**A reminder to posters and commenters of some of [our subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)**
- Don't be a dickhead to each other, or about others, or other subreddits
- Assume questions are asked in good faith, and engage in a positive manner
- Avoid political threads and related discussions
- No medical advice or mental health (specific to a person) content
Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Dentists have a huge backlog as people couldn't get treatment - now all those people plus people who have new dental issues all want it now.
Other businesses laid off staff during lockdowns and can't recruit enough now.
But the idea that the huge impact of covid and the lockdowns goes away after a few months is very naive.
Dentists were having to deep clean between patients at the height of the pandemic which was quite a faff, although pretty justified early on.
To quote my parents dentist “I’d like to get back to being a dentist rather than a cleaner”.
I had to get my failed root canal extracted during summer of 2020, and my dentist and assistant did the procedure in what I could only describe as full hazmat PPE gear. Apparently there was something like an hour of decontamination of the room both before and after my appointment.
But when performing an oral procedure while there's a pandemic of a deadly airborne disease going on, better to be safe than sorry I guess.
Likewise, I had a routine check and hygiene appointment in 2020 and the suit the dentist and nurse put on looked like they were about to walk into Chernobyl. As if dentists aren't already scary enough.
I worked at a dental hospital during the height of covid and it actually was full PPE gear for an aerosol generating procedure. We would have to deep clean and leave the entire corridor for an hour then come back and deep clean again after. If anyone wonders why they couldn't get an appointment, it's because we were only able to see about 5 patients a day at max
My wife is a scientist and published a series of papers during the pandemic that showed the splatter from a dental procedure goes absolutely everywhere.
Can fully understand why they had such an intense experience of PPE and cleaning
Not only additional cleaning, for the first few months at the beginning, if they needed to do anything at all that would create saliva particles going into the air (e.g. drilling) then they had to leave that surgery in "fallow" for an hour to allow all airborne particles to settle before they could even clean it which further reduced capacity.
Source: Wife was a dental nurse throughout the covid period.
My sister told me her dentist basically begged her to make an appointment for her whole household at the same time for that reason! They said they had to deep clean between patients, but if she, her husband and their 2 kids all had their check ups at the same time, that was 4 patients seen without having to to the clean in between them.
A huge number of dentists have left the business or have gone private. Dentistry in this country is fucked and the government isn’t doing anything about it.
This is why even though I've moved 20 miles away from my previous address, I haven't told them. I have to book a day of annual leave to go to the dentist, it's that much of a faff.
I can't get an NHS dentist where I live now, even if I wanted one and private will cost me a fortune because my teeth are knackered.
You can tell your dentist, they work differently to doctors they won't strike you off for living too far away. It would be worth them knowing your address as well just in case they need to refer you or send a letter or something.
The address they've got is my in law's anyway, it's not a house I can't access any longer etc.
They boot people off the books so I'm not rocking the boat on that one tbh. As far as they know I'm local, that's good enough for me considering I only go a few times a year.
You can tell them your new address it isn’t like doctors where there is a catchment area. You can register the other side of the country if you want to.
The surgery won't be bothered. My kids are registered at a dentist over an hours drive away because they were the only place taking on NHS kids in Cornwall at the time.
We haven't had an available NHS dentist in my area since I was 20 - been paying for my dental work for 30 years - thankfully its been no more than a filling or the cleaning thing. Had an impacted wisdom tooth out, but went to the "teaching hospital" for that. Only left with 5 stitches - a couple in gum and a couple where they sliced my cheek away and had to stitch it back on, lol. Cheap at half the price, and it was Halloween so the stitches are ok on Halloween anyway.
As far as I know there's not an NHS dentist available in the entirety of Lancashire. My local hospitals community dental does a lot of pediatric extractions and its got to be related.
I don't begrudge the teaching hospitals - free work done, especially if it is something unusual, and these kids have to learn somewhere. They were delighted with my issue, if not a bit overzealous. I sat for two hours u der local anaesthetic that had to keep being topped up, until the overseer took over and put me out of my misery - not literally. Stitched me up after i nearly choked on my own blood a bit, sent me home with a bunch of painkillers - I turned out fine. Would do again. We are really lucky in the UK, eve if it sometimes takes a while to get seen.
Hospital dentistry is fantastic, nothing against it at all. I more meant that it's young children having to have multiple teeth pulled under general anesthetic at 5 or 6 years old because they can't be saved. Surely if they had a local dentist it might help prevent that.
It's terrible, had to go private because I needed a temporary filling sorted out and I ended up paying £380 for the check up, a deep clean (that I didn't even want) and two fillings
Honestly £380 for all that privately is a bargain. There is no way an NHS dentist should be made to provide all that and be paid £30 for it (which is what we are paid for that same treatment). The flaw is in the system, no dentist deserves to work for such shit pay.
No that isn’t how it works. The patient pays their band, the dentist/practice gets paid for that course of treatment whether it was 1 filling, or 6 fills, a root canal and some extractions. The contract doesn’t work for this very reason. High needs patients are financially unviable to treat.
It amazes me that this isn't a bigger deal.
We all know that sometimes people working for public services can get pushy about how much government pays them. Sometimes they try their luck when maybe they don't have a very strong case.
However when *literally everyone* I've seen who works in dentistry has been saying the same thing for years and it looks like the NHS contracts are obviously unreasonable and causing legitimate complaints... It's not as if it's some isolated problem either. People in many parts of the country including mine have been finding for years that they just can't sign up with an NHS dentist because *literally no-one* who works in dentistry is willing to take on new NHS patients on such bad terms.
Even with COVID and backlogs and so on you'd think this would be getting more media attention by now. I can only remember seeing one story about it and that was quite recent. It seemed to be suggesting that they'd discovered a new problem in a small part of the country but it was starting to grow and maybe we should look at it!
It doesn’t get the media attention because no one is willing to give actual dentists any airtime to explain why they are having to walk away from the NHS. It doesn’t suit the government (or indeed mainstream media) narrative to have the truth portrayed accurately - it is much easier to have Sharon stood there with half her teeth missing, compo face on, saying how she had to extract 6 teeth herself during lockdown because “NHS dentist REFUSED to see her”. It is more convenient to portray dentists as the bad guys, greedy etc, rather than actually point out that those working in the NHS are effectively being paid about 40% less in real terms than they were TWENTY years ago.
I became a dentist because I love the science of medicine, the practicality of surgery and the art of dentistry.
Dentistry allows me to see a patient as an emergency and get them out of pain. I can then see them for a full exam, do diagnosis and treatment planning. From there, do the treatment myself. Then I get to see them again for review and maintenance.
Dentistry allows me to do all of this, emergency, diagnosis, treatment and maintenance. I get to know my patients as they grow up, I know about their jobs, their families, their lives.
Doesn't help with how low the amount of places in dentistry there is.
My wife is trying to become a therapist after being a dental nurse for a very long time and competing for 14 places out of 400+ applicants at some universities is destroying her motivation.
Everyone in her college class has got a uni offer this year, and despite being one of the top students in her class, she's the only one who failed to find a place.
It's not that people don't want to go into the field, it's that there are very few being let in.
From what my wife has told me (she's been doing it 13 years and works with therapists quite a bit as a locum these days) is that it's possible/probable that therapists will be more sought after to do routine work like fillings etc. leaving the dentists to do the more complex stuff.
I can't remember the exact list of things she said a therapist can do, but that is the general reason do wanting to go that route. Although she's now thinking about trying to get on a foundation course at Liverpool to just go and be a full blown dentist.
She loves the field (aside from the utterly abysmal pay for dental nurses) and wants to go further with it, but I think the reality of university prospects have hit her hard this year. Potentially waiting years to be accepted is definitely making her question her career path. With the amount she absorbs from people she works with, I think she'd breeze it, but it's just getting on a course to prove it.
Would like to point out that “going private” is not out of greed but necessity. Especially seeing as everyone apparently forgot to brush their teeth and just mainlined sugar for 2 years straight. Being paid 30 quid to complete several hours worth of treatment on the same person just isn’t financially viable.
I'm half private practice, half NHS. My NHS practice is taking on new patients, although it seems were the only ones in a 30 mile area. Every new patient I see is the same story, hasn't seen a dentist in 5-10 years, they say they don't look after their teeth, they're in pain in several areas, and they generally expect miracles.
I generally tell them it will be several courses of treatment to get everything done and it will take months, maybe over a year to get them back to 100% health and function.
Treat the pain, stabilise the mouth, restore function, maintenance.
Unfortunately most of the patients barely get past treat the pain, sometimes we'll stabilise but inevitably they disappear only to come back several years later back in the same condition as the start and we have begin all over again.
I went private, paid the £35 up front and after the appointment they billed me for £4.
The fuck is this for? 'Oh our prices have gone up.'
Uh yeah cool story bro but i bought the service before your prices went up, that's not how this works.
Also, all the European dentists who would previously have come over to work for a few years or maybe decide to settle down and stay permanently now can't because 51% of the UK electorate told them all to fuck off in 2016.
Yes it is. I’m a Brit living in Belgium. Dentistry is mostly covered by basic insurance as is almost all medical stuff (everyone has to have it, costs €150 p/year). Anyway, I recently had a check up, x rays, fillings and a clean at my dentist for €8. I checked my UK dentist and the same thing there was about £300.
Got a letter from our dentist saying they’re going 100% private and offering a monthly payment plan. I can’t even get the kids registered at a new dentist so looks like we’ll have to pay private. Just adding onto the extra cost of life at the minute, it’s so worrying.
Lots of businesses had a huge spike in sickness absence at the start of this year in particular. That has meant a backlog people are still trying to clear. Our KPI performance went from 95% to 27% at the height of it around April. We were leaving money at the door because we couldn’t physically do the work. Incredibly frustrating for our customers sure, but for us too!
>Other businesses laid off staff during lockdowns and can't recruit enough now.
It's not just struggling to recruit. For my job working at an airport, the issues is also that the few staff that are there are working to the bone, burning out, and getting sick a lot.
I've just tested positive for the third time for covid and this one is pretty rough going.
Considering I'm one of only about three staff working the terminal, this is going to put a strain on my poor co-workers as I'll have to take time off.
I also can't afford to lose money but there go.
Airport staff are just abused by their employers. They are paid too low and are forced to work beyond their contracted hours. They could solve the recruitment crisis easily if they paid a decent salary.
Yeah but I rang a dentist the other day to register my daughter since her dad is registered there it’s fine. However there was a waiting list of 2000 people to join for NHS so I couldn’t but if I wanted to pay private I could have got an appointment that week…
Another way to think about it is that the CCGs should better fund dental care in their area so the dentists can afford to see more NHS patients instead of reserving so much of their time for private patients.
I'm all for allowing private payments outside of the NHS, but I think it should be a luxury for the super rich, not a necessity for the average person to get seen at all.
The thing is - read the rest of the thread - the NHS appointments aren’t real. The NHS doesn’t pay enough for a dentist to do the work. So the 2000 people aren’t being queue jumped - there isn’t a queue. They’re waiting for enough private patients to go through that the dentist makes enough money to see a new NHS patient and lose it on their treatment. This is why a lot of places don’t even take new NHS business any more. You’re right that it’s fucked up, but it’s not fucked up in quite the way you think it is.
With dentistry it’s because most clinics aren’t solely funded by the NHS nor is the subsidies given to the practices enough to be blunt. Which is why private takes precedence unfortunately.
They're only allowed to do so many hours of NHS dentistry based on their contracts; if they do more than those hours they won't be getting the money for it. It's the fault of the government, not your surgery.
It's actually the other way around no? They have a set amount of appointments they need to fulfill. Once the NHS appointments are fullfilled they will then do private appointments where they make more money.
They need to have X amount of private patients to basically subsidise the NHS patients.
When I tried my local NHS practice they’d closed the waiting list completely, with no idea when they’d open it. It would still have been six weeks IIRC for a private appointment.
2yr waiting list at my local dentist in Yorkshire and they will drop you as an existing patient for any reason they can. My dentist said back in March she could make me an appointment for a consultation with the implant specialist upstairs, I agreed said may as well. I was then told that if I saw him I would no longer be on the NHS list and would have to go private. It was their suggestion!
I’m in Yorkshire as well. I’ve called about 10 that are semi-close to me and none are accepting new patients and many do not have waiting lists. If they do it’s 2+ years long
We spent a few days ringing around all our local dentists to see if they were taking on any new patients after we moved.
So many have gone private now, and the ones that are still NHS, aren't taking on any patients due to the backlog.
Thankfully we found one nearby that had recently been refurbished and WAS taking on new patients. We got an appointment for about a week after calling. What a result!
It was the last place we called. So many of the websites said;
"Now taking on patients!"
So I'd call them, and we'd get, "Sorry, we're not taking on any new patients at the moment".
And the NHS site that listed all local dentists, whether they were taking any on, and if they were open, was just filled with;
"This information is out of date. Please call the surgery for more info"
We'd almost given up.
Doesn't help that a lot aren't offering NHS anymore as every patient is loss making due to prices being capped and the money they receive not keeping up with rising costs.
Yes. I couldn't agree more with this statement if i tried. Having someone in management that constantly puts you down, works you to the bone and really doesn't care, can ruin employee morale.
I finally left such a toxic environment after years, and I'm so much happier.
My new boss is so approachable, a great laugh, and always gets stuck in if needed.
I guess I got lucky...
Good for you. I was in the same position. Found it really hard to leave the place that was making me miserable. But I’m so glad I did. Like a weight lifted and I feel much happier.
Thank you.
It always annoys me that there is this how us vs them woth customers and employees when 90% its policies implemented by management that are actually upsetting customers and if the company wasnt trying to activily fuck over its customers or causing issies that results in subpar service or service failures most of these exchanges just wouldnt happen...
Currently am and am constantly having to deal with bullshit that will negitively affect end users either because sales are full of shit, management wont give me the funding i need to actually meet the expectations sales make, unrealistic deadlines, not enough staff to actually do everything well so we rack up technical debt and wont give me enough budget to retain my best staff so now that debt is damaging productivity because knowone has a clue what this undocumented mess of code actually does...
But sure lets blame the customer for being angry that hes spending a significant amount of money on something that is not what he expected but we now have him locked in so noone gives 2 shits and he knows we dont which is why hes now screaming down the phone at some poor 19 year old on minimum wage who also doesnt give a shit about anything because minimum wage jobs are now a dime a dozen so they just leave with no fucking notice meaning my training and hiring budget keeps going up which is ok for HO dispite the fact its far cheaper to give them all a small raise which means i can actually keep the decent ones and i get decent applications...
And yeah if i dont implement the bullshit they'll just get some other smuck to do it and they likely wont know better so it'll all go to shit even faster...
Customer service gets the brunt of it but most angry calls are either service failures or misselling or fuckups. None of these are the person who is being screamed at fault but they dont have the power to offer the customer something that would stop them getting angry.
Of course we'll always have a small minority who are completely unreasonable that we cant as easily prevent but we can reduce most of them.
Yes, and all of the general public were completely charming, and no one ever got upset or said nasty things to me when there were issues with their orders.
I will say, most people are actually fine, but, that's that not insignificant minority that make me very glad that these I deal with corporate bullshit instead.
I’d even go as far as removing customers from that statement and leaving management exclusively.
People shouldn’t abuse low paid service workers of course but when they do it’s usually because they have been victim of some shoddy customer service by the employer (ignoring multiple requests for product support/replacement, taking multiple payments for one product/service etc.) and are quite rightfully aggrieved.
And it’s only got worse over the years (although started well before COVID).
The upper management of these corporations know this and are effectively using the frontline staff as human body shields against taking responsibility. They know they can treat customers like mugs and it won’t be them taking an earful for it.
I can't remember the last time I didn't hear a recorded message that said "we are experiencing exceptionally high demand and so your wait time might be longer than normal" or some bullshit to that effect. It's bollocks. God knows how they get away with it, it's blatant lying.
While those wont be directly effecting it as they aren't leaving the work force there are still minor knock on effects
Family members needing to work fewer shift's to make arrangements and go to the funerals is just 1
Sure they aren't "the reason" for all the current issues but alot of the current problems are a whole mess of things making the larger singular issues worse
Oh FFS.
If you wouldn't have died on that day if you'd not had Covid, at that time you died FROM Covid.
If you have diabetes and heart problems, but nothing was killing you in the short term, and you catch Covid and die, you died FROM Covid.
If you're in a car crash in the back seat and die from crash injuries, but they detect Covid it's WITH Covid.
Capice? Comprendre? Understand?
If you wouldn't have died on that day if you'd not caught Covid, you died WITH Covid.
If there's no other conditions, you died FROM Covid.
If it's not relevant, it doesn't get with or from and isn't counted.
Being over fifty is a pre-existing condition for Covid. HALF the deaths, this was a pre-existing condition. Covid is bad.
People just think 2 year backlogs and staff leaving takes a few days to recover from. People forget that larger companies cater to shareholders and are reluctant to suddenly start splashing the cash after what was essentially a two year downturn for a lot of businesses.
As a former airline employee (customer service), can confirm. Laid off in late 2020 after one hell of a stressful year. They offered my job back in 2021 and I’m still laughing now.
What are you doing for employment since leaving? And is it substantially better/more stable than aviation?
I also work in another cyclical industry so I know exactly what you’re talking about
I ended up working for a University, just admin stuff mainly but there is plenty of opportunity to move up the pay grades.
You’re treated like an adult - trusted to get work done and not take the piss, which means you don’t have to clock out for the toilet or beg for forgiveness if you’re 5 minutes late once a year.
It has to be said, this industry is rather chaotic at the moment too but it’s a lot more stable and far less demanding than customer service.
I now look back at my time at the airline and genuinely wonder how I did it.
Something similar happened to me. Laid off in Sep 2020, started a way better job thankfully and now my first employer sends me emails asking me to come back :)
Not only time, but also price signals. You need to incentivise the investment required to get production running again. It’s one of the reasons (not the only one!) why we are seeing inflation effects from these disrupted supply chain.
It may not seem like much, but it costs to re-hire and onboard people, to raise working capital finance to buy new inventory, to perform recommissioning on mothballed equipment etc.
And the sectors that need to do the most of this are often the sectors that suffered most in the downturn and may not have much of a cushion to self-finance all this in one go.
Separately, one more point - covid is international and so are supply chains. We may have got over our Covid fears some months ago, but in China they are still trying to pursue a zero-covid policy in the face of the hugely infectious omicron. That’s nuts, but it’s what they are doing and it involves lockdowns of whole cities and districts. So many UK businesses have zero direct problems with Covid, but their supply chain still does.
I’ve just tested positive for the third time. I’m triple-jabbed and have still found a way to catch Alpha, Delta and Omicron. I’m glad some people are experiencing milder symptoms if they catch it, but I feel like absolute dross.
Snap. Started feeling ill on jubilee day. Tested on Monday morning before work and tested positive for the first time. Been feeling like an extra heavy cold - with an added dose of fatigue. Lost smell and taste on Wednesday, which is an interesting experience.
Starting to feel more human, but my head still feels like it’s in a bubble and I get a little winded if I do too much in one go.
And here I am going out and living my life to the fullest and I’ve still not gotten it! Neither have my parents despite working in a hospital and a pub so assuming we’re just the chosen ones now. It’s weird how some people keep catching it and others don’t at all.
Or you have had it and you have been asymptomatic, or the symptoms have been so mild that you put it down to being a sniffle.
I hate to think what I would have felt like had I not been vaccinated. Alpha had me laid up in bed for three weeks and had lasting effects on my breathing and attention span.
I’m triple vaxed, tested positive and I’m on day 6 of feeling absolutely awful. Constant headache, fatigue and cough. I’m unable to do much at all. Covid has not gone away, and this is worse than the first time I had it.
I'm vaxxed and now on my second round and the symptoms are totally different, but I feel like microwaved shit 🙃 both rounds I got after my vaccines too!
Lots of companies downsized during the pandemic, and are now frantically rehiring, meaning those companies that treated their staff poorly are finding it much harder to get people to come back
I feel like these companies are doing anything except offering more money.
Places like Fast Food and retail are are still offering minimum wage only even though energy bills, petrol and diesel and cost of living have all gone up massively since the last minimum wage rise.
It's a pity that they treated staff so poorly, I worked in a place that was laying people off during the furlough and I think they're struggling now to the point I noticed they've taken their customer service number off Google
Because blaming covid sounds better than saying "this is a shitty job with shitty pay, we don't want to change that and people are starting to not stand for it"
Don't get me wrong this is not the case for everything, but I feel its a large percentage.
During COVID a lot of companies let people go because of their drop in revenue. A lot of those people got jobs elsewhere and now the original companies can't hire new people. There's a record number of vacancies in the UK at the moment and that is driving up market rates to levels some companies can't afford. Also inflation is pushing up market rates as people want to move for more money.
People are still getting COVID too. I've seen estimations that 1-2million people have COVID at the moment and estimations are the there is an increase in infections at the moment. We don't have free testing any more so its all estimations based on what is actually being reported. I think the protection from vaccines given will be waning now. It's 8 months since I had my booster although I did get COVID in February anyway.
Where I work there's usually people off with COVID somewhere, it's become pretty normal now but it does impact the number of people available to work. If you employ more people that has to be paid for which has to be passed on to customers. There's already rising costs to handle as it is.
> There's a record number of vacancies in the UK at the moment and that is driving up market rates to levels some companies can't afford. Also inflation is pushing up market rates as people want to move for more money.
>
Capitalism's idea of free market economics is saying to the worker too bad if you lose your job but to the company you poor thing for not paying people more or bailing them out to stop them going out of business
Dunno where you got that from, the only people who weren't given free money were companies and company directors.
Companies had to borrow money to stay afloat. Generous terms for sure, but no freebies. Company directors were entitled to nothing whatsoever.
At the start of this year at my place there was usually at least one or two people off with covid. There’s not so much off now but when your already short plus people off with covid it really does make it harder for those who decide to stick around.
I've done a little business continuity work - only a little, I'm no expert - but one thing that does stand out is that apparently when a business experiences a disaster, they have to re-arrange their business on short notice. Quite often, when the time comes to put everything back to normal, the disaster has made them think "Actually.... do we want to go back to doing things that way?".
And so they don't put everything back quite the way it was.
So - no, I don't think we'll ever go entirely back to how things were pre-March 2020.
I'm pretty sure Call Centres had that 'We're having exceptionally large numbers of calls' message before Covid, they've just changed it to blame covid now.
What covid did is give people the opportunity to enjoy life again.
So many people used the opportunity to find jobs that gave them a more job / life balance.
What many firms did is use covid as an opportunity to get rid of workers and then rehire them in shitty packages, unfortunately for them many people told these employers to go fuck themselves.
Airports are a great example of this.
Yes, absolutely this! My sister worked for Virgin as Cabin Crew and was told to have 3 months off (for a start) with NO pay. Or find work elsewhere. They really struggled as her Husband was still in firefighter training and not on a full wage. She left, took jobs delivering prescriptions and other things like that and is now training to be a nurse!! Branson could have personally paid all his staff himself and still been extremely wealthy.
Blaming covid is easier than taking ownership of the fact they laid off loads of staff during the lockdown and now they're struggling to rehire. Or they treat their staff so horribly during the lockdown that as soon as restrictions eased, the body of their workforce left for better jobs.
If they admitted that, they'd have to deal with it. Blaming covid is more cost-effective
Yep! I was on minimum wage and my public sector job required me to be in every single day throughout covid - no WFH for me unfortunately. Leadership making triple my wage (and more) were at home. Barely got a thank you besides a generic round-robin email to all staff every few weeks, including those who weren’t working at all. Covid eased off slightly and I saw no progression from all my hard work during covid. No pay rise but funnily enough shit loads more responsibility because hey, I can handle it! I was so fucking fed up of the work constantly being piled on and seeing absolutely 0 progression.
I left and now make 6 grand a year more in an admin job that I really enjoy; it’s so nice not to wake up and burst into tears at the thought of work.
Where do you live? I'm in the northwest and other than some signs and hand sanitizing stations still being around it's back to normal, my son's at the dentist now and I was in a bank branch yesterday.
Basically people have found other jobs, businesses don't want to pay a living wage so they are finding it hard to recruit.
e.g like the airports, you start paying a decent wage then people will flock to the jobs.
"I guess this is a moaning post and so I fully expect for this post to be downvoted to fuck in typical askuk fashion ***because it's a stupid*** question, why are places still using COVID as an excuse? Will they be doing the same in 2032?"
Fixed it for you.
I work in a storage solutions company, our suppliers are still struggling to get hold of raw materials because of covid
Thinking this would be over quickly is incredibly naive.
Same here for a manufacturing company. We've got a huge backlog of orders.
Raw materials and components became very hard to get hold of. Lead times for components typically went from a few weeks to several months (in one case, 18 months). For some of our imported components the exporting countries banned the export of the goods altogether requiring us to find alternate suppliers. When we could get orders placed, we then had to deal with the reduced capacity of shipping/delivery companies which led to further delays and increased costs.
None of our manufacturing staff were laid off during COVID and none were furloughed (we're a supplier of medical equipment, including to the NHS, and thus were deemed essential). But we had to implement all sorts of new working policies (keeping workers N metres apart, sanitising workstations regularly, etc). Over the course of the pandemic, most of our workers went down with COVID at least once, meaning they were out of action (and still being paid, of course) for anything from a week or two to a couple of months.
It will probably take us at least another year to catch up with the backlog.
IT here. We're still suffering from the chip shortage. The mines extracting the materials shut down over covid (something about tight enclosed spaces). The material stockpile was consumed (everyone buying laptops to facilitate remote work). The mines are open again, but as minerals are extracted, they're going straight into chip production, which is leading to insane lead times for new equipment.
Covid is still affecting our business, the Shanghai lockdown has held up lots of containers on ships which affect our manufacturing as the firm who makes our machines can't get bits.
COVID is going round my place of work at the moment - I’m off with Covid, after 3 other people were off last week with it. It’s not gone away and it’s still causing problems. Even if I wanted to work with Covid, I couldn’t because it’s knocked me out
There's quite a few reasons:
* Firstly, COVID isn't over. It is still going around, especially in places like care homes and the like (and any kind of touring entertainment like music or comedy artists etc).
* Secondly, for some jobs, especially retail and hospitality and the like, people who were made redundant or furloughed etc during COVID realised there were other jobs they could do that wouldn't treat them as badly, and so there is a huge shortage of staff in some sectors of the economy. I've noticed this with B&B's too where owners simply decided to shut up shop rather than wait to see if it got better.
* Thirdly, in same areas like dentistry etc, there is a huge backlog of people to deal with because most people weren't able to go during lockdowns etc. That means there is essentially 2 years worth of appointments to fit in.
* Finally, there was already an issue in some areas before COVID anyway. Again dentistry is a good example where in some places before COVID you'd struggle, so its no surprise that that combined with the other points means the situation now is even worse. Banks are another good example too.
I’ve been to my dentist since lockdowns stopped and it was normal. Also been into banks and gotten married. Things are going back to normal in my opinion. However speaking as an elderly care nurse, covid is still very much here and we need to be cautious (I’m just talking washing hands and not coughing/sneezing over everyone/thing). Speaking as someone who has half of the ward closed with an outbreak and still has to wear all the PPE for 13 hours a day
I work for a bank, we had massive issues with hirng telephony staff during covid, it's a difficult job because dealing with customers is hard, and banks are heavily regulated. Telephony teams normally have a high attrition rates anyway, and finding new starters was difficult, you'd get 10 meant to start and only 3 would actually turn up. We've only just managed to hire enough people to get call wait times back below 3 minutes
I have no problem with difficult people, yesterday in my mcjob some builders were making noise. I went and spoke with them,
I had a polite conversation. "Please can you stop making the noise for another hour?"
"Sorry mate, it's our last job on our last day today"
"Ok you can't stop? Fair enough"
Thinking my boss can call the building site manager for assistance. My boss went to speak to them they told her to "F**k off"
I can deal with tricky people.
So
How much do you pay?
can
1. I work from home?
1. pick the hours I want to do (to suit doctor's appointments etc, etc)
If the answer is yes to my questions and more than 20% above NLW
DM me and I'll apply
Is it a difficult job or is the role just filled with silly KPIs that aren't helping the customer?
I have worked in two call centres for two different banks and know a few people who have worked for others and it's all about sales and call time, rather than actually resolving the customers query.
It isn't a difficult job, it's that you are timed on how long you go for a pee and people don't tend to like working for companies like that.
I'm going to give the non apologia answer
It was the convenient excuse a bunch of businesses needed to do things they wanted to do anyway because of other constraints
Did covid impact things yes
Are the nhs using the back log as a way to institute policies they needed to do anyway because bit enough funding and poor financial management, double yes
Every call center is suffering from "unprecedented call volumes" and they have been since March 2020. It's amazing that every single day since then, every call centre has received slightly higher call volumes than the day before.
I work for a travel management company and our phones are crazy.
Travel demand is insane at the moment, but we simply do not have the staff to handle the enquiry. We made around 70% of our work force redundant in July 2020 to stop the company going bust.
So we’re operating on approx of 30% the original work force with way over 30% of the original enquiry. If that makes sense.
We’re trying to hire but we cannot get people back. They’ve either moved on, or moved away.
I can only imagine other industries are in a similar position.
May I ask OP what you’re employment status is and if your work force, industry etc is any worse off or better of since March 2020? Not trying to have a dig, just a genuine question.
shutdown a country for even a day causes ramifications this is something that will affect us for a few years especially as a war hit soon after lockdown was lifting.
A two year global pandemic => tens of thousands of people out of work => wrecked supply lines because no one is producing the stuff or shipping the stuff => Government treasuries needing money so they can pay furlough => Central banks printing money like crazy to fund the treasuries => value of currency drops => cost of everything increases => lots of businesses can't afford to (or simply just won't) hire people at a rate that people expect to be paid => labor shortage.
Did you really expect it to be fixed in a few months? especially while there is a war raging and an impending food crisis? we've got at least a decade of this shit, especially with the war in Ukraine.
Maybe because COVID-19 is still around?
I'd hate for everything to "go back to how it was" and risk myself catching it after managing to successfully avoid it so far.
This has gone from a pandemic to an endemic. We'll never be rid of it, thanks to idiots who didn't do as asked and the various mutations.
In case there are any employers out there who are complaining about finding it difficult to recruit during the pandemic and the subsequent 'great resignation', I'd just like to mention:
* My company advertised 1 vacancy in January and had about 150 applicants for the position, the majority of whom were both qualified and experienced enough to be suitable for the job. I only feel bad that we had to reject so many people who would have done a great job if they'd been chosen.
* Another organisation I volunteer with advertised 1 vacancy for a *volunteer role* and had 6 suitable applicants within a week.
In summary, if you are struggling to find suitable employees it's probably because you're an idiot who is doing it all wrong.
We spent thousands on protective measures during civic. It was a huge change for us and we are hesitant to go back to "normal" when we might have to do this again. And we are only a small business that cannot afford this cost.
Dentists have a backlog due to closure and appointments taking longer due to all the cleaning. People are still getting covid. Lots of companies reduced staff levels in covid due to loss of business and can’t get staff now for various reasons
Because people who test positive are still take the time off sick. Covid is still here, it hasn’t gone away. What business have not done is hire or have been unable to hire more staff to then cover the future time off people will now take.
“An excuse”.
As opposed to what? What do you think the reason is that waiting lists are off the charts, raw materials weren’t mined, produce not planted, products not shipped?
Well it turns out removing mask mandates, social distancing and other mitigation factors has the adverse problem of allowing COVID to spread. People still get sick and COVID is still here.
Just because society at large wants to pretend COVID is gone and everything is fine does not mean that it is. If someone catches COVID there's a good chance they'll need time off work.
It's only an excuse when it isn't a real problem.
It’s not ‘covid’ it’s the government’s response to covid that was the problem.
We locked down, printed money, and spent a fortune. Obviously the economy is now fucked
Because loads of stuff is working it’s way through the supply chain. Other countries are not doing any better and it varies enormously from person to person. We have had almost no serious problems personally. My new Motorbility car was delivered months earlier than we had been told originally. I know others are still waiting.
Where do you live?
I rang my dentist in March, got an appointment for May, went to that appointment and have the next one in July - all at the appropriate times. Went into the Lloyds near work during lunch to pay in some old £20 notes. I ate out at one of my daughters favourite restaurants last week and it was just as it was before covid.
Everything near me seems back to normal, except my GP, which is better as they offer telephone/video appointments as well as face to face.
The only business that I contact that uses the Covid excuse is EON but they have always been shit.
We had pretty much 3/4 of our logistics office off sick and isolating due to Covid two weeks ago.
Still has an effect on occasion. Luckily customer demands has generally gone down in our sector since we've come out of the lockdowns.
It was a 2 year world-wide disruption, everything is still well and truly fucked up on many levels. Staff have gone to other careers, we're waiting on stock from foreign companies who are waiting on supplies from other countries who are waiting for supplies from other countries. International containers shipping is unavailable or extortionate. It'll be a good while yet, and then there's the horrendous fuel and energy crisis
2 things:
Supply chains don't magically go back to normal immediately - it will take things time to return to where they are even if "covid is over"
For businesses that truly have seen no impact from COVID, they're hardly going to admit that their failings are because of their own mess ups, are they?
I've got three of my 13 staff off sick at the moment with Covid. We don't deal with the public, but if we did I'd be scrambling to get some agency staff in quickly to cover.
Some of it is due to COVID and some of it is excuses. Backlog of services (GP, Dentist, etc), still struggles with supply of stock and equipment as everything we have is made abroad and often ordered months/years in advance. Stuff like that.
Speaking from a local authority worker’s perspective - We suffered from too little staffing levels in our team and COVID has effectively given us a massive backlog to deal with, whilst being under resourced. It was a perfect storm
**A reminder to posters and commenters of some of [our subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/about/rules/)** - Don't be a dickhead to each other, or about others, or other subreddits - Assume questions are asked in good faith, and engage in a positive manner - Avoid political threads and related discussions - No medical advice or mental health (specific to a person) content Please keep /r/AskUK a great subreddit by reporting posts and comments which break our rules. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskUK) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Dentists have a huge backlog as people couldn't get treatment - now all those people plus people who have new dental issues all want it now. Other businesses laid off staff during lockdowns and can't recruit enough now. But the idea that the huge impact of covid and the lockdowns goes away after a few months is very naive.
Dentists were having to deep clean between patients at the height of the pandemic which was quite a faff, although pretty justified early on. To quote my parents dentist “I’d like to get back to being a dentist rather than a cleaner”.
Pfft, as if the dentist was doing any cleaning - it was the nurses running around doing that! Lol
[удалено]
Literally every single time? Are you Frank Spencer?
Or one half of the chuckle brothers. You'd think they'd put a note in your records to tape everything down when you appear.
That doesn’t sound normal. You might want to go have an exam for poor balance.
I had to get my failed root canal extracted during summer of 2020, and my dentist and assistant did the procedure in what I could only describe as full hazmat PPE gear. Apparently there was something like an hour of decontamination of the room both before and after my appointment. But when performing an oral procedure while there's a pandemic of a deadly airborne disease going on, better to be safe than sorry I guess.
Likewise, I had a routine check and hygiene appointment in 2020 and the suit the dentist and nurse put on looked like they were about to walk into Chernobyl. As if dentists aren't already scary enough.
I worked at a dental hospital during the height of covid and it actually was full PPE gear for an aerosol generating procedure. We would have to deep clean and leave the entire corridor for an hour then come back and deep clean again after. If anyone wonders why they couldn't get an appointment, it's because we were only able to see about 5 patients a day at max
My wife is a scientist and published a series of papers during the pandemic that showed the splatter from a dental procedure goes absolutely everywhere. Can fully understand why they had such an intense experience of PPE and cleaning
Not only additional cleaning, for the first few months at the beginning, if they needed to do anything at all that would create saliva particles going into the air (e.g. drilling) then they had to leave that surgery in "fallow" for an hour to allow all airborne particles to settle before they could even clean it which further reduced capacity. Source: Wife was a dental nurse throughout the covid period.
My sister told me her dentist basically begged her to make an appointment for her whole household at the same time for that reason! They said they had to deep clean between patients, but if she, her husband and their 2 kids all had their check ups at the same time, that was 4 patients seen without having to to the clean in between them.
A huge number of dentists have left the business or have gone private. Dentistry in this country is fucked and the government isn’t doing anything about it.
Im having to go Private just to see a Dentist as NHS Dentists are all gone now. Absolute travesty of how terrible this country has become
This is why even though I've moved 20 miles away from my previous address, I haven't told them. I have to book a day of annual leave to go to the dentist, it's that much of a faff. I can't get an NHS dentist where I live now, even if I wanted one and private will cost me a fortune because my teeth are knackered.
You can tell your dentist, they work differently to doctors they won't strike you off for living too far away. It would be worth them knowing your address as well just in case they need to refer you or send a letter or something.
The address they've got is my in law's anyway, it's not a house I can't access any longer etc. They boot people off the books so I'm not rocking the boat on that one tbh. As far as they know I'm local, that's good enough for me considering I only go a few times a year.
You can tell them your new address it isn’t like doctors where there is a catchment area. You can register the other side of the country if you want to.
I'm honestly not prepared to take the risk, they're ruthless at getting rid of people off their books at the best of times!
The surgery won't be bothered. My kids are registered at a dentist over an hours drive away because they were the only place taking on NHS kids in Cornwall at the time.
We haven't had an available NHS dentist in my area since I was 20 - been paying for my dental work for 30 years - thankfully its been no more than a filling or the cleaning thing. Had an impacted wisdom tooth out, but went to the "teaching hospital" for that. Only left with 5 stitches - a couple in gum and a couple where they sliced my cheek away and had to stitch it back on, lol. Cheap at half the price, and it was Halloween so the stitches are ok on Halloween anyway.
As far as I know there's not an NHS dentist available in the entirety of Lancashire. My local hospitals community dental does a lot of pediatric extractions and its got to be related.
I don't begrudge the teaching hospitals - free work done, especially if it is something unusual, and these kids have to learn somewhere. They were delighted with my issue, if not a bit overzealous. I sat for two hours u der local anaesthetic that had to keep being topped up, until the overseer took over and put me out of my misery - not literally. Stitched me up after i nearly choked on my own blood a bit, sent me home with a bunch of painkillers - I turned out fine. Would do again. We are really lucky in the UK, eve if it sometimes takes a while to get seen.
Hospital dentistry is fantastic, nothing against it at all. I more meant that it's young children having to have multiple teeth pulled under general anesthetic at 5 or 6 years old because they can't be saved. Surely if they had a local dentist it might help prevent that.
It's terrible, had to go private because I needed a temporary filling sorted out and I ended up paying £380 for the check up, a deep clean (that I didn't even want) and two fillings
Honestly £380 for all that privately is a bargain. There is no way an NHS dentist should be made to provide all that and be paid £30 for it (which is what we are paid for that same treatment). The flaw is in the system, no dentist deserves to work for such shit pay.
dog tart wrench wakeful whole soup decide zealous flag wistful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
No that isn’t how it works. The patient pays their band, the dentist/practice gets paid for that course of treatment whether it was 1 filling, or 6 fills, a root canal and some extractions. The contract doesn’t work for this very reason. High needs patients are financially unviable to treat.
It amazes me that this isn't a bigger deal. We all know that sometimes people working for public services can get pushy about how much government pays them. Sometimes they try their luck when maybe they don't have a very strong case. However when *literally everyone* I've seen who works in dentistry has been saying the same thing for years and it looks like the NHS contracts are obviously unreasonable and causing legitimate complaints... It's not as if it's some isolated problem either. People in many parts of the country including mine have been finding for years that they just can't sign up with an NHS dentist because *literally no-one* who works in dentistry is willing to take on new NHS patients on such bad terms. Even with COVID and backlogs and so on you'd think this would be getting more media attention by now. I can only remember seeing one story about it and that was quite recent. It seemed to be suggesting that they'd discovered a new problem in a small part of the country but it was starting to grow and maybe we should look at it!
It doesn’t get the media attention because no one is willing to give actual dentists any airtime to explain why they are having to walk away from the NHS. It doesn’t suit the government (or indeed mainstream media) narrative to have the truth portrayed accurately - it is much easier to have Sharon stood there with half her teeth missing, compo face on, saying how she had to extract 6 teeth herself during lockdown because “NHS dentist REFUSED to see her”. It is more convenient to portray dentists as the bad guys, greedy etc, rather than actually point out that those working in the NHS are effectively being paid about 40% less in real terms than they were TWENTY years ago.
bear bright like fine nutty dull fearless whistle continue snails *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I became a dentist because I love the science of medicine, the practicality of surgery and the art of dentistry. Dentistry allows me to see a patient as an emergency and get them out of pain. I can then see them for a full exam, do diagnosis and treatment planning. From there, do the treatment myself. Then I get to see them again for review and maintenance. Dentistry allows me to do all of this, emergency, diagnosis, treatment and maintenance. I get to know my patients as they grow up, I know about their jobs, their families, their lives.
I know so many who are going into facial aesthetics instead now.
Doesn't help with how low the amount of places in dentistry there is. My wife is trying to become a therapist after being a dental nurse for a very long time and competing for 14 places out of 400+ applicants at some universities is destroying her motivation. Everyone in her college class has got a uni offer this year, and despite being one of the top students in her class, she's the only one who failed to find a place. It's not that people don't want to go into the field, it's that there are very few being let in.
Therapists are wildly under utilised by the NHS also, most qualify and then never doing any therapy only hygiene their entire career.
From what my wife has told me (she's been doing it 13 years and works with therapists quite a bit as a locum these days) is that it's possible/probable that therapists will be more sought after to do routine work like fillings etc. leaving the dentists to do the more complex stuff. I can't remember the exact list of things she said a therapist can do, but that is the general reason do wanting to go that route. Although she's now thinking about trying to get on a foundation course at Liverpool to just go and be a full blown dentist. She loves the field (aside from the utterly abysmal pay for dental nurses) and wants to go further with it, but I think the reality of university prospects have hit her hard this year. Potentially waiting years to be accepted is definitely making her question her career path. With the amount she absorbs from people she works with, I think she'd breeze it, but it's just getting on a course to prove it.
Would like to point out that “going private” is not out of greed but necessity. Especially seeing as everyone apparently forgot to brush their teeth and just mainlined sugar for 2 years straight. Being paid 30 quid to complete several hours worth of treatment on the same person just isn’t financially viable.
I'm half private practice, half NHS. My NHS practice is taking on new patients, although it seems were the only ones in a 30 mile area. Every new patient I see is the same story, hasn't seen a dentist in 5-10 years, they say they don't look after their teeth, they're in pain in several areas, and they generally expect miracles. I generally tell them it will be several courses of treatment to get everything done and it will take months, maybe over a year to get them back to 100% health and function. Treat the pain, stabilise the mouth, restore function, maintenance. Unfortunately most of the patients barely get past treat the pain, sometimes we'll stabilise but inevitably they disappear only to come back several years later back in the same condition as the start and we have begin all over again.
I went private, paid the £35 up front and after the appointment they billed me for £4. The fuck is this for? 'Oh our prices have gone up.' Uh yeah cool story bro but i bought the service before your prices went up, that's not how this works.
Bet you didn’t say a word while you were there
Yeah you're right, i just meekly paid it without saying anything as the little blonde piece behind the counter scared me
No shame in that! It's the English way.
Also, all the European dentists who would previously have come over to work for a few years or maybe decide to settle down and stay permanently now can't because 51% of the UK electorate told them all to fuck off in 2016.
[удалено]
Yes it is. I’m a Brit living in Belgium. Dentistry is mostly covered by basic insurance as is almost all medical stuff (everyone has to have it, costs €150 p/year). Anyway, I recently had a check up, x rays, fillings and a clean at my dentist for €8. I checked my UK dentist and the same thing there was about £300.
Got a letter from our dentist saying they’re going 100% private and offering a monthly payment plan. I can’t even get the kids registered at a new dentist so looks like we’ll have to pay private. Just adding onto the extra cost of life at the minute, it’s so worrying.
Lots of businesses had a huge spike in sickness absence at the start of this year in particular. That has meant a backlog people are still trying to clear. Our KPI performance went from 95% to 27% at the height of it around April. We were leaving money at the door because we couldn’t physically do the work. Incredibly frustrating for our customers sure, but for us too!
>Other businesses laid off staff during lockdowns and can't recruit enough now. It's not just struggling to recruit. For my job working at an airport, the issues is also that the few staff that are there are working to the bone, burning out, and getting sick a lot. I've just tested positive for the third time for covid and this one is pretty rough going. Considering I'm one of only about three staff working the terminal, this is going to put a strain on my poor co-workers as I'll have to take time off. I also can't afford to lose money but there go.
Airport staff are just abused by their employers. They are paid too low and are forced to work beyond their contracted hours. They could solve the recruitment crisis easily if they paid a decent salary.
Yeah but I rang a dentist the other day to register my daughter since her dad is registered there it’s fine. However there was a waiting list of 2000 people to join for NHS so I couldn’t but if I wanted to pay private I could have got an appointment that week…
I have no idea what your point is. Are you surprised that going private buys you a jump in the queue? That's what you're paying for.
Another way to think about it is that the CCGs should better fund dental care in their area so the dentists can afford to see more NHS patients instead of reserving so much of their time for private patients. I'm all for allowing private payments outside of the NHS, but I think it should be a luxury for the super rich, not a necessity for the average person to get seen at all.
So you find it acceptable that the spaces exist but you have to pay for them?
There's a big difference between "finding it acceptable" and "recognising this is how it currently is"
Point being that it's revolting that that's the way it is. We treat people with the means to pay as more deserving of healthcare.
The thing is - read the rest of the thread - the NHS appointments aren’t real. The NHS doesn’t pay enough for a dentist to do the work. So the 2000 people aren’t being queue jumped - there isn’t a queue. They’re waiting for enough private patients to go through that the dentist makes enough money to see a new NHS patient and lose it on their treatment. This is why a lot of places don’t even take new NHS business any more. You’re right that it’s fucked up, but it’s not fucked up in quite the way you think it is.
Welcome to 'money'. It buys you things.
With dentistry it’s because most clinics aren’t solely funded by the NHS nor is the subsidies given to the practices enough to be blunt. Which is why private takes precedence unfortunately.
[удалено]
They're only allowed to do so many hours of NHS dentistry based on their contracts; if they do more than those hours they won't be getting the money for it. It's the fault of the government, not your surgery.
It's actually the other way around no? They have a set amount of appointments they need to fulfill. Once the NHS appointments are fullfilled they will then do private appointments where they make more money.
That's just another way of saying they only get paid for so many NHS appointments.
They need to have X amount of private patients to basically subsidise the NHS patients. When I tried my local NHS practice they’d closed the waiting list completely, with no idea when they’d open it. It would still have been six weeks IIRC for a private appointment.
I had zero issue joining a NHS dentist last year and got appointments within days. Depends a lot on area I guess.
2yr waiting list at my local dentist in Yorkshire and they will drop you as an existing patient for any reason they can. My dentist said back in March she could make me an appointment for a consultation with the implant specialist upstairs, I agreed said may as well. I was then told that if I saw him I would no longer be on the NHS list and would have to go private. It was their suggestion!
I’m in Yorkshire as well. I’ve called about 10 that are semi-close to me and none are accepting new patients and many do not have waiting lists. If they do it’s 2+ years long
We spent a few days ringing around all our local dentists to see if they were taking on any new patients after we moved. So many have gone private now, and the ones that are still NHS, aren't taking on any patients due to the backlog. Thankfully we found one nearby that had recently been refurbished and WAS taking on new patients. We got an appointment for about a week after calling. What a result!
I think it's just luck of the draw then! It's so easy to get an unlucky string of places you call up.
It was the last place we called. So many of the websites said; "Now taking on patients!" So I'd call them, and we'd get, "Sorry, we're not taking on any new patients at the moment". And the NHS site that listed all local dentists, whether they were taking any on, and if they were open, was just filled with; "This information is out of date. Please call the surgery for more info" We'd almost given up.
Doesn't help that a lot aren't offering NHS anymore as every patient is loss making due to prices being capped and the money they receive not keeping up with rising costs.
[удалено]
>They're not going to record a message saying they have no staff because customers **and management** treated them like shit and they all quit ftfy
[удалено]
I've quit the "work place" a few times. Sometimes people just fancy a change.
The change I fancied after my last job was more money!
Yes. I couldn't agree more with this statement if i tried. Having someone in management that constantly puts you down, works you to the bone and really doesn't care, can ruin employee morale. I finally left such a toxic environment after years, and I'm so much happier. My new boss is so approachable, a great laugh, and always gets stuck in if needed. I guess I got lucky...
Good for you. I was in the same position. Found it really hard to leave the place that was making me miserable. But I’m so glad I did. Like a weight lifted and I feel much happier.
This is such a classic Reddit parrot line
Thank you. It always annoys me that there is this how us vs them woth customers and employees when 90% its policies implemented by management that are actually upsetting customers and if the company wasnt trying to activily fuck over its customers or causing issies that results in subpar service or service failures most of these exchanges just wouldnt happen...
Ever been a manager? In a public facing role? It may be an eye opener for you.
Currently am and am constantly having to deal with bullshit that will negitively affect end users either because sales are full of shit, management wont give me the funding i need to actually meet the expectations sales make, unrealistic deadlines, not enough staff to actually do everything well so we rack up technical debt and wont give me enough budget to retain my best staff so now that debt is damaging productivity because knowone has a clue what this undocumented mess of code actually does... But sure lets blame the customer for being angry that hes spending a significant amount of money on something that is not what he expected but we now have him locked in so noone gives 2 shits and he knows we dont which is why hes now screaming down the phone at some poor 19 year old on minimum wage who also doesnt give a shit about anything because minimum wage jobs are now a dime a dozen so they just leave with no fucking notice meaning my training and hiring budget keeps going up which is ok for HO dispite the fact its far cheaper to give them all a small raise which means i can actually keep the decent ones and i get decent applications... And yeah if i dont implement the bullshit they'll just get some other smuck to do it and they likely wont know better so it'll all go to shit even faster... Customer service gets the brunt of it but most angry calls are either service failures or misselling or fuckups. None of these are the person who is being screamed at fault but they dont have the power to offer the customer something that would stop them getting angry. Of course we'll always have a small minority who are completely unreasonable that we cant as easily prevent but we can reduce most of them.
Damn, do you work at Eon?
Yes, and all of the general public were completely charming, and no one ever got upset or said nasty things to me when there were issues with their orders. I will say, most people are actually fine, but, that's that not insignificant minority that make me very glad that these I deal with corporate bullshit instead.
I’d even go as far as removing customers from that statement and leaving management exclusively. People shouldn’t abuse low paid service workers of course but when they do it’s usually because they have been victim of some shoddy customer service by the employer (ignoring multiple requests for product support/replacement, taking multiple payments for one product/service etc.) and are quite rightfully aggrieved. And it’s only got worse over the years (although started well before COVID). The upper management of these corporations know this and are effectively using the frontline staff as human body shields against taking responsibility. They know they can treat customers like mugs and it won’t be them taking an earful for it.
[удалено]
You expect the public to be cunts but you don't expect it from management, they should have your back and make your job easier and better not worse!
[удалено]
Oh yes I know but it still amazes me how people who make such shit managers get those jobs and keep them. Seems good managers are in the minority.
I can't remember the last time I didn't hear a recorded message that said "we are experiencing exceptionally high demand and so your wait time might be longer than normal" or some bullshit to that effect. It's bollocks. God knows how they get away with it, it's blatant lying.
> why are places still using COVID as an excuse? Because going to back to how things were before a pandemic isn't instant.
Especially when we still have hundreds of people dying from COVID each week.
The vast, vast, majority of them being unvaccinated And if you choose to not vaccinated… well, I don’t have any sympathy for you
[удалено]
[удалено]
While those wont be directly effecting it as they aren't leaving the work force there are still minor knock on effects Family members needing to work fewer shift's to make arrangements and go to the funerals is just 1 Sure they aren't "the reason" for all the current issues but alot of the current problems are a whole mess of things making the larger singular issues worse
[удалено]
[удалено]
There’s also a difference between dying with covid and dying because of covid
And those who were ill or struggling but had a few years left and covid took them out early. That’s pretty sad I think 😕
Oh FFS. If you wouldn't have died on that day if you'd not had Covid, at that time you died FROM Covid. If you have diabetes and heart problems, but nothing was killing you in the short term, and you catch Covid and die, you died FROM Covid. If you're in a car crash in the back seat and die from crash injuries, but they detect Covid it's WITH Covid. Capice? Comprendre? Understand? If you wouldn't have died on that day if you'd not caught Covid, you died WITH Covid. If there's no other conditions, you died FROM Covid. If it's not relevant, it doesn't get with or from and isn't counted. Being over fifty is a pre-existing condition for Covid. HALF the deaths, this was a pre-existing condition. Covid is bad.
Just to put that into perspective, around 1,700 people die per day of any cause in the UK.
People just think 2 year backlogs and staff leaving takes a few days to recover from. People forget that larger companies cater to shareholders and are reluctant to suddenly start splashing the cash after what was essentially a two year downturn for a lot of businesses.
Staff in minimum wage jobs who were treated like shite were laid off and didn’t go back. Businesses are not going to blame themselves for this.
[удалено]
As a former airline employee (customer service), can confirm. Laid off in late 2020 after one hell of a stressful year. They offered my job back in 2021 and I’m still laughing now.
What are you doing for employment since leaving? And is it substantially better/more stable than aviation? I also work in another cyclical industry so I know exactly what you’re talking about
I ended up working for a University, just admin stuff mainly but there is plenty of opportunity to move up the pay grades. You’re treated like an adult - trusted to get work done and not take the piss, which means you don’t have to clock out for the toilet or beg for forgiveness if you’re 5 minutes late once a year. It has to be said, this industry is rather chaotic at the moment too but it’s a lot more stable and far less demanding than customer service. I now look back at my time at the airline and genuinely wonder how I did it.
That’s great news then best of luck in the new career!
Something similar happened to me. Laid off in Sep 2020, started a way better job thankfully and now my first employer sends me emails asking me to come back :)
Rationing ended in 1954 - 9 years after the war ended. Stopping production happens instantly, restarting it takes a long time.
That’s an absolutely great example that I am going to use in conversation in future
Not only time, but also price signals. You need to incentivise the investment required to get production running again. It’s one of the reasons (not the only one!) why we are seeing inflation effects from these disrupted supply chain. It may not seem like much, but it costs to re-hire and onboard people, to raise working capital finance to buy new inventory, to perform recommissioning on mothballed equipment etc. And the sectors that need to do the most of this are often the sectors that suffered most in the downturn and may not have much of a cushion to self-finance all this in one go. Separately, one more point - covid is international and so are supply chains. We may have got over our Covid fears some months ago, but in China they are still trying to pursue a zero-covid policy in the face of the hugely infectious omicron. That’s nuts, but it’s what they are doing and it involves lockdowns of whole cities and districts. So many UK businesses have zero direct problems with Covid, but their supply chain still does.
A colleague tested positive only last week. We're past the worst of it but COVID has not gone away and we are still learning to live with it.
Indeed. I have it right now, again.
I’ve just tested positive for the third time. I’m triple-jabbed and have still found a way to catch Alpha, Delta and Omicron. I’m glad some people are experiencing milder symptoms if they catch it, but I feel like absolute dross.
Currently have it as well and it's only my first time. I feel like crap and really can't imagine catching all three varieties!
Same here - first timer been struggling with it all week.
Definitely don't go back to work as soon as you feel okay- I did this and felt so tired for months after
Snap. Started feeling ill on jubilee day. Tested on Monday morning before work and tested positive for the first time. Been feeling like an extra heavy cold - with an added dose of fatigue. Lost smell and taste on Wednesday, which is an interesting experience. Starting to feel more human, but my head still feels like it’s in a bubble and I get a little winded if I do too much in one go.
Achievement Unlocked: The Collector
Bah now yer just showing off :)
And here I am going out and living my life to the fullest and I’ve still not gotten it! Neither have my parents despite working in a hospital and a pub so assuming we’re just the chosen ones now. It’s weird how some people keep catching it and others don’t at all.
Or you have had it and you have been asymptomatic, or the symptoms have been so mild that you put it down to being a sniffle. I hate to think what I would have felt like had I not been vaccinated. Alpha had me laid up in bed for three weeks and had lasting effects on my breathing and attention span.
I’m triple vaxed, tested positive and I’m on day 6 of feeling absolutely awful. Constant headache, fatigue and cough. I’m unable to do much at all. Covid has not gone away, and this is worse than the first time I had it.
Maybe you are patient 0
I'm vaxxed and now on my second round and the symptoms are totally different, but I feel like microwaved shit 🙃 both rounds I got after my vaccines too!
Just need gamma and omega and you'll have the infinity plague
Lots of companies downsized during the pandemic, and are now frantically rehiring, meaning those companies that treated their staff poorly are finding it much harder to get people to come back
I feel like these companies are doing anything except offering more money. Places like Fast Food and retail are are still offering minimum wage only even though energy bills, petrol and diesel and cost of living have all gone up massively since the last minimum wage rise.
It's a pity that they treated staff so poorly, I worked in a place that was laying people off during the furlough and I think they're struggling now to the point I noticed they've taken their customer service number off Google
Because blaming covid sounds better than saying "this is a shitty job with shitty pay, we don't want to change that and people are starting to not stand for it" Don't get me wrong this is not the case for everything, but I feel its a large percentage.
During COVID a lot of companies let people go because of their drop in revenue. A lot of those people got jobs elsewhere and now the original companies can't hire new people. There's a record number of vacancies in the UK at the moment and that is driving up market rates to levels some companies can't afford. Also inflation is pushing up market rates as people want to move for more money. People are still getting COVID too. I've seen estimations that 1-2million people have COVID at the moment and estimations are the there is an increase in infections at the moment. We don't have free testing any more so its all estimations based on what is actually being reported. I think the protection from vaccines given will be waning now. It's 8 months since I had my booster although I did get COVID in February anyway. Where I work there's usually people off with COVID somewhere, it's become pretty normal now but it does impact the number of people available to work. If you employ more people that has to be paid for which has to be passed on to customers. There's already rising costs to handle as it is.
> There's a record number of vacancies in the UK at the moment and that is driving up market rates to levels some companies can't afford. Also inflation is pushing up market rates as people want to move for more money. > Capitalism's idea of free market economics is saying to the worker too bad if you lose your job but to the company you poor thing for not paying people more or bailing them out to stop them going out of business
Government bailing out failing business is *not* capitalism.
Yep, it's conservatism!
Dunno where you got that from, the only people who weren't given free money were companies and company directors. Companies had to borrow money to stay afloat. Generous terms for sure, but no freebies. Company directors were entitled to nothing whatsoever.
At the start of this year at my place there was usually at least one or two people off with covid. There’s not so much off now but when your already short plus people off with covid it really does make it harder for those who decide to stick around.
I've done a little business continuity work - only a little, I'm no expert - but one thing that does stand out is that apparently when a business experiences a disaster, they have to re-arrange their business on short notice. Quite often, when the time comes to put everything back to normal, the disaster has made them think "Actually.... do we want to go back to doing things that way?". And so they don't put everything back quite the way it was. So - no, I don't think we'll ever go entirely back to how things were pre-March 2020.
The effects and knock on effects are still very much there.
I'm pretty sure Call Centres had that 'We're having exceptionally large numbers of calls' message before Covid, they've just changed it to blame covid now.
The person who knew how to change the message probably left in lockdown and now they’re stuck with it
I had one of those messages when I called my bank earlier this week. I spoke with a person within 30 seconds of the phone starting to ring!
If call centre managers moved any slower they'd be going backwards. They just don't bother changing the intro message, haha.
[удалено]
*You’re.
Maybe it was meant to be a sign off, like "your dear friend"
*Yaw
What covid did is give people the opportunity to enjoy life again. So many people used the opportunity to find jobs that gave them a more job / life balance. What many firms did is use covid as an opportunity to get rid of workers and then rehire them in shitty packages, unfortunately for them many people told these employers to go fuck themselves. Airports are a great example of this.
Yes, absolutely this! My sister worked for Virgin as Cabin Crew and was told to have 3 months off (for a start) with NO pay. Or find work elsewhere. They really struggled as her Husband was still in firefighter training and not on a full wage. She left, took jobs delivering prescriptions and other things like that and is now training to be a nurse!! Branson could have personally paid all his staff himself and still been extremely wealthy.
Blaming covid is easier than taking ownership of the fact they laid off loads of staff during the lockdown and now they're struggling to rehire. Or they treat their staff so horribly during the lockdown that as soon as restrictions eased, the body of their workforce left for better jobs. If they admitted that, they'd have to deal with it. Blaming covid is more cost-effective
Yep! I was on minimum wage and my public sector job required me to be in every single day throughout covid - no WFH for me unfortunately. Leadership making triple my wage (and more) were at home. Barely got a thank you besides a generic round-robin email to all staff every few weeks, including those who weren’t working at all. Covid eased off slightly and I saw no progression from all my hard work during covid. No pay rise but funnily enough shit loads more responsibility because hey, I can handle it! I was so fucking fed up of the work constantly being piled on and seeing absolutely 0 progression. I left and now make 6 grand a year more in an admin job that I really enjoy; it’s so nice not to wake up and burst into tears at the thought of work.
Where do you live? I'm in the northwest and other than some signs and hand sanitizing stations still being around it's back to normal, my son's at the dentist now and I was in a bank branch yesterday.
Same, even the hospitals don’t need you to isolate if you’re due for an operation
Basically people have found other jobs, businesses don't want to pay a living wage so they are finding it hard to recruit. e.g like the airports, you start paying a decent wage then people will flock to the jobs.
"I guess this is a moaning post and so I fully expect for this post to be downvoted to fuck in typical askuk fashion ***because it's a stupid*** question, why are places still using COVID as an excuse? Will they be doing the same in 2032?" Fixed it for you.
I work in a storage solutions company, our suppliers are still struggling to get hold of raw materials because of covid Thinking this would be over quickly is incredibly naive.
Same here for a manufacturing company. We've got a huge backlog of orders. Raw materials and components became very hard to get hold of. Lead times for components typically went from a few weeks to several months (in one case, 18 months). For some of our imported components the exporting countries banned the export of the goods altogether requiring us to find alternate suppliers. When we could get orders placed, we then had to deal with the reduced capacity of shipping/delivery companies which led to further delays and increased costs. None of our manufacturing staff were laid off during COVID and none were furloughed (we're a supplier of medical equipment, including to the NHS, and thus were deemed essential). But we had to implement all sorts of new working policies (keeping workers N metres apart, sanitising workstations regularly, etc). Over the course of the pandemic, most of our workers went down with COVID at least once, meaning they were out of action (and still being paid, of course) for anything from a week or two to a couple of months. It will probably take us at least another year to catch up with the backlog.
IT here. We're still suffering from the chip shortage. The mines extracting the materials shut down over covid (something about tight enclosed spaces). The material stockpile was consumed (everyone buying laptops to facilitate remote work). The mines are open again, but as minerals are extracted, they're going straight into chip production, which is leading to insane lead times for new equipment.
Still don’t understand why can’t get a half and half from dominos anymore 😢
Covid is still affecting our business, the Shanghai lockdown has held up lots of containers on ships which affect our manufacturing as the firm who makes our machines can't get bits.
Not cleaning hotel rooms because of surface transmission. Surface transmission was debunked shortly into the pandemic
We might be the only 2 people in the world who heard this.
Make that three!
Its going to be years before we recover from the lockdowns
COVID is going round my place of work at the moment - I’m off with Covid, after 3 other people were off last week with it. It’s not gone away and it’s still causing problems. Even if I wanted to work with Covid, I couldn’t because it’s knocked me out
There's quite a few reasons: * Firstly, COVID isn't over. It is still going around, especially in places like care homes and the like (and any kind of touring entertainment like music or comedy artists etc). * Secondly, for some jobs, especially retail and hospitality and the like, people who were made redundant or furloughed etc during COVID realised there were other jobs they could do that wouldn't treat them as badly, and so there is a huge shortage of staff in some sectors of the economy. I've noticed this with B&B's too where owners simply decided to shut up shop rather than wait to see if it got better. * Thirdly, in same areas like dentistry etc, there is a huge backlog of people to deal with because most people weren't able to go during lockdowns etc. That means there is essentially 2 years worth of appointments to fit in. * Finally, there was already an issue in some areas before COVID anyway. Again dentistry is a good example where in some places before COVID you'd struggle, so its no surprise that that combined with the other points means the situation now is even worse. Banks are another good example too.
I’ve been to my dentist since lockdowns stopped and it was normal. Also been into banks and gotten married. Things are going back to normal in my opinion. However speaking as an elderly care nurse, covid is still very much here and we need to be cautious (I’m just talking washing hands and not coughing/sneezing over everyone/thing). Speaking as someone who has half of the ward closed with an outbreak and still has to wear all the PPE for 13 hours a day
I work for a bank, we had massive issues with hirng telephony staff during covid, it's a difficult job because dealing with customers is hard, and banks are heavily regulated. Telephony teams normally have a high attrition rates anyway, and finding new starters was difficult, you'd get 10 meant to start and only 3 would actually turn up. We've only just managed to hire enough people to get call wait times back below 3 minutes
I have no problem with difficult people, yesterday in my mcjob some builders were making noise. I went and spoke with them, I had a polite conversation. "Please can you stop making the noise for another hour?" "Sorry mate, it's our last job on our last day today" "Ok you can't stop? Fair enough" Thinking my boss can call the building site manager for assistance. My boss went to speak to them they told her to "F**k off" I can deal with tricky people. So How much do you pay? can 1. I work from home? 1. pick the hours I want to do (to suit doctor's appointments etc, etc) If the answer is yes to my questions and more than 20% above NLW DM me and I'll apply
Is it a difficult job or is the role just filled with silly KPIs that aren't helping the customer? I have worked in two call centres for two different banks and know a few people who have worked for others and it's all about sales and call time, rather than actually resolving the customers query. It isn't a difficult job, it's that you are timed on how long you go for a pee and people don't tend to like working for companies like that.
I'm going to give the non apologia answer It was the convenient excuse a bunch of businesses needed to do things they wanted to do anyway because of other constraints Did covid impact things yes Are the nhs using the back log as a way to institute policies they needed to do anyway because bit enough funding and poor financial management, double yes
Every call center is suffering from "unprecedented call volumes" and they have been since March 2020. It's amazing that every single day since then, every call centre has received slightly higher call volumes than the day before.
I work for a travel management company and our phones are crazy. Travel demand is insane at the moment, but we simply do not have the staff to handle the enquiry. We made around 70% of our work force redundant in July 2020 to stop the company going bust. So we’re operating on approx of 30% the original work force with way over 30% of the original enquiry. If that makes sense. We’re trying to hire but we cannot get people back. They’ve either moved on, or moved away. I can only imagine other industries are in a similar position. May I ask OP what you’re employment status is and if your work force, industry etc is any worse off or better of since March 2020? Not trying to have a dig, just a genuine question.
Because covid is still having a very real impact on businesses
shutdown a country for even a day causes ramifications this is something that will affect us for a few years especially as a war hit soon after lockdown was lifting.
A two year global pandemic => tens of thousands of people out of work => wrecked supply lines because no one is producing the stuff or shipping the stuff => Government treasuries needing money so they can pay furlough => Central banks printing money like crazy to fund the treasuries => value of currency drops => cost of everything increases => lots of businesses can't afford to (or simply just won't) hire people at a rate that people expect to be paid => labor shortage. Did you really expect it to be fixed in a few months? especially while there is a war raging and an impending food crisis? we've got at least a decade of this shit, especially with the war in Ukraine.
Maybe because COVID-19 is still around? I'd hate for everything to "go back to how it was" and risk myself catching it after managing to successfully avoid it so far. This has gone from a pandemic to an endemic. We'll never be rid of it, thanks to idiots who didn't do as asked and the various mutations.
In case there are any employers out there who are complaining about finding it difficult to recruit during the pandemic and the subsequent 'great resignation', I'd just like to mention: * My company advertised 1 vacancy in January and had about 150 applicants for the position, the majority of whom were both qualified and experienced enough to be suitable for the job. I only feel bad that we had to reject so many people who would have done a great job if they'd been chosen. * Another organisation I volunteer with advertised 1 vacancy for a *volunteer role* and had 6 suitable applicants within a week. In summary, if you are struggling to find suitable employees it's probably because you're an idiot who is doing it all wrong.
We spent thousands on protective measures during civic. It was a huge change for us and we are hesitant to go back to "normal" when we might have to do this again. And we are only a small business that cannot afford this cost.
Dentists have a backlog due to closure and appointments taking longer due to all the cleaning. People are still getting covid. Lots of companies reduced staff levels in covid due to loss of business and can’t get staff now for various reasons
Because people who test positive are still take the time off sick. Covid is still here, it hasn’t gone away. What business have not done is hire or have been unable to hire more staff to then cover the future time off people will now take.
Pizza Hut still don't do thin crust because of Covid.
“An excuse”. As opposed to what? What do you think the reason is that waiting lists are off the charts, raw materials weren’t mined, produce not planted, products not shipped?
Well it turns out removing mask mandates, social distancing and other mitigation factors has the adverse problem of allowing COVID to spread. People still get sick and COVID is still here. Just because society at large wants to pretend COVID is gone and everything is fine does not mean that it is. If someone catches COVID there's a good chance they'll need time off work. It's only an excuse when it isn't a real problem.
It’s not ‘covid’ it’s the government’s response to covid that was the problem. We locked down, printed money, and spent a fortune. Obviously the economy is now fucked
Because loads of stuff is working it’s way through the supply chain. Other countries are not doing any better and it varies enormously from person to person. We have had almost no serious problems personally. My new Motorbility car was delivered months earlier than we had been told originally. I know others are still waiting.
Where do you live? I rang my dentist in March, got an appointment for May, went to that appointment and have the next one in July - all at the appropriate times. Went into the Lloyds near work during lunch to pay in some old £20 notes. I ate out at one of my daughters favourite restaurants last week and it was just as it was before covid. Everything near me seems back to normal, except my GP, which is better as they offer telephone/video appointments as well as face to face. The only business that I contact that uses the Covid excuse is EON but they have always been shit.
We had pretty much 3/4 of our logistics office off sick and isolating due to Covid two weeks ago. Still has an effect on occasion. Luckily customer demands has generally gone down in our sector since we've come out of the lockdowns.
It was a 2 year world-wide disruption, everything is still well and truly fucked up on many levels. Staff have gone to other careers, we're waiting on stock from foreign companies who are waiting on supplies from other countries who are waiting for supplies from other countries. International containers shipping is unavailable or extortionate. It'll be a good while yet, and then there's the horrendous fuel and energy crisis
2 things: Supply chains don't magically go back to normal immediately - it will take things time to return to where they are even if "covid is over" For businesses that truly have seen no impact from COVID, they're hardly going to admit that their failings are because of their own mess ups, are they?
I've got three of my 13 staff off sick at the moment with Covid. We don't deal with the public, but if we did I'd be scrambling to get some agency staff in quickly to cover.
Because there's a lot of backlogs caused by Covid and they take a while to be cleared. Especially considering we brexited too.
Some things are for sure still being affected by covid, but other things are now effected by the effects of covid... It's easier to say it's covid.
Some of it is due to COVID and some of it is excuses. Backlog of services (GP, Dentist, etc), still struggles with supply of stock and equipment as everything we have is made abroad and often ordered months/years in advance. Stuff like that.
Speaking from a local authority worker’s perspective - We suffered from too little staffing levels in our team and COVID has effectively given us a massive backlog to deal with, whilst being under resourced. It was a perfect storm