5 Things I Hate About Stay-At-Home Orders

This COVID situation has been our way of life for a couple of months now so I thought that I would share ~~five~~ seven things that I have learned to hate about our “new normal”.

It should be noted that this is just my observations. They are not meant to be taken seriously by anyone else 😂

I should also point out that where I live in Australia, I have always been able to go to work if I wished to as long as we were social distancing etc at work (not an issue since about 90% of the office has elected to work from home). I have also been able to visit family as long as they agree and they do not have more than 2 visitors at any one time. As I live alone, I was allowed to have 2 visitors. But you couldn’t go for a drive unless it was for a essential reason (care giving, groceries, work etc)

Our restrictions have been eased since 2nd May so we are able to go for a drive (up to 50km), have picnics (number of people is restricted) and we can now have up to 5 visitors in the home (as of 10th May).

I have pretty much worked from home since Easter so the below are things I have really noticed over the past 4 weeks (except for the last couple of days because my internet was down so I HAD to actually go into the office).

Zoom meetings (or any video call meetings) – this is especially when there is a large number of people in the meeting and someone does put mute on even though it is announced like 1000 times for everyone to go on mute or there is a lag, or any technical difficulty really. These meetings are now the norm but honestly I hate them – especially when I forget my camera is on and I “accidentally” roll my eyes at someone.
Working from home – ok so I do like the fact that I can get out of bed and don’t really have to get dressed but at the same time, there is just no separation and I do find that I am not as productive (don’t tell the boss!)
People not social distancing – I have successfully avoided people in the grand scheme of things but when you go grocery shopping because you are literally down to your last piece of bread because you have kept putting off going to the supermarket and you get there and despite the signs everywhere, NO ONE is keeping at least a trolley length away from each other!
People not reading signs – on that same vein .. I went through a drive the other day. The store was also open and they had a sign on the door saying “no more than 2 customers in the shop at any one time”. I watched as a family of 4 joined a man who was already in there PLUS another 2 people came in so there was a total of 7 people in the store at once. The sign was at eye level as you walk in the bloody door!
Everyone is bored – you can tell that everyone is bored because they all post the same things on social media. Because no one can go anywhere or do anything all you see are those “I was nominated by XYZ” posts. Now, before I get people commenting, I am not complaining about people posting those posts – I am just saying that there are so freaking many of them and I put it down to actual boredom due to not actually being able to do anything else.

Actually I have thought of another two that I should add:
Spending money! You would think that being at home saves money but noooooo… not when pretty much everything is at the tip of your fingers and you can buy those all important planner stickers online for delivery straight to your door (well letterbox but you know, close enough)
Everyone and their dogs are out walking! This is my latest rant because I went to go somewhere on Friday night and I couldn’t get anywhere near where I wanted to go because there were so many people out. I am not saying people shouldn’t be out there exercising but do they have to do it wherever I want to go anywhere?! Before all this stay at home business started you would hardly see so many outside walking but now they are EVERYWHERE and walking on the roads without looking and then giving YOU a dirty look for almost running them over. Not to mention the severe lack of social distancing I see when said people are out and about.