at once) whenever a new set of inventory drops. Then they go to the company-wide chat channel and harshly criticize the store for being “broken”, “failure”, and hundreds of comments pile up about how they lost the chance to get one of the items they wanted because it sold out too fast. The comments go on for hours or even days, and they are extremely rude. The best part? The swag is all FREE (via generous annual credit granted to each employee). So they’re b*tching about not being able to get all of the FREE items that they wanted.

    It’s not a great experience when websites crash or things sell out quickly, but the program is limited by budget and having only one sweet person managing the whole thing (in a company with thousands of employees)

    I cannot believe the entitlement!! And yes, it’s gotten worse since 2020. I think people are more empowered to be rude when they’re looking at a computer, not face to face with the person managing the store.

    1. D. B.*

      I don’t know … economics says it’s not really free if it’s scarce, and your company has made a choice not to buy enough merch for everyone to get the stuff they really want. It’s a cruel way to treat employees—like having six dogs and tossing them four treats. Of course they’re going to fight.

      1. Rusty Shackelford*

        Sounds like it’s a benefit, and it’s a benefit that only a few people actually get to take advantage of.

        1. Anon in Midwest*

          That’s a fine point, but I will say there are many, many other benefits that are worth MUCH more money given to all these employees. So the swag benefit is mainly an emotional one.

          The ferocity of their love for swag, and their deep anger when they don’t get what they want, is just pretty obnoxious to witness.

  52. Dasein9*

    I’ve been seeing this trend for a few years now in the US. It’s gotten angrier and meaner here and seems to be coming to a head with pandemic fatigue and increased political instability.

    In this country, people just don’t do things just because they make life better. Profit is the only measure of success.

    – Our consumption is dominated by mega-corporations that find it profitable to make it easy for us to spend our money and very difficult to get help when we need it. (Example: Phone mazes designed to frustrate us before we can talk to a human, all but ensuring that the interaction is stressful and brief as possible.)

    – Our health care marketplace is dominated by a capricious racket that drives prices up and profits from denying us care.

    – Our employers (who control our access to health care) talk about our hobbies, leisure, eating habits, and sleep as though they are implements in the managerial toolkit and only exist to increase our productivity for them.

    This place is mean and getting meaner.

  53. A Genuine Scientician*

    I’m in higher ed, and I’m seeing more hostility and entitlement from the students in the past 3 years than I did in the previous 5.

    Some of it is pandemic related — they’re not getting the college experience they had anticipated, and they assume the professors are in charge of more than we actually are. I got the same email from my university that the students did in March 2020, letting us know that in less than 2 hours classes were being converted to online. I’d gotten an email the night before telling me I wasn’t allowed to make any changes to my course unless the administration told me I could. But I had to deal with a lot of students yelling at me that I didn’t give them enough notice, and that they couldn’t learn the same online, and they shouldn’t have to pay for courses online. And some of it is just that the high levels of stress for the past few years make life in general hard, so they’ve got less patience and are lashing out at what feel like safe targets. They also assumed that teaching online is easier than teaching in person; it’s not, it’s a *lot* more work for anyone who teaches classes in a more useful way than just a person standing at a podium and lecturing.

    But some of it honestly predates the pandemic. In Jan 2020, I had students demanding to know when the alternative exams would be, because they were taking a cruise during the scheduled ones. With the assumption that of course I would create alternate assignments if the first one didn’t work with their schedule. I had others who joined the class in the third week, and who were angry that I gave them the choice of making up the work from the first two weeks or taking a 0 on it; they felt that they shouldn’t be responsible for it since they weren’t in the class then. There’s been a rise in the number of students complaining about not getting As despite the number of hours they put in, while ignoring the fact that they’re only getting 50% of the questions correct (in a fact-based discipline, so there are actually correct answers).

    I turned 40 during this pandemic, so I’m hardly an old curmudgeon when it comes to being a prof, but it does seem like this is on the rise compared to even a few years ago.

    1. Rebecca Strawberry*

      It sounds like you’ve become the frontline retail employee for higher education. You work for an company that charges its customers $70,000+ a year for a service, but have little control over pricing and other organizational decisions. Students aren’t customers in the classical sense, but it sure feels like it when they’re mortgaging their entire futures for a four year degree. It leads to a sense of entitlement that isn’t conducive to learning.
      Honestly, this seems like another American institution that needs to be wholly overhauled before it can get better. I’d love it if we could go back to a system where students were charged a fair price and bad students faced actual consequences.

      1. A Genuine Scientician*

        Frontline, yes, but definitely not as poorly treated as a lot of people in retail are. The past few years haven’t been a picnic for me, but retail employees have had things a lot worse than I have.

        Sites like RateMyProf also do a number on morale.

  54. Nightengale*

    I work with children with developmental disabilities and there always seem to be ebbs and flows, times when it seems like no one is doing well. It is hard to tell if we are in one of those now or this is something more. There are unprecedented waiting lists for mental health services for children in my area, but it is not clear if this is a cause (people not getting the support they need) or an effect (waaaaay more people needing support.) Or both. Probably both.

    But I do have an explanation. When the pandemic started, we – global we – were pushed into crisis mode. There was an emergency and our brains and bodies responded in emergency mode. We put out cortisol and other stress hormones and neurotransmitters, all the things which enable fight-or-flight emergency response. The crisis continued, abated in some ways but is not gone, and there have been months and months of mixed messages and uncertainty.
    We – again collective we – have depleted our coritsol reserves. A psychiatrist colleague said it is though the whole world has an adjustment disorder. Chronic stress, anxiety, depression, adjustment problems, all of these often lead to irritable mood, poor frustration tolerance, poor decision making.

    1. ThursdaysGeek*

      And when others are rude, it’s sometimes hard to have grace in that situation, to ignore my own adjustment disorder and remember that they too have been suffering. If I can be generous to them, it helps just a little bit – both me and them.

      I haven’t seen that much rudeness in person. But I am sometimes trying to be extra nice to people around me, and I think people react to that just as much as they react to rudeness.

  55. Non-profit Fundraiser*

    I’ve been seeing more of this in the non-profit industry as well…I work in event-based fundraising and over the last few months, I’ve noticed that donors and volunteers have become much more demanding and willing to be rude. It honestly reminds me of some of the customers that I worked with in my retail job 10 years ago. When something doesn’t go exactly the way they want it to, I get voicemails and emails telling me what a horrible person I am and how I’m ruining their whole experience. And oftentimes, it’s over little things like a t-shirt got delayed in the mail or I can’t move a donation to someone else on their team. It’s been hard, I used to love working with our donors and volunteers, and now most days I dread it.

  56. Popinki (she/her)*

    I’ve been at my current job (property tax collector) for almost 14 years and last summer was the first time I’ve thought about changing fields since I started here. There were always rude people before, but were the exception and not the rule. They’re still the minority but… they’re getting nastier. They seem to have this Verucca Salt “but I want it NOW!” mentality combined with “if I nag them enough, they’ll give me what I want to shut me up” when the real world, especially local government, doesn’t work that way at all. No, you can’t pay your taxes over the phone with a credit card. I don’t take debit or credit cards. No, you didn’t last year because this office has never taken credit cards. It’s printed right on the bill that I don’t take credit cards. No, I can’t take your credit card just this once because I have no system for accepting credit cards. Yes, I know this is 2022. Call me a stupid b!tch? Verbal abuse will not be tolerated CLICK!

    I used to get one a season, now it’s one a week and I feel myself turning into more of a grouchy misanthrope than ever.

    1. Sad Desk Salad*

      It’s crazy to me to think that a tax collector wouldn’t have the ultimate in power when it comes to people that pay you…it’s not like they’re customers who can “take their business elsewhere.” If I was having trouble paying my property taxes, cursing out the tax collector would be the absolute furthest thing from my mind. If I ever needed to call my tax collector, I can’t imagine being anything other than absolutely deferential. The mind boggles.

      1. Popinki(she/her)*

        I actually have no power, because I’m basically a bookkeeper. I don’t set the tax rates; the town, county, and school district do. The deadlines are set by state law. I can’t decide what payment types I can accept; my town does, and once in a while they’ll float the idea of credit card payments but it has yet to happen because of budget and logistics. Even my office hours are spelled out in the town charter. Basically at the beginning of the tax season I get a list of names and amounts due. I collect and deposit the money and reconcile the cash in/cash out, and pay the taxing bodies every month. I sure can’t refuse someone’s *valid* payment because they’re giving me lip, although I can and do shut them down if they get abusive or profane, with 100% support of my overlords.

        On a certain level people understand this, but I’m the one they can call up on the phone or go to the office and grouch at. I suggest that they go to town council or school board meetings if they’re that upset, and 99% of the time they blow that off. So lucky me, I guess :D

        1. Eff Walsingham*

          A few years ago I had a property tax issue relating to my dad’s estate. Everything had to be done by phone and mail, long distance, and my home town is… not at the pinnacle of high tech, early adoption-wise.

          But those people in that office were so patient, and explained everything so clearly, and I made sure to tell them that I appreciated it. Sure, nobody likes to part with money, but it’s not their fault that people owe taxes. I agree with Sad Desk Salad: who argues with the tax collector? It’d be like pi$$ing up a rope! If there *is* a mistake, their office is the one in a position help you fix it.

  57. MP*

    I work at a museum and we’ve definitely seen increased rudeness from visitors, especially racially-charged aggression.

    One day, a visitor reported a technical issue. They added that the museum had been closed for a year during the pandemic so we should have taken the time to fix these issues. The museum relies on revenue from admissions to pay its employees. Since we were closed for a year, no revenue meant a lot of staff was furloughed and remaining staff was given a pay cut. The pandemic was not a vacation for many of us or a time to twiddle thumbs. Some of us were taking on tasks from our furloughed colleagues. Our colleagues with children were now working from home and taking care of/educating their kids at home.

    The museum introduced DEI measures regarding our docent program. It wanted to change from unpaid (and mostly white women) staff to paid training and paid position with a focus on DEI. The front line staff was accosted by aggressive visitors. The aggression was so severe that my employer offered on-site counseling for affected staff.

    1. Popinki(she/her)*

      So stuff at the museum only breaks while it’s closed and functions perfectly while it’s open? Gosh, I never knew… /s

      As to the DEI stuff, racism has always been around but the past few years (coincidentally starting with a certain president who never hid his contempt for people of color) it’s become far more overt and nasty than it was. And this is me, a fairly clueless white person noticing it.

  58. CW*

    I work an office 9-to-5 job, and I haven’t noticed anything. Everyone I work with is super nice. We even had a public event a couple weeks ago and there was no incident.

    But in my opinion, between the pandemic, bitter political divides, inflation, and the turmoil going on overseas, it is no surprise why this is happening. People are stressed beyond belief these days. Even yours truly over here. But I don’t act out and take it out on others. I find the right support group and channel it out in a healthy and friendly way.

  59. KSharpie*

    My clients are generally chill but the customers they serve have the potential to actually shoot us.
    I helped write the de-escalation process for my job because we frequently encounter those customers while we’re in the field and they do not like us or our clients.

  60. alferd g packer, esq*

    I work for a state department (not The State Department). Right now we’re revamping our safety processes, in part because of the very thing you describe. However, we also have a lot of millennials and Gen Z folks who are Extremely Online and aware that members of the public who may not care for the state government have avenues open to them to make our lives miserable that didn’t necessarily exist in the past. Doxxing and swatting are much bigger threats than they have been in the past. Data aggregators have our home addresses — even worse when we’re working from home. One of our colleagues observed that we are one Reddit conspiracy theory away from a tragedy.

    Government workers have targets on their backs just by virtue of the employer. It’s not great, but it’s the job. There are a lot of valid reasons not to trust the government — my parents were both government employees as well, and I grew up with Some Stories — but it’s worse now as more folks question the nature of facts (and are facing an ongoing pandemic, pandemic fatigue, rising cost of living, climate crisis, existential problems, etc.). I try to be compassionate but it’s very hard not to despair when you spend a lot of time getting told how useless you are, and frequently worse than that. (Our safety survey showed a lot of gender-based abuse, for one thing.)

    1. Penthesilea*

      I worked in local government until a few months ago, when I took a job with a consulting firm. The constant negativity, distrust, suspicion, etc. were a significant factor in my departure from government. It’s definitely a trend that has been growing for quite a while. In my job, the negativity started ramping up noticeably in 2019 and continued to accelerate through the pandemic. We got an uptick of people calling/coming into City Hall to yell at front line staff about things that were totally out of their control — think yelling at the clerk taking a water bill payment about road construction. Now, I have a job where I do a lot of the same work, but I don’t have to interact with the public. I feel a lot better about myself now that I don’t have to deal with being someone’s punching bag just because of my job.

  61. Lyngend (Canada)*

    Tech support. I started during covid-19. And yeah, the difference between 2020 and 2022 is soooo obvious. The customers yell so much more than they used to. But it’s not a consistent thing, it’s like a rollercoaster or series of hills. Where we’ll have a stretch of time that makes me want to quit. Then a stretch of time where people are mostly accepting of the information I have.
    Just wish people would stop expecting me to have a magic wand tgat would instantly fix any issue
    The only saving grace is that I don’t have to control my body language just my words and tone.

  62. stargazer*

    I work on discrete projects for a large number of clients. At any one time I might have 5-8 projects of varying size, difficulty, and urgency in progress. The number of clients requesting projects be delivered within a few days, or even the same day (!) has gone up tremendously this year. For many of these projects, delivery even within the same week would mean dropping everything else I’m working on. But everyone is impatient and everyone’s sense of urgency seems to have skyrocketed. A couple of times I’ve gotten a “can you deliver this entirely new project by the end of today” email followed a few hours later with “just checking in on the progress here” before I’ve even had a chance to process what the ask is.

  63. Unfortunate Reality*

    Yes, I have seen rising hostility everywhere. Even in a corporate environment. It is incredibly unfortunate.
    I attribute these behaviors to living in a low resource environment where everyone is seemingly competing for everything. Like toilet paper during the early pandemic, everyone seems to be willing to fight and get very ugly over the smallest things and I believe that comes from living where there are seemingly not enough resources to go around. I live in the US so resources are disproportionately allocated to people with overwhelming wealth. It’s an “every person for themselves, fight to survive mindset.” As a middle class American, my perspective is that the system is rigged against my very existence (so many of us are only one ER visit from poverty) and it created an environment where people feel the need to fight in order to exist anymore. Very disheartening to say the least.

    1. Elec*

      I work in a corporate environment and I would describe it similarly. Especially because my workplace is very hierarchy-based, there’s really strong feelings about competition for resources between different seniority levels.

  64. Mooses*

    I had been doing civil enforcement for less than a year when the pandemic started, so it was easy to believe that people have always been this hostile.

    My colleagues tell me that cases are going to trial that would have been settled in the past, and I seem to be on the receiving end of unusual unprofessional behavior from everywhere but our clients. Some of it is my gender and age, but a lot is based in anti-government sentiment of various flavors and degrees. That has gotten noticeably worse even in my short tenure.

  65. Lore*

    I very keenly feel loss of resilience in so many ways; I often feel tapped out emotionally and physically by a schedule that was on the light side in the before times and completely unable to manage my time in ways that were second nature two years ago.
    AND my job has gotten a lot harder–supply chain issues mean we just don’t have the flexibility to roll with unexpected developments the way we used to without blowing a publication date, so every tiny thing that goes wrong is way more stressful than it used to be.

    So I think the distance between “normal day” and “last straw” is a lot smaller than it used to be. I’m tired and frustrated with myself and stymied by the micro-decisions of daily living in a way that I generally was not in 2019. I personally tend to internalize (and externalize) that as anxiety and/or tears rather than anger, so when I hit “last straw” I collapse in a puddle of misery rather than lashing out, But for anyone whose exhausted/frustrated/disappointed mode goes to anger, it’s just RIGHT on the surface waiting to be tapped.

    1. Dino*

      This is exactly where I’m at. I was already struggling more than most in the pre-covid times and now I’m just… unable to leave my house except to go to work to keep food on the table. Can’t even make it to the grocery store, ironically, because it’s too overwhelming and them being out of something I counted on has left me blubbering in the aisle. Which is embarrassing. So yeah, I think everyone is going through that but some take it out on others, some isolate, and others ramp up the kindness.

    2. Chopin*

      Fellow publishing person here, and all I can say is: PREACH. All of this resonates with me, and rest assured that you are not alone.

  66. JC*

    I work in healthcare and ever since the pandemic started to settle down, patients have become incredibly entitled and increasingly abusive. I definitely think that the politics of the last few years have played a major role. People are being told that they no longer have to be polite or understanding, that they can say F*** YOU! without consequence. It makes it hard to have as much sympathy as I used to. If you are rude/insulting/abusive to me or my employees, I will no longer go out of my way for you. You can’t come into my clinic and threaten my physicians or employees, I won’t allow it. It is my job as a manager to protect and stand up for my employees and providers. It is true what they say, you get more flies with honey.

  67. ThoughtfulCarrot*

    I work in nonprofit social services. People are so, so burnt out – both employees and clients. Economic woes are adding on to pandemic-driven challenges. Life has gotten just harder and harder for everyone over the past few years. I see more depression and anxiety in my clients and coworkers. I also think a contributor is the rise of online dissemination of videos showing people behaving poorly in public. It normalizes the behavior in a way that encourages it.

    1. nora*

      I was going to suggest that to some of those in the K12 sector; there’s a lot of public tantrum videos but also a lot of purely obnoxious and ridiculous behavior from popular YouTube personalities.

  68. Allison*

    I work in recruiting, as a sourcer, so I’m not even a recruiter. Recruiters can, to some degree, communicate up and tell the hiring managers that the prospects that meet the qualifications are looking to make way more than we’re able to offer, but we don’t SET the salary bands – that’s something HR ops and finance have a stronghold over, and we have to appeal to *them* if we want to flex up on salary.

    Anyway, I believe in being transparent with the prospects I’m messaging, if they ask about salary I do disclose it, I hate doing that “well what are *you* looking to make?” dance, but then they get mad at ME for the budgeted salary being too low, like I’m the idiot who set that budget and I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t set it, I have zero control over it! It’s fine to tell me you’re looking to make more than that, but please don’t be rude, I’m literally just the messenger.

    1. Posilutely*

      I misread your role as ‘sorcerer’ and thought, that’s it, we’ve found the coolest job ever!

    2. Sad Desk Salad*

      My spouse went from recruiting to sourcing and her stress levels dropped insanely when she did so. Maybe it was her clients that were giving her all the trouble? But the recruiter she sources to is under a ridiculous amount of stress that she doesn’t always have to absorb.

      Add in that she recruits high-level engineering experts in big tech and you’ve got an ego problem compounded by an engineering shortage. And people want to work remote so they can take their big tech money to the sticks and buy a massive house…but they work on hardware. :forehead slap:

  69. Doctors Whom*

    I do not work in a public-facing function, but have been experiencing this with a specific handful of coworkers. Relationships that used to be solid and contain a hefty dose of mutual respect have had a lot of damage done.

    In my experience with these encounters, what’s been clear to me is that the person involved is experiencing an anxiety reaction and they are spiraling. (I live with situational anxiety, my kids both have anxiety, when you live with it it’s a lot easier to spot when other people are experiencing it.)

    I think that the multiple years we have behind us of varying degrees of social isolation, with many of us primarily interacting with 2-dimensional screen beings, has done a lot of mental and emotional health damage and my non-scientific observation is that a lot of people struggle as a result to maintain empathy or abandon it altogether, intentional or not. I’ve tried to give a lot of grace while also not excusing poor treatment.

  70. CoveredinBees*

    It is for this very reason that I have been making an extra effort to be kind and patient with staff in retail, restaurants, customer service, etc. From my own time in these jobs, I know that there were already more than enough assholes out there pre-covid but it seems like there are more now.

  71. This is My Happy Face*

    I feel like I’ve seen a weird dichotomy between people who are much nicer than before, and people who are WAY meaner than before say 2 years ago. When I see fundraisers or charity events, I think they’re hitting their goals faster and people are being more generous where they can be. When it comes to service workers, I’ve seen grown adults throw full out temper tantrums over nothing. It’s strange to me, and all I can come up with is that people are moving towards extremes.

  72. WingedRocks*

    My theory is that abusing frontline staff escalated during the pandemic, and folks just decided that was the new normal because business owners and managers did so little to protect or defend their staff who were subjected to hostile customers. And, no surprise, people are increasingly wanting to avoid customer-facing roles for low wages and persistently rude clients. All of this can be partly be blamed on the laughably inaccurate statement that, “The customer is always right.” Because between the lines, customers see that as their behavior or demands are therefore never unreasonable.

  73. Bronze Medalist*

    I work in a healthcare-related field and have noticed a sharp increase in rudeness/lack of professionalism over the past few years.

    My role is client-focused. I have always received excellent feedback on my ability to manage clients. I switched companies last year and have dealt with more bullies than ever before – just straight-up nastiness and verbal abuse.

    I have been thinking about getting out of this field for awhile, but this behavior has solidified my decision to move on to a different industry. There is no place for verbal abuse (or any kind of abuse) in the workplace.

  74. Posilutely*

    I work in a niche area of acute healthcare and would definitely agree that families, staff and students all have a low threshold for throwing their toys out of the pram at the moment, but for varying reasons.
    Our visiting rules are still under Covid restrictions so families are trying to cope with incredibly difficult situations without their usual support networks.
    Staff are struggling to cope with heavy workloads due to severe recruitment and retention issues and unprecedented sickness levels (a mixture of short term illnesses due to being run down and long term absences for stress/anxiety/depression).
    Students are coming to us with a notable lack of social skills and we’re wondering why but of course they have been taught virtually for the past two years and this is their first time in a workplace.
    Times are tough for all and we’re horribly low on goodwill for each other while we’re all wrapped up in our own problems.

  75. Khatul Madame*

    In government contracting clients have not become any more hostile, but the even before Covid the situation had been pretty horrible. The temptation to be nasty to contractors with absolutely no consequences is just too great.

  77. elizelizeliz*

    All right i am ready to stop working in k-12 schools and switch to your job! What field do you work in? I am truly happy for you.

  78. Sangamo Girl*

    The pandemic isolation and fear has ratcheted up my anxiety level to eleven. Little things are work that I used to be able to shrug off are a big deal. I am constantly in fight or flight mode over the most innocuous things. It’s exhausting and makes it really difficult to self regulate.

    I fight the urge to be snarky or rude but some days I just have to take some time off to get myself together. I’m lucky to be able to do that. Most people aren’t and I think it comes out in interactions with others.

  79. LKW*

    I’ve been very lucky in my career – in 20 years I can still count the jerks I’ve met on a single hand. I haven’t seen any uptick in unprofessional behavior, but more and more I see people who are just tired and a bit overwhelmed.

  80. Dunno, I usually just read AAM...*

    The membership organisation I work for has definitely seen an increase in hostile calls and emails from members complaining that the organisation is publically welcoming of everyone, regardless of gender identity, orientation, race, etc. I think people are (sadly) seeing more open bigotry in the media, which makes them feel freer about repeating it irl.

    Personally I’m with the colleague who concluded after reading an extremely racist, sexist, homophobic complaint email that ended with a threat to cancel their membership: “don’t let the door hit you on the way out!” (I assume she put it in politer corporate speak in her actual response.)

  81. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    At work I feel like it has risen somewhat (academia) but we have always struggled with parents and students who want the rules bent. But there does seem to be a quicker time to the nuclear option now. (Calling the president directly when a grade isn’t changed. Starting a social media protest rally used to wait until the channels failed, now it seems to be the first step)

    In my personal life I definitely see it and largely because it seems everything is politicized. Every issue or speed bump is instantly escalated to be divisive. Teachers are quitting because students are responding to them with violence and parents are following up on those reports with additional threats. Parents are taking out their feelings of frustration that teens are really struggling with additional mental health issues through covid and blaming the teachers.

  82. Hotdog not dog*

    I work in Compliance in the financial industry. Part of my role is to review, evaluate, and address complaints to determine whether any rules are being violated. At least, it used to be part…it’s pretty much mushroomed into the whole thing. Most of the complaints from clients are not actual violations, but people are filing complaints over things nobody can control and then becoming borderline abusive when someone from our firm reaches out. This week’s winner is the lady who complained that she requested a transaction after hours and it wasn’t processed until the next morning. She had called our associate on their personal cell at around 8 pm; her transaction was completed by 8:30 the following morning, but she screamed at the poor associate anyway. (Fwiw, the system shuts down at 7:30 pm and reopens at 7:30 am daily so the transaction was actually submitted at the earliest possible opportunity.) I had already started logging the complaint based on the report from our associate, but she also called the manager asking to lodge a formal complaint and followed it up with an email threatening to sue. I’m looking forward to logging her complaint when she receives our response letter (which is policy for written complaints), since it basically says “please take your business elsewhere.”

    1. Littorally*

      Oh! Hello, I do approximately what you do. And yeah — our volume has gone off-the-charts crazy lately. Our stats are something like 95% of the matters we review are entirely without merit, and the stuff people find to complain about is mind-boggling.

  83. Sharpiee*

    I’ve noticed a rise……in me, unfortunately.

    I will sheepishly admit that over the past two years I was rude to a few service employees/call center agents over things that were either out of their control or because of minor mistakes that we ALL make at some point. I was never like that before. Not an excuse, but the pandemic stress/isolation just got overwhelming and it manifested in me acting like a jerk a few times, unfortunately. One time (oof) because my coffee was made incorrectly and I SNAPPED at the teenager at the drive-thru, who probably wasn’t even the one who made it. I wish I went back and apologized to her. I’ve worked in the service industry and I know how demoralizing and awful people can be and that makes me even more horrified.

    Service employees were among the unsung heroes of the pandemic and they don’t get enough credit for putting up with crappy people while simultaneously putting their health at risk and dealing with their own pandemic stress.

    1. Sorcyress*

      I know you can’t necessarily go back to that same teenager, but can you try and use your horror at yourself to move forward and make sure you are extra nice in the future? Drop an extra five in the tip jar, clean up the table next to yours that someone left their cup and wrapper at, fill out a “how are we doing” survey with glowing feedback…stuff like that?

      (I know for me, being ashamed about something in the past will make me spiral and feel all the bad unless I can use it as a springboard to Do Better Moving Forward. Not that it makes my past behavior right, but at least I can _try_ and reset the karmic balance some)

    2. Totally Subclinical*

      I hear you. I used to be polite to telemarketers, saying “sorry, we’re not interested” and hanging up — they’re just trying to stay fed and housed, and that might be the only job they can get; my beef is with their parent company, not them. But after getting multiple daily “we want to buy your property” calls, I ended up shouting “NO WE DO NOT WANT TO SELL OUR HOUSE AND WE ARE SICK OF THESE CALLS” at a telemarketer. I feel bad about it, though not as bad as I would have if I’d lost it with a grocery store employee or the staff at my doctor’s office.

      It doesn’t help that there are no consequences. The only thing that’s keeping me from being an asshole to the next telemarketer is that I don’t want to be an asshole.

  84. My heart is a fish*

    Absolutely, both online and professionally.

    It seems to me that a big part of the uptake is people being quicker to take each other in bad faith — whether consciously or not, analyzing others’ behavior through a decidedly negative and even paranoid lens. There’s no such thing as an honest mistake anymore, only a presumption of malice. Someone steps on your foot — that asshole! They must have it in for you! And then things escalate, because everyone else witnessing also interprets everything through a similar lens. It turns so many conflicts that could be easily resolved into death spirals of rage and resentment.

    2. Ampersand*

      I like that you note online here, because I believe a lot of this is related to the rise of social media sites like Twitter and TikTok, where people are fed content consistent with pre-existing views. These algorithm is designed to eliminate opposing viewpoints, or content you don’t “like”, and I don’t think a lot of people seek out that kind of content independently. I believe that is where a lot of the preconceived hostility and inability to compromise comes from .

    3. Bookworm1858*

      Had this yesterday with a coworker who I felt twisted my email to be the worst possible interpretation of my words (he already had an axe to grind with my department and has yelled at the people above me, a director and VP, way above him in the reporting structure!) I agree with a lot of the comments here but this one just really stood out to my personal experience. Thank you for articulating so well!

    4. Coast East*

      Ugh I so agree. Even when I couch my language to be as bright and friendly as possible, if I make a comment online that doesn’t fully align with some strangers’ opinions, a pile on will quickly ensue. Even if there’s no political or social discourse happening, just harmless stuff, people will find a reason to be mean. I’ve started writing out comments and just not hitting “reply” because I dread someone deciding to twist everything I say or invent an argument for no reason. The anonymity of the internet has also spilled into phone calls we get at work. I recently had a man start spouting incredibly sexist comments about my ability to find a part for him while on the phone. (Hey dude, if you don’t know enough about your own engine to give me the right info…the problem isn’t my gender)

  85. TrixieD*

    I work in property management, so I’m used to receiving calls from unhappy tenants and testy vendors who are looking for their late payments. In the last year, though, the tenor of those calls has really risen to 11. Everyone is edgy and short-tempered, and all pretense of manners have evaporated. It’s really hard to maintain a cool and professional persona when a business conversation is peppered by raised voices, random accusations and a seeming lack of trust. I feel like I’m still the same person I was–what the heck happened to everyone else?

  86. So and So from UpNorth*

    I manage the guest services staff at hospital in rural Minnesota. My staff is responsible for asking the screening questions (do you have any COVID symptom or positive or pending test) in addition to making sure you get into the hospital and clinic safely, direct you to your appointment and help you find your way there.

    There is a very small but vocal group of people that vile and rude. Swearing at my team because are required by the state and CDC to ask to these questions. Throwing papers. Throwing their used masks at them. Telling us it’s a hoax and scam. Screaming at us that masks don’t work. Refusing to wear a mask when wanting to go up and visit their ill loved one in the hospital.

    All of this so hard for my team but it is also hard for our patients and families who already in various levels of crisis to experience this.

    COVID is exhausting. Our reaction to COVID is depressing.

  87. Wants Green Things*

    I work in a civil engineering field, so my clients are local governments and agencies, not the general public. I’ve noticed that the majority of project managers have gotten – well, not kinder, but less snippy. The bad ones haven’t changed a bit, but the others seemed to do a whole lot better when they weren’t dealing asinine public comments on the regular. That’s starting to creep back up, though, and it sucks.

    The worst people I’ve been interacting with these last 2 years have been parents, by and large. Yeah, management needed to handle workload distribution bettee, but when I’m juggling 3 people’s work because the other 2 have yet *another* “child emergency,” my empathy runs real low, real fast. And then – then, when I brought it up with one of them, I was told “oh please, you’re single and childless, what do you have to complain about?” You, for one. My own health, for another. You, again, for plopping your child back in an unlicensed daycare so you could spend a day “reconnecting” with your husband and then exposing half the office to Covid *at its height* because said unlicensed daycare became a vector spot.

    I’m sure my parent-based coworkers would call me snippy and rude now. I say they doused the bridge in gasoline.

    2. J.B.*

      I’m really sorry for your experience. I have had more problems than I can say from young male colleagues without kids. It depends very much on the circumstance.

  88. Cube Farmer*

    To be fair, I’m also at a point where I’m not sugar-coating anything. I don’t believe I’m rude, but at the same time, I have not shied away from advocating for myself and being clear about what I will and will not do in a situation.

    Coincidence or not, but for the first time in over 25 years of working, I experienced a colleague quitting by ghosting us. He was new–here for only a couple of months, and it was obvious to me that he wasn’t enjoying his work. About two weeks ago he stopped following through on simple requests, and last week he simply stopped participating in anything. Took us a little more than a day to notice when he didn’t show up for a major meeting, “Hey, has anyone heard from or seen Oswald since the meeting yesterday morning?”

  89. ijustworkhere*

    Oh my goodness this is so true. I think there are a lot of things at work–one big one being that we have lost our interpersonal skills after being isolated for so long. People are frustrated and they’ve been airing their resentments on social media for two years—-and you don’t have to engage with anyone who feels differently from you on social media.
    So people don’t get feedback on how they are perceived by others.

  90. Atlantis*

    I work in higher Ed, although I’m a bit isolated from it as I’m a grad student, but I’ve definitely seen a rise in this over the past few years.

    I was a TA for a course when a student got mad and snippy in an email to me after they submitted an assignment incorrectly and received a zero, but didn’t bother to check their grades until a month later. The student wanted partial credit for having submitted something, even though it was wrong. It was the first assignment of the semester. I was extremely professional in my response, and cc’d my supervisor in the response so she’d be aware. She told me I did a great job responding, and hoped that would be end of it. Apparently the previous year she had to deal with a students parents complaining to the dean of our college about the students grades when the student wasn’t submitting their assignments. These are college students, and yet the parent went on the warpath all the way to the dean without any attempt at getting the student to address it themselves.

    The rudeness and entitlement is crazy sometimes. I have even more respect now for the faculty and staff who have to deal with so much nonsense like this from students and parents. There are legitimate reasons to be frustrated and escalate a request for action in higher education (lack of disability accommodation, abusive faculty, etc). Being mad that you lost points on a single assignment cause you didn’t read directions is not.

  91. rebecca*

    Something I’ve noticed is an increase in the number of people (grocery delivery shoppers, contractors, servers) who have said things to me along the lines of “thank you for being nice to me.” It bums me out to think about what the majority of their interactions must be like if they feel motivated to thank someone for being civil.

    The internet has allowed us all to congregate in spaces where everyone is like-minded to us, and the pandemic exacerbated the phenomenon; even reasonable people may now find differently minded folks intolerable. You cannot mute or unfollow or block in meat world, and as a consequence, many of us have lost the muscles that would normally allow us to function better.

    It doesn’t help that we are conditioned by for-profit media to be outraged and that many or even most of us feel increasingly stressed (and powerless to change that) by conflict, cruelty, climate disaster, and all the stuff humans deal with in the course of living a life.

    For me? It helps to go the extra mile sometimes, whether that means making eye contact and taking a moment to be human (asking someone how their day is going…and meaning it) or tipping more than I normally would. Just do something to give someone a break. You’d want the same for yourself on a crappy day.

    1. cardigarden*

      “Thank you for being nice to me”– I was one of the many people who had a wedding scheduled in 2020 that had to deal with lockdown restrictions/postponements. I remember being on the phone with the events manager at our reception venue, and I cannot imagine the sorts of bridezillas this poor woman had to deal with during their rescheduling period, but I remember saying something along the lines of “you probably don’t hear this enough, but I know things have been hard lately, and I really appreciate all the work you’ve been doing.” She started crying, and it sort of hit me like a brick to the face that every single other phone call she had was probably people yelling at her because of government covid rules she had no authority over.

    2. Posilutely*

      I completely agree with this. I spoke to an Ikea customer services rep a few weeks ago who thanked me for not shouting at her. I had told her how much I enjoyed singing along badly with the on hold music (ABBA) and then politely asked for my order to be chased up. Civility is just the bare minimum people should expect. It shouldn’t be a rare surprise when they get it.

  92. Reality Check*

    Definitely noticing it as well. Also, as a customer service rep, I’m noticing a huge uptick in helplessness from the customers. They can’t seem to do the simplest things for themselves anymore. Another thing I keep seeing from my coworkers, myself, and professionals outside our org that we work with is a big increase in mistakes. Lastly, things that used to take a week to get done now take a month. I blame it on everything. Pandemic, inflation, politics, etc. I think people are just utterly overwhelmed.

  93. Banana Naan*

    I feel like I’m constantly fighting down my own hostility and rudeness. I’ve had sudden upsetting urges to throw things, especially at people (I’ve never done it, but the urges themselves are so strong it scares me). I have to work not to snap at people, and make up for it by being nice and lending an ear or saying nice things online to people. It works for a while, but I know it’s burnout and it’s not going to go away unless something major changes.

    1. Rhiannon*

      I have been feeling simmilarly. I generally try to be as kind as possible–especially to those in IT or service jobs–but recently I have noticed frustration coming out in my interactions with people, particularly when I’m anxious about other things. Climate change, the pandemic, war, collapsing trust in government and institutions–it is all so large and outside of our control. So in the moment it feels not only “good,” but that I’m *entitled* to feel and act with frustration.

      Obviously, this perception is untrue and harmful, but I have a sense that much of the aggression coming out in social interactions is an external manifestation of anxiety and feeling loss of control in our lives.

  94. MA*

    Long-time reader, first-time commenter. Yes! I work in healthcare and this has been extremely challenging. Staff (rightly so) don’t want to listen to people yell at them all day but we still need to care for them. It’s very difficult to enforce things like behavior contracts with patients without feeling moral injury. Trying to be aware of power dynamics in healthcare and not alienate already underserved populations. It just seems like people are more willing to hurt each other both physically and emotionally in these past two years. I think it’s a result of not being able to process our collective trauma. I’m in the US in a safety net primary care setting for context. Healthcare here is a brutal system and it feels like something has to give soon.

  95. relaxy*

    With so many people having had COVID, some multiple times, I am starting to wonder about the neurological effects of the virus.

  96. The Worst Part of Your Day*

    I worked retail for a bit in 2016 in an incredibly rich part of town. Our clientele were multi-millionaires, and they weren’t afraid to show it. I thought that was tough because of how tense people could be when things were going awry. Then 2020 hit, and I was working as an on-site admin for a Covid-testing company that served everyone from orderlies in retirement communities to Forbes 500-level real estate firms.
    I was wrong. It could get so much worse.
    I was called stupid to my face for asking to see insurance cards. On a daily basis, I was mocked, demeaned, yelled (literally yelled, verging on screamed) at, told I was the worst part of someone’s day, spoken to like I was less than human…I quit after three months because I was diagnosed with PTSD and my therapist recommended I leave the field for my own well-being. I still experience massive anxiety when people get even mildly brusque with me. Whenever anyone says people are people and have stayed the same over the last few years, I have to laugh. People have become monstrous, and they have been emboldened to become monstrous because of the political climate and anti-intellectualism running rampant in the US. I’ve gone freelance, which has enabled me to immediately cut off clients that show even a hint of that malice I encountered in my old position, but the damage is done. I will never ever trust people in the way I once did.

    1. batcat71*

      to start, i am so sorry you went through that, and i agree with all your points. sadly.

      1. The Worst Part of Your Day*

        I appreciate that. I’m much better than I was, but that doesn’t negate the initial trauma, which is what I wish people would focus on with this “Great Resignation.” It doesn’t matter that people are leaving their jobs and may be happier (I’m especially hating the current framing of somehow turning workplace abuse into an unexpected opportunity–that is damaging in itself) when the real issue is that they felt the need to leave in the first place. But that’s a whole other discussion.

  97. Alex*

    I have a side gig in retail, and while there are definitely some rude customers, I’m happy to say that this isn’t the norm where I’m working. There are extra obstacles such as understaffing of the store and supply chain issues that really do affect the service we can provide, and the majority of customers are very understanding when I explain that the reason we don’t have what they want is because of these issues.

    Of course, there are those customers that will call the store with the most bizarre complaints, and it does feel like the reason they call is because they want me to feel shame and despair because I couldn’t make them happy. In fact, the more I try to help them and offer solutions (we’re happy to give you a refund on the product you didn’t like!), the angrier they get. It is as if the thing they want is to hurt someone and spread their misery. But fortunately these customers are the exception, and I mostly just tell myself that they are behaving that way because they are miserable themselves and it probably sucks to live that way.

  99. ghostlight*

    I work in entertainment and theatre, and have always seen my fair share of hostility and rude patrons, but it definitely feels amplified and more political. And I am quickly running out of bandwidth. Especially around enforcing masking. It wasn’t too hard when we had a blanket mask mandate for every single show that came through our venue, but now my organization only enforces masking on the tours that insist upon it, or for any backstage VIP events. The messaging is unclear, and it’s affecting the “front-line” workers like box office, concessions, security, and house management A LOT.

    I was herding people at a VIP event and politely requesting everyone to mask, handing out masks to anyone who needed one. A patron took one and sneered at me, “You know these don’t work, right?!” And I just wanted to snap at him. My industry shut down for TWO YEARS, my colleagues and I were laid off, and many of us lost our careers, our friends, our family. He ended up wearing the mask, but I would have loved to drag him out of the venue.

  100. Bex*

    I work internal IT, supporting end users at my location and helping coordinate with third party support and vendors as needed.

    Since right around December 2021, I’ve noticed a marked increase in exasperation and annoyance levels. On all ends. Our vendors and suppliers are having their own problems (especially those crunched by global supply chain things), and their communications are much more abrupt and … I’m not sure if aggressive is the right word, but definitely not friendly.

    Internal customers have continued to have high anxiety, and reacted to standard things (switching printers after a device upgrade, for example) with a lot of vitriol and annoyance. There’s less understanding of computer systems not working (which, Yknow, happens. It’s why I have a job) and more people seem to be looking to immediately spread blame – looking for the full chain of people responsible for this one (minor) thing breaking down. More group emails that are really just spleen venting.

    I think it’s partially burnout from pandemic – everyone hoped this would be done by Dec 2020, and another year has passed and still … – and the daily anxiety and stress from living in those circumstances. I also think that the return to office for some workers has also prompted this – at least once a week, I’m working on something while someone vents that now they waste X hours driving in and getting ready just to have this thing break and it’s pointless for them to be here, they did the job from home just fine for almost two years!

    Specific to my specialty, I think the last few years have also emphasized how important tech competency is, at least at a basic level, and that’s scared a whole lot of people because turns out they’re maybe not as good as they thought they were.

    I’ve tried to counter personally. I’m over using emojis that are friendly in our chat platforms, I try to slip in small jokes, when people express frustration at not knowing how to do something, I point out what they can do that I can’t. All that stuff.

    But. I’ve come to realize in the last six months that a not insignificant portion of my job has become emotions smoother and handler. And I don’t like that.

    1. EdTechManager*

      Agree with a lot of this. Tech support has got a whole lot harder because people are flying off the handle at things like a change of desktop wallpaper, or being given new printers(?!!! probably because they’re a different manufacturer, despite the user-facing interface remaining identical). So much of the work is becoming calming people down (much more so than before) and resisting the urge to respond in kind.
      We’re exhausted, too, from people leaving the industry in droves, lack of qualified and experienced replacements, and the pressure on those of us left in the sector to support the huge increase in use of tech.

      1. Bex*

        It feels like we can never win. If it’s quiet and nothing breaks they want to know why they’re paying us since we’re not doing “anything” (that they can see, never mind handling equipment and software life cycles and updates, planning, etc). And if something goes wrong and production is impacted, it’s a matter of “why do we pay you all if things still break?!”

        There’s no winning lately. And lots of professional contacts I have are choosing to no longer work for big companies, and are instead going consultant (especially for places that have a butts in seat mentality) or just retiring altogether. It’s exhausting.

  101. Heidi*

    The practices that we use to keep ourselves safe in the pandemic are likely to foster distrust. Masking and social distancing are predicated on the idea that you cannot tell who is sick and you can’t trust people to isolate themselves when they are sick. Given the number of outbreaks occurring at weddings and other family gatherings, the message that comes across is that even your closest relatives can be the agents of your demise. In that light, it’s maybe not that surprising that people are not putting forth the effort to maintain an outward superficial friendliness with strangers.

    1. Temperance*

      This is a really insightful comment and I totally agree. When I see a person without a mask in a crowd, if they approach me for any reason, I reactively back away. If I have to ride public transit, I take the seats furthest away from other people to lessen the chance of contact.

      Strangers aren’t just people I don’t know now. They’re active dangers to my family. I see someone maskless in a crowd, and my first thought is “you might kill my husband/baby”.

  102. NerdyKris*

    I even noticed it in driving. When the vaccines came out and everyone went back to work, it was chaos. I’ve never seen people following cars so close, and it still happens. I had never been in an accident and then within six months had my first two, both people that were accelerating towards me and slamming on their brakes until they got a chance to go around, at which point they clipped me. There were so many people for the first six months that were incandescent with rage over other drivers being on the road.

    I’ve driven in bad traffic before, but this was a noticeable increase in aggressive drivers for a while.

    1. Rara+Avis*

      Last year (2021) there were 21 traffic fatalities in my city. This year we’re in month 4 and already at 27.

    2. Not a good neighbor*

      Completely anecdotal, but in the past 1.5 years 4 people in my family (including myself) have had cars totaled in accidents that were not our fault. Like, rear-ended at a red light not our fault.

      And I don’t even have that big of a family!

  103. little mx imperfect*

    I work at a large, over a century-year old company that is very white male dominated, and there has always been a level of accepted rudeness that everyone is simply required to accept.
    What I have been noticing is that people are beginning to take things a lot more personally and then melt down a bit about them. I very politely pointed out a missed communication between teams recently and the respondent all-caps said “I CAN’T BE PERFECT ALL OF THE TIME.” that and people are clearly fed up and leaving en masse. In general, emotions seem to be running VERY high.

    I’m also personally quite burnt out. I wouldn’t say that I’m abusive or even rude by any means, but I think the bitterness comes out in my tone and I’m so effing tired I don’t know how to fix it.

  104. Lyn*

    I am not seeing this in my job (I’m an admin in academia) but I think some people are so used to being rude with no consequences on social media, that carries over into their day to day interactions.

  105. Jane s*

    I’m a receptionist at a veterinary clinic, and yes, absolutely. There has been a downward trajectory in term of how we are treated by clients over the past ten years, partly due to the rise in entitled pet owners, partly due to overbred animals with health difficulties that people have overpaid for but can’t afford to treat. Multinationals are buying up vet practices, we can’t compete on cost plus overheads with drug pricing. There is also the assumption that just because there is this super advanced treatment available for a condition that might work, it should be the default to treat instead of looking at quality of life. If more people understood that euthanasia is ancient Greek for ‘good death’, we wouldn’t find we were prolonging life to the point of cruelty. Also, lockdown dogs. Just separation anxiety and poor socialisation covered in fur.

    1. Sorcyress*

      Oh wow! I did not know that about euthanasia but it makes sense –thank you for the tidbit!

  106. Decidedly Me*

    I manage a customer support team – no face to face interactions, just chat, phone, and email. It’s B2B, but due to some business sizes, can feel more B2C. I haven’t really noticed an increase in rudeness and hostility. The same sorts of people that were rude before are still rude now. However, I would say that people are more impatient now than they were at the beginning of the pandemic, though I can’t recall how this compares to pre-pandemic. At the beginning of the pandemic, everyone was in it together, but as time has worn on, people are less understanding if there is an issue or slow reply. No rude or hostile about it, just impatient.

  107. BugSwallowersAnonymous*

    I definitely felt like at my last job at a nonprofit, the pandemic exacerbated a huge existential conflict within my organization – was what we were doing even worth doing? Was it what the world needed? On a more granular level, it felt like no one agreed on what was important or what we should prioritize, on top of general burnout from too much work and too much stress because of the pandemic, police violence, really tense political situation, and more. So I think it really frayed people’s trust in each other and it was hard to move forward or do good work in that environment.

  108. Lux*

    I think the pandemic has made it so much harder to go along to get along. Before this period, if I disagreed with someone, I rarely felt as if their preferences actively endangered me on an everyday level. I have a low tolerance for risk and tend to be quite worried about my health, and I find it scary when people, for example, share indoor space with me without a mask, or show up to a hang-out with symptoms of a cold. And if someone dismisses my concerns, I feel very anxious and upset that they don’t care about my worries. But I was talking the other day to a close friend who often passive aggressively attacks my cautious approach, and when she did it in this conversation, it occurred to me that she was scared too, because she hates the way that the pandemic has affected her life; e.g. during lockdowns she felt really lonely; it affected her relationship with her lodger and so ended up impacting her financially, and she feels that people’s caution around the pandemic is preventing her from accessing social connections and she’s finding that really difficult. I think she’s scared that it will always be like this, and she’ll always be less happy than she was pre-Covid, and so my reminders about science-based arguments for caution seem like an attack. The thing is, this isn’t a theoretical argument – it has an impact whenever we agree to spend time together – we always have to navigate our different levels of risk. And it has affected our relationship; I don’t trust her as much any more, and I find myself judging her level of intelligence a bit, and I think she feels that I don’t care about her loneliness, her worries around her livelihood, etc. These sorts of problems have come up, a little bit or a lot, in about half of my relationships (the other half have a similar risk tolerance to me). It’s a huge deal to have half your friendships and family relationships impacted so severely, for so long, and it makes me feel less safe in the world. I imagine that almost everyone is going through some version of this. And so, dealing with intense and difficult emotions on a regular basis, and in general feeling much more lonely, scared and unsafe, people behave worse than they did before the pandemic in general with the humans they encounter, because they have come to believe that others are out to get them.

    1. Stuckinacraxyjob*

      I think the asymmetricality of the concerns is difficult for me. I’m like ” but you could gallavant for a YEAR and more??? Just use a gratitude journal? People could die, Susan.” Like “Joe might die, but Susan saw a waiter wear a mask at their hundred person party so who is to say who is more negatively effected?”

      1. ThursdaysGeek*

        You see them as asymmetric, but we don’t know that they really are. We don’t know what someone else is going through, we are all experiencing trauma, and it’s often different. I’ve known people who have died, but isolating doesn’t hurt my psyche, and the last two years have very much hurt my extrovert friend who had to isolate. Even the people who act like they are just rude and uncaring – that is often a sign of pain as well. It’s too bad that as humans, we often take our pain out on people around us.

    2. Eff Walsingham*

      Lux, I think you’ve articulated this very well. As someone in my social group who has always been more cautious about handwashing, and had a lot of colds in the Before Times, I’ve gotten a lot of yardage out of this one:
      Person: “What are you, some kind of germophobe?”
      Me: “Well, I’m not a germo*phile*!”

      It actually seems to work. People back off, or change the subject. After all, who likes germs? Who likes colds? No one I’ve talked to has been willing to rise to their defense. Not even the ones who say this whole Covid thing has been “blown way out of proportion”. But then, most everyone I know has noted over the years that I often have a cold, and that it’s too bad when I’m sick and can’t do whatever with them. Side note: I will probably wear a mask every cold and flu season forever. I really like this one small part of the “New Normal”.

  109. Deb*

    Short answer: yes. Longer answer – as someone who works in complex problem solving and conflict resolution, I’ve been finding that people are vibrating at a different frequency – and it takes next to nothing to send so many of us over the edge. I understand it as emerging out of multiple years of global trauma – due especially but not only to the pandemic. I use the Window of Tolerance model a lot with my clients and people I coach – https://www.nicabm.com/trauma-how-to-help-your-clients-understand-their-window-of-tolerance/. It helps me (try to) feel empathy towards myself and others that are being nasty, and also points to things that I can do to be more resilient.

  110. KL*

    Working in public libraries is honestly pretty awful right now. I work in a relatively “easy” library, in that we don’t often have major incidents (though I have STORIES. Anyone who thinks that libraries are a quiet and easy place to work is very, very wrong…) But people are generally irritable, we’re terribly understaffed, and we are increasingly being asked to pick up additional, non-library tasks that take time and energy. Every librarian I know who works in a public library is so incredibly burnt out.

    1. another,+another+librarian*

      I could have easily written this comment myself as a fellow public librarian.

    2. Collie*

      Yeeeep. I work in an urban public library so whenever I share these stories, my mom inevitably says something like “Whoever would have *thought* in a *library* this would go on? You should come back to [rural-suburban New England town with a single-location library].” She refuses to accept that this is just how it goes in public libraries, generally speaking.

      But yes, burnt out. Staff morale is bad and it seems we’re taking it out on each other.

      1. KL*

        Yes! I used to work in a technically suburban but really basically urban library, and whenever I would tell my mom about something that happened she would always say “I can’t believe someone would do THAT in a LIBRARY.”

        Then she heard enough of my stories, and now when I start to tell a story she says “Is it another masturbator?”

    3. Esmae*

      God, the burnout is real. I don’t know that it’s been WORSE since covid, it’s just… been bad for a really long time.

  111. Prose Spa and Manicurist*

    I don’t know that it’s getting worse; I just started a really awesome new job so in my personal world it’s gotten much, much better recently.

    But as a professional editor, I absolutely felt that letter.

    So if you are an author, or a person whose job requires you to send stuff through editing, please know:

    We’re not your tenth-grade English teacher and I’m so sorry they were like that. You deserved better. We’re editing your document, not writing your report card. You cannot flunk being edited. If we made a tonne of suggestions it’s often because we really like what you’re saying and got really into trying to give you everything we could.

    It is YOUR document. We’re just trying to help you make it the best version of itself.

    Think of us as the people who give your document a bath and brushing and trim its nails and put little cute bows on its head. Let us know if you don’t like the bow and we’ll leave it off next time.

    We’re not judging you. We know you’re busy. We know some days all you can manage is getting the gist into a rough draft. We know some of you are writing at a high level in your second or third or fourth language. We know your mind is on the domain knowledge you are explaining, which is why you have your job.

    We get paid for knowing the style guide, the rules of grammar, and all the weird spellings. You don’t.

    The “reject change” option is there for a reason. We don’t even know if you’ve used it. Go ahead and revert that edit; all we really wanted was for you to take a second look at that bit. We’re road signs, not cops!

    We know there’s stuff we don’t know. If there’s an SEO or policy or whatever reason you wrote it that way, it’s kind to let us know for the future but if the rules change a lot just reverting it is fine too, honest.

    I can’t really get mad at people who feel personally attacked by editing, because I get it, I understand all the ways “how good a writer” someone is gets weaponized in this culture.

    But FWIW, MOST editors understand how it gets weaponized, and we mostly try really really hard not to be those people.

    We LIKE you. Honest.

  112. Higher Ed Kitten Party*

    This all comes with a caveat that we perceive may not be universally true. Pre-pandemic I worked retail where I got yelled at all the time for ridiculous things, so the number of rude people I encounter now is probably dramatically less than before, but things are definitely… a different kid of spicy.

    Because there were so many pushes during the height of the pandemic to get people’s needs met – through Expanded Unemployment, CARES/HEERF, various stimulus checks, etc. – I have found that people react with hostility when I tell them that there are no additional financial resources for them at our college. There is no more no-strings grants, no more payment extensions, no more waiving of fees. (Usually, anyways.)
    Often there is a greater narrative that people “got used to getting everything for free” and now they’re mad “they have to work for it”, which is not true, and moreover, can you really blame people for getting a taste of economic stability and then being mad when they don’t have it anymore? People still aren’t having their needs met, and that frustration is completely valid.
    What is interesting is that the students who get the most angry are usually students who come from some amount of privilege, or those who are not existing in abject poverty. They seem to have heard this narrative that people “get everything for free” and then, when they don’t get things for free, are incensed and think it is a personal slight against them. This is in stark contrast to people who have lived their entire life in poverty who are routinely told “no”, and have to weeble-wobble their way through the world and just stand back up and try again.

    Ultimately, I try to offer compassion to everyone who is frustrated because it is just very hard to be a human right now.

    1. ecnaseener*

      That’s a good point about perceptions! It’s probably a mix, people are stressed so more likely to be rude, but you’re also stressed so more sensitive to rudeness.

    2. Cake Party*

      I think this a good point about the social safety net – in some places it did seem that there were measures put in place to help people during ,let’s say the pandemic original flavor times, which are now being rolled back/ending since they “can’t continue forever” and it’s probably misplaced frustration at the workers instead of the social system that we are now loosing this safety net. And it’s coming at a time that people probably really need a safety net. For a while there it seemed like the government/each other might have cared for/about us a little bit.

  113. I'll Never Tell*

    I volunteer as a leader in an organization for kids. Last weekend I planned an event for a large group of kids, a field day. One of the games was a scavenger hunt, and it was warmer than expected in our area. The org requires two adults with each group of kids, so I asked for volunteers for each group. They went off and one group came back in about 20 minutes with some answers right and some answers wrong. I told them to try again and one of the adults screamed at me about how this was WAY TOO HARD and it was WAY TOO HOT and these kids are way too young for this much walking. (ages 5-13). I’ve been a volunteer for 5 years and I’ve never been yelled at like that for anything, let alone having kids take a 20 minute walk on gravel paths in 80F sunny weather.

  114. Office Manager*

    I work in admin that’s client facing… I haven’t seen much of a difference in terms of bad behavior, it’s about the same amount as pre-pandemic to me. What I HAVE noticed is that people answer their phones less and less, and are overall harder to reach even than they were a few years ago.

    1. ecnaseener*

      Do you think that’s mostly WFH effects, or a broader shift in norms? I’ve heard from a lot of external contacts that their employers still haven’t provided a WFH phone setup other than maybe forwarding the office phone to their personal phone (with no caller ID).

  115. Ayla*

    Sometimes I feel like one factor is that we just keep needing to make more concessions. I’ve changed my shopping habits over and over trying to figure out how to get my family fed and cared for, as safely as possible, without going broke and while being environmentally and socially responsible when I can–and in my area, that has meant just giving up several of my favorite foods completely. Trying to balance my and my family’s needs with the risk of COVID involves constant adjustment and negotiation, particularly with no safe childcare options. I know I’m not the only person who feels constantly torn between what I feel I should be doing, or what I feel should be possible, and what is actually feasible.

    I’m not an angry person, so for me all this concession fatigue has resulted in me simply breaking down in tears once or twice when I got to the grocery store and saw that what I need is sold out or has tripled in price. But I imagine others have a more hostile response.

  116. ecnaseener*

    I can’t say that I’ve noticed a new uptick in rudeness recently, it’s at similar levels to early-pandemic days. I’m in research administration, so I don’t work with the public, but some contacts got (understandably!) very rushed and stressed. The rude ones are still in the minority, thankfully – most people seem to get that even a token effort at civility will get better results.

  117. Dana Lynne*

    Wow, my experience seems atypical based on the comments I read! I teach at a 2-year college and was 100 percent working from home from March 2020 to December 2021. I went back into the classroom every day this past January.

    The face-to-face students I had were wonderful — so happy to be back in person, gracious to me when I asked them to wear masks during the omicron wave (our state banned mask mandates in universities, so I could request but not make them), gracious and friendly to each other. I think they were all very hungry for human contact and did not like online classes so they definitely were a self-selected group of people who wanted to be there in person.

    What I did notice was kind of a blurring of the lines — they were expecting the classes to be run and managed more like their all-online classes and that led to more absenteeism than is really appropriate, and more expectation that they could turn in stuff at midnight and not in class, etc.

    My colleagues have all been very happy to be back in person and generally it was a good semester.

    So I’m very grateful, I guess, to have avoided what others are reporting.

    I have seen a lot of reckless driving, though. More than usual. Or that may just be my pandemic-induced anxiety; hard to say.

    1. PinkCandyfloss*

      Lord, yes – being out on the roads these past few weeks have been slightly more terrifying than usual. I concur.

  118. Totally Not A Bamboo Plant In a Trenchcoat*

    Hi, academic advisor/success coach here for an online university! While it hasn’t been as dramatic as some of the other comments, and while I’ve yet to come across one who’s gotten aggressive with me personally, I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in students getting adamant and pushier than usual when things don’t 100% go their way.
    Also, just recently our advising department had a training presentation a few weeks ago that was essentially “what to do if an escalated-situation student is becoming hostile with you”, and while nice to know our workplace isn’t telling us to just lie down and take it, I can’t say it’s a a promising sign of the times ahead of us.

  119. PinkCandyfloss*

    Honestly I think some of it can be chalked up to the stress of 24/7 connectivity. We were never meant to be around this many strangers for this many hours in a day, and without the buffer of face to face contact or social cues in at least half of our daily (virtual) engagements with others, that loss of filtering and rise of impatience starts to spill over into into real life.

  120. Mischief & Mayhem*

    I’m in the airport/airline industry, so I’ve seen how awful people can be to workers. Most of the time, the culprit is drunk, but that doesn’t excuse their abusive and irrational behavior towards employees. Unfortunately for said culprit, a bystander usually ends up recording the situation, and they end up on the local news channels for all the world to see. On top of that, they face federal charges and are added to “no fly” lists. I can only hope they learn something from their stupidity, but I seriously doubt it.

    1. No name*

      I work for an airline.
      I don’t care that the culprit is recorded but I do feel bad for the victims’ assault being displayed for the world to view.
      I hope all of the fines levied are collected.

  121. fieldpoppy*

    Most of the comments here (appropriately, since that is what Alison asked!) about about customers/clients/parents whoever being rude to the service provider/professional. I am here to acknowledge that I am now more frequently shorter with service providers than I have been in the past — not on purpose or because I consider myself to deserve “better service” or whatever, but because it’s just HARDER to interact in a flow-y way when we’re both wearing masks, when there’s plexiglass, when it’s hard to hear, when you’ve waited in line longer than ever (like 2+ hours for the visa people to come on the phone after my card was defrauded!), and when the service providers are either not trained, overworked or not able to hear. Stupid things like negotiating getting a coffee while both wearing masks, someone behind is talking and there is plexiglass; I finally get the coffee and there is no 1% or 2% milk at the counter where I fill milk, so I come back and ask for 2% and the guy thinks the words are coming from the person next to me (again, mask) so I have to speak loudly, then he doesn’t hear me say “just the tiniest bit please” and he drowns my coffee in milk. And it’s all taken 3x longer than pre-pandemic. I won’t scream at the guy but I’m definitely not going to sound cheerful, because by this time I’m super stressed by a simple interaction.

    1. fieldpoppy*

      I live in a place where mask mandates in most public spaces were recently lifted but most people still wear masks and the plexiglass things are still up.

      1. Temperance*

        The plexiglass barriers are for the protection of staff. They’re forced to interact with dozens or hundreds of people each day, at least some of whom likely have an active COVID infection.

        1. Spearmint*

          I haven’t looked into this recently but my understanding was that the research largely showed plexiglass barriers to be ineffective, and thus they’re hygiene theater at this point.

    2. Robin Ellacott*

      That’s a good point – everything is delayed, wait times are long, and people who are already going to be frustrated by those things will be feeling it more.

  122. Sew Done*

    I literally almost wrote in about this last month during a particularly frustrating week- I’m a young (especially for my field), female technical consultant in a niche industry. Usually I’m brought on when something has gone wrong, so it’s not uncommon for there to be some level of tension or stress, but its always aimed at the situation, not at me. I’m good at what I do, and good at working with people, and I’ve always been seen as an expert and treated with respect, even when there’s large age/seniority disparities between myself and my clients.
    But recently, I had multiple interactions with different clients where the person who responded well after I explained, say, what glaze is and why you should use it on a teapot (something ideally a teapot painter should know about but rarely does, hence why my profession exists), then comes out of the blue later in the same conversation acting as though I’ve never seen a teapot in my life.
    Another time I had a great interaction with a client where I had spent hours explaining, for example, the most efficient factory floor set up and intricacies related to that, but then they decided the issue with the factory wasn’t their setup, it was that I didn’t know how to open the door to get inside and they proceeded to give me step by step directions for 20 minutes. Obviously opening doors is something I would know how to do if I’m familiar with factories, and it was a completely standard normal door that every single person has opened before. There was in fact an issue I was having with the door- that they gave me the wrong key. Which I told them multiple times. But no, they insisted numerous times it was that I didn’t know how to use a door, and it took a truly ridiculous amount of time and effort to get them to realize it was the key, not my lack of knowledge in how a handle works.
    It luckily hasn’t usually been truly hostile or aggressive, and I know my bosses would absolute shut it down if it reached that point- if anything this could be more chalked up as “mansplainy” behavior, but its still absurd and frustrating and exhausting. I’d honestly at this point much rather deal with them outright not listening to me or outright ignoring my suggestions or reports, instead of this game where I have to go through my work, just waiting to see when it turns and they decide on what basic thing I don’t actually know what I’m talking about. And the fact that they trust me completely on the complex stuff, but not the most basic foundations just confounds me. It’s definitely new though- I’ve worked with hundreds of clients in this work and nothing massive has changed with our industry work pre- versus mid-pandemic, but have only really started encountering this in the past few months.

  123. Robin Ellacott*

    We work with clients mandated to attend remedial programs, and we’re used to a certain amount of abuse. We expected it to get way, way worse, but it really hasn’t – what has been more noticeable is the number of people who are really struggling and fragile. It feels as though stresses and mental health challenges are closer to the surface these days. It makes the work harder but it’s been rewarding to offer what help we can.

    But my good friend who runs a store tells me stories that make my hair stand on end. Constant abuse, credible threats of violence, sexual harassment of staff, and all far worse than the (already pretty awful) norms for retail. Mask mandates were a common trigger, even though they were government mandated and broadly popular here.

    I’d guess it’s a combination of a constant state of uncertainty and (at least until recently) more isolation. But that’s just a guess – humans in general seem to worry less about a social cost from bad behaviour these days.

  124. Anonapotomus*

    I work in software support for a financial planning software that advisors use. Our team deals with financial advisors who have questions about using/navigating the program and also with technical issues. We’ve always had the occasional rude user and I don’t know if they’re any more rude or aggressive or entitled than they’ve always been, but they’re absolutely more distracted/unfocused/slow to learn now than prior to the pandemic.

    I’m talking advisors who have to be given the exact same simple instructions over and over and over again, advisors who can’t wrap their head around simple concepts that any advisor should thoroughly grasp, advisors who claim our software is calculating something wrong when in reality they just made their own glaring math error, etc…

    I sympathize because I’m sure a lot are dealing with crazy home situations or after-effects of Covid, but it is absolutely burning out our team. Their patience is paper-thin and we have a lot of call outs, more then a few people have already burned through all of their sick days for the year.

  125. Joyce+To+the+World*

    I work in health insurance. Lately I have had issues with peers in other departments. Granted I was sharing new expectations for my support for their responsibilities (think Project Manager, except I am not a Project Manager). I have a new Director who has a hugely different approach than the previous micro managing Director. I was the messenger for this information and it was received poorly. Several times one person started peppering me with questions that didn’t relate to the meeting topic in an attempt to take over and make me look like an idiot. So far, 2 of these situations with different departments have been escalated to management and it makes it look like I can’t get along with anyone. I have tried to be friendly and professional at all times, but the responses I have received have been much more disproportionate to the news shared. At least I have the support of my Director.

  126. Aphrodite*

    I work in a behind-the-scenes administrative assistant role at a community college’s adult ed division. This means we are dealing almost exclusively with so-called adults. Two, maybe three, of our craft programs in particular attract and unfortunately retain some of the nastiest students to ever walk the face of the earth. This was pre-Covid and it has certainly gotten much worse. I have no idea how I once thought that older people were all nice once they got older. Ho boy, was that one of those hair-raising middle-age learning experiences to discover how unbelievably naive I was.

    But what has come. out of this pandemic / political / social / change downward (far, far downward) for me is a positive change. I have made myself develop a dominating peaceful and calm presence that dominates my own reactions especially to frustrating or anger-inducing situations in my life and allows me to stay warm, friendly and very serene. Any customer service person with whom I interact, whether online, on the phone, or in person, gets smiles, a calming demeanor (that is real), and invariably cheerful multiple thanks and best wishes. I always leave ’em better than I found ’em.

    I think it helps too that I refuse to listen to or see news, not at all, not at any time any more. I don’t participate in any social media. I am very careful about online places to hang out. All of this is designed to isolate the ugliness developing, especially in politics. I stay aware of Covid news enough to protect myself but I am not interested in peripheral issues. Certainly nothing with rage attached.

    But this interesting question has brought to mind the idea that I used to reserve for December, and that is to begin to carry around a bag of those mini. assorted chocolates and hand them out when I can to cashiers and other service worker along with a simple “thanks so much for all you do.” Yes, I do believe I will; it will just take a quick stop at the store.

    1. These Are My Formal Jorts*

      Community college employee here: adult ed students are a whole different breed and it is sometimes impossible to explain. One time I got an email to our general department inbox with a screen cap of a receipt that had paid for an adult ed class and the email read “now what”

      My dude.

      Please give me literally any additional info.

  127. Just Trying to Make It Through the Day*

    I work in healthcare and we have seen a significant uptick in behavior ranging from mean to openly verbally abusive to our nursing staff on the phone in the past 9 months. We’ve had a record number of nurses driven to tears during calls with families and nearly weekly instances of a nurse having to hang up on an abusive family member. We’ve had physician parents (who should know better) be openly hostile and abusive to our nursing staff when we couldn’t meet their demand immediately. Our nurses just don’t have the training to handle verbally abusive customers, nor the resilience in the era of staffing shortages to keep coming back to this experience week after week. Seems like families are emotionally stretched too thin, but also the lack of shame in the face of being confronted on the behavior by their pediatrician is surprising.

  128. Temperance*

    I work in pro bono legal services. And while we always had some rude/gruff clients, they are absolutely worse now and so much more entitled.

    They refuse to understand that they can’t just pop in to our office and POOF meet an attorney, they don’t get that people aren’t comfortable providing homebound services, they don’t understand why I personally won’t meet with them for “one quick thing”, and they’re mean about it. They keep showing up to the office and arguing with our security team, who frankly aren’t paid enough to deal with rude Aholes.

    I find that I am less tolerant of other people now, too, if they get near me without a mask. I have an infant and a spouse who is severely immunocompromised. I’d like him to get to watch his daughter grow up, so anyone who comes near me is an active threat to my family.

  129. KP*

    I work for a global company with a very American Midwestern culture. We don’t get hostile and rude. We get super passive-aggressive. I think I would prefer outright hostility, honestly.

    But, that said – things are really tense right now. People are on edge. Deadlines are tight, stakes are high (for real, I make medicine) and more than once I’ve seen colleagues crying in the bathroom.

    In response to it though, I think I’ve gotten a little kinder.
    1) no one in the Midwest is going to be mean to a cheerful/nice person to their face. It’s great armor.
    2) I genuinely mean it. We’re all so close to the edge that I’m genuinely concerned.

    Today I apologized for being a pest (I am. I’ve had to be. Everyone has conflicting priorities but I need my stuff) My colleague responded that she didn’t mind at all, because I was “always so nice and funny”

    So…at least I’ve been successful on that front?

    1. Cake Party*

      I think maybe with a lot of the turnover in places and/or maybe workplaces transition back into “normal” workflows (though why the digital workflow that worked for 2 years doesn’t work now doesnt make sense) workers are juggling a lot and are busy so that means backups in processes. And I’ve unfortunately had this feeling too of being the customer who has to be like “checking in on the status” even though I know that’s the thing that bugs me at my work – but I do need to ask because (as an example) my prescription runs out in two days and I haven’t had any updates.

      Maybe another area for stress is that we are now having busier social lives? I’m having to calendar things and keep track of things and having busy weekends (which are all good and fun and a positive) but that just means more things to keep on top of and organize and find time to make that call, send that email or squeeze in that appointment.

    2. Rebecca Strawberry*

      I do enjoy weaponized Midwest nice.

      At best, the other person relaxes and gets friendlier. At worst, they get irrationally angry at someone being nice, and it’s hilarious to watch.

  130. Fake+Old+Converse+Shoes+(not+in+the+US)*

    I’m a software dev who has been transitioning to devops in the last six months and I’ve noticed people are less patient than before. My role is more of “policing” work, making sure our tickets follow the correct process and sometimes people don’t react well when their ticket bounces back because they forgot to comment before changing status, or a pull request gets rejected, or a bugfix can’t be found because someone forgot to write the ticket number in the commit message. They’re not angry, but they want explanations here and now.

  131. JustMe*

    In my job as a customer service rep, I speak with about 50 ladies across the country every workday. I can say for a fact that the further we get from March 2020, the nastier people get. Honestly, I thought it would get better, but no it definitely hasn’t. People are more demanding, rude, dismissive, and impatient than they ever were in the last 10 years. Of course, this type of attitude is always expected but not to this extent. I personally blame the climate in the country where people are being driven apart rather than taking a “We’re all in this together” attitude. It saddens me truly because I know that their ridiculous behavior comes from a place of true weariness from the effects of the pandemic. Attitudes and cultures are so diversified across the country that people are feeling marginalized by the media that bombards them with their differences. And they take it out on me – call after call.

  132. A rose by another name*

    I have four overlapping theories, with the “right” answer being a mix of them (and certainly a bunch of other factors too)

    1. Particular to the current moment in time: Everyone wants the pandemic to be “over.” But two distinct camps blame each other for why it isn’t – some believe it’s overly-cautious wimps who won’t allow COVID restrictions to just go away while others believe that if their fellow citizens would just practice basic -and not terribly onerous- community health measures like masking, distancing, and vaccination, we would actually be in a position for it to really be over. Both blame the other for why we’re not back to normal yet.

    But a lot of it is more structural, which leads me to…
    2. The already often mentioned in-thread idea that Internet “manners” are infecting real-life interactions. The level of rudeness and performative a-holery on the internet has always been pretty shocking to me. It’s just SO much easier to be a jerk in a virtual environment when you’re not face-to-face. During COVID times online became a much more prevalent means of interaction, and gradually this confrontal/rude style of interaction is becoming some peoples’ default setting even in real-life.

    3. Similarly to #2, the rise of reality TV has/had a similar effect. Most reality TV shows explicitly play up the inter-personal conflict angle and the “Who’s the ‘Omarosa’ on this show?” angle. News programming and viral “confrontation” videos also play roles in this dynamic. Soon enough, people start to think “I guess this is how I am supposed to act.” Put another way, the stories and narratives we tell ourselves teach us how be… and a lot of the stories we tell ourselves today aren’t exactly priming people for positive inter-personal interactions.

    4. The political partisan divide is worse now than I can ever recall. Personally, I’d trace this back to the talk radio political “shock jocks” that proliferated in the late 80s and then took over almost all of talk radio. Their shows almost always revolved around demonizing and being as horrible as it was possible to be to the “other” however the host defined it. The more heated and derisive the rhetoric, the better. When this type of discourse met up with cable opin-u-tainment and the internet, it was like mixing drugs and alcohol.

    So, how does this get fixed?

  133. AfraidNow*

    I am a volunteer in animal rescue, and trying to trap, rescue, and rehome animals in apartment complexes has become very abusive to the volunteers — Trying to explain our reasoning and work together to reach a good resolution for all parties (resident and management) has absolutely failed in the last… 4-5? months now. It seems like people are so unwilling to even look outside themselves that things escalate very quickly to very insane levels. The level of hostility and aggression is unnecessary and disturbing. I can only hope that the poor animals can avoid any inhumanity, and in the meantime, since we can’t step in, their suffering and struggles continue.

  134. Smitty*

    I quit my last job in IT for just this reason. It had gotten to the point that customers and coworkers who were once friendly acquaintances you would see in the hallway and even meet at happy hour became actively hostile through chat and email. It mostly started with the pandemic when everyone was adjusting to the new normal, but it never got better. Certain individuals seemed emboldened to say horrible things (using colorful language) since it was not face-to-face. Sadly because of how common it was, reporting these situations to management was met with apologies for the treatment and nothing more. This was despite having chat records of the horrible and unwarranted language that was being used almost daily.

    I am happy to report that at my new job, which is also fully remote, I have not experienced anything like that.

  135. WomEngineer*

    Many STEM fields have been (rightfully) focusing more on DE&I. While I haven’t been targeted/excluded in my professional career and my employer seems to value diversity/equality, I still have to be aware of how I might be perceived and mentally prepare in case I have to stand up for myself (or others).

  136. NotAnotherSageGrouse*

    My wife does freelance in a high-demand specialty field where clients typically go in expecting to drop $10,000 or more for a typical project, and she has seen an uptick in wildly unreasonable job postings on her union’s job board and other places where she connects with clients. She’s seen ridiculous lowball offers (like 1/10 of the market rate low), clients who wanted to hire someone for a small “quick turnaround” project but didn’t have specs for said project, and someone who had a 1-month timeline and 1-person budget for a project that would typically take multiple people a year, just to name some of the most memorable examples of the clownery.

    My personal and very unscientific thought is that general increase in outrageous public behavior (the people causing scenes over having to wear masks, wild political antics, etc) has emboldened some folks to try out this kind of nonsense and see what they can get away with.

    1. Anonymouse*

      I wonder if it has to do with lowered expectations due to on-demand technology of how much work some of these tasks entail and how gig economy work has skewed our expectation of what we are willing to pay/people are willing to accept to be paid.

      1. NotAnotherSageGrouse*

        Great point, Anonymouse. I’ve unfortunately seen some “race to the bottom” stuff around the gig economy, plus the perception that technology is magic.

  137. zebra*

    I have one counter-example. After two years of online-only conferences, we had our first in-person one last month. People were SO HAPPY to be back in person, they were much nicer and friendlier than pre-Covid. Lots of people decided to stay home and participate remotely, so there was a smaller than usual group who traveled to the location, and anyone who didn’t want to follow our masking/distancing requirements stayed home too. So the group who was in person were all very excited to be together again and totally willing to follow all of our Covid protocols. Everyone was in such a good mood all week and they were complaining a lot less about things that probably would have caused big fusses a couple years ago. We really hope the positive attitude continues as we go even more in-person!

  138. Anonymouse*

    I’m in admin/hr in higher education and I feel this.I haven’t had many full out rude/hostile reactions I’ve had but I’ve been feeling an increasing level of people having minimal patience. And it doesn’t help that I’m cranky about the same things too, and the “customers” also being cranky also makes me have a low threshold for being helpful to them. Some things I’ve noticed that go along with this:

    – this has been ongoing but it feels like it’s been increased and correlated to these customer outburst: people wanting you to do the work for them. for example sending them an email with the directions and a link for info. And them just replying back with a reiteration of the questions like “but what about X”. and I’m just thinking “AGAIN, READ THE EMAIL”. but they don’t want to, they want an answer RIGHT NOW and they don’t want to do any work/research to find out the answer. I figure this is some combo of our immediate access internet and maybe short attention spans – people want to put in zero effort to get a result.

    – customer service being at the forefront. like the grocery store worker above, it seems that a lot of places are trying to be as pro customer as possible. this means that workers have to bend even further backwards to make them have a *smiles kindly* pleasant experience. Which is already exhausting. and then to the first point above – at some point you might just end up doing it for them because it’s easier than them immediately sending a high priority email up the chain for “bad service” – which management will then come down on you for not being X,Y,Z enough. when did we lose the ability to be the authority in our profession and tell customers that they need to wait/what steps need to be taken, etc. (in a professional manner of course)?

    For myself I think some of the frustration is the squeeze of having to come back and conform to this “traditional” office life and having to feel like a peon again – only a few minutes for lunch, no privacy to take phone calls, reduced flexibility in day to day activities (during the pandemic I could take a long break and hop on a virtual appointment then go back to work, now I have to leave 2 hours early to go to the appointment), very strict rules for telecommuting that needs manager approval/veto. I think this also may be contributing to peoples sense of entitlement/pushiness – for 2 years we were keepers of our own domain/lives and now we’re all back under the corporate thumb so to speak. It’s frustrating and also a reason to find any way to take back a little of your power whenever you can (which probably means people taking it out on other workers, unfortunately).

    And also really feeling the pinch of my pay in comparison to the rising cost of everything/high COL area, and having to deal with faculty routinely questioning me about their pay when they make at least twice as much as me per month (everyone’s entitled to their own stress of if they are “making enough” but seriously please stop badgering me about your bonus that is equal to a months pay for me). And I’ve heard similar feelings from admin in other departments – special projects created that benefit faculty so the faculty feel better but then that just creates more work for the admins who are still left overworked and paid less.

    1. HigherEdAdminista*

      People wanting to put in zero-effort and get a result is something I feel so hard. I go through the exact same thing as you. When I was a student, I didn’t have anyone I could reliably ask for information or instructions; I had to figure everything out on my own. I was so happy to be the person who could point you towards the website with the information, or answer a question about the directions, and hear about people’s experiences.

      Now more often than not the exchange is:

      Me: Hi student, here are some explicit directions about how to address your problem
      Student: What do I do?
      Me: What part are you confused about?
      Student: Everything. Can you tell me what to do?
      Me: Explains first step and highlights the second step for them

      Silence for three months

      Student: Did you ever do *first step*? I’m still having this issue. OR Student: I did first step and nothing happened. Why do I still have this issue? No one cares about me!

      Early in my career, I got the loveliest thank you notes from students all the time. I kept them all. Now that almost never happens. The main thing we hear are complaints about the fact that we expect them to be engaged with their education, as opposed to use letting them coast through and handing them a degree.

      This isn’t universal of course. It might not even be the majority. But the group that is on this path is so loud and so needy, they make up 90% of our work.

      1. Cheshire Grin*

        This, so much this! I worked for Large University during the pandemic and boy howdy was this becoming more common. The hardest part was that the students coming in were largely from departments that also were demanding, impatient, and unwilling to work within the rules that the University itself had set up. This was certainly a major factor in why this became a former workplace

  139. Dinwar*

    I haven’t seen any increased hostility in my industry. Environmental remediation is a high-stress job anyway, and after 18-24 months you’ve either learned to cope or left the industry. While I don’t mean to downplay Covid, the reality is it’s only one of a huge number of things we’re exposed to every day, and objectively speaking not the most hazardous, even among the biological contaminants we deal with. We’ve got the training, the tools, and the experience to deal with it, to the point where my office was ahead of every recommendation from the CDC except vaccinations (for obvious reasons).

    Managers have thus far been pretty good at shutting down hostility–there’s simply too much chance of someone being hurt. So we shut things down before they get out of hand. I always tell staff that the second quickest way to get thrown off site is to throw a punch.

    And it doesn’t hurt that we know we’re fortunate that our workloads haven’t been disrupted. Because we’re better able to cope with the pandemic than most, clients have taken the opportunity to have us hit the ground running while everyone else isn’t here to interfere with us. Most clients don’t like having their parking lots ripped up, but if everyone’s going to be working from home anyway… And knowing that our families are being taken care of, that we’re still bringing home the paycheck, and often that we’re bringing home more than in the Before Times thanks to overtime pay, helps remove a lot of the stress many are feeling.

    That’s not to say that there isn’t an increase in hostility. There definitely is in our culture. I’m just not seeing it at work.

  140. Syzygy*

    Not my profession, but telling – last fall my mother passed away. While meeting with a funeral director, he expressed gratitude that my brother and I were in agreement about arrangements. We asked him why, and he said for about four years – starting after the last president took office – there had been a marked increase in families who were at odds with each other, often in drastic and rude ways. He said that others in the profession had noticed this as well, and that it made their work harder when families couldn’t agree, or sometimes refused to get necssary signatures from other family members. His impression was that it was political divisions, accentuated by rudeness and name calling that became more commonplace in public discourse.

  141. cardigarden*

    This may have already been addressed above, but I really do think polarized politics has a lot to do with it. We’re at a point that, for a lot of people, political affiliation has become their primary identity. You’re a [party] before you’re a [sports team] fan or a [profession] or a [specific] hobbyist. And because political rhetoric in many places has taken an apocalyptic tone, there’s a lot of “if you’re not [part of my group], you’re my enemy” going on. Any pushback based on political affiliation becomes a perceived and deeply personal attack. Combined with the dehumanizing language present all over the internet (where people were driven to because of covid isolation), it’s disheartening but not difficult to see how that tribalism can have devastating real life interpersonal consequences. Not to get too political or too America-centric on Main, it’s not much of a jump to go from being bombarded by “x-group aren’t real Americans” to devaluing them as people and giving yourself permission to be an asshole because “they don’t matter”.

    So I think it’s a combination of 1) some people being out of practice with the social contract because of covid isolation (awkward, but probably mostly benign), 2) other people stopped caring about the social contract because of covid isolation, and 3) the miasma of political tribalism and gross internet culture permeating all of that.

  142. Zennish*

    My completely non-scientific theory is that it’s a result of a culture of extreme entitlement running into the real world upheaval of the last few years. People became used to basically living in an individual alternate reality, where their social media, their news, their entertainment, everything was tailored to their specific opinions and worldview. Then the political situation and the pandemic intruded on that in a way that caused people to either fall into total delusion or have a complete meltdown trying to cope. I think it’s left a lot of people feeling like their entire reality is out of control, and they’re lashing out.

  143. Grand+Admiral+Thrawn+Is+Blue+Forevermore*

    I work for an insurance carrier, so we service home insurance policies. We had many many claims filed in LA after Hurricane Ida hit last Aug. Part of my job is to work reception and let me tell you, every single call was from angry, frustrated people who didn’t want to wait, wanted their checks RIGHT NOW, and occasionally were willing to curse at me. Due to the volume, everything was backed up, wait times were long, and often as soon as a human came on the phone, callers just laid into me. They wanted to pour out all their frustrations and anger on me. It was a deeply scarring experience. I am dreading August right now, actually.

    PSA: for homeowners in hurricane country, please check your policies to know exactly what is in there, and also to make sure the ins company has the right mortgage company listed. Your claim checks will have their name on it too. Weeks get added to send the old one back, get relisted, back to the bank, etc.

    1. fposte*

      Which reminds me also that staff shortages mean that people on the other hand have had longer and more frustrating waits, while the remaining staffers are run harder than ever.

      1. Grand+Admiral+Thrawn+Is+Blue+Forevermore*

        Oh yes, definitely. We lost a lot of people when the shutdown hit for various reasons, and last fall we were very short handed.

  144. HB*

    I fortunately haven’t noticed too much bad behavior, but I work with college students and I will say that engagement is at an all-time low. Getting people to show up for events, respond to e-mails, and take care of important degree steps is always difficult but I’m truly losing my mind this semester trying to even get a single response to an email. About important things, like graduating! I feel like everyone is just exhausted and totally disengaged.

    1. Higher Ed Kitten Party*

      Yes, this is true. Part of it is Pandemic Time, I think (“grad apps are due April 22nd!” “that is weeks away … oh god that was LAST WEEK???”), and part of it is just being remote and not having that social structure of friends/events that supports students. It is hard to feel obligated to someone you only know via e-mail, you know?

      I try extra hard to engage with students on a personal level so they feel like they have someone accessible to them who is invested in their success. Every week I have people email me months after our last exchange to say, basically, “sorry everything got very hard and I didn’t do anything you told me to do but now I want to do those things what can I do”. And each time? I feel very stoked that they reached out and am always happy to help. I am sure my coworkers think my tone-of-voice in my email is too casual/friendly, but … I don’t want students to think of me as an authority figure who will be Mad At Them, you know?

      It is frustrating when students are like, “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!!!!!!” when it is not an emergency, it is a thing they have known about for months, and there is nothing you can do about it, but that has been happening long before the pandemic.

      1. BugSwallowersAnonymous*

        I think that point about feeling less connected to/engaged with people you only talk to over email is so true! Especially with students, I imagine. It’s happened a few times that I thought I had a bad or at least not great professional relationship with someone, but once we talked on the phone, it instantly got much better and our emails got better, too. I think it can be hard to make the connection of email contact = real person in the brain, especially these days when lots of us are drained of the capacity that would normally go towards making our written communications more pleasant/accommodating.

        I know someone who teaches a fully online class who makes it a class requirement for the students to have a 30 minute phone call with her during the first half of the semester, which seems to have worked really well as a low-barrier engagement tool.

  145. Ophelia*

    I’ve noticed this in my profession too (I’m in education and echo just how abysmal morale is right now, in large part because the expectation is to deny what’s happening and carry on as if things were stable & safe when they are not). People are quick to anger and emotions run high.

    I’ve also noticed that I’m not myself, or my best, in interactions where I am a customer and it’s been unsettling to me. In the past three months I have had Big Emotions about a shipping delay that had me in tears of anger and helplessness despite the loveliness of the customer service agents who were resolving my problem. This was very much NOT a thing to cry about, which only made it harder to stop once I’d started.

    Possibly this has been said upthread but my theory is that this might be grief? I’m incredibly lucky in that no family members of mine have passed away before their time during this pandemic, and if even I feel a sense of loss at not being able to feel safe being indoors with my vulnerable family members, I can’t imagine what people who’ve recently lost family members, friends, colleagues, etc are coping with. The anger and emotion I feel over things that are trivial feels a lot like grief to me – highly pressurized hurt that is just looking to find a way out.

    1. Sorcyress*

      Oh, I think this touches on a really good point. I have noticed that I just…don’t really have emotions anymore. And then every once in a while, something hits me and I will cry and not stop for like an hour or two. I think I’m probably not alone in (consciously or unconsciously) suppressing my emotions right now until you just can’t anymore, because good god, if I tried to actually feel all the grief and pain and fear and anxiety that the world deserves right now I would not be able to get _anything_ done.

  146. Forkeater*

    I work in higher ed and posted about this in the Friday thread a couple weeks back. I’ve been in higher ed for over 20 years and have never seen the things I’m seeing now. At my institution it’s not necessarily face to face rudeness, it’s spamming the email listservs or putting up giant posters airing grievances or tearing down signs they don’t like. We’re a very small, open door, collaborative place (really – we’re nationally know for this actually) and any student could come and talk to anyone, including the president, anytime. Instead they seem to be treating the world as if it’s social media – posting screeds “at” us instead of opening a dialogue “with” us. It’s very strange.

  147. Ina Lummick*

    From when the pandemic started I didn’t specifically notice people being rude in my customer service position, however I did notice a big increase in people wanting an answer ASAP compared to before C-19. It didn’t help that at that point I was covering roughly 7 FTE roles, so my response time to anything ballooned to about 9 working days instantly.

    I found it frustrating as I had no agency to move clients requests forward. Along with other changes to the work environment at the start of lockdown, I ended up leaving and taking my 3 years of institutional knowledge with me.

  148. LR*

    I answer the phones for a prominent park and performance venue and I’m surprised and pleased to say that I haven’t noticed this happening! We only got a couple of angry calls about our mask/vax policies and generally speaking my phone interactions are reasonable and pleasant.

  149. Anonforthistelecoms*

    My spouse works as a manager for a telecom (phone company) in the contact centre. People have gotten ruder, more abusive, crueler, and more racist.

    The entitlement of people have always sucked—(you called long distance, it didn’t matter if you didn’t realize you did, you still did, and there are charges. Someone you know got a better deal, and you’re going to cancel if you don’t get that same deal, no we can’t get into a complete stranger’s account to figure out that plan sort of thing), but the isolation, pandemic fatigue, being stuck at home and in an echo chamber where people think they can get whatever they want–people are just horrible.

    So many front line contact care workers are being burned out from people yelling at them for things they cannot change, and no one can because the charges are user driven. And because they’re burnout, people quit and now there’s longer wait times and customers are even more angry.

    People are horrible to people in service positions. There’s no ways around it. It’s disgusting.

    1. Zennish*

      I have to say I’ve never understood this. “I want you to help me with something so I’ll be abrasive and rude and see if that works.” just doesn’t seem like a winning strategy.

      1. Robin Ellacott*

        Me either, but it seems it does work in some “the customer is always right” settings. At my work we are specifically told to discontinue the call if the client is abusive, and these clients are so shocked that it suggests they usually do get what they want by yelling and power calling.

  150. TeacherAnon*

    As a high school teacher I’ve noticed greater rudeness and hostility from some of my students. In some it comes with a thin veneer of politeness but in others it’s just blatant disrespect. Not all students are like this, but a number of them seem to really just not care to listen and engage collaboratively in a classroom setting. Despite my best efforts it seems to be getting worse as the school year nears its end.

    1. TeacherAnon*

      I think the fact that I’m visibly queer and openly inclusive of minority persons in the content I teach (all well within thr curriculum) may be attracting some of the specific things I’m experiencing.

  152. Pichi*

    I work on the HOA management industry, so a lot of people being rude to us is nothing new. I can’t say that people are more rude than before, but it definitely feels like everybody is more demanding than they used to. I think the increase in prices across the board is making people feel that because they’re paying – sometimes more than before – they deserve more, when in reality the increase in prices is just part of inflation not for additional services. I’d say, people are rude because many companies allow them to be rude, and frequently reward rude behavior (meaning, the person that complains the most will get extra whatever just to keep them happy even if it’s not something they’d usually receive). FWIW, I don’t think that a lot of people being rude/aggressive/etc is a normal part of the everyday work life in other places of the world as much as it is here (of course there are certain industries/jobs/locations where it’s rare in the US as well).

  153. Strict Extension*

    I work in specialized education (as in no one is here without a conscious decision and desire to be so). The new element for us in recent months is pushback against standardizing what flexibility we can offer. For the first two years of the pandemic, we were extremely accommodating when people ran into issues that effected enrollment/attendance/etc. This year, we realized that if we are going to continue in an indefinite state of pandemic, we have to come up with concrete rules. And when we outline what is possible within those rules we’ve set, we get “but you offered something different for a similar issue in February 2021, so I don’t understand why I can’t have it again.” It’s true that we’re still in a pandemic and people still need a degree of grace, but organizations can’t continue to bend over backward on a case-by-case basis endlessly (and honestly interest in services has returned to a degree that we don’t have to in order to retain every last person we can). Our new rules take into account our new world, but people still want to make up their own. It’s reached a point where I regret trying to be nice to some people in the past because all they do is use it as a weapon for the present.

  154. Madison*

    I’ve noticed a HUGE uptick in rudeness over the last year, but I think it’s because that was when I started working frequently with Americans (I’m not American myself, but my role recently expanded to include admin support for them). There’s been a massive culture difference: they don’t ask; they demand, and they assume you’ll give them exactly what they demand, even if they know it’s against policy. They send increasingly terse follow-up emails if you don’t respond what they deem to be quickly enough – usually within a matter of hours when our usual turnaround time is one business day for initial emails. If I tell them any version of the word “no,” I’m often met with a condescending tone, pointless attempts to go over my head, and/or outright shouting. I’m quitting this job at the end of the month in no small part because of this.

      1. Fushi*

        As an American who immigrated to another country some years ago… So what? Whether it’s all Americans or not doesn’t make anyone’s experience with American clientele less true, and denying that there are the cultural issues at play certainly won’t improve how anyone perceives America.

        Ime, it is actually pretty uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of the lowkey hostility and selfishness that Americans often don’t even notice they’re displaying! And to circle back to the topic of the thread, I do think it’s even more noticeable since the pandemic started. I’m not sure if the behavior has gotten worse or there are just more obvious ways to be a jerk now that we’re all sort of reliant on each other in the deadly illness arena, but there is certainly a difference.

  155. Throwaway123*

    I think there is so much grief from the last several years that has gone unaddressed and it’s coming out as rudeness. There has been COVID’s deaths, hospitalizations, delayed health care needs, record breaking overdose deaths. The inability to mark these events through funerals, visiting loved ones who are hospitalized, is so heart breaking. Missed celebrations – weddings, graduations, big trips, baby showers is a type of grief as well. All the young people who will not get a chance to have an in person high school experience- missed dances, sporting events . I think people are going through the grief process and we are at the anger stage now.

    1. ms42*

      I know in the US (can’t speak for elsewhere) treats grief like something you should be over quickly, like, okay, here’s a small unit of time for you to process these feelings and they should be totally resolved after that. That’s completely not how it works, and there’s not really any acknowledgement that grief comes in waves, some larger than others, for years and decades. So we have a society facing hundreds of thousands of excess deaths and millions of grieving people with no support in place.

      I’ve worked in a call center (not customer facing) for five years. My first three years, time off requests for funerals/bereavement happened maybe quarterly. But the past two years, they’ve been regularly increasing in frequency; in the last month, there have been more requests than in my first two years total (this isn’t delayed ceremonies, either).

      And none of this factors in grief over the many other things we’ve lost — opportunities, time with family/friends, even just the semblance of civility that our casual interactions no longer have.

      So, yes, grief, and rage at the people whose decisions have made this all so much harder/worse than it had to be.

  156. EdTechManager*

    Definitely. I work in the education sector and the rudeness and sense of entitlement from some colleagues – mostly teachers, it pains me to say – has reached a new high.
    There are some people who have always been like that, but others have got worse of late. It’s demoralising when I am working so, SO hard and they seem to have no idea how much work is needed behind the scenes to keep their tech running and fix issues when they crop up, especially when I have been without a team for almost a year and single-handedly got everything set up for online learning at the drop of a hat at the beginning of the pandemic. It’s a good thing I can remain focused on the overall result of ensuring our vulnerable and/or unwell students get an education. There have been many occasions I’ve nearly submitted my letter of resignation where I’ve had enough of being spoken to like I’m a piece of dirt.

  157. Selina Luna*

    I’m a teacher, and the rudeness I’ve experienced from parents has been a sad constant. The students are rude in new ways, but the actual amount of disrespect hasn’t changed much. The new source of rudeness has been fellow teachers, particularly those who have fallen down the Q-conspiracy hole. Previously, teachers with whom I had political disagreements and I would simply not talk about politics. We would limit our conversations to students and data. Unfortunately, the Q-conspirators see reasons to expound loudly about their politics in nearly any situation.

  158. Tirving*

    Sadly, it seems people are becoming more self absorbed-expecting our individual needs/ wants to be accomodated immediately by others rather than realizing we are all part of a whole. I increasingly see signs posted at businesses instructing customers that rude behavior will not be tolerated. I try to go out of my way now to be extra nice when going about my day to day interaction with people and remind myself that even though I may be irritated that my internet or cel sevice is yet again all balled up, it’s not the customer service person’s fault. The last person I dealt with thanked me profusely for being so nice as I was the first person in days who had treated them well. It must be soul sucking to have to spend one’s day putting up with abusive customers.

  159. loislolane*

    Interestingly I’ve had a mix of both increased hostility and increased kindness/gratitude. I’m a nurse working in a senior’s home. Some folks can get quite hostile over COVID protocols no matter who the mandate comes from but I’ve also had an overwhelming number of patients and families share their gratitude for keeping their loved ones safe. I know burnout for nursing is high right now for the profession but I can’t picture doing anything else!

  160. Anonforthis*

    I work with the public and I’ve held this job for about ten years. A couple months ago I had to deny someone’s request because it didn’t meet the legal requirements (this is very typical, we lay out the reasoning and possible ways to fix this in our denial letter). The person instead went on a tirade, posting things about me on social media, making threats. It was bad enough my supervisor reported it to the police. It was awful. Nothing like this had ever occurred in the past ten years. Just awful.

  161. Dana*

    I’m a professor and I haven’t noticed an increase in rudeness. I’ve seen an increase in other sorts of difficulties (not attending class, not submitting assignments, being socially anxious to such a degree that they can’t just discuss a question with the person next to them when asked to), but not in actual disrespect or rudeness. I teach at a community college, so there’s a lot less sense of entitlement here than in more privileged environments; that might help.

    My students themselves do complain about an increase in rudeness, though–they’re seeing and experiencing it in their service-oriented jobs. One class of students all seemed to agree, when the topic came up, that customers have gotten worse over the last year.

  162. Critical Rolls*

    I am not going to try to put all the disclaimers on this that it probably needs, but. In America, at least over the past 246 years, there have been people who have seen benefit to themselves and their causes in degrading the quality of public discourse. The internet really gave them a lever and a place to stand. Then we had an administration and a series of events that showed us all the cracks and ugliness in our country and our neighbors. Segments of the population were drawn down an alternate-reality rabbit hole. Then we almost had a coup, and found out that our democracy is much more fragile than we thought, and bad actors have done much more damage than we thought, and fixing things is going to be much harder than we thought. And then the pandemic hit, and everyone’s ability to carry on and regulate their emotions has worn away. This does not excuse bad behavior, of course. But it gives it some context.

  163. Keyboard Cowboy*

    I work as a programmer at Tech Giant, and I have noticed the opposite – everybody tuning in to meetings from the intimacy of their homes, with kids and pets and clutter on display, has led to a kinder and more understanding communication style. That’s true both of people I collaborate with every day on my own team, and people I meet with only once in a while or once and never again. There are more jokes, more commiseration, and more patience with each other. It’s been really nice!

    1. Orangie*

      Yes, I’ve noticed this as well. I work for a nonprofit supporting a population for whom the bad news has been constant over the last two years, and my colleagues have done a wonderful job of extending grace to each other. It’s also helped that leadership has tried to model healthy work/life habits.

  164. The Last to Know*

    I work in tourism, and oh, yes, how the guests have become rude and hostile. It started with mask mandates and escalated from there. For a while, I was seriously concerned for the frontline staff. While they are still empowered to do things to make a guest happy, I strongly encourage them to call me personally if a guest is becoming belligerent. I understand that there has been a lot going on and there are probably deeper issues at stake, but that is no reason to curse and yell at the 16 year old behind the counter that has no control over the situation.

  165. Esmae*

    I’m in public libraries, and honestly, it’s been bad but I’m not sure that it’s been worse than usual. People have always been rude and abusive. It does feel like the rudeness and abusiveness have kind of coalesced around specific issues though.

    1. Not a cat*

      I think it works both ways. I use public libraries in LA County. I’ve seen librarians scream at patrons and the front desk staff act like they are doing everyone a favor. There was a group of high schoolers in a few weeks ago. They were together with an adult and it looked like a special needs program. The front desk person was taking their applications for library cards. One student didn’t know his mother’s maiden name and the staff member kept yelling, “How do you not know your mother’s maiden name!!!???” Well, bitch maybe he doesn’t know who his mother is? Ever think of that? I was SO disgusted. I got her name and wrote an email about the incident, but nothing will happen.

      1. Esmae*

        Oh, it definitely does. Some librarians are terrible. I think that’s true in every field though, there are always going to be some really awful people. (I’ve never seen a librarian hit a patron, though, and I have seen a patron hit a librarian!)

  166. Hey Ms!*

    Absolutely! I am a teacher and a lot of students have been hurting and showing it through horrible attitudes, rudeness, disrespect, fighting, and bullying. There’s always been a bit of that, but it seems like it’s more the norm than the exception. Schoolwork and learning have been on the backburner just to get these kids to an emotionally stable place to be near each other. It’s awful and sad.

  167. insert pun here*

    I work in a non-student facing, weird little corner of higher ed. Additionally, my workplace is generally very low-conflict, and our operations were relatively (that’s the key word here) untroubled by pandemic disruptions. (We are getting hit now with some serious supply chain issues, though.) We are… okay, but not great with each other now. It really feels like everyone is just barely holding it together. As others have noted, there’s no more assumptions that people are acting in good faith. I am trying really hard to be patient, relaxed, and generally not an a-hole and I think I am mostly succeeding but it is getting harder every day.

    In restaurant/retail/similar situations I have also noticed an increased amount of behavior that’s just twice as hostile as it used to be. It doesn’t feel (to me — not working in this environment) that there are more actively hostile people overall, just that the hostile ones have gotten way, way worse. And as others have noted, I’ve also experienced really strong reactions from restaurant/retail staff when I’ve been bare-minimum-level polite (please, thank you, have a good day, plus a decent tip if it’s a tipping situation.) That’s really unsettling, too.

  169. Theo*

    I work in the publishing field; there’s always been a pretty high level of rudeness from our MD/PhD authors towards our editorial staff. I don’t think it’s notably increased (possibly even gone down a little?), but their response-times to requests have gotten a *lot* longer, and they seem more scattered than they used to be. I don’t blame them!

    (Not for publication, please; but I’d love to hear if other people who work alongside doctors have similar experiences.)

  170. Lime+green+Pacer*

    Over 30 years ago, I saw the opposite phenomenon. My city was hosting an internationally prestigious event that was well-supported by the citizens. People everywhere were in a pleasant move, rush hour traffic was nicer, everything was just that little bit more pleasant and easier.

    Now, due to global events, people are more tense, fatigued, and irritable, and it comes out in their behaviour, maybe?

  171. JumpAround*

    I think in my job it’s less outright rudeness and more people becoming short with one another more easily/frequently. We’re all super stressed and short staffed and it’s causing us to become occasionally unpleasant. I hate it!

  172. NeedRain47*

    Y’all, two things have happened.

    One is straight up, trump gave people permission to be rude.

    Second, the social contract is broken.
    The US especially has now reached a point where it doesn’t matter how well you follow the rules of society. You can have a “decent” job or more than one, be a kind person, work hard every day to better yourself, etc. and still not be able to afford food to eat and a place to leave. Being an upstanding participant in society gets you NOWHERE and NOTHING, so why do it?
    (note, social contract has *always* been pretty broken for people not of the white, cis, straight, christian, category, that’s a whole ‘nother topic)

    1. Annie Porter*

      I agree with the sentiment that rude is the new normal. Also, people seem to think their input and opinion are mandatory to share. No one can just let anything go anymore. I saw a t-shirt that said “Why be homophobic, transphobic, racist, or rude when you could just be quiet?” and like, I want to buy it for so many people.

    2. Elle*

      You really hit the nail on the head here. It scares the crap out of me where society is at right now. It’s so striking to me that so many people who were previously of the “manners are more important than actual ethics” crowd decide they didn’t even care much about politeness.

  173. Bird Lady*

    I am a Museum Professional and have noticed that for the most part we are operating in a hybrid model of delivering content – both on site and virtually. Doing both requires additional capacity in terms of staffing and technology. Many museums are currently understaffed and their staff is overwhelmed. I don’t think people are trying to be rude or mean, but they are burnt out and being asked to do more with a lot less. Breakdowns happen.

    The other thing I’ve noticed is how Covid-19 is becoming a moral issue. My husband and I caught Covid (likely at a work event) and some of my colleagues thought it was appropriate to moralize how we got sick, even without knowing the specifics.

  174. Janine*

    Our public has been relatively polite but we have definitely seen more hostility in our volunteer group. Our parent organization is among the more strict in the community about COVID rules, especially for staff and volunteers, and we have seen unprecedented rudeness among a few who do not want to follow those rules when all that is needed is “Sorry, that’s not for me but please let me know if you change the policy.” It’s particularly shocking because this group has traditionally placed a VERY high value on civility (to the extent that they have sometimes had a hard time resolving issues because everyone was too polite to say what they really think.)

    I also think that life is just so frustrating these days–between workforce turnover, supply shortages, rising costs, on and on–that it’s getting harder and harder to keep a polite attitude. I had two issues recently that required me to interact with customer service at different companies, and by the time I was on my fourth or fifth call, with no resolution, I had definitely devolved from “warm and friendly” to “coolly polite.” I can only imagine the customers who weren’t actively trying to be courteous.

    In addition, I am definitely finding, in myself and others, that people are more empowered to call out things that need to be called out, especially around DEI issues. I have reached out several times to address situations that I would have let go in the past, and at work we are hearing more from the public when they have reason for concern. To everyone’s credit, all the conversations I have been involved in have been very courteous. But I can imagine that in less thoughtful hands it could get hostile quickly.

    1. Nameless+in+Customer+Service*

      In addition, I am definitely finding, in myself and others, that people are more empowered to call out things that need to be called out, especially around DEI issues.

      This is a good point. I do think that actual rudeness has increased, but so has people’s ability and willingness to not silently tolerate abuse, and the latter is often labeled as rudeness. For an example in this very discussion, see a thread above where a commenter labels a T-shirt that says, “Why be homophobic, transphobic, racist, or rude when you could just be quiet?”” as a problem.

  175. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    I’m a director at a nonprofit that’s fully remote – For the last year or so, people have been treating each other increasingly poorly within the organization. At the same time, everyone’s threshold for rudeness has pretty much evaporated. So we have these spiraling escalations, like “Person X snaps at Person Y. Person Y can’t resolve the situation with X because they have to immediately jump to a meeting with Person Z, in which they’re still upset/haven’t had time to process the conflict and snap at Person Z. Person Z gets upset because this is the third time Person Y has snapped at them in a month and snaps back. Person Z’s boss doesn’t have that context, and chooses this particular day to give Person Z some critical feedback. Person Z doesn’t take the feedback well, and now their boss is concerned, putting more pressure on Person Z.” Then none of them can have a conversation to rebuild trust because (totally fairly) all of them are working parents who don’t have 30 mins (or the emotional bandwidth) for an uninterrupted zoom call. I think it’s a combination of severe burnout, 2.5 years of poorly managed institutional change, senior management who’s privileged enough to be insulated from the pandemic while frontline staff and middle managers aren’t, and remote work making it harder to build relationships. But whatever’s causing it, the amount of “crying at work” that has become the new normal is just so not ok.

  176. Kokie*

    At my workplace in Higher Ed, people are absolutely more rude than what I’ve experienced in the past. I think this is partly due to job expectations higher than before yet the resources and means to meet those expectations are limited.

  177. Agnes*

    It might be interesting to have an ask the readers post to see what people will report on for ,”that time I snapped ” and what their justification was.

    1. NeedRain47*

      I’m curious as to where the line is between “snapped” and “was appropriately angry at the situation” is. I’ve never, like, yelled insults at someone, but I certainly feel “snapped” after being on the phone for three hours without having my problem resolved.

      1. A rose by another name*

        I think for many, many people the line is this:

        When YOU do it, it’s “snapping.”
        When *I* do it, it is “being appropriately angry at the situation”

        (sort of joking, but not really — and I’d hope most us would agree that hurling insults and swearing is way over the “snapping” line)

      2. Susie*

        Me, too. I spent approximately 1.5 hours on the phone*, transferred around to multiple people and no one could answer a simple question. Then I asked for supervisor. I asked 4 times for a supervisor. After the fourth ask, the person on the phone assured me they were the right person to answer/fix my issue and I just needed to have “confidence” they could do it. Yeah, I snapped. I did not yell but I told them that I had absolutely zero confidence they could fix my issue and since I know the line was being recorded, I wanted to note that I asked for a supervisor 4 times, was refused and was going to call the corporate office as soon as it opened the next day to lodge a complaint. 2 hours later, I got an email that explained how to fix my issue and that I was receiving a credit for the time I was unable to access my services.

        * Previous to this call, I had spent multiple hours on multiple calls over multiple days with an issue that turned out was easily solvable but I had to resort to threatening to lodge a complaint to get things done.

        1. Eff Walsingham*

          After a similar tangle of transfers and callbacks, a call centre supervisor told me she found my tone of voice very hurtful and I had hurt her feelings. I told her, “Your feelings are not the issue here,” which was probably somewhat mean, but we’d already covered the fact that the reason for my call was that my father had died, and I was trying to cancel his cable service.

          I’d have a couple of things to contribute to a “snapping” thread, but I don’t think this occasion was one of them. I was still pretty dazed and confused by loss, and just going through steps to get the job done. All the other utilities and service providers were great, BTW. Said and did everything appropriate for the situation.

      3. Colette*

        I’d say “snapped” is yelled, called the person you were talking to names, used racial or homophobic slurs, and otherwise behaved rudely.

        Calmly stating that you’re angry, asking to speak to a supervisor, or making a formal complaint might be appropriately angry.

        1. Susie.*

          Yes, you are right. I just felt so edgy and anxious that I was speaking through gritted teeth and I was this.close to yelling. I was also rather snarky when I told them I had no confidence in them. Not yelled but very snarky inflictions with tone that I normally don’t do.

  178. mreasy*

    Not customers, but colleagues. Tuesday a coworker was so sharp with me in an email exchange (in which I was being careful to be kind) that I cried, a LOT. And I’m usually pretty impervious to that stuff, due to unfortunately a lot of exposure.

  179. My Cabbages!*

    I’m a college professor, and while I haven’t noticed the students to be *ruder* per se since the pandemic, I have noticed that they are a bit more demanding than they used to be. They expect a lot more hand-holding and get snippy when I don’t just give them answers or provide a detailed list of “what you need to know for the exam”. They also seem to have lost a lot of curiosity and critical thinking skills (and this view is shared by a lot of my colleagues). It’s dramatically decreased my enjoyment of the job.

  180. Anonforthis*

    I’m a veterinarian and the abuse we’ve been getting in our profession has been well documented. Specific to our profession I think it comes down to that people are having to make decisions that are highly emotional, but also financial. I’m always sympathetic but it just sucks when people are rude to me or to our staff when we are trying to help your pet. I had a client verbally abuse me on the phone for 10 minutes and I finally had to tell her that the conversation wasn’t going anywhere, I would have the practice manager call her back, and then I hung up the phone and cried. It was all because we told her to go to ER rather than be seen by us again and it turned out her pet did need emergency services that we could not have provided at our clinic! But she felt that we should have just seen her again because the ER was more expensive.
    I do think there’s been some anti-veterinarian sentiment on social media lately but I can’t blame all of it on that.

    1. Monty*

      I think a lot of people got pets during the pandemic without doing any research about what you can expect to spend on an animal friend. I grew up with pets and knew exactly how expensive even a fundamentally healthy animal can be, so, even though it probably would have done wonders for my mental health, I didn’t get a dog in 2020.

      There have also been several exposes in my area about shady rescues who are more focused on placing dogs in homes than they are in finding a home that can actually support the dog. This means they were not disclosing bite histories or pre-existing medical problems, and eager adopters were left holding the bag for unexpected expenses. Especially for inexperienced adopters facing a financial catastrophe, the vet may have felt like the closest target because rescue agencies are “good guys” so the problem couldn’t possibly be there and the vet is the person who handed them that enormous bill…

    2. The+OG+Sleepless*

      I work in a combined day/ER animal hospital. During the pandemic we had FIFTEEN DIFFERENT day practices telling all of their emergencies to “go to the emergency clinic.” Said emergency clinic (us) was typically staffed during the day with two doctors and five nurses. We were just a finite resource trying frantically to keep up. All we got from it was a ton of burnout and a ruined Google rating, because every pinhead sat in our parking lot and gave us one star for having to wait two hours to be seen for an ear infection.

      1. Anonforthis*

        In this case it was legitimately something that we could not do any more for the client at our facility- didn’t respond to medical treatment and required an emergency surgery that we are not able to perform.
        We try to see as much as we can and get owners to realize that for some things they might have to wait a day or two for an appointment! If I send something to ER I also try to warn owners there still will be a wait but they will be triaged appropriately.

  182. Karate Saw*

    The last five years or so have shown that some of the most visible people in the world can behave pretty shittily and experience absolutely no consequences. #MeToo improved things for women in exactly zero ways, Jared Kushner will never be indicted, Mel Gibson still gets to direct, we saw a hundred viral videos of women going ballistic at retail workers but no videos of them being led away in handcuffs. Why wouldn’t terrible people take that as a license to be their terrible selves at all times? And for the ordinarily perfectly nice people to feel like “well, what’s the point of trying to live in a society if no one else is playing?” It’s very bad out there, and it’s not going to get better any time soon.

  183. Rovannen*

    Elementary School Office. I have examples from both ends of the spectrum. When we switched to distant learning at the start of the pandemic, one parent called us to apologize for being previously rude to the teacher. She said she didn’t know her child was such an “*******” when it came to schoolwork. On the other hand, we have a parent whose child did Absolutely Nothing with distant learning, yet we’re at fault for the child refusing to work after a year at play.
    I believe the stresses during the pandemic, whether a person believed it was real or not, has parents’ nerves on edge. We do a lot of listening, from Covid Conspiracies to Germaphobes. All in all, we try to keep our students on a normal routine and out of the adult drama.
    As to if the parents are ruder this year, overall, it seems only the parents that were rude before, got more aggressively ruder. The social constraints that kept these parents in check have gone away and I think this is the new normal.

  184. Maltypass*

    (*quoted as in seeing myself on an AAM post made me excited, I’m not assuming I’ll make it into the piece. ;)

  185. Susie*

    Yes, I have noticed people being more aggressive and ruder than usual. I answer phones as part of my duties. Two of the most common questions I get are do we require masks because if we do ,they are not coming. The public answer to that to no, we are not requiring masks at this time. (Coincidentally, half of our staff has been exposed to COVID, due to a staff member “not feeling well for 3 weeks” but just thought it was the weather change and kept coming to work)

    The second question is about price ($17) which was increased by $1.05 in July of last year (first increase in 5 years). They want to know why is cost so much, what do they get to see, etc. You get everything in the museum (4 galleries, 3 special exhibits and a make & take activity). If they want to see the show, that’s $3.75. People get so angry and start yelling, sometimes cursing, at me like it was my decision. I asked and was granted permission to respond to yelling people with “So sorry you won’t be visiting. Have a nice day” and hang up. People start cursing and I just hang up. Now many want to complain being hung up on because they were cursing.

    Times are tough for all of us and taking out your frustration on others, especially retail and fast food workers who usually can say anything for fear of losing their jobs, is just bully like behavior. If you wouldn’t say it to your grandmother, you shouldn’t say it to someone who is just doing their job.

  186. It's Not Just Puppies and Kittens*

    I work in veterinary medicine and the hostility we have received from clients has been flabbergasting. The pandemic caused a perfect storm- people at home with their pets and noticing more medical issues, an increase in adoptions, and a shortage of credentialed veterinary technicians and veterinarians. All of this led to increased wait times, delays in services, and inability to provide necessary care. Clinics also went to curbside services and clients were not present for the appointments and that caused confusion and misdirected anger. The most tragic component to arise from this is increased number of suicides and mental health challenges from veterinary professionals. I wish clients would be more cognizant of the difficulties in veterinary medicine and that we are a huge group of empaths and take losses and attacks very personally.

  187. LizardOfOdds*

    This is all very interesting. I’ve felt closer to snapping than I ever have before now, even during pandemic lockdowns. Every time I need something, it’s harder and more time-consuming to get the thing. Need gas? Be prepared to spend time scouting the best price and waiting in line for a while. Need baby formula? Good luck finding the brand, you’ll probably need to visit 3 stores and dance around hundreds of people who aren’t wearing masks because they think this ish is over when it isn’t. Trying to work around the noise by ordering pickup? Half your stuff is going to be out of stock and you’ll wait for an hour before someone has time to bring your order out. I keep hearing “this is the new normal,” but I can’t imagine this being sustainable for anyone, let alone workers at the center of it all.

    I’ve worked in retail and have a lot of empathy for how crappy people can be, so I work extremely hard to keep my reactions internal. I know full well that the people I’m talking to have zero control over any of this. But I haven’t been this frustrated with the state of things in the last few years, even during TP shortages or when idiots were throwing mask protests or other nonsense was happening.

  188. Orora*

    I’m an HR Director in Higher Ed. We’ve seen an increase in resentment within our formerly very close-knit staff. Many of us are in 1-2 person departments but pitched in together for projects and events.

    My own belief is that because we were all in the office 5 days/week prior to COVID, we got used to working as a team because we were together all the time. When we went remote, we all worked alone in our silos at home and got used to thinking of “my tasks” instead of “team goals”. So now that we’re partially back in the office, we’re hearing a lot of discontent. Some of the people who are here all the time because their job doesn’t allow for remote work are resentful that others have more flexibility. The ones whose tasks don’t require being on-site are resentful that they have to come in because they feel they can do all of their tasks remotely. It’s causing some friction that we’ve never had before. We’re trying to figure out a way to allow for some flexibility for everyone and other perks if someone’s job doesn’t allow them as much flexibility as another person.

  189. H.C.*

    I work in a government agency’s public information office; despite the name, we mostly handle PR/marketing and do not function as the agency’s 411 – though I’m aware that the general public may not know that I’ll try to steer them to the proper contacts within our agency, or the main call center who would function in that 411 role. However, we regularly get tirades about service denials, staff being unavailable, accusations of any number of -isms, etc. without being able to get a word in edgewise that we’re not the appropriate contact for this. I empathize as much as I can, but there are a few occasions when I hung up mid-tirade when they kept yelling at me even though I told them they should be contacting someone else or our call center.

    This behavior definitely worse during pandemic (& esp lockdown periods) when we get angry calls about mask mandates, closures, requiring distancing or any number of safety measures, even though we are not the public health department that ordered them!

  190. Howie*

    I agree that there are more signs of people being rude and unkind (especially in retail), but I believe one reason for it is that when the pandemic hit, consumers became responsible for a lot of the actions formerly performed by retail staff. For instance, we had to learn how to check ourselves out and bag our own groceries. I used to own a grocery store so that wasn’t out of my comfort zone but think of how many people had to navigate these processes – and without any training. Same thing online where we had to figure out how to order via store websites or over the phone and arrange for deliveries. This is not to excuse people, but customer grumpiness/shitty behaviour could be one of the results of having to learn unfamiliar procedures.

  191. Not+Your+Sweetheart*

    I work in hotels, and there has been a noticeable increase in entitlement, rudeness and hostility the past few years. I’ve been in the industry for 15 years (retail before that). It had been slowly getting worse until 2020. Once the pandemic hit, the downward slope became much steeper. I get called names on a weekly basis. Twice this month alone, we’ve had to ban a guest for verbally abusing and/or threatening an associate.
    My current property is a low-end suburban hotel, but I get less abuse than I did when I worked for a higher-end downtown hotel. Which is to say, the quality of guest has nothing to do with income, education, or status.

    1. MeepMeep02*

      I think it’s got to do with COVID-related behavior. The people who are considerate of others aren’t the ones traveling, for the most part – they are taking precautions and staying home if they can do so. So the people who stay at hotels during COVID are basically a self-selecting population of the inconsiderate.

    2. Eff Walsingham*

      My spouse had occasion to travel across the country recently. A necessary trip, but not high-pressure or high-stakes, so… just a guy, coming and going. He checked the mask policy and followed it, and asked ordinary questions such as, “When is breakfast served?” And he said that the staff seemed so relieved and happy to help him, as if they were braced for folks to react unreasonably. I am so sorry when I hear that people feel so free to mistreat frontline staff who are just trying to help them!

  192. Night Owl*

    I’m a veterinary technician, and man oh man are we seeing this. I can absolutely recognize that a large part of the picture is that during the pandemic, the pet population absolutely exploded due to all of those work-from-homers going out and buying/adopting new pets. That’s great, to a degree, but bear in mind that we were short-staffed industry-wide even before the pandemic, so now, we’re absolutely drowning. And that’s not even touching the fact that people are leaving this field faster than ever due to burnout or worse.

    My hospital is seeing a marked rise in bad behavior from our clients. I’ve had people lie about their pet being sick so it could be seen quickly, only for the pet to miraculously heal by the time of the appointment and hey, while I’m here let’s just update that Rabies vaccine that expired last year. I’ve had people literally try to force their way inside the building when we were operating strictly curbside. We get all manner of complaints about our mask policy, from eye rolls and snide comments to cursing and yelling. All of this on top of the usual complaints—people show up late to their appointments and are livid that we can’t see them; people show up early to their appointments and are livid that they have to wait; why won’t we refill an antibiotic from three years ago without an examination; why are you charging so much for that…the list goes on.

    It’s exhausting. This job is physically and emotionally demanding, horrifically low-paying, and hard enough even in the best of times—I really wish people would stop going out of their way to make it harder.

  193. Elle*

    GOD yes. My org functions sort of like an internal agency- we create deliverables that other orgs within the company need. We have to work closely with other teams to get the info we need for our deliverables and while it’s not new for it to be like pulling teeth to get what we need, increasingly folks are demanding, unreasonable, and snarky. We are actively losing people over it. It doesn’t seem to happen to me the way it happens to some of my teammates, and I’m at a loss for how to help the situation.

  194. JQWADDLE*

    Prior to the pandemic, I felt like etiquette rules weren’t keeping pace with technology. A lot of people were using their phones in ways that were really rude – like talking on your phone when you are in line at a store and the clerk is actively scanning your merchandise. Acknowledge your cashier people!

    Since the pandemic, I am not really seeing an increase in rude behavior at my day job, but I am seeing it more in my volunteer work.

    I teach Sunday school and was one of the few parishioners who wore a mask once the mandates were lifted. I had people at church act strange toward me (avoidance, walk away) or outright ignore me when I ask a question. Yes, this all happened at church, which is supposed to be a source of community. I thought about putting a name tag on with “Hester P.” to see if anyone got my joke.

    My husband coaches rec league soccer. There was poor sportsmanship, parents and grandparents getting aggressive with my husband, parents sometimes getting aggressive with the kids, and even an accusation of child abuse when a spectator didn’t like the outcome of a game (I don’t get that one. Are you trying to accuse the winning team coach of abuse so the win is overturned?). The kids are great, but my goodness the adults. Going to a soccer game – which should be about the kids having fun – is like an out of world experience because the adults are so insane.

    1. Dinwar*

      I’ve read about similar complaints in children’s sports for a while now. It’s one reason I’m glad my kids prefer karate to more traditional sports. I think that case, the issue is that it’s become all about winning. Don’t get me wrong, winning is great, and the point of playing a sport is to win! But that’s the KID’S goal. The goal of the parents is to teach the kids how to win and lose with grace, how to work as a team, how to help each other, etc. It’s our job to teach them sportsmanship, in other words. But we don’t anymore. We just want them to win.

      The training and such that go into it are insane as well. The sheer time commitments are overwhelming. Practices should be an occasional thing, not most nights a week! And this feeds into the drive to win at any cost, and the sense of betrayal when you lose. It’s the Sunk Cost Fallacy: I put all this money into the game, my child should win. My child is training at a high level, how can anyone beat them? They must be cheating!!

      G K Chesterton wrote about this phenomenon. He pointed out that battles weren’t won on the professional cricket green, as many were claiming. They are won on the backyard greens. If by “playing cricket” you mean “playing at a professional level”, what that means in fact is that no one is playing cricket–only the best are playing. If everyone’s playing cricket, “playing cricket” means that most of the people are bad at it. In the USA we’ve accepted that “playing sports” means playing at a professional level, even if you’re 7 years old. And that means that only the best play. This is evidenced by the frequent observations that no one does pick-up games anymore–baseball fields in parks are empty unless there’s a scheduled game.

      1. Eff Walsingham*

        You might have something there. My extended family used to play pick-up softball games in the side yard when I was a kid, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a bunch of people do that. It’s all organized stuff now.

        My uncle once slid into home in a white linen suit! (See: pick-up game. He wasn’t expecting to play.) My aunt was not his biggest fan that day. :)

    2. A Genuine Scientician*

      My family was active in running a deliberately non-competitive youth softball league in the late 80s through mid 90s. We routinely had to ban particular parents. It was virtually never the children who were the problem.

  195. Moe Jontana*

    Definitely. I’ve always wondered if this goes back to the rise of Reality Television. We’ve normalized crazed, attention-getting behavior in person and that language on the internet. Our politicians and other celebs use it to get sound bites. Now I assume that some nuclear behavior is to be accepted when I am reading comments online or out in public. Civility has become a bit of nostalgia.

  196. GiantPanda*

    I am not working witht the public und seeing much nastiness, but an awful lot of small-scale rudeness and inconsiderateness between coworkers. The fact that we are all stressed and overworked (too much new business for too few employees) doesn’t help.

    A one liner “This thing is happening” does not replace any planning. And planning would be your job, not mine. The follow up “I’ve told you this is happening, figure it out, make it possible.” doesn’t really help. And I’m not sitting around twiddling my thumbs when you tell me about super-important thing 30 minutes in advance.

    Most of these are small things and could be overlooked, but after months and years of this I’ve lost most of my patience, too.

    Also, nobody even apologizes for scheduling things at lunchtime or early morning / late afternoon anymore.

  197. Canadian Librarian #72*

    I’m in libraries too but have not noticed this, possibly because I don’t work in public libraries (which are, again, not the only kind of library out there!), but I’ve definitely heard this from people I know who work in the food service industry and in retail.

    1. NeedRain47*

      I have worked both in an academic library and a public, and generally speaking, the public displays a much wider variety of behavior (there would be more rude people on your average day even pre-pandemic) than the students & other academic users did. I’m guessing that still holds true. (I’m a cataloger and don’t work in public service regularly now.)

  198. Esmeralda*

    Academic adjacent, I also teach freshman classes.

    I have not seen any increase in rudeness except for more playing on phones in class. My students are polite with me and with each other. In fact, when some have (inevitably) missed an appointment, they are much faster than pre-pandemic to email an apology and to at least sound genuinely mortified that they slept through the appt (or the like).

    Parents have been polite too. As have colleagues around campus. I mean, still the usual turds, but they were like that before.

    I dunno, maybe I’m lucky or I give off a don’t-f-with-me vibe, but I’ve encountered very little bad behavior at work and elsewhere. Even at airports and on airplanes.

  199. Lacey*

    Not for me, but that could be both because 1) I don’t work with the public & 2) We were already in multiple locations, so changing to WFH didn’t effect how we communicate – it was always over email or phone calls.

  200. Orangie*

    This is probably very specific to my field, but I am seeing the opposite of hostility. I work in nonprofit fundraising, and SO MANY people are stepping up in a myriad of ways. We’ve gotten more unsolicited checks in the mail in the last two years than ever before. People are seeing the news and reaching out to us to try to help. Everyone is stressed and scared, but some people are channeling those emotions in really lovely ways. Even the former donors who are experiencing financial difficulties are writing us notes apologizing and promising to try to give in the future. Every conversation with a donor begins with their inquiries about the wellbeing of our students and program staff (we work in education/mental health, so there is a fair amount of secondhand trauma for program staff). It is really heartening to see, and I’m grateful for it.

  201. "Giles, no one is using the 'I' statements!"*

    Alison, thank you for this thread. It’s very therapeutic to hear from other people in many different fields saying, “it’s not just you.”

  202. LavaLamp(she/her)*

    I work from home in a data entry role. My coworkers are professional and normal, but I have noticed the attitude shift in customer service people. I have had multiple people on the phone from my bank for example thank me for not shouting at them, same for folks from my phone company. They are so timid and pleased that I’m not shouting at them for something that it makes me kinda sad for them, but it’s obvious people have taken their frustrations on the random call center people a lot more than usual lately.

    1. A Genuine Scientician*

      Definitely.

      I used to joke pre pandemic that my superpower was not yelling at customer service reps for things that are clearly not their fault. It was always so weird to me how much they would go out of their way to help me just because I wasn’t yelling at them.

      During the pandemic? The number of them effusively thanking me for being understanding has just skyrocketed. Look, I get it. You are the CS rep. It is not your fault that my internet is out, or there’s an error in my insurance bill, or whatever. You’re just the point of contact for me to let your company know that there is a problem. As long as you are not actively obstructing the process, we’re good. I don’t get why customers scream at the CS reps, any more than I understand them screaming at cashiers about long lines or high prices.

      1. Eff Walsingham*

        I often start calls for customer service by saying, “I know this is not your fault.” And if the conversation becomes circular: “Please escalate me, because this is getting us nowhere” in a calm and level tone of voice. Because my secret super power is sarcasm, and I don’t want to pull it out on someone comparatively powerless. If *they* start getting heated, I point out that “I am not shouting at you. I am not swearing at you. Nevertheless, (restates problem)”

        I really wish companies wouldn’t leave their employees with inadequate scripts and no backup. Two different cable companies tried to tell me I couldn’t cancel service for a parent who had died, that there was no way to cancel someone else’s service, that there was no one else I could speak to. They really need to get a script for that. It’s a thing that happens. And the caller is likely to be very upset.

  203. Loves libraries*

    I live in western Australia, which was one of the most protected places in the world during the pandemic. I work in healthcare and did not see this in my hospital job. However, I believe my general practice colleagues have experienced it. And all my healthcare colleagues have been increasingly burn out (we now have COVID-19 in the community but even when numbers were low the health system was under extra pressure). I think our state government took a consistent but hard line approach which means those inclined to protest and get angry about mask and vaccine mandates were very much directing their anger at the government over individuals or businesses.
    We have been very lucky throughout the last two years

  204. TigressInTech*

    I’m in college. Overall, classmates haven’t necessarily gotten ruder (lazier due to online classes, but that’s a different conversation). There are a few interesting cases I’ll mention though:

    – Fall 2021 was our first semester back in person. We had many sophomores who had never been to campus. It felt (and sometimes still feels) as if half the campus is socially freshmen, as in the way they act and interact with people – it still feels very highschool-ish.

    – (Surprisingly positive) One student who had previously been that guy that gave off odd vibes and who girls had generally avoided has now completely normalized and is making a huge effort to be socially normal (and is succeeding).

    – One student who was a freshman during the pandemic appears completely reserved in person, but gives off “creep” vibes in online groups and overall has few boundaries online (think: rants that are posted and deleted in the middle of the night, blaming professors and tutors for his own verifiable lack of work and major mistakes, things like that). I don’t know if that was triggered by the pandemic in particular because I didn’t know him before, but that seems to be a factor in his lack of social skills.

    I think part of the reason for the tension is all the restrictions around the pandemic. For example, a situation I experienced: Someone wearing a mesh mask in a student social area where they’ve been asked to wear a standard medical or cloth mask is a violation of the boundaries of many students using that area, but the person wearing the mesh mask feels (emotionally) that they have the right to do what they want with their own body, so you have emotions heightened on both sides. It’s similar with social distancing, washing hands, hand sanitizer, coughing without covering… there are very few boundaries (personal or otherwise) outside of pandemic life (for straight, white, cisgender people) that can be flouted in such a visible and flagrant way.

    1. Anonymous for this*

      That’s interesting, to hear from the students’ side.

      Definitely what I’m seeing is most students are behaving very nicely with faculty, staff, and each other. But I’m referring a lot more of them to our CARES team, because a lot more students in distress, of various sorts. Not at the levels of spring 2020 – summer 2021 (when we were not in person, or when the university tried to go in person and then sent everyone home), but still higher than pre-pandemic.

      You might think that high levels of stress and distress would lead to more poor behavior, but in fact students apologize to me for “asking for too much help” and for “bothering you with a stupid question”.

      1. TigressInTech*

        Yeah, I’ve also noticed extra anxiety around asking questions or asking for help. I tutor and I don’t think tutoring hours were this quiet pre-pandemic.

  205. SelinaKyle*

    Not work related;
    Outside the pandemic years my partner and I go to the cinema at least once a week. We have noticed that people do not know how to act in public anymore. It used to be the odd group who would misbehave (if that’s the correct word) before and now it’s 8/10 people. The amount on their phone talking or playing videos loudly during the movie, feet up on chairs and food everywhere!

  206. DinoGirl*

    I’m in HR. I don’t think I’ve seen a change in volume, but maybe a change in intensity. In civility has existed for awhile, but I think people are finding boundaries harder to maintain and maybe having some incidents be “more” because their mental health is suffering.
    That said a lot of people are soldiering on in spite of lots of stress and things businesses are doing that are bad for morale, so those not cracking yet will be soon, I fear.

  207. Alpaca Clinician*

    I am a veterinarian at a veterinary school, so I do a combination of clinical practice, research, and teaching classes and laboratories to veterinary students. Overall I have felt for the past 4-5 years that students were getting “needier” – i.e. more questions about what specifically would be on an exam, not preparing for lab sessions and expecting us to basically read the lab handout to them, etc. – but I think the last 2 years have had an increase in these types of encounters. There is definitely a level of entitlement among some of the students that wasn’t there before. I haven’t encountered an increase in rudeness from the students – many of them were truly grateful we were able to do in-person learning last fall as we had been fully remote the previous year – but overall I find they are more disconnected from us (faculty and staff) as well as each other. Vet school has always been an intense situation and the 30+ hours of class/lab per week fosters a sense of community within each class that just isn’t as possible when students aren’t together all day, every day. I have noticed the neediness I mentioned earlier, as well as an overall feeling that the students aren’t as emotionally mature as they have been in the past.

    In terms of clinical practice, I would echo the comments of the other vets and veterinary technicians that posted above. My clients have been very understanding and nice, but many of my friends and colleagues have had horrible experiences with rude and abusive pet owners. What is getting to us now, I think, is exhaustion. We have been working in-person throughout the pandemic. Initially, our hospital went to emergency-only service and cohorted staff as much as possible to minimize service disruptions. But recently we have been dealing with chronic shortages of support staff (veterinary technicians are notoriously underpaid for what they do, and every clinic in the region needs staff right now so we had 1 applicant for 3 open positions recently) as well as burnout, exhaustion, and mental health crises in our house officers (qualified vets who are pursuing additional qualifications post-grad) leaving all aspects of the hospital short-staffed and short-tempered.

    I’m incredibly lucky that our schedule allows me time off-clinics to decompress from that aspect of my job, as many of my colleagues do not have that luxury. But we are all tired – tired of constant PPE and infection vigilance, tired of clients not understanding why wait times are longer and appointments take longer, tired of clients fighting over paying their bill. Tired of it feeling “normal” now to see another notification that another veterinarian or veterinary technician has committed suicide. Just, in general, tired.

  208. FancyNancy*

    There is no doubt that we are seeing an increase in hostility and bad behavior in our industry (I’m a farmer). We’ve had customers scream at our sales team, and employees getting into a shoving matches (yes – plural). I’ve had several occasions where people call to say they are going to sue us because the piece of fruit they bought “tastes awful”. Plus the amount of theft has gone way up. People steal things from our farm stand, or out of our fields, or even from employees belongings! And i’m not including t I’ve even had people approach my employees as they were working and threaten them (this happens in the fields, where its difficult to control who comes in and out of the area).

    I think the theory of our social fabric becoming more frayed seems to be on point. Plus, farming typically happens in more rural areas with smaller populations. Most people that work for us, or with us, know each other outside of work and are bringing their grievances from church, or school, or their neighborhood with them. Things that were a minor irritation in the past are now worth a fight because it’s not one thing they are angry about, it’s many things.

    Personally, I’m getting pretty burnt out. Being the owner, its my job to make sure everyone is healthy, and safe so I dont have time to be burnt out. But its really hard to go from cutting a long time customer off for verbal abuse, to protecting an employee from an angry sibling who is threatening to get them fired, to calling the cops, AGAIN, because some people on an adjacent property to ours threatened some employees. I’m lucky that I have a great HR person who can help calm the waters, but lately I feel more like a therapist managing societies anger issues than a farmer trying to grow a piece of fruit.

  209. Not Anonymous*

    I work in a public library that closed for the pandemic. While we did encounter some people being rude about it, we also had a wave of public appreciation when we opened up again. Some people really did miss us, which was nice to know. Now I think we’re at more or less normal levels of patron behavior, though we’re not back to pre-pandemic levels of patron traffic yet. Also, many of us noticed while commuting that road rage was more prevalent 6-12 months ago, but traffic has steadily increased and now is more of the usual commuter flow. I think that our staff are somewhat less resilient than before and less confident about their ability to handle problem patrons, but there, too, I have seen improvements–fewer conversations are happening where it’s impossible to tease out and address individual problems because everything is ONE BIG PROBLEM.

  210. Kate*

    I’ve noticed two quite separate trends.

    The first was/is an emboldening of aggressive, hostile behavior in some people as being socially admired and applauded. The embrace of Trump-y style rudeness, insults, “cry more libtard sheep” type of communications. A goal of upsetting people is celebrated in some circles. The “f*ck your feelings” crowd revels in how much they can offend someone.

    An utterly different vein I’ve seen, is some people taking the idea of “boundaries” and drawing knives when they feel their boundaries are being violated, instead of seeing a boundary violation and not accepting it (important!), but also not attacking in response. I’ve seen some vicious teardowns over what could have been handled by a polite and firm stated boundary.

  211. It's All Elementary*

    I’ve been saying for years we have had an “it’s all about me” mentality and it’s only gotten worse. If a situation doesn’t meet a person’s expectations then they become belligerent, rude, and intolerant. I absolutely hate it.

  212. ScruffyInternHerder*

    Multi pronged answer:

    I work in what I’ll call architecture/engineering/construction adjacent. There is a level of loud, rude, etc that is just there, and I doubt it will change. I would love, in 2022, to never again be asked who I’m related to/who I’m sleeping with in relation to “how do I have my career”, because the assumption that I’m unqualified simply because I’m a woman is gross. I’ve not noticed any difference from the Before-Times to now as it relates to the number of times its implied I’ve screwed someone to get where I am, or the amount of times I’ve seen meeting devolve into shouting matches that feature “Go Fornicate Upon the Command of the King Yourself”.

    As a parent of school aged children, I’ve thanked every pantheon of known gods that my children were in upper elementary (i.e. could read, write, and to some degree, work with a level of independence) when the fecal matter hit the air rotating device in March 2020. And yet, even today, I got a phone call from school demanding that I come get my child NOW because she has a “fever” and a headache. No, no she doesn’t, by any definition (99.1 is NOT a fever). Yes, I found someone to pick her up, and I’m keeping her home tomorrow regardless how she feels because the school literally will not admit her. I’m frustrated because its an impossible situation.

    I volunteer as a youth sports coach. I have for years. I’m reasonably successful by several metrics (decent record, occasional league and state titles, and by far the most important to me – I’ve NOT had an athlete quit the sport on my watch) I am NOT paid; truth be told, I pay for my credentials, my continuing education, background checks, gas and wear and tear on my vehicle, my own equipment, etc. I do not set rules and regulations as they relate to the sport’s governing bodies. The number of parents who have lost their d@mn mind and manners in the past two years is disgusting. I refuse to engage with them. I don’t set the rules, my opinion doesn’t matter, hell, I don’t even have the bandwidth for an opinion most of the time. I’ve watched a parent volunteer who is a lawyer threaten to sue the head referee on a virtual meeting if the referees enforce the mask mandate. I’ve had a dad follow me onto the field of play acting confused and pretending to request clarification when I’m actively coaching a game, and you’re really not requesting clarification, you just don’t like the answer so you’re going to waste my time. When we had capacity rule in place, I had a parent screaming that how I dare I not permit their whole family watch (not my rule, I can’t do anything about it, it’s called parenting, figure it out. The athlete and one guest rule affected my family too). Mask mandates brought out the a$$holes en masse. (Again, not my rule, and the referees have been charged with enforcing. If they tell you to put it on and play isn’t going to proceed til you do or get out, whelp, there you go.) When game play wasn’t allowed, I had people demanding refunds – when they weren’t being charged for anything but field time that was being used. And to be clear – this was parents. Kids have been kids the whole time. And they’re the reason that I haven’t quit coaching, because they are worth it. Not their fault that a few of them have absolute entitled @$$bags for parents.

  213. Lora*

    Well, I used to get called an evil shill responsible for profiting off the entire misery of the world (used to work for a pharma company you’ve definitely heard of) and at PreviousJob we regularly got death threats for manufacturing one of the Covid vaccines, and the FBI had to warn us to improve our security. So…that was fun.

    I don’t know if people were always this bananas and just got more vocal about it or what, but it used to be pretty friggin rare that someone would choose to die rather than take the Big Pharma Drugs. Occasionally you’d hear about some Christian Scientist folks who got their kids taken away for withholding medical care, or I’d run into a hippie who said they only believed in their magic herb supplements (which were definitely not a scam at all, no sir), but it wasn’t often. Now it turns out there were a LOT of people who prefer the possibility of death (and for many of them, actual death), plus Long Covid and all the other sequelae, rather than Big Pharma Vaccines. It’s sort of weird knowing how many people would literally rather die than trust your work, even in your own family. Like, my cousins would take meth cooked in the back of a chicken restaurant before they’d trust a drug that I made to save their lives. I knew they didn’t respect me due to not being male/straight, but this was sort of mind blowing.

  214. I'm Just Here For The Cats!*

    I work at a university at the front where we have give proctored exams and mental health counseling so both students and community members come into our space. The university doesn’t have any mask mandates but our center does, per CDC health guidelines. Most students are fine, many roll their eyes but don’t give us any problems. The real trouble makers are the community members who come for exams. One person got irate with us. I am super thankful that my supervisors all have our backs and we have procedures where one of the supervisors can come and deal with the angry bird in the lobby.

  215. Mid*

    I noticed I was more easily frustrated by things (not that I acted on it towards workers but I felt my tempter being shorter.) I ended up needing to take a medical/mental health leave due to severe burn out/depression. Now, things are much less irritating and I’m much less snappy than I had been.

    I’ve also, like many others, noticed that everyone seems on edge, more easily irritated and frustrated, especially towards retail and service workers, but even within my own office. I think we’re collectively burnt out. The last few years have been traumatic. Even if you were fortunate enough to be healthy, not lose anyone to the pandemic, not lose your job or housing, or have any other major impacts, it’s still been deeply traumatic for everyone, and the push to pretend things are normal, that we should all just go back to work, we should pretend nothing terrible has been happening for several years, that’s only furthering the trauma. I wish everyone in the world could just….stop working for a few weeks. Spend time with friends and family. Breathe. Cry. Take time to recognize how much we’ve all been going through, how many terrible things have happened to the world, and acknowledge that this *isn’t* normal, it’s okay to not pretend like everyone is okay.

    1. Ben Marcus Consulting*

      I had to take a week of when I started getting upset with myself for taking so long to walk from the car to my office. It’s a 75 second walk.

    2. MeepMeep02*

      I’ve definitely gotten angrier and more frustrated, though I don’t take it out on anyone. I’ve been a total shut-in for two years and don’t go outside my bubble.

      But what I’m seeing from my comfortable home bubble is an entire country of people whose actions show that they don’t give a damn if I live or die, or if my child lives or dies. I’m not sure I can unsee this now. I’m not sure I can ever unsee that.

  216. Pam Poovey*

    I work for a healthcare company in a non-clinical position. I’m not generally external-client-facing, but I did recently complete a project where I talked to a lot of bedside nurses. The across the board consensus was that harassment and abuse is through the roof. They’ve always put up with a lot but the pandemic has multiplied it by tons, especially since now a large proportion of their COVID patients are anti-vaxxers and people who will flat out refuse to believe they’ve got the ‘rona.

    (I don’t want to be quoted in an article, thanks!)

  217. Ben Marcus Consulting*

    I’m in healthcare. Rudeness wasn’t uncommon before the pandemic, now it almost seems as if patients feel entitled to abuse healthcare employees (providers and support teams). Anything seems to be a trigger:

    -not enough modernized systems in place for telemedics
    -too much modernization in place for telemedics
    -too long of an appointment
    -too quick of an appointment
    -This one was in the same breath: ‘It’s ridiculous that you charge this much for this service, we need to be more responsible with how money is spent. How could you just let the insurance write off nearly 75%?! You’re not making enough to pay for staff.”

  218. Alanna*

    I work in K-12 education in the US, and EVERYONE is at the end of their rope, and I’m not even somewhere contentious like Florida. Parents were plenty rude and pushy pre-pandemic, but it’s gone to a whole other level now. I work in the back office where I’m being run off my feet with growing compliance demands at every level of government (local, state, and federal) while my colleagues are constantly dealing with parents in their faces. Suddenly everyone’s child is in need of more resources, more time, and special treatment from the school, while we’re facing budget cuts, high staff turnover, and low money coming in in general due to students being out with COVID. Our schools serve a needy population, so we’re seeing very high levels of learning loss and mental health issues from our students, and students are acting out worse than ever before. It’s coming from all sides and our jobs are nothing but lurching from crisis to crisis.

    1. J.B.*

      Children are in greater need. The pandemic has been brutal. I’m afraid how many school staff will quit – at some point people can’t do this anymore – and how much harder it will be this year.

  219. Bob-White of the Glen*

    Has anyone seen the video of the baseball ref quitting mid game because the parents were being so horrible? Behavior that should never be tolerated.

  220. Calamity Janine*

    so at risk of being chicken little banging on about the sky that’s falling… and while acknowledging that the increase in rudeness very likely has multiple causes (if it is indeed a cohesive pattern at all, instead of unconnected pockets of jerks being discovered and not indicative of a trend)…

    …there have been some very interesting round-ups in medical journals recently about the long-term neurological effects of covid-19.

    of particular interest to me was a study from the UK that was a relatively small cohort, but they had imaging from pre-pandemic times on file for every patient, so they could compare apples to apples (instead of the far more vague “we don’t know what your brain meats looked like before you got covid, only after”). if i am remembering the numbers right, they did indeed show dramatic changes to the brains of those who had covid, with even mild cases meaning a person’s brain shrank equivalent to an entire decade of aging.

    now i am not a doctor. i don’t even have a degree higher than a bachelor’s. i just know how to hum along with a scientific study, and have the “lone non pre-med bio major” advantage of knowing a lot of doctors lol. so when they talk about a round-up from the Lancet on the subject, i get to slide in to read the articles too. so take what i say with your daily recommended dose of sodium; i essentially know just enough to be dangerous.

    h o w e v e r.

    a lot of the talk about covid-19 has been laser focused on mortality rates. and even as we have started to talk about things like long covid, generally people have only noticed those long term effects that are severe and easily spotted. it turns out that it’s a virus good at wrecking shop, and one that can slip past the blood-brain barrier with relative ease, AND (if i am remmbering right here) some of the variants touted as being more mild, such as omicron, are even better at causing direct neurological damage.

    and that’s just the virus directly getting to the grey matter and deciding to do some vandalism. covid is also so dangerous because it likes to make a ton of blood clots. needless to say, many things within your body don’t work great when there’s a blood clot clogging up the pipes so they can’t get adequate fuel to work right. and of course one of those things that will strongly object to having blood flow cut off, is… your brain. that’s why strokes are a big deal to call the ambulance about.

    brain damage is not really associated with people continuing to act in sensible manners exactly as they did previously. (even if Phineas Gage did get kind of a bum rap on that one. sorry Mr. Gage.)

    people like being focused on the idea that covid is now gone forever and we don’t need to worry about it. aside from my bitter disabled rant about how the immunocompromised still exist… here’s my called shot y’all:

    we have barely begun to figure out the tip of the iceberg when it comes to long-term suffering and health consequences of getting covid. even, and especially, if the case was ‘mild’ – or even largely asymptomatic.

    as a society this is going to be on the forefront of public health issues for at least the next 50 years, if not longer. even if every single covid-19 virus decides tomorrow that, much like Poochie, it must return to its home planet (and then dies in transit)… the damage it leaves behind will remain.

    and maybe some of that damage is helping a lot of people get stuck in jerk mode.

    (but who knows, really. …also sorry there’s no bibliography here, i am on mobile, and also recovering from norovirus, so honestly, kinda understand my immune system flipping out a few days ago and turning the thermostat to 104F. for i, too, am tired of these @$%&+:$÷ing snakes – err, viruses – in this @$#$@%@ing me.)

    1. Nameless in Customer Service*

      This is a very educational and thought inspiring comment. I’m going to go factcheck the information you’ve provided but I’m reasonably certain of finding confirmations. Thank you for this.

      1. Calamity Janine*

        please do fact check me! not really because i think i got anything wrong. i’m just. y’know. too tired to to rummage up the links for proper citations.

        because “eh if you google something like ‘lancet covid neurological review’ you’ll get there, like, eventually” is not MLA format, lol! fact checking me by finding the links yourself ends up doing me a solid LMAO

        1. SweetestCin*

          I do have a vague recollection of seeing something along the lines of this study recently. When I saw it, I thought “eh, that might explain why it feels like my memory has holes in it”. Because whether its the last 2 years in general, or perhaps due to having had the original strain of this mess, there are blanks where things should be in my memory. “Do I have an account? What’s the login information…? Do I still have an Rx for ::this::? Hmmm…”

          1. Calamity Janine*

            the plural of anecdote isn’t data of course, but in terms of scuttlebutt from medical professionals i know and people who experienced it – omicron has a rep for causing memory issues! i have a friend who outright lost a few days – straight up Error 404 Memory Not Found – when he had covid, and was told at the ER that it was something the doc was seeing fairly commonly. (…and then was told to go home because the hospital was so packed to the gills, all they could really offer was “we will call you to see if you’re not dead enough to pick up the phone”. truly terrifying levels of healthcare in shortage.) and that was with the vaccines on board – i told antivaxxers to get the heck out of my life a long time ago lol.

            again, it’s anecdotal, and all i have is a bachelor’s. but if covid is good at wrecking brain meats, memory one way brain meats get wrecked, QED it’s pretty plausible lmao!

    2. J*

      This is such an insightful comment. Even just assuming the minimal neurological damage of brain fog, it’s really messed up. You don’t feel like yourself and you certainly don’t act like yourself. I haven’t had Covid but I had an illness and medication path that caused brain fog and permanent disability and it changed my entire personality, probably half from the neurological issues and half from the PTSD that followed. I’m an internalizer so I didn’t really tell anyone but I did notice myself snapping beyond what the Prednisone levels of anger and I shut down even more rather than subject people to it. So add that kind of experience onto deeper neurological effects and you’ve got a crisis waiting to happen. Plus it’s compounded with the people they’re interacting with having less patience and a lot of internalized ableism and I just feel like it could get worse.

  221. Alexa*

    Yeah it’s so weird that the people I’ve been calling Nazis, deplorable, misogynistic, every phobic or ‘ist’ under the sun, extremist, science deniers for the last 5 years aren’t being nice to me.

    1. Bob-White of the Glen*

      “Are you seeing this in your own job? And if so, what do you think is behind it — pandemic fatigue, increasingly bitter partisan divides, something else?”

      I’m going to go with increasingly bitter partisan divide on this one.

    2. Love to WFH*

      Now that I’m vaccinated and boosted and have reliable N95 masks, I’m not as tense about going into a doctor’s office or a store.

      Prior to that, unvaccinated and with just a cloth mask, when I went into a business that had a big sign saying “Masks Required” on the door, it made me angry/on edge when I saw people ignoring the rule and not wearing masks. I knew they were putting me, and the other people there, at risk and I was angry at them for doing that. I didn’t yell at them or anything, but I fled the place as fast as I could.

    3. Calamity Janine*

      honestly i have ended up far more surprised that the people openly and avidly calling for my death, to my face, for the last few years, with rallying cries celebrating their own rudeness… expect me to offer them more than the bare minimum of chilly civility. the fact i ain’t immediately coming to blows in self-defense and chasing the avowed threat away before they can enact any promised violence against my person? pretty big and generous of me imho. not sure why they’d expect me to greet them with supplication and simpering.

      but i don’t think cause and effect is really the strong suit of the lot who go around waving swastikas while chanting key points from Mein Kamf and then get terribly offended when people other than themselves call ’em nazis

  222. Gary Patterson’s Cat*

    Yes, I have seen the levels of rudeness and hostility go up in the last year. Especially in some fields like retail, hospitality and travel.
    However, I have also noticed a lot of errors with customer service things too. Things like incorrect billing, wrong shipping, billing errors, and an inability to contact anyone who is empowered to make corrections to fix the errors. I realize this is not always the fault of the customer service person, but it frustrating to get the runaround.

    1. Turtle Dove*

      Yes! I’ve had the worst customer-service experiences of my long life since the pandemic started, and they’re even worse this year. Today I returned a package after I ordered two of the same bedding item but instead received two different items. And the packing slip listed someone else’s name, address, and merchandise (clothes, not bedding). The company representative I chatted with was competent, but I expect more mistakes and headaches before my money’s refunded. I could deal with this as a one-off, but it’s happening a LOT with various companies.

      1. Gary Patterson’s Cat*

        Yes! This just happened to me with a trade show. My company was billed $500+ for freight services that weren’t for our booth. I know this because of emails where they actually sent me photos of the items that weren’t ours! I told them these weren’t our in the moment, but we were billed anyway. Now it will be a mess to untangle and a lot of time on my part.

  223. Angstrom*

    Social media and other clickbait media make people angry by design. Controversial, angry, divisive posts generate the most clicks and page views, and so the algorithms push those to the top of the feeds. It is not a bug. It is a feature.
    There’s money to be made by painting everyone who’s not you as an “other”, and blaming all your problems on “them”. You’ll keep clicking to get that rush of being right and being better than “those people”. It’s a vicious cycle that corrodes civility and the social contract. Why be polite to those who obviously don’t deserve it?
    Someone called it “irritainment”. It’s more dangerous than that.

  224. Allison S*

    I’m a school counsellor and the grade 5s and grade 9s this year are just awful. We were all expecting some delays due to the pandemic, but these groups seem to be even worse than expected. They have no impulse control, no conflict resolution skills, and no social skills. I’ve been asked to come into classrooms to teach on these skills, but even when I go in, there’s so much behaviour management needed that we can’t get any learning done.

    Students are also having complete meltdowns over small things, like not having a pencil. One theory I’ve heard is that the pandemic and everything going on in the world is draining our energy reserves. The parts of our brain that would normally be able to manage everyday stress is being used to manage stress from all of the other stuff, so there’s no energy left. Something that we would normally be able to handle (like not having a pencil), we now no longer have the capacity to deal with, so our brain freaks out.

    1. 1LFTW*

      I mean, that makes total sense. The climate is collapsing, civil society isn’t far behind, the pandemic *still* isn’t over, and now there’s an escalating threat of nuclear war. That asks *a lot* of our ability to self-regulate. It’s not surprising that a pencil might break the llama’s back under these circumstances.

  225. Not that other person you didn't like*

    A local middle school finally opened to in-person classes after nearly 18 months of virtual school. They had to promptly close back down due to the number of fights, altercations, and Lord of the Flies level misbehavior. I had two thoughts:
    1. Children at a critical phase of development that aren’t properly socialized become anti-social savages not fit for society
    2. Children who’ve had a year and a half of self-ownership (I eat when I’m hungry, I don’t ask permission to pee, I don’t have to put up with BS bureaucracy, no-one talks down to me or makes me feel like an idiot) aren’t willing to put up with our public school system

    I think maybe both might be true and that this isn’t necessarily constrained to middle-school aged people. I see many of us struggling with social and societal behavior AND struggling with the amount of nonsense and BS we have to put up with in the society we’ve created. Add in fear/trauma and the breakdown in political and civic discourse, and here we are…

  226. CommanderBanana*

    I think I have a shorter fuse than before. A lot of it is burnout. I’m just so, so burned out and running on fumes all the time.

    1. Anon for this*

      I feel that way too. This past Sunday, I was supposed to leave for a trip that I’ve been planning for months, that I’ve been looking forward to like a lifeline to get me through some really, really tough things. The morning I was supposed to leave, I found out I had tested positive for COVID, which was ironic, because I didn’t feel sick at all and only tested because it was required for the trip. Having to cancel the trip was just the final straw for me. I broke down and cried for like an hour before I could pull myself together. And yes, I know that things could always be worse, but it was just like I hit my limit and fell apart.
      I was able to reschedule my trip, but now I’ve somehow got to pull myself together and carry on when all I want to do is crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head for the next 6 months. :(

  227. Aang*

    I’m a debt collector that works for a credit union doing pre charge off collections… so no I haven’t noticed a difference. People didn’t like me pre, during or post pandemic.

  228. Love to WFH*

    I work in high tech, and we’re 100% remote. Basically, the very, very privileged — except for the people with kids, with day cares and schools shutting down (or worrying about them in classrooms).

    I haven’t noticed any increase in rudeness/crankiness.

  229. TechWorker*

    I admit I find it interesting how many comments there are describing how the commenter is making an effort to be as nice to retail staff as possible. That’s great! And clearly AAM commenters are not a representative sample of society… but also we’re *all* frazzled. I would be surprised if that doesn’t come into play in our interactions. Also in the *perception* of whether other people are being rude… if everyone’s baseline is more stressed, then we’re probably having both customers/clients being more rude *and* employees interpreting things in a worse light than before.

    1. Princess Xena*

      I wonder if the switch to more electronic communications has had any effect either. I’ve noticed that it’s way easier to read something as rude and accusatory over email/text, since we’re missing so much of the tone/body language, and it takes a lot more work to format a text communication so that it’s less blunt. And a lot of the time I find it more exhausting than I want to deal with to figure out all the possible interpretations someone could be putting on my message.

      This doesn’t apply to the face-to-face rudeness retail/food service/customer service folks face or outright abuse but if everyone feels like they’re getting a constant undercurrent of rudeness then it strains everyone all the more.

  230. VegBabe*

    I don’t work with customers in my current job (and the nature of our work means we have mostly positive interactions with our clients), but in my last job (in the insurance industry) I definitely noticed an increase in the number of people who were just straight-up mean. My department worked with clients on a specific type of project that has pretty strict limitations, and we were used to having people make weird requests or being upset that we couldn’t meet them, but it was usually mild enough that we could deal with it. In my last few months there I couldn’t believe how often my team members were going to our manager and asking them to deal with an angry or belligerent customers. People would just fly off the handle at the slightest pushback or being told we couldn’t do what they wanted.

  231. Anonymous Teacher for This Post*

    YES! Yes, I am 100% seeing this in my own job!

    I work in a public elementary school, and the children are definitely experiencing frustration faster and at higher levels. They’ve all got shorter fuses than I’m used to. (This is my 16th year as a teacher.)

    But even worse are some of our parents. I want to be clear: the vast majority of our parents are supportive, kind, and lovely. But there is an extremely vocal minority that is just nasty. Our local school board meetings have descended into absolute chaos with some of these parents coming in and screaming into a microphone that the librarian is trying to ‘groom’ their child because they had a copy of ‘I Need a New Butt,’ in the school library. (I mean, it’s for sure not great literature, but it’s also not worth an adult temper-tantrum.) It’s horrifying.

    I wish I knew what was behind it. If I thought it was just pandemic fatigue, I could hope that it would improve if/as conditions improve, and we finally start being able to put Covid in the rearview mirror. But it feels like something uglier and worse to me. :(

    I’m leaving education after this year. I love my students and my colleagues, and I used to love this job. But I can say that this year has easily been my absolute worst year as a teacher, even worse than last year when I was trying to teach virtually. (And I thought THAT was going to be my worst year ever!!) I know I’ll miss it. But my students deserve a teacher who isn’t burnt to an absolute crisp. And I deserve to wake up in the morning feeling something other than absolute dread at another day.

    1. Not a cat*

      ” I wish I knew what was behind it. If I thought it was just pandemic fatigue”

      A certain political party and a certain former president who act out in wretched, lying ways. That’s who.

  232. Stripes*

    Yeah, this past week absolutely solidified that for me. It’s not the best industry as it is, but my coworkers in other departments have been terrible. I think this specific week was likely fatigue, based on the switch to 100% remote work, and one person being stuck not wanting to work at home and sitting in the office until it transfers ownership. I think people are feeling burnt out, but also aren’t necessarily willing to make changes in how they operate to accommodate the changing workforce.
    I got to spend most of this week dealing with more hostility than I have since I worked in Customer Service. People don’t like change, and that’s fair, but sometimes you have to learn how to deal with it. You can’t decide to make snide comments under your breath during a Zoom call when you’re not on mute and expect everyone to just pretend you’re not actively insulting them.

    Outside of work I think it’s a lot of things. Everything is political. Everything is stressful. Prices are going up, wages are stagnant in a lot of areas because of the “unique circumstance”. People on the lower end of the wealth spectrum are worried more about paying rent or bills, which turns into stress they can’t avoid. They get told to get better jobs, but then once they do they hear how nobody wants to work. I think everyone is being a lot harsher and unforgiving, and the stress overload from simply existing is becoming too much and people are losing their ability to filter themselves.

  233. RJC*

    I am also in libraries, and public behavior has been absolutely absurd since the pandemic. I have colleagues at libraries nearby who have had to call the police because grown adults have had complete meltdowns around mask/distancing policy (to be clear, they did not call the police because someone wasn’t wearing a mask or distancing; they called the police because the person began yelling, threatening, cursing at, and physically intimidating the librarians). I have had similar encounters at my own library. I had one patron yell that the Library “should have never even closed down, because we are supposed to serve EVERYONE and NOT EVERYONE believes in the pandemic.” (Yes, really, he used those exact words).

  234. Eff Walsingham*

    Within my (now former) workplace, I saw no changes that couldn’t be attributed to pre-existing conditions: bad management, wages not rising fast enough, industry change being handled poorly….

    What I noticed most was the public transit. You would think, especially in 2020 when it was almost all essential service workers commuting, that people might be behaving more civilly to each other, but no. They crowded the doors, they pulled down their masks, they shouted and swore at friend and foe alike. After a brief uptick in cleaning at the start of the pandemic, the floor is usually sticky with spilled food and drink, etc. My husband and I nominally enjoy a car-free lifestyle, but not really, not anymore. And, given the state of traffic and the price of gas, etc., neither of us want to drive here. I quit my job in January, in part because of the huge stress of my commute.

    We are seriously planning on moving to another part of the country, where there aren’t quite as many people, and none of them have been rude to us yet!

    1. Eff Walsingham*

      *** To be completely honest, we are also leaving due to the high and rising cost of living. But if we felt like we were surrounded by kind and lovely people, it might change the calculus. However, it truly feels like the majority of the folks moving into our ‘highly desirable’ area are hard and pushy and entitled. This used to be a friendly little city, and we thought we’d retire here. I don’t think there’s any way to tell how much the pandemic has influenced this probably-inevitable shift, but it sure hasn’t helped.

  235. Emotional support capybara*

    It’s not outright rudeness we’ve noticed at my shop (awards and recognition industry) and after over a decade at my current company I can still count on one hand the number of genuine assholes I’ve had to deal with. But we HAVE noticed an uptick in weird entitlement, especially around production time (“what do you mean you can’t build 50 custom trophies while I wait!?”) and after-hours availability (“I emailed you and left a voicemail at 2 AM, why did I have to wait 7 hours for a reply!?”).

    We also get occasional hagglers but those are easy to shut down.

    Them: what’s the best price you can give me on these?

    Me: [deadpan, pointing at price tag on display piece] this one

  236. lockhart*

    I write a newsletter for a news org that’s read by like 30-40K people each day. For a long time, people who emailed me were very rude and downright mean.
    Then I started saying “Good morning.” right at the top, and nearly all of the mean emails stopped. The only people who are mean are the ones who come down on the other side of a political issue. I’m very openly pro-vaccine and pro-mask, and I get some guff for that, but I always respond to people with professional kindness even if they’re jerks in the initial email.
    There’s something to making people realize you’re a human being.

  237. Emily*

    I work in state government and have dealt with people being particularly ridiculous in the past 6 months—mostly trying to politicize our [non-partisan] work and, quite frankly, being racist. As a state employee, I can’t just ignore them or their comments, and they know it—these folks are quick to threaten to call their state representatives. I can put out a message to thousands of people or offer a program that has hundreds of participants, and the literally ONE person who complains will end up getting an inordinate amount of attention. It’s so frustrating.

  238. Veryanon*

    I think rudeness and hostility are just on the rise in general. I don’t think it’s specific to an industry or position. Everyone just seems incredibly on edge and ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

  239. Summer*

    I truly believe social media is at the root of people becoming ruder over the years. By interacting anonymously online, some seem to have lost the veneer of civility that many people had in the past. It used to be difficult to be mean to people in person but it seems like more people no longer care about that or about anyone except themselves. I also think when networks like Fox News demonize and denigrate everyone who has a different opinion, then those viewers absorb that mind-frame and look at people as enemies instead of fellow Americans.

    1. Turtle Dove*

      I totally agree with you. I see it on the road too: Rude drivers treat other drivers as anonymous, faceless “others” who don’t merit consideration.

  240. Usagi*

    Part of my role is to create and present HR training materials to clients. One thing I’ve noticed an increase in is people requesting topics that really don’t make sense for me to present. Some examples include:
    – “How to be a better employee.” When I asked for more information about what exactly that meant, it essentially came down to “my employees don’t do their jobs and my managers don’t want to coach them.” I (very politely and professionally) told them that what the employees need is better managing, not some training from a third party person.
    – “Professional texting.” Apparently this company uses texting a lot to communicate, but people are “purposefully being rude to each other” — their words! I told this client as well that what the employees need is better managing. This client actually got mad and said something along the lines of “well we don’t KNOW how to do that, that’s why we’re reaching out to you!”
    – “How to do annual evaluations.” Finally! Something I can train people on! But, wait, no, actually, what the client wants is “do the annual evaluations for me, and I’ll just fill out the form.” Nope nope nope.

    Requests like these were extremely rare before the pandemic, but now I seem to be getting them once a week. My theory is that due to the pandemic, many employers (and their managers) have burnt out, understandably, and now want a magic cure to all that ails them. Which… I guess I understand? But come on, let’s be realistic here.

  241. Mia Willson*

    I recently left the Workers Compensation industry for this exact reason. People with injuries have become more unreasonable, rude, demanding and entitled over the course of the last 6 months. Almost every single person I worked with was just so incredibly rude and demanding, it became so taxing and took a massive toll on me. I’d been in the role over 7 years and had planned on being there forever. I couldn’t take it any longer. The economic climate can only be described as desperate and that’s trickling through into peoples sense of entitlement.

  242. Xaraja*

    I work in IT, and generally deal with a small subset of our internal employees and some of our largest vendors and customers. Usually my contacts at the vendors and customers are in their IT departments, also, and those tend to be collegial and long term relationships. I don’t know why exactly, but the people at my employer at exceedingly nice. I’ve never had anyone i talked through the help desk (i.e., when I’m answering questions and problems) be anything other than extremely polite and patient and understanding. I started this job in late 2020 so i can’t compare to before the pandemic, but my experience at work is astonishingly gracious and polite.

    As for my industry, i interact with people in my specialty on forums online sometimes, and they are always very helpful. But then, forums designed to answer questions and policed by big software companies (i generally use the Microsoft forum for the software i am learning) are designed to reward good behavior with points and such going to those voted helpful.

  243. Sarah*

    I feel SO validated hearing from others who work in higher education. The amount of times, be it a student or faculty/staff, have been rude to me has gone up exponentially in the last few months. Please be kind to the people who answer phones or work the front desk. We don’t have control over the things making you mad

  244. SloanGhost*

    During the pandemic–especially when we were operating curbside–my experience as a receptionist in veterinary medicine went from occasionally frustrating to a constant stream of hostility and verbal abuse. We ended up reopening our doors extremely early despite the risk because our clients were so extremely hostile about curbside basically because we were on the verge of a staff-wide mental breakdown (the time loss caused by curbside also meant that we never left the clinic before 8pm, so that contributed as well).

    While we were able to work more efficiently once people were coming inside again, and while they were less enraged without curbside, their behavior otherwise has not significantly improved in the last 2 years.

    Technicians and even veterinarians have noted this as well, meaning that speaking from a position of greater authority hasn’t protected even them from being berated, screamed at, cursed at, and subjected to repeated harassing phone callscalls.

    To be honest it’s completely wrecked my mental health and even my ability to trust other human beings, since it now seems that anyone could be seething with hatred under the surface. And now that I’m out, it’s made my efforts to find new employment very scary.

    This feels a little silly but I get actual physical anxiety symptoms simply from key words/phrases like ‘client’, ‘customer service’ and ‘fielding phone calls.’ I’m pushing through it in the service of finding employment, of course, but I feel like it’s pretty illustrative of how rough things have been.

    1. SloanGhost*

      If you use this feel free to throw in a comma or two in that severely scrambled sentence up there…

      1. Eff Walsingham*

        Hearing from so many individuals who were working in veterinary practices during the pandemic, I feel like I should send a card at the very least to our vets’ office, who have gone above and beyond. Our cat went from otherwise healthy hyperthyroid senior through palliative care to… he died on Good Friday night at home. And the staff were all amazing the whole time. So patient. They are still doing ‘curbside’ here, so out in the noisy parking lot in all weather, and with masks, all making it harder to communicate effectively. I am definitely buying a card. Since I guess the dissatisfied customers pretty much drown out the grateful people at most practices.

        On behalf of all the clients who were too stressed or struggling or just forgot to say it before they drove off, THANK YOU!

        1. SloanGhost*

          For what it’s worth, I can at least say this: you have NOT been drowned out by all the jerks. At the clinic I worked at, we kept every single thank you note, passed them around, read them and (if the note is a thank you for taking care of them during a sad appointment) cry. So if you’re thinking about a card, it would NOT go amiss. And I’m so sorry about your kitty.

          We’ve also had a few clients go really above and beyond on gifts and treats around the holidays and we remember that warmly–for the effort they took to be kind to us mostly (though we do also love cookies and the massive charcuterie board will never be forgotten lol).

          And I always remember the clients who have taken the time to tell me that I’ve helped them feel calm and in control during a crisis or that I’m lovely to talk to. That helps when other clients have essentially told me I’m am ogre.

          So it’s not ALL negative, even if the balance has shifted, and the good clients have become real beacons of hope.

  245. Support your local street cats.*

    We don’t have much interaction with our customers. The one times we do, its to replace their residential grinder pump that has crapped out, and they are usually happy to see us because we’re going to make the nasty go away. If they do want to become abusive, we have backing from our boss’s all they way up to the director that we can leave. Leave their broken things and over flowing well and nasty sewerage running through the yard for them to deal with.

  246. Catherine*

    Well, the US had a petty, rude and belligerent president normalising this behaviour for a a number of years so…

  247. nora*

    I’m a social worker, getting yelled at/cursed at/threatened with imminent death is pretty normal. I’m glad I work remotely and my employers take stuff like that very seriously. There has been a definite increase in what I’d call incoherent anger. People are just MAD. At me, at the system, at everything, and too often I just happen to be the last straw for their fraying nerves. A big part of it is that everything takes forever these days. Every process I can think of has slowed down dramatically, and that is hard to deal with, especially when you’re already living on the margins. I’ve leaned really hard on my training as a Professionally Empathetic Person but I’m worn out to the point where I’m starting a new job in a couple weeks that isn’t public-facing. My empathy reserves are just gone.

  248. Barista Boy*

    I’m in retail. People have always been incredibly rude and remain incredibly rude. It took a while for me to accept that people as a whole are not “basically good,” as some say, but now that I’ve swallowed that tough pill it doesn’t really get to me anymore.

    1. Eff Walsingham*

      Barista Boy!

      As an essential service worker, I was so so so relieved when the coffee shops reopened and I could have that small slice of kinda-normal again. I tip the baristas, and I also say thank-you, and I don’t complain if today’s coffee doesn’t taste just like yesterday’s or there’s no whipped cream or whatever. And, for the record, someone working at my local coffee shop was the only person to thank *me* for working through the pandemic! Even with all the garbage they have to face every day in there. (My job was kind of invisible, so it was really great, to hear that.)

      I can make coffee at home. But I’m so appreciative of what coffee shops provide to our community here, I can’t even begin to express it!

  249. Florida squirrel*

    Holy moly yes! I work in public education and volunteer for bus duty (last year I’m doing that, no joke). I’m sorry, but some of you parents are a nightmare. There is nothing confusing or unusual about our setup: busses only on one side of the building, parents/cars on the other. Taught in 3 states over the years, same all over. Some parents WILL NOT drop off their child in the appropriate areas, and will pull up to the marked busses only curb, BLOCKING SPECIAL ED BUSSES because they don’t like waiting in the parent line. “Oh it’s OK, he’s on the basketball team! ” said one mom, no joke, completely straight-faced and very sure of herself, as we await our cognitively impaired students. Lol, thanks, and good to know what his “issue” is! Next time we’re hoping she waits a sec while we roll out the red carpet for her very “special” son.

  250. Other Duties as Assigned*

    Echoing some others here in saying that I’ve been making an extra effort to be kind/polite to service workers. I think it would be helpful if owners of these businesses would stop placating disruptive customers and were quicker to throw them out/refuse to serve them/etc. Someone once said: if you want to put the customer first, you have to put your staff ahead of first.

    I’ve always felt the entire society would be better if everyone spent a year in retail or food service. Once you’ve experienced it first-hand, you tend to be a more courteous customer.

    1. CW*

      I agree. I worked a two different retail jobs while I was in college. One for a large chain store I am pretty sure you heard of, and the other one for a grocery store. And it has humbled me to the point that unless a cashier or waiter/waitress are willfully nasty to me first to begin with, I am always friendly no matter what. Even if they royally mess up, I am usually very understanding.

      1. CW*

        Ugh, a typo. I worked for two different retail jobs, not “a” two… very bad grammar and typo on my part lol

    2. Squirrel Nutkin*

      YES! If we stop coddling the disruptive entitled people, we will have a much more pleasant society overall. A couple of my proudest moments have been calling out jerks who were being mean to service workers who couldn’t fight back without incurring the wrath of their bosses. I literally yelled at one person haranguing an employee, “She has to be nice to you because she works here, but I don’t work here, and I don’t have to be nice to you.” The person left.

  251. Lolllee*

    I’ve seen in in my industry. I supported customer returns and repairs but also supported the manufacturing side. I ended up quiting that job without another lined up and took 6 months off. One of the biggest reasons was I was so sick oh literally getting yelled at by both customers and my coworkers. I had a manager also pull me aside and tell me I was short tempered myself and acted like I didn’t have time for him after he’d stopped by my desk for the 4th time in 2 hours asking me if I was done with the thing he needed me to do to ship product, a task that was required to be given to me 24 hours before ship date that was given to me during my lunch hour 45 minutes before cut off for shipping. Half the company had been let go though the work load was the same. My company, our suppliers and our customers were all in the same situation, everyone trying to do the work of 3-4 people so stress and fatigue was extrodinary. Most people were working remote with no face to face communication and for me it was those people were the ones that yelled at me. I this stress and social separation in all spheres of our lives professionally and socially made a lot of us lose both patience and empathy. Political and wealth divides are wider and wider. There are so many more things I think driving us apart than bringing us together. And when people see rudeness from people in power, I think they think that is how they should or could behave too

  252. Midwest Teacher*

    I’ve been teaching for 11 years and each year gets more and more hostile. I think it’s a combination of our current political climate devaluing public education (I’m in the US), caregivers not respecting teachers as competent professionals, and school administrators bending over backwards to do whatever it takes to make caregivers happy rather than supporting their own staff.

  253. Chickaletta*

    I work as an EA in the largest health care system in my state, and employee safety has been a topic among executives and Board Members in the past 6 months. Rude behavior and physical violence from patients, family members, and visitors is at an all-time high. We’ve had to beef up security measures in our facilities in order to help protect our nurses, doctors, clinicians, receptionists, and other employees who come into contact with the public. It’s a complicated problem because we cannot simply turn patients away, but they, and their support persons, are being terrible to the very people who went into this profession because they want to be helpful and caring. It’s sad, and it’s a contributing factor to medical professionals leaving this industry.

    On a personal level, I just ended a relationship with a person who tends to be confrontational and aggressive to others to the point where he’s been banned from at least one business that I know of. That was a contributing factor to our breakup for sure.

  254. Anonymous today*

    I work in IT and mostly support other employees. We’ve been 100% remote the whole time, which honestly is so much better for me, given that I have quite bad social anxiety. At work, I would say the same percentage of people are rude vs. polite to me as pre-pandemic.

    I just wanted to say, though, that I have a background in the social sciences and I often think about a model of politeness, that there are two main types of politeness, that I learned in school these days:

    1) Negative politeness: you are polite when you defer to others and don’t impose on them. You proactively guess their needs, like noticing they need to get by you and moving out of their way.
    2) Positive politeness: you are polite when you are actively friendly to others and follow more formal rules of politeness. You use formal polite language, like excuse me, could I get by? to indicate what you want from others.

    So, for example, someone might be waiting for someone else to notice them and move out of the way because they don’t think it’s polite to impose on them by asking them to move. But the other person in the way may be assuming that if they needed them to move, they would just ask, and that it’s inconsiderate/self-absorbed to expect others to anticipate your needs. And both will think the other person is being very rude!

    And with the recent polarization, I think there’s this sense that it’s righteous to punish others for being rude, especially if they’re marked as “other” (like by the presence or absence of a mask). I also think because people are stressed and burnt out, they have a lot less capacity for… empathy? or for giving people the benefit of the doubt.

    I had this misunderstanding recently. I was in the grocery store and I was focused on reading a label when someone reached over my shoulder from behind me to get something in front of me without saying anything. When I gave a surprised start, she smirked and said sorry in a sarcastic voice. I think she must have been waiting behind me and thinking I was rude for not proactively noticing her. Then she decided she could be rude, because I had been first by taking up her space/time, and in fact it would be righteous/justified to push into my personal space (even though I was masked and therefore likely social distancing) instead of just saying excuse me, could I get something in front of you?

    I think that there’s been a general shift toward negative politeness during the pandemic because it requires less talking (less spraying droplets!)… but the frustrating part of living in the US is that these two styles seem to both be very popular. I’ve been noticing these kinds of interactions in public for years.

  255. SixTigers*

    I haven’t noticed people being nastier at work — we work in a secure facility, we’re reasonably well-paid, and it’s not easy to get hired here so it’s a stable group, and people aren’t going to wantonly start getting in each other’s faces if they hadn’t been un-friends before now.

    What I HAVE noticed is that ugly behavior on the roads is off the charts. People tailgating, people shouting and waving middle fingers at each other, people weaving in and out of traffic at dangerous speeds, people racing each other, people deliberately blocking traffic — and higher gas prices make no difference to the jack-assery. “Gas is $4.35 a gallon? Watch me stand on the accelerator when the light changes!”

    I’ve heard that that sort of appalling behavior is another offshoot of “pandemic stress,” and I agree with the “stress” part of it. Economic stress, definitely. Prices are going up sharply; some things are harder and harder to find. And I dearly hope that another wave of COVID doesn’t arrive — we live in a very complicated, interconnected global economy, and there have been so many disruptions that I wonder how many more it can endure.

  256. Sabrina*

    Just a thought: there’s no excuse for treating people badly. But I wish if pay of this is partly everyone feeling overwhelmed, like one more setback well break them.

    I was teaching college through the pandemic and I dealt with rudeness (I mean they’re 20ish so that’s just part of it) but I also saw more people crying or just disappearing for weeks and then coming back scared to even talk to me. I got used to starting a lot of conversations with “it’s ok, you don’t need to explain, we’ll make a plan and figure it out.”

    And while I always try to treat people with grace, I know that I’ve been broken by having a toddler and trying to juggle care for him and my partners and my jobs. There have been a few times when I’ve broken down crying and sent angry texts to family who don’t understand why I won’t relax about travel or masks. But I know even a cold means another week or two with no care and my husband and I fighting about who takes more time off.

    Anyways, I just wonder if that’s part of the issue. Not exactly entitlement, as since people phrased it, but everyone simultaneously reaching a breaking point and not coping well.

    1. BB*

      This happened to me this week. I was dealing with a huge load of stuff one day, including serious family medical issues and setbacks in my career. Then I completely forgot about a virtual job interview. When the interviewer called me I was so humiliated I couldn’t even pick up the phone. I wrote them a letter saying I was sorry and I’d never bother them again. I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. I can’t imagine how I could even speak to them – much less ask them for a job, and I can’t imagine how they don’t hate me.

      1. Squirrel Nutkin*

        Oh, please don’t hate yourself over that. It was nice of you to write a letter so that they know what happened, but that’s all you owe them. If I were the interviewer, your nice explanatory letter might make me think well of you and maybe want to re-schedule the interview — you owned up to a mistake and apologized, and that’s a great quality in a future employee. Don’t sell yourself short! And good luck in your search.

  257. 1LFTW*

    I’m a community arts educator. We resumed in-person programming in the Autumn of 2021, and my students are great! They’re so happy to be back in person. They’re gracious and friendly and helpful. Every student, every week, makes sure to thank me at the end of class.

    I wish I could enjoy it! And yet, I am closer to burning out than I have ever been. The local government agency that I work for bought into neoliberal “lean” budgeting philosophies for at least the last decade, meaning that we all operate as adjuncts instead of permanent, full-time staff. Most of the people laid off during the pandemic haven’t returned, so I no longer have a classroom assistant; this has doubled my class size, with no commensurate raise in pay.

    My colleagues are all in the same boat. We are stretched thin, exhausted, burned out, and snapping at one another. We’re told to provide more programming with less money and fewer people. Workplace safety issues are ignored or denied by upper management, and my health is suffering. I spent two pandemic summers providing emergency childcare to my community, but they just. don’t. care. Like every other “essential” worker in the United States, I’ve learned that I am expendable; that it’s my responsibility as an individual to mitigate public and workplace health hazards.

    I love my work. I just hate my job. Here’s hoping the union can negotiate a decent contract for us by the start of the fiscal year.

  258. Texas Teacher*

    I wonder if it is the “Karen” stories being so popular in entertainment and some people imitating them while others are determined to go viral exposing them. I do think with some people it is a case of other people getting equality/human rights feel like they are losing something.

    My personal way of combatting this is to speak up when people do a good job. I will frequently e-mail local businesses to praise an employee. If something goes wrong, I try to focus on fixing it not heaping blame on someone. During the start of the pandemic, I had a major skin reaction to disinfectant being used on shopping carts. I didn’t blow up. I asked for help dealing with the reaction. The store opened their closed bathrooms so I could wash and treat my hands. I have atopic and contact dermatitis and that was the root cause and I carry a personalized first aid kit with me. They changed the procedure slightly to help those who might react to the disinfectant.

  259. JSPA*

    I know what’s set me off. Intellectually, I know its wonderful that people have been moving jobs… moving up… getting out of their comfort zone… and are being supported so that their continued employment and sense of self worth and all that, are not dependent on doing their job perfectly from day 1.

    I’m sympathetic in the abstract that people with long covid‐‐who are lucky to be alive!–are functioning at 50-80% of their previous competence.

    I know that people who ARE working are not the reason I’m now on hold for 4 flipping hours, before talking to a human being.

    But after being charged an extra $8000 for health care due to newbie error; had the duplicate of a euro 10K wire transfer that went through fine in January, be mysteriously FUBAR in April; be stuck repeatedly on hold for hours, only to talk to someone reading from a script (after being berated by the recorded message to use the website… which I’d of course be doing, if it were an option)… and hitting this level of non-functionality multiple times a day, for weeks on end? My attitude, as far as presuming minimal competence, is low. My frustration level (by the time I reach you) is high.

    I will still wish you good health. I will still wish you a good weekend. But when you tell me, “I don’t know how to do that,” about something that’s a fairly common aspect of the job…and you won’t listen when I describe how it’s been done in the past…and you won’t ask for guidance from your supervisor… and you insist that you need to re-re-re verify by calling me on “my land line” (after I’ve explained that I have not had a land line for over 15 years)…I will eventually insist on speaking to someone who is already minimally competent at the job.

    Everything taking 2 to 40 times as long, and being done (on average) with (say) 40% competency, is wearing, in a very different way from direct crisis. “We are offline due to the tornado” feels very different from, “understaffed, overworked, undertrained and underempowered.”

    1. BB*

      Agreed. I’m basically infuriated by errors and mistakes now, because I’m exhausted by feeling like everything is BROKEN. Like nobody does their jobs, nothing works the way it’s supposed to, people aren’t meeting their obligations, and I’m getting stuck in bizarre Catch-22 situations due to bureaucracy.

  260. iliketoknit*

    I haven’t noticed rudeness/hostility per se. However, I work in the criminal justice system, not as a probation officer but with probation officers, and it seems that way more people who are being supervised by probation are really, really struggling with compliance. And the probation officers are getting more and more burned out.

  261. Commenter*

    I work for an organization that values properties for taxation purposes. Since the pandemic started, we had the policy that we won’t go inside people’s homes to collect property information. Pre-pandemic, sometimes we would ask to go inside and sometimes we would just ask questions at the door. Now, we just ask questions at the door.

    I did a ride along with one of our field workers and noticed how many property owners volunteered to show us around their house without being asked, then being disappointed when we had to decline. The field worker noted that people are inviting them in at a higher rate than he has ever experienced.

    Here are my pet theories why this is the case: by us not asking to inspect inside the home, it shows that we trust them to provide honest and accurate answers to our questions and they want to reciprocate that trust by welcoming us in. Also, by showing us around, it’s a way to have connections with other humans in a place that they have been living in a lot for the last little while without much company.

    Offering to show us around has financial risk for the property owner, their taxes could go up if we find something that would lead to a higher assessment. Nevertheless, people’s civility still shines through, for whatever reason that may be.

  262. We're Not In Kansas Anymore*

    In this small, beloved local nonprofit that is renowned for its good work promoting health and health equity in our community, we have seen a trend emerge where donors and volunteers are treating employees with a level of hostility, outrage, and lack of empathy that is utterly shocking. Stakeholders have harassed, intimidated and cruelly demeaned employees for doing their job (things like launching programs to more equitably meet the needs of underserved communities, taking actions necessary to maintain operations in a pandemic, e.g., virtual formats, Covid safety protocols, masks, vaccine requirements), and otherwise generally shown a horrifying lack of compassion for the wellbeing of the employees and the organization itself. Some examples:
    During a period of two-three months when nearly every employee in the organization was experiencing a crisis, staff were going through dreadful events: a parent’s death from Covid, being hospitalized themselves for Covid, an adult child with a health crisis, a medical emergency, loss of a parent to a terminal illness, a spouse who had a serious accident. At any given time during that period, only one or two employees (out of a total staff of six) were available to work. Even after being told again and again that the organization was overwhelmed by serious emergencies, people from this aggrieved group repeatedly called to make imperious, completely unrealistic, and shockingly self-centered demands and lodge absurd grievances. One individual called to demand that the organization discipline an employee for not promptly returning a routine, non-urgent call from a community partner. The employee hadn’t called back immediately because their mother had died; they were making arrangements for her funeral. After another staff member explained that the employee in question was unavailable due to their mother’s death, the caller responded furiously, “The lack of communication is unacceptable! It’s unprofessional! Not responding to a call from that partner – actually, in my opinion that phone call was really an emergency! – is unacceptable. Remember, I’m a volunteer in this program. This kind of unprofessionalism by the staff reflects badly on me!”
    Another individual from this malcontented group called to complain about the organization’s transition to virtual programming (a transition that was seamless, flawless, and implemented at a time when the employee responsible was coping with a family member’s harrowing health crisis), while shrieking at that employee, “You have no idea what families are going through, you don’t care about families at all!”
    Another individual objected to the organization’s decision to hold virtual programs per Covid safety protocols, browbeating an employee for 45 minutes while screaming statements such as, “It’s like a George Floyd situation, how you treat your employees. You’re standing on the necks of your staff. You’re not letting them breathe!”
    Still another individual held meetings with a high-level community official about the organization’s strategic direction, without the organization’s approval or participation – meetings of the type that only the executive director should convene and lead. When the organization’s leader diplomatically and respectfully requested that this individual focus only on activity related to their specific, limited role as a volunteer, that individual became belligerent and repeatedly interrupted that leader while barking accusations that they were being “patronized” and “undermined”.
    Yet another individual targeted a new employee with a smear campaign by contacting local and state officials to allege “intimidation” and financial exploitation by that staff member. When the allegations were investigated, that individual eventually admitted that they made up the accusations; they didn’t want to work with someone new, so they’d tried to orchestrate a way to get the new employee fired.
    Many people have also called and emailed to rage about programs that are part of the mission. A typical example: “It’s a disgrace that you’re doing divisive programs like this (an educational presentation about the particular impact of the pandemic on African Americans) – that’s racist!”
    As this aggrieved group has escalated their hostility and harassment, nearly everyone on staff has sought mental health treatment, several employees have had to take mental health-related leaves of absence, and all of the employees have suffered unnecessarily while already enduring a global pandemic. Employees have been harassed to the point of diagnosable trauma, experiencing insomnia, depression, panic attacks, migraines, nausea and nightmares. They have feared the impact on their professional reputations and the prospect that they might never be able to get another job in the field again. Staff who identified as African American, Latinx or LGBTQ+ of course have been even more psychologically wounded and demoralized by the ordeal.
    Ultimately, the attack on this kind, caring little nonprofit seems to have been ignited by the pandemic – something about the Covid-19 calamity caused certain people to be rendered incapable of self-regulating and to become the absolute worst, most despicable and harmful version of themselves. These outraged individuals of course have found each other, and formed a coalition; from that point forward they have lived in an evil echo chamber where they’ve incubated a grossly inflated sense of entitlement and collectively demanded extreme consequences that are wildly disproportionate to the situation at hand. Who joins a mindless mob to go after the jobs and careers of a team of underpaid, overworked, highly dedicated nonprofit staffers with sterling records for selfless service in their community, over a phone call that wasn’t returned for a few days? Or for following basic Covid safety protocols that protect the extremely vulnerable population the organization serves? Or because one doesn’t want to work with someone new? Or a program topic one doesn’t like? Or a reasonable, diplomatic request to respect that the ED speaks for the organization? Or when one of those dedicated souls has lost a parent, or is struggling through their child’s life-altering health crisis? Or because one just has a difference of opinion about something – a decision, a discussion, a direction, or one of a million moments where employees and leaders just did the best they could during a global crisis that was the worst thing they’d ever lived through? I don’t know the answer to that, I just know that it’s awful to treat a fellow human being with such viciousness.

  263. LittleMarshmallow*

    It’s late and there are a lot of comments already, but I’ll throw my 2 cents in. I’m gonna come at it from the side of the rude person… because I’m certain I’ve been guilty of being short with people (esp at work). And here’s the reason… I’m tired. Our workplace, like many, is understaffed and its lead to a workload that requires 60 hours a week on average to complete (using the term complete loosely… it’s really more on a get enough done not to get fired) and this has been going on for at least a year and management just keeps saying “be patient these things take time”. Well, I’m tired of being patient. Im tired of having more stuff piled on my plate by managers and then saying, ok but what am I not going to do to make room for that (already doing 60 hr weeks) which they answer with… well, you just need to also do this. So no, I’m not nice about it anymore. I’ll probably be quitting this job within a year because I don’t see it improving and unfortunately sometimes that exhausted frustration spills into other aspects of my life. I don’t mean to do it, but it slips out.

    I’m assuming all of the rudeness that people are seeing isn’t from this, but if you’re noticing it with your employees maybe consider what you might be doing to make a previously calm and collected employee get snippy with you.

  264. Baby In A Corner*

    Those of us whose work can only take place in the physical world are more exhausted and burnt out than ever. Early in the pandemic, lots of tasks previously taken care of by administrative support staff fell to us by necessity. Those administrators never reclaimed ownership of most of those tasks, yet our primary jobs never shrank. I am sure parents have it toughest, but I may never get to become a parent because I’m spending my last fertile years working 7 days a week carrying everyone’s slack, troubleshooting others’ mistakes, while trying to launch my own career. I do not want to relitigate the who-has-it-worse debate (remote, isolated workers or in-person, over-burdened workers). It’s not helpful. I am in survival mode as are all my in-person colleagues. We are not the most pleasant people at the moment (going without weekends gets tiring after a while), but we are the ones keeping the institutional wheels from falling off. Then again I graduated into the great recession, so I guess it’s ingrained into my psyche that I’m lucky to have a job, especially one I still sort of love even after being tortured by it the past 2 years. I don’t know how universalizable anyone’s individual experience can be, but you’re welcome to publish this comment if it’s useful. This is my first time posting a comment despite being an avid reader of AAM, so it’s a little cathartic just to express how burnt out I am and just be a cry-baby for a moment. There’s no excuse for rude behavior, I just wish there was more support to go around. The sudden withdrawal of many humans from the workforce, and the diminished hours from those whose jobs could tolerate it, has left us scrambling and it never ends…

    1. Beancat*

      Thanks phone, totally meant to post just that *eyeroll*

      I’m the manager of a medical office, and people are just horrible to my assistant and I. We took an absolute beating this week for people who condescended us, talked over me, and generally refused to let me help them by being horrendously rude. I would have to go get a medical assistant, who has been there a fraction of the time I have, to explain something administrative I was trying to help with or a policy that’s in place – because since they’re not “the girl at the front desk”, the people believe them.

      We’re such a small office I have zero space to separate me from the front desk, so people just assume I’m “that girl at the front desk” who’s out to ruin their day by explaining deductibles and copays and insisting that masks are still required in our medical office. The medical staff deal with it to a degree as well (which is also horrendously unfair; nobody deserves to be treated that way), but by the time the doctor gets to them they’re all sweet smiles.

      It’s at the point I want to just cry. I’m tired of being treated as subhuman. I want out, and the last two years have ensured I’ll avoid anything even remotely customer-adjacent moving forward.

  266. Dog Murderer*

    I’m a veterinarian working in the UK and we are seeing similar things here. Our clients are just not able to cope with very much at the minute and they react much more extrememly to things.
    Euthanasia is the worst – it used to be that when I recommended euthanasia people would believe me that it is the kindest thing to do. Nowadays I get all sorts of reactions ranging from outright refusal or repeatedly asking if there is anything else I can do to yelling and screaming that I am a bad vet who doesn’t care about their animal. I had one lady laying face down on the floor crying and banging her fists because I told her her cat had died (she brought it in dead). I’ve had to threaten to call the police to seize a suffering animal so I can euthanise them.
    I think people became isolated in the pandemic and started depending much more on their pets. So now whenever anything goes wrong they just cannot cope.
    Our staff are burnt out too; I lack the patience and emotional capacity to deal with these very emotional clients and I think that makes things escalate more quickly.

    1. Esmae*

      Masking and distancing requirements made the whole euthanasia situation harder too, I think. My grandmother’s cat got to the point of needing to be put down during the pandemic, and at the time her vet was only allowing one person to be in the room with the animal during a visit. Very reasonable! But it also meant that a 98-year-old woman with dementia would either have to be there for the euthanasia alone, possibly not understanding what was going on, or wait in the waiting room during her companion animal’s last moments. It wasn’t at all the vet’s fault, but it was a really difficult situation. (Fortunately in our case, the appointment was for Monday, and the cat died naturally Sunday night so the choice never had to be made).

  267. JelloStapler*

    I have seen a lot more division on our campus, or perhaps it has become less subtle and more brazen.

  268. BB*

    I can think of two occasions I was unnecessarily rude to someone. Both times it was out of sheer frustration with incompetence and the feeling that things were constantly “broken.”

    The first time I was at the DMV trying to do some paperwork, but I didn’t have the right information. I had to call the bank to get the information. They asked me to verify my identity by receiving an email. But my connection wouldn’t allow me to download the data and continue the phone conversation at the same time. I asked if there was any other way to do it, and they said no. At that point I snapped and said, “Well that’s pretty fucking stupid, isn’t it?” I was just exasperated that they had these policies that made it literally impossible to fulfill their request.

    The second time was when school was about to start. I was under intense stress trying to balance my job, find child care for a disabled child, find the right clothes for school, and so on. It felt like I was constantly being forced to do things that were simply impossible. I received a letter from the school telling me when and where my child’s bus would pick her up. When the day came, the bus never showed. At that point I pretty much lost it, drove to the school, and I was aggressive just below the threshold of actually screaming at people. The school wasn’t fulfilling their legally required obligations, and I wasn’t having it. There was a cop there directing traffic (and probably waiting for a parent like me) and he intervened and told me to calm down. I took my child home, went into the woods with a baseball bat, and struck a tree until the bat shattered.

    Again, the anger was caused by a feeling of total powerlessness and frustration that nothing seems to work. I can’t get people to do their jobs, or do their jobs correctly. They aren’t responding or even arriving at the time and place they are supposed to. I’m being put in impossible Catch-22 situations where people are demanding things I can’t provide. And this is on top of the broader societal pressures… an incompetent government, an insane president, police beating and murdering people at will, unchecked inflation, and family members screaming at each other because we can’t agree on what constitutes reality.

  269. Lilaeden*

    I’m a therapist and I have heard so often about issues like this – and worse /more unhinged behavior from adults especially customers in retail, restaurant environments during the pandemic. I really believe part of it that tension was heightened for everyone in these times, and so many don’t really have great emotional resources for dealing.

  270. StoneColdJaneAusten*

    It sounds cynical to say “I’m a lawyer and opposing experts, judges and even my own clients have always been like this” but that’s the truth as I perceive it.

  271. Remember Neopets?*

    I work in fundraising for a museum and have been having a similar experience to a lot of other non-profit people. There have always been rude and entitled people but they were an exception and now it’s becoming more and more frequent.

    We had a guy call because he didn’t get the discount at the gift shop. Turns out he expired in 2020, didn’t renew because of the pandemic and then got upset that we didn’t pause his membership until he was ready to visit again. When I pointed out that he expired in February and the pandemic closures didn’t happen until March, he got really snippy and then hung up on me. (He didn’t actually miss any time and like many other orgs, we did pause memberships while we were closed. It sucked and we lost of a lot of money.)

    I kind of shut down about it because it’s a normal occurrence now, but I have so many questions. He had to have purchased admission! So he knew he wasn’t a member! What did he hope to achieve? Unless someone let him in without checking?

    I’ve been in group chats with other people in similar roles and it does seem like people are jumping to being rude at the slightest inconvenience. If you’re upset about something, but you’re nice about it, we’ll literally bend over backward to make up for it. I’d rather spend all of my budget acquiring nice members then keep the jerks.

  272. Eff Walsingham*

    Ugh. I’m going to add one more thing, because I’m also the president of my building’s strata council, and I received the rudest note under my door last night asking me for a favour! This lady was widowed during the past year, and in a phone call she told me of some problems she was having. In each case, I told her I would need something in writing, or an email I could refer to, in order to act because we can’t just move or repair people’s property based on a conversation. To me, this seems easy to understand.

    For example, someone has stored some junk in one of her parking spaces. I did offer personally to discard it, or at least some of it, for her, provided she gave me a letter stating the problem and authorizing me to act. I mean, I can’t just go down to the parking garage and start throwing away people’s stuff! And all I conclusively know about these items is that they’re not mine.

    Really, we are 98% sure who the dumper is because it’s a small building and part of a larger problem. All the more reason why I’m not putting myself in between 2 owners without documentation for backup! Anyway, I promised her that she would not be subject to any fines, from council or the fire department, over the fire code violation, and she hasn’t been fined a cent. Because I believe her, that the mess is not hers, and I did feel compassion for her circumstances. (And years ago someone dumped old furniture in my space, and I was fined $50 and threatened with more fines if I didn’t arrange for the removal by a short deadline. Same building. No, no cameras.)

    So anyway, last night I get this thing that looks like a ransom note, all caps, black sharpie, telling me to “KINDLY HAVE THE ITEMS REMOVED” by *Sunday* because she will be moving “MY EXPENSIVE FULLY RESTORED ANTIQUE VEHICLE” into that spot.

    This is just loony tunes! This is not my job. Even if it fell under my purview, strata council is voluntary and most of us do have jobs we need to attend to. It happens to be my busiest season, but even if it wasn’t, I am no longer feeling the sort of compassion that would motivate me to do junk clearance for no money. I have only met this woman once or twice in eleven years, and we spoke on the phone once, a few months ago.

    My immediate neighbour is apparently friends with us both. I’m going to ask her if she would mind (please) calling this entitled dimwit and telling her to call 1-800-GOT JUNK.

    Ghhhghh! Sorry for the rant. But I can see the theme running through many of these posts, that we can each only absorb so much negativity before we start reflecting it back into the Universe. Some people have more or more appropriate outlets. We can rant to our spouse or a good friend, or on a blog; or we have a therapist or a clergyperson to help take the weight off. But some people find themselves vomiting it over individuals, working or otherwise, who were only trying to help them with something, and the cycle continues, and then everybody feels a little bit worse, day by day.

  273. OrigCassandra*

    I want to send out so much love to so many people in this comment section. No advice, I have nothing useful to suggest, just love.

    Alison, if you have the cycles (and while I’m thinking about that, how have things been in your inbox?), it would be a great good deed not only to summarize this outpouring of comments as you always do, but to make suggestions for how workplaces can reset behavior expectations — including for the behavior of customers/clients/etc — to take some of the agony we’re hearing out of the equation.

  274. Alanna of Trebond*

    Rudeness (and like….. hostility) absolutely seems to be on the rise. I work pretty low-stakes retail (a used bookstore!) and this winter we were having multiple interactions a week that got so heated that the police had to get involved. The weather warming up seems to have helped a bit, so my theory is pandemic vibes + everyone being trapped inside, but it was still totally unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There’s only so many times you can watch a customer trying to climb over a counter to get at your coworker at a $14 an hour job before you start thinking there’s something in the water.
    That being said, as the worker in these situations, my general level of Customer Service Happy Face has also gone way down. I can feel myself being extra nice and friendly to people who approach me in a good way, but interactions that start w any hint of entitledness/rudeness I do probably contribute to keeping frosty. I just don’t have the energy anymore to pretend to be cheerful as someone tries to order a book from me while also talking loudly on the phone to someone else, or when they literally THROW their money at me at the register. Its such a low ask to want people to treat you with basic respect but it feels out of reach now. I definitely don’t remember ever feeling like this before the pandemic hit.

  276. cosimo*

    The customers my company serves are businesses that were able to function during the pandemic, but had to make a major pivot. They are now pivoting back to their original business models and are experiencing both high demand and fierce competition.

    The service my company provides is vital to our customers ability to function and takes some time to implement, usually about 2 weeks. Pre-pandemic our customers would plan ahead to make sure we could finish our work in time for them to launch their product. It seems like in the rush to get back to regular business some of our customers are forgetting to request our service until the last minute. Many of them seem to be requesting the day of or even the day after they intend to launch.

    I’ve seen an uptick in hostile behavior and unreasonable expectations with both new and existing customers. Even knowing the process from having been through it multiple times some of our existing customers are demanding a same-day turnaround and escalating to management when they don’t get what they want.

    On the one hand I’m sympathetic. The past few years have been extremely stressful and I understand the desire to get back to normal can be overwhelming. It is for me, in other areas of my life. At the same time the constant badgering is hard on my coworkers and I. The amount of time we have to spend managing expectations is actually making it take longer for us to finish our work. We are trying to find new ways to explain the process and timeline to our customers, as the previous explanations we used are falling on deaf ears. At the moment there’s not much we can do though, and it’s just very hard.

  277. Youth*

    I’ve kind of forgotten how to interact with people. Sometimes when folks say something I’m not expecting, I just don’t know to respond anymore, and I’m sure that has led to me saying things that sound rude even when I don’t intend them to sound that way.

  278. Mrs. Weaver*

    I do tech support for a medical equipment company. My coworkers and I have been talking about this lately, saying the same thing. There’s an increase of rudeness and impatience. In the Before Times, people who were frustrated would usually just say “I’m really frustrated right now” but then we would work together to resolve the issue. Now they’re much more likely to be mean or abusive. And they’re much more likely to want to spend time haranguing us for them having to wait their turn for a call back. They will call back repeatedly, even though we tell them we call customers back in the order the calls come in, and what the time frame is for a call back. I have to bite my tongue from saying “me spending 15 minutes getting yelled at by you isn’t getting your issue resolved any faster. It’s also delaying me from helping the next customer, and the one after that”.

    Another issue I’m seeing is that people seem to have lost the ability to listen, especially if it’s instructions with more than one step. If I tell them to right-click on FolderX, then chose properties from the menu, I get “okay, I see FolderX”. Then I have to repeat “right click and chose properties from the menu, only to have them say “Okay, I right clicked and have…” while they list off all of the things on the menu. All these interactions end up taking so much longer than necessary (which some of them then complain about) And I’m not giving them long, complicated, multi-step instructions. But as soon as it’s not a single step at a time, it’s not going to work.

  279. ObserverCN*

    I work at academic competitions as a side gig, and I recently had to deal with a coach who was furious that his team lost a match. I wasn’t even working that match, but he yelled at me in front of other kids and coaches. That was the first time I’ve ever had to be firm with a coach and ask them to talk to one of my bosses. Usually if coaches object to something, they’re much more polite about it. Not sure if this was pandemic-related, but it could be. For their part, I think the kids have mostly been the same — some are polite, some are rowdy, but when I ask them to quiet down, they generally listen.

    My sister is a teacher, and her ninth-graders were struggling to adjust to high school because they didn’t have a normal eighth-grade experience. I hope things get better for them.

    (Alison, please don’t publish these! Thanks.)

  281. SGK*

    I work for a big med tech company with a normal culture of overwork and lionizing busyness that’s only gotten more severe during the pandemic (it sucks, and yep, I’m looking for a new job!). I’ve definitely noticed people are crankier, less responsive, less enthusiastic, and more reactive when challenges occur. Everyone is burnt out, but only some people realize they are. It’s rough, and I’m sending my sympathy to everyone else going through this too!

  282. Unaccountably*

    I hear about this everywhere but I don’t *see* it anywhere. Maybe it’s just me and I don’t pay attention? There are sometimes Issues at work and people get a little snappish because everyone is tired and busy, but as a general rule the people around me (whether at work, at the grocery store, or with Comcast tech support) are polite and pleasant. They’re not always having a great day, obviously, but they’re not jerks about it.

  283. Rufus Bumblesplat*

    I think the percentage of rude people hasn’t increased significantly, but the severity of the rudeness has increased drastically.

    I asked a man to walk around a shelf instead of squeezing past a delivery that was being unloaded. He flipped out and threatened to throw bricks through the window and set the building on fire.

    I had another guy go off on a rant and claim I was breaching his civil liberties because I asked a question that I am legally required to ask.

    With the pandemic, rising costs, and other stresses, I think a lot of people have decided that their primary concern is to look after themselves and to hell with everyone else. I don’t know if it’s in part caused by limited social interactions over the past two years, but a lot of the public I interact with seem more self-centred and almost arrogant. They react poorly if they don’t receive the subservience they feel entitled to.

  284. droughtlizard*

    Professionally, I’ve seen the opposite. I work in an office with no public-facing positions, and the whole office went remote permanently ~ 2 years ago. I’ve noticed less conflict, a willingness to cover for other people in the office when necessary (but also an overall decrease in the NEED for coverage with remote work), and more of an effort to build community since the easy option of chatting when you see someone in person is no longer there.

    Our management has been kind and understanding throughout the past few years, and it feels like they truly care about our wellbeing, both physical and mental. I think it makes a difference. I’ve never felt so appreciated before and it would take a lot for me to leave at this point.

  285. BeertendingBoss*

    I’ve been in food service for at least a decade, and retail for several years. Currently I work at a brewery. I’ve seen the opposite. There’s always a few people who are unreasonably rude and do not accept any excuse for not getting their way (right now this shows up as problems with supply chains and increased prices), but overall, I’ve found people to be much more lenient, friendly, and tip better. They’re grateful to be able to support small businesses. Giving credit where it’s due, in have to point out the my managers are VERY supportive of us blacklisting rude customers. We are well supported as employees, customers know that rudeness is not tolerated, and so we’ve had no staffing issues and even opened up a new tasting room in the past couple of years.

  286. Senor Bunsy*

    I mean… I’m in the Army, so rudeness and hostility have been an inherent part of the profession since 1775 ;o)

  287. Burger Bob*

    Yes! Absolutely. I’m in retail pharmacy, and it has long seemed like people get ruder every year, but that has seemed to accelerate over the past couple of pandemic years. I don’t know that it’s all due to the pandemic, though, at least not directly. I’m sure there’s a wide variety of factors contributing to it. It really feels like it’s not just that people are more stressed or whatever, but rather that they simply think this is an acceptable way to behave now. I don’t know if it’s performative or what. It’s exhausting.

  288. Anonymouse*

    I’ve noticed this in my office, as well! I do not have a public-facing job, but I have noticed that when I reach out to colleagues via email, they are more likely to ignore my requests. If I set up meetings, they are more likely to ignore them or even decline them without a comment. When colleagues do reach out to me about my requests, they are likely to be pre-emptively rude, for example, insisting that there is no way I could need this information from them and basically telling me to stop writing to them.
    This rarely happened in the before times, and certainly not to this level. I find it very tiring.

  289. Hyacinth Bucket (Pronounced Bouquet!)*

    Like many other commenters, I’ve seen an uptick in aggression and and bad behavior in public over the past two years. Aggressive drivers are a daily scourge on my commute when it used to be an occasional annoyance. Other shoppers have been berating cashiers over things outside their control. Our clients are generally lovely but the ones who aren’t have gotten meaner and more entitled to our time.

    But what really struck me about this whole thread is that I’ve been grappling with feeling that *I* have a much shorter fuse than I used to. I don’t take it out on members of the public or people at work (if anything I just complain about them to my spouse or siblings at the end of the day), but I’m finding that those little annoying habits of friends and family are starting to grate on me to the point where I’m at risk of losing my temper. It’s really freaking me out because I genuinely don’t quite understand how to return to my prior patience level. I’m working on this with my therapist, but it’s genuinely frightening to feel like I’m losing control of my emotions.

    (I appreciate that many of you might have tips or advice on how to deal with this but I think I would find that overwhelming right now. I’m working on it, but it’s a journey.)

  290. Dekoboko*

    I think trauma is on the rise across the globe and this plays into the deterioration of behaviours as well as things like internet culture. I think there are just a lot more really traumatised humans who have few boundaries and a lot of anger and entitlement.

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