Fellow NHS worker, too. During Covid, when neighbours banged their pots and pans I asked them to do something useful with them by making me meals as I was busy working. They didn't. So I had to pay for food items with money as claps weren't a currency and then use my own pots and pans to make meals myself.

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erroneousbosh@reddit

We had a neighbour at the time whose whole family (and there were a lot of them) would come out and bang saucepans.

My little boy was born in mid 2020, right around peak "clap for the NHS" pish.

Great, thanks guys, I have a heavily pregnant partner who's trying to sleep and you're knocking shit out of your Tesco Value pans for ten minutes.

I hope you become allergic to toilet paper.

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badonkadonked@reddit

I lived in a big block of flats at the time and the very first night it happened everyone was out and to be honest it made me a bit weepy; it was less about supporting essential workers, if we’re honest, than it was a moment of connection with all these people we’d never bothered to get to know but who were all suffering alongside us. It was a warm evening and afterwards someone brought a guitar out onto their balcony and played songs for half an hour.

I don’t remember it ever happening again. Maybe it did, and I just didn’t get involved, but it never registered if so. So I have fond memories of it - but my memories are not, tbh, anything to do with Supporting Our Key Workers or anything, just a moment of everyone being together, but apart.

I don't know why this stuck with me so much but it did..

I was out on my daily allocated piece of exercise and was running round my city. As I was heading back to my house I started heading down this fairly long, pretty wide alley way. Half way down I come across a lady walking in the opposite direction, shopping bags in hand. There was no where to really go that didnt mean we weren't going to be within the 2 metre distance of each other for all of .2 milliseconds as I ran past.

I didnt think a lot of it, made my way as far to the side as I could but as I approached she pinned herself face first to the wall screaming "NO DON'T COME ANY CLOSER!". God knows how she'd made it to the shops and back down the road without encountering another human being.. nor how she managed for the next 18 months.. or why she chose to walk down a fairly narrow alley way if she was that concerned about human contact.

Either way, I stopped and without saying a word buggered off in the other direction. It was about 3 weeks into lockdown and I think it just hit me how all essence of common sense and basic thinking had fallen to the wayside in place of complete paranoia and illogical thinking.

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JackyRaven@reddit

But... she was also walking closer to you! You moving past quickly at max possible distance was the best solution. Some people!

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LurkingWithStyle@reddit

Ny thoughts exactly... but at the same time it felt like a lost cause to try and talk reason into a person who was quite literally screaming into a wall.

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JackyRaven@reddit

Losing my husband in the 1st lockdown, although not to Covid. Me, son, & daughter allowed in to his hospital room in PPE to be with him as he passed. I did take off my mask to speak to him. Organising a funeral when we were only allowed 9 people, distanced. Friends travelled over 100 miles to wait outside & listen over speakers. Wake in gazebo in my garden, distanced chairs, 9 people. Surreal & so upsetting.

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My partner was a front line covid nurse for two of the spikes (not the first one). He was put forward because some of the other nurses had PTSD and severe anxiety and were refusing to return to the covid wards. He was meticulous with PPE, he would undress at the front door and I would mask up, bag his clothes wearing gloves, a d immediately put the on a boil wash with antibac in while he showered. We observed every rule because of the risk he posed to others, we didn't even go out for daily exercise just in case.

I was a midwife on labour ward, which was the red zone where our covid women went.

He got covid and passed it to me on Christmas day (side note, my Mum sent a Christmas dinner over in a taxi, that was weird). I was the hospitalised on New Year's Eve and in for nearly a week.

One...teabag???

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Iheartthenhs@reddit

I work for the NHS. I got a teabag and a little metal badge with a Covid virus on it.

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Same here. I was lucky enough to be able to practice remotely for a big part of the lockdown, but my partner was only “grounded” for one week, then had to work double shifts.

I kept begging the neighbours to not make noise, but because he was not NHS, he was not considered essential (he was!) and nobody gave a s*it. I tried it the other way and asked on my behalf (I was NHS) but it still did not work because “we need to take selfies when clapping”.

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Recessio_@reddit

then being called a "sarcastic little wanker" for responding with "can't wait to be at the top"

That's hilarious, I wish I had been as quickwitted when faced with those type of nutjobs back then!

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lornamabob@reddit

I was working in a pet shop so we were considered essential (we stopped selling animals and tried to encourage people to only buy the food they needed rather than browsing the treats and toys for hours). So many people would get mad when we told them buying pet fish wasn't considered essential. We got fuck all from upstairs for risking our health. We would spend 2 extra hours after closing bleaching all the surfaces.

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positivelittlecorner@reddit

I managed a small city’s Covid ward through 2020 and 2021. Back to back 80-90 hour weeks while looking after 19-20 patients per nurse.

We had patient relatives banging on the ward door for us to let them in to a closed ward with Covid on and patients on negative pressure oxygen masks, screaming that we were nazis and should be hung (while caring for their grandmother). It was an insane and terrifying time. I lost my own grandfather to Covid and could never imagine in a million years carrying on that way to the staff that were caring for him.

I was so done with the clapping after about 2 weeks and so many staff working night shifts would get woken early for work by it.

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Not gonna lie, you sound like someone who was in their element during that time.

I bet you’d go back in a heartbeat.

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themosthappyx@reddit

I remember I was a student nurse during the pandemic. I'd just finished a 13 hour shift in neonates, it had been particularly loud that day during the shift and I had a headache, and when I finished I was walking to my car and some people were stood in the street banging pots and pans and shouting "thank you for your service!!!" Right into my ear. I was furious! All I wanted after my shift was peace and quiet and instead my ear drums got assaulted. The clap for the NHS never ever felt like it was for us. It was more for people to feel good about themselves.

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Silent_Doubt3672@reddit

This is it exactly, it was never about us. It was so they could feel/look good saying they supported the NHS and then turn around and call you murders the next day.

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Fantastic-Bother3296@reddit

Worked through the whole thing in community pharmacy and my most common memory was just being moaned at and shouted at for the majority of it.

Journeys to work were peaceful at least.

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Critical_Wasabi5218@reddit

Baaaahh bahhhhh

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x0_Kiss0fDeath@reddit

My sister worked at a hospital reception in the US during covid and OMG the stories she would tell about people and how they would behave towards her. I did not envy her for one minute. The amount of people she said would actively cough on her and stuff as well.

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My whole office was told to work from home, except for my department! And I was pregnant at the time with hyperemesis, I had no choice but to come into the office and vomit until I car keep my head up, and then I was allowed to leave early, I would’ve done anything to be able to work from home. But there was another lady, who has been advised NOT to come in, she’s a cancer patient, she loves her work but she’s always been a bitch to everyone, I worked in her team for a few years too. She had only just recovered from sepsis. God knows why she came in. She walked into the kitchen while I was trying to catch my breath after vomiting, so my mask was off for a few seconds, also, I was exempt from wearing it as it triggered my nausea. I was only 8 weeks pregnant and wasn’t ready to tell anyone so I stood there and got a right bollocking from her, about how I’m putting people at risk, people like her who are vulnerable and are fighting cancer, she even came back and put a note on the table to remind everyone to keep their masks on to protect vulnerable people. I put a complaint through and after that week, she didn’t come in until lockdown was over, which was around the time I went back from my maternity leave. Should’ve seen the look on her face when everyone was asking how my pregnancy was and I said how I couldn’t stop vomiting but still had to come into work unlike some people who were told not to come in but still did.

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Careful_Feedback_168@reddit

For me i was living literally in the world of zelda breath of the wild 🤣

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snarkycrumpet@reddit

being forced to wash my hands under the detailed direction and supervision of a LUSH employee just to browse the shop

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Character_Life840@reddit

Got a mildly ridiculous one. Lost my grandad, aged 108, to COVID in May 2020. Due to social distancing we had a tiny wake for him outside at a local beach, just 6 immediate family members. I took some food for everyone. My sister brought 70 falafels. Only her and I eat falafels. Her car was full of them. I think it was stress-buying, but it was so funny and really lightened a sad day.

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eggs_and_ham_i_am@reddit

And couldn't it (doesn't it) make you so pissed off to think how you and your family and friends followed the guidelines like that, meaning you couldn't have a proper send off for a much loved Grandad, and all the while those in power telling us what to do were having parties in big groups.

Government got off far to lightly by the public for that behaviour.

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snarkycrumpet@reddit

I think of the Queen, sat alone at her husband's funeral. meanwhile the govt played us for fools

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Andthenwefade@reddit

My dad died in 2021 and funerals were still limited to 25 I think it was. It was a travesty. My Dad was an amazing man, and he deserved more people there.

I don't hold onto hate these days, but I've made an exception for the UK government at the time.

Our current government are getting bullets for making some tough decisions, and people seem to have totally forgot about the behaviour of the Covid government.

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denbolula@reddit

Even the Queen sat by herself at her husband's funeral, they were partying.

Not to mention the grift behind so many PPE contracts.

Still boils my piss.

I'm sorry about your dad.

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Silent_Doubt3672@reddit

I'm not mad, i'm furious about the PPE, the Vents, the rationing of oxygen, having to watch people die alone multiple times a day because the goverment refused to lockdown sooner when it could have saved so many lives and caused less trauma to healthcare workers who haven't even started to process everything that happened.

The general public perception of the hospitals being empty, that doctors and nurses were lying, that we were murders trying to get rid of people by placing them on DNACPR orders only if CPR was going to cause more damage or there would be no quality of life after a CPR attempt. Thats the ONLY thing its stops, the physical effort/trauma to the body of CPR where its normal to break ribs.

Sorry! Yeah i'm still furious.

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LadyGruntfuttock@reddit

They still had time to learn the dance routines though

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Silent_Doubt3672@reddit

While they were on break which they are legally entitled to.

h00dman@reddit

My mum has been a Costco 'hoarder' for as long as I can remember.

My partner is a chef.

When his restaurant closed he got to bring home all of the meat and stuff

We left a cool bag of brisket, chicken thigh, beef & lamb mince on the doorstep.

10 minutes later my mum collected the bag and dropped off a SLAB of loo roll as we all waved at each other through the window 😂

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Celestial_Light_@reddit

This is very sweet

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myreddodgeram@reddit

My village shopkeeper going, “psst, I saved you some toilet roll, it’s under the counter for you!” I was so impressed and it was surreptitiously put into my carrier bag and I paid for it. When I got home, I discovered it was the thinnest, cheapest, crappiest 1 ply. I laughed so hard - but was still grateful.

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ACanWontAttitude@reddit

Was 6 months post partum and got sectioned.

Had to have 3 days isolation due to the obvious, on the 4th morning a nurse accused me of non engagement because I had 'just sat' in my room

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pennydogsmum@reddit

The small hospital I worked at didnt have a morgue. We had funeral directors come out to a patient who had sadly died of covid (well many over the pandemic) but on this day they had run out of body bags. We had some just in case but it brought home how many deaths they must have been attending.

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pixeltash@reddit

Sending you love and full respect for what you went through. .

Thank you for working so hard in such difficult circumstances.

I found my little pass from work not that long ago. I laminated it to stop it getting tatty. I only went in one or two days a week but for ages I kept bumping into the same two police officers on my way in (I walked part way and took the bus part way). It just devolved into me holding up the slip and saying "Multipass!" As I walked by.

Once some miserable bloke had a go at one of them for not "checking it properly" which just ended up with him being questioned why he was out instead.

First stop, 6th street. Starting from I35 and 6th street, I saw a homeless guy getting beat up by another homeless guy.

Then a drug dealer was giving me a long hard look because of my helmet.

You see, one day my friend had a big european oval bumper sticker that said APF on it (austin parks foundation) and he asked me if I wanted it, at which point I immediately put it on my white motorcycle helmet as a joke. However, I later realized, from the front, I kind of looked like I was riding a police motorcycle (all white, windshield, 3/4 modular white helmet with a boom mic for my communicator) and APF looks kind of similar to APD (austin police department) at that point.

So the guy is giving me a good long look that I might be here to bust up the party,, but also, I'm obviously not a cop, no uniform, no gun,,, so he says 'You alright?'

I said yes.

'Well, I run shit down here.'

Now he's saying this because there's no traffic behind me and I'm progressing forward quite slowly looking around, which was suspicious to him. But also,,, what is APF?

Passing him, I see a woman wearing nothing but a u-Haul moving truck blanket over her naked body, who sees me cruising past and puts he arms up in the air, showing me everything, and says she needs to make $750 tonite. 'Unlikely,' I mumbled to myself.

Next up at a bar that was somehow open, a group of 40+ish year old men were talking to some younger guys out front.

I decided to loop around on 5th street back to I35 and see the scenes again because my mind was blown at how things were compared to when the place was filled with thousands of people. Gone were the puking college students, the brawling university students, and the university students dressed like crack whores. Now were actual crack whores, puking middle aged dads, brawling dossers.

Not even 90 seconds have passed as I cross the start/finish back onto 6th from I35. Decrease thottle. Drink it all in.

The homeless guy who was being beaten had apparently gotten up and left, or perhaps his body has been moved.

This time the drug dealer had angry customers in front of him kicking scooters (Bird, Lime, escooters) over on the sidewalk. Now that he's got belligerents in front of him (presumably complaining about price or availability) he's awkward about the fact that I'm looping around on lap 2, tires warm, single 250cc cylinder thumping. Crackheads kicking e-bikes with reckless abandon. And if all that isn't enough, APF is back. I had his curiosity the first loop, but on loop two I'd earned his split-attention.

With no other traffic, I rolled upon the scene slowly and stared at him without blinking as I rode past as if I was a loitering scooter-cavalry asset here to assist the crack addicted infantry assaulting his position on foot. The crack troops.

I stared at him to sternly infer to him that this could become a combined assault momentarily. By all means, good sir, kindly reconsider your crack prices. He was trying to keep his eyes on the men thrashing and yelling in front of him while also turned his head to keep me in the corner of his eye as I proceeded beyond him and behind his back as I trawled towards congress ave.

The lady with the moving blanket on looked at me and went to show me her body, but then realized I had already been through and suddenly she decided not to. But she seemed to be trying to discern whether I simply wanted the free show again, or if I was working up the nerve to actually proposition her. As a gentleman, I can assure you that it was certainly nothing more than the former of these two options that had even remotely crossed my mind.

Onwards, the bar where the younger men and the younger-middle aged men had been speaking. Ninety seconds earlier this had been nothing more than an innocent chat. Some young slim men talking to scrubby, chubby, drunk dads. There but for the grace of god, and 20 additional years of American light lager drinking, they were talking to their future selves. But all sentiments of being in this bastardly shell game called 'life' together had been dispensed with.

The middle aged guys were walking off angrily while the 20-somethings yelled at them not to come back. One last 45-ish year old guy walked out hammered and stumbled into the group of 20's guy who looked at him like 'another one?' but also were giving him the benefit of the doubt that he might have just been leaving and unassociated with the other group.

He broke the icy silence when he innocently asked 'did you see my friends out here?' at which point the young guys screamed ' Yeah, f#$\^ off!' and pointed him towards the group who were walking away. Confused, the man ran after them, seemingly completely unaware that there had been a conflagration of any fashion. I imagined he'd early bought a bag from the dealer down the way, and now, in no more than the time it took to take a hasty coke-shit, the world had changed.

As I slowly passed the retreating pack of drunk dads, I decided to glare at them as well. My menacing APF sticker and,, scooter,, combination causing them to have the same sort of curious double take that the crack dealer had. They seemed to stand up straighter and walk in a less inebriated manner. That's right old chaps. Get it together.

I wanted to loop back a third time, but I weighed this against the fact that if the drug dealer now didn't have any adversaries to contend with, it might free him up to take the initiative to challenge me, along with the platoon of drunken dads, or possibly even the naked crack-whore with the Uhaul blanket. Or the resurrected tramp.

I decided to move my patrol onwards to another neighborhood and perhaps find a McDonalds drive-thru.

As you can imagine, I'm still ferociously proud of my performance that evening. Walk like you haven't been drinking boilermakers on my streets. Stop brandishing your bits at passersby. Deal your crack as if Jesus himself, or APF are watching you. Both.

God forbid that persons manager actually manage, no, lets make a sweeping change that impacts our whole workforce instead!

Once we were all RTO, one guys live in gf got COVID. He tested negative, so wasnt allowed the extended sick leave protection and company wouldnt let him WFH.

So instead he worked in a store room with a hastily set up work station, and when he needed to leave the room to use the loo or kitchen or whatever, the HR manager walked ahead of him and cleared everyone out of his path / the room he needed.

Absolutely unhinged, and really brought home that there is no global crisis that can't be made worse by the actions of a localised bellend.

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Paul_T_M@reddit

I couldn't believe how my manager operated during COVID. We can do pretty much everything WFH but no, they forced at least half the team into the office.

What made it worse was a colleague in our dept lost their dad to COVID and also the previous manager of the dept.

Just no consideration given or logic applied. I'll never forgive that

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catschimeras@reddit

So many of these companies just full-bore showed their arses during the Pandemic.

Like, I was aware that our senior "leadership" didn't respect or value us, but "we will put you at increased risk of an illness that leaves people dead or with permanent health issues for the sake of an aesthetic" was awful even by their usual low standards.

I did enjoy the brief turn of the tables during the Great Resignation when those same companies couldnt attract or retain staff after behaving so badly.

That kind of thing drives me bananas. Blatant favouritism and just being awkward for seemingly the sake of it. All to common

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Late_Abalone3751@reddit

My daughter's school made up bags of activities and worksheets to do, and we had to collect them from a table in the playground. At the same time as each other.

We ran out of loo roll at about that time.

But we had a Costco membership and had been buying toilet roll there for years. And Costco doesn't sell small quantities - you get 5x9 roll packs of Charmin. So in the middle of everyone being rationed, I waltzed 45 toilet rolls into the house.

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Jlaw118@reddit

I didn’t get my Costco membership until mid-2021 and always said I bet it was fantastic during the first stage of the pandemic

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jimicus@reddit

Sort-of. The queues to get in were unreal.

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No-Snow-9605@reddit

Waking up to find I had tinnitus.

Lufc87@reddit

Being hounded by track and trace. The missus and I were away during one of the periods where went back into lockdown.

We both did exactly the same in terms of testing and form completion etc. but something must've gone awry with mine.

I received about 30 phone calls over 4 days and had 3 different people come to the house.

Car full of lads in Wiltshire April 2020 told police they were driving to McDonalds ,every McDonalds within 20 miles was closed (I know this because I know the franchise owner ) I wonder to this day if :

A,
they didn’t know that all the McDonald’s were closed.
Or

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rosetyler86@reddit

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--BooBoo--@reddit

Ahhh what a gorgeous pile of fluff! ❤️

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spyrobandic00t@reddit

I did this too ahaha!!

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rosetyler86@reddit

Thank you.

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No_Cellist_326@reddit

Celtic_Cheetah_92@reddit

Cat tax please

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Prestigious_Leg7821@reddit

I did this too! Furry little morin has been here 5 years now!

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YchYFi@reddit

Cat tax

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Living in Cornwall, we got off very lightly at the beginning of the pandemic, and a lot of people were a bit more relaxed about the rules as our local case rates were low to non-existent.

My nan had been getting steadily more ill since September 2019, and went into a hospice on the 2nd April, passing away on the 9th.

For reasons that are not relevant, I had been staying with my grandparents for just short of a year when lockdown started, and had been providing a lot of care for my nan before she went into the hospice. The nurses there were kind enough to let me into her private room to say goodbye after my grandad had been with her for the last 2 or 3 days.

We decided not to have a funeral, as there were more of us than the rules allowed, and if 1 or 2 of the family couldn’t go, then nobody got to go to make it fair. We didn’t have a small video session in the morning of the day she was cremated, with my dad coming into my grandads house to be with him and me. I found it so bizarre that my grandad and I were sat in his kitchen in our pyjamas mourning his wife of 62 years, rather than being dressed in our nicest black outfits with friends and all the family.

My last truly happy memory of her is me bringing her a cup of coffee a couple of days into lockdown, while she was watching the news, and she said “I think it might be an idea for you to stay in for a couple of days with this bug thing that’s going around.” I can’t help but laugh at that, but it’s a very bittersweet memory because of the circumstances.

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Nearby-Metal-3030@reddit

Struggling to feed my dog because the shops were limiting tins of dog food and it kept selling out...

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woollover@reddit

In case you're ever in this situation again, dogs can easily eat a lot of 'people food' - chicken,beef,rice, pasta,a lot of fish, eggs, most veg, just no onions(or veg from onion family), no garlic,grapes or sultanas/raisins. I feed my dog mostly human food because it's much better quality than dog food, and her fur grows like I stood her in miracle grow overnight lol... Just letting you know you can easily cook stuff you'd eat, and your dog would love it.

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Nearby-Metal-3030@reddit

Thanks, I ended up giving her chicken and rice and things, but she was a very fussy pup! We got by 🙂

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PityPartySommelier@reddit

I had a brief period of cooking food for my cat because grocery home deliveries were so hard to get.

He was getting chicken, egg and rice bowls with some crushed cat biscuits on top just to help stretch the few biscuits we had out for as long as possible.

I never understood this. I had a friend who had the same.

There was no law in place stating only key workers could travel to work.

I certainly wasn't a key worker. I make guns for a living. Yet I worked through the whole thing.

The guidance was to work from home if possible, and for employers to consider if working from home was an option.

Furlough was because many companies couldn't make money so couldn't pay their staff. It was not intended as a tool to keep workers at home from industries that didn't require public customers to pay the bills.

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Upbeat_Map_348@reddit

‘You have no authority here Jackie Weaver!!!’

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Having a baby

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LadyGruntfuttock@reddit

Everybody believing that masks made out of an old t-shirt or made of paper would protect them from an airborne virus 😅

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Severe_Iron_5127@reddit

Christmas Day Dinner at my brother's house. My parents were there and our respective families. My sis and her bloke rocked up outside, but stayed in the car to eat their 🦃 and trimmings, as they'd contracted the 'rona. We took it in turns to pop outside and converse with them.

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VixenRoss@reddit

Facebook posts. “Well done everyone in Random Road for turning out for our NHS clap, apart from the ones at number 23 who aren’t very nice people anyway”.

“I’ve seen number 45 have a visitor, who do I report them to?”

He was found guilty, but what they put me through, the way I was treated as a victim was far worse than the sentence he got.

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loobyloo_42@reddit

Clapping for carers/NHS workers/essential workers

*Judgy batshittery on social media about people with chocolate/Easter eggs/biscuits in their shopping trolleys ("its not ESSENTIAL! We were told to only go out to shop for ESSENTIALS!"

Not being able to get gluten-free pasta or bread because supermarket workers were directing people to the free-from section when rhe "normal" pasta and bread was sold out

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Speedboy7777@reddit

I work for the NHS. I remember that being summoned to how we were going to do things “from now on.” It was like being in a military camp. “We WILL do this WE MUST do this.” And so on. 2 days later I got COVID myself and was shut up in my flat for 6 weeks, on full pay. It was the days before the vaccines, and even before testing. I would simply say to work “I have symptoms” and I’d get signed off for another 2 weeks.

It was hell. Stuck inside, breathless walking between rooms, it was like a shit indie film. I would sweat and hallucinate all night, wake up, go to the sofa, and just sit there, and build up the courage to make a coffee. Rinse and repeat for 6 weeks.

COVID took something out of me I can’t ever get back.

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Electronic_Wind1855@reddit

Thank you for working during Covid! I can’t imagine what it was like.

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Spanner1993@reddit

Ugh. Reading that brought back memories of my first bout of COVID.

Laying on the bedroom floor beneath the open windows, hallucinating the Japanese Army were coming for me.

That was intense man.

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LCPO23@reddit

Also NHS. Caught COVID from my daughter and ended up off work for 4 months. I still see a respiratory consultant every 6 months, on increased increased inhalers and meds for asthma.

Those 4 months were truly horrendous, I couldn't walk the length of myself.

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Loud_Report7985@reddit

A man on a motorbike and full leathers and helmet, which he didn’t lift or remove, dropped off a box full of necessities, teabags, sugar, milk, biscuits etc, and mumbled something incoherent and before I could say anything he rode off like some kind of superhero.

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worldworn@reddit

We had just been allowed to shop again, it had been made so bloody clear about keeping a bit of space and masking up.

Only to see skne boomer, leaning around the screens to loudly chastise some poor young girl working behind the till, who looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there.

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LadyGruntfuttock@reddit

I travelled to London before the last lockdown was lifted (told the hotel I was on business), but just walked around for four days, covering about 60 miles. It was bizarre, it felt like I was in a zombie movie, quite post-apocalyptic. I'm so glad I did it, it will never happen again. We'll never fall for it

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zonaa20991@reddit

The period where people were encouraged to phone the police if they thought their neighbours were ‘breaking the rules’.

My dad passed from Covid in 2021. After two weeks in the ICU. I was a nurse and I guess I just snapped, idk. He had passed. We were waiting on the doctor to come pronounce. I had watched line after line of nurses and docs and RTs in gear line up to do compressions on neighbors in the ICU. I had lost so many patients myself, March 2020 we lost an entire family. Well, I just stood there and cussed Covid for all it was worth. Loudly, violently, crying in way that was guttural.

I look up to see my colleagues have turned like I had been praying- heads bent, somber. And then the doctor says “amen”

And then I slumped in my chair and quiet cried bc I wanted to tell my Dad about it, and it hit me I could never again. He loved when his personality slipped out.

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Nikki_Ess@reddit

When there was a sign on the beach near my house telling people not to talk to anyone

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Upbeat_Branch_4231@reddit

The NHS refusing to recognise my mask exemption, but every commercial business recognising it. Go figure!

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h_pur@reddit

My partner was learning to drive and lessons had stopped, rightly so. I sat beside him when he drove to work as he was an essential worker. Nearly a 9 mile journey and there would often only be 2 or 3 other cars on the road. They then changed the rules and he wasn't allowed to drive. I can only think incase he had an accident and the hospitals were at breaking point but there were barely any cars on the road to have an accident with. For weeks I had to drive him.

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MisaManaged@reddit

Working in a preschool was very surreal looking back. A few things that stand out, having to wear masks/aprons when bringing children in, often getting very close to parents trying not to breathe to take them out of their parents arms, having to try and have the child facing away from our faces when carrying them in while they were crying. Obviously hard for the child as they can't see us properly and don't want to leave their parents.

Again when they were upset we were told to hold them facing away from us, I would usually cuddle them so their head was at my shoulder/chest level or their head on my shoulder facing the other way. No way was I leaving a child to get upset.

Having to lone work in small bubbles, I had my little group of 6 3/4 year olds in one bubble and 4 2 year olds in the other I was looking after by myself. The preschool was split into 3 areas, we would have 3 bubbles in at a time and rotate to share the garden. Everything being cleaned before we moved on. Having 1 toilet per bubble and changing nappies was full ppe. I had 2 sets of bubbles, 1 in mon/Tues and the other Thurs/Fri. The preschool was deep cleaned on Wednesdays/Saturdays.

After all the measures we put in place to keep us and the families we looked after safe, the children would tell us about seeing family/friends/going out, all the while I couldn't see my family or friends due to the lockdown rules.

Oh and doing first aid training during covid we were told if you needed to perform CPR to first put something over their face and only do chest compressions.

My husband worked in a small convenience shop, he was verbally abused and shouted at daily usually by people who didn't like the rules on how many items you could buy. And when he called people out for coming in multiple times a day for non essential items just to get out of the house.

Despite us both working, my children weren't initially allowed into school as children of essential workers as we didn't work for the NHS/police and because we mostly worked around each others hours. So some days when I was working my children aged 7 and 10 were left alone while my husband slept after his late shift or while I was travelling home/he had left for work. We had to then figure out the school work around that too. Thankfully by the September the school changed the rules and they were allowed in.

And my final gripe was trying to find gluten and dairy free food as when people couldn't buy regular items they just bought from the free from section. My diet was limited enough and at times became even more so due to lack of options. We never struggled for regular basics though as my husband put aside toilet roll/pasta/bread/rice/eggs when deliveries came in to the shop he worked at if I couldn't get them when food shopping.

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simsyboy@reddit

Watching Michael Barrymore do strike it lucky on tiktok.

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simsyboy@reddit

Although chat shows which became zoom calls got boring really quickly.

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IkeTurn@reddit

I worked through the whole thing and would cycle to and from work. Got stopped a few times by the police who thought I would be an easy target to fine etc. Got so annoying that my boss made us id cards explaining what we do why we work etc. Second time I got stopped they were pretty heavy handed, threatening me with arrest, I showed them my little id card explanation thing, they didn't like that. Weird thing is they weren't wearing masks though but I was, even though I was cycling. I got a bit annoyed and told them to get lost after I showed them my card and I carried on cycling home.

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Fit-Jellyfish1675@reddit

I was alone through most of COVID and I kept hearing this weird noise. I was looking around for the source but it was coming from multiple places but I couldn't see anything obvious making the sound.

I started to think that my brain had just had it until I casually mentioned hearing this noise to my mum and how it sounded like people banging pots and pans. At which point I found out that's exactly what people are doing, you just can't easily see people's front doorsteps where I lived at the time.

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Neither-Drive-8838@reddit

I was allowed to work in my small print shop so long as the door was locked. I would hang printing on the door handle for customers to pick up and they would pay by bank transfer. It was glorious.

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ra1ndr0p@reddit

I remember spending April and May at my sewing machine, making hospital scrubs for our local doctors. Frontline workers were under-equipped, so we made what we could for them.

The pattern had been created by a furloughed London fashion designer, printed by local printing shops around the country. Fabric and paper patterns were distributed to a few cutters' doorsteps. I'd drive the cut fabric bundles to various seamstresses' doorsteps, and we would then spend the next few days sewing and overlocking each set of scrubs, often handstitching a kind little message on the inside for the frontline workers who would receive them.

Once completed, hospital staff would pick them up and take them in for their overworked and exhausted medical colleagues. I think we did two or three waves of these before supplies of commercially manufactured scrubs started flowing in again.

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fraughtwithperils@reddit

The porridge fairy.

My daughter had just caught chicken pox on the last day that the nursery she was at was open.

First full day of full blown scary lockdown; four year old covered in spots.

We couldn't get hold of any chamomile solution as every clinic near us had enormous queues with no guarantee that they would have any and it wasn't an emergency so I asked my mum if she had any porridge oats which I could use in my daughter's bath to help with the itching.

She said that she had some and would drop some off at our front door and wave from the car.

We thought that was the end of it.

The next day there was another full bag of oats on out front door. There were also two packets of quick oats in the back garden.

The day after that, my daughter comes in from the garden, three more sachets of porridge had appeared. One was cinnamon flavoured.

Over the course of a week, we accumulated enough porridge oats to feed a small army (definitely enough for oat baths) and the legend of the porridge fairy was born.

I called my mum on day three to say that we had plenty and that she didn't need to keep dropping stuff off. She replied that she had only dropped off one bag.

My dear sweet mum had put the request on her church WhatsApp group and over twenty people had seen it and sent porridge flying into our garden.

Still my favourite covid memory.

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erroneousbosh@reddit

Matthew 6 - "Take heed that ye do not yeet bags of porridge oats over your sister's wall before the eyes of men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father"

"Therefore when you hoy sacks of oats into gardens, do not bang a pot for the NHS before thee, as do the twats across the street, that they may have the glory of the local Nexdoor group. Truly, their 27 replies of 'dm me hun, 2 meny sneks' shall be their reward"

"But when you fling breakfast cereal, let not they left hand know what thy right hand does, lest it grass you up to the cops"

I lived on my own and had my dog. There was a period of time at the beginning when it hadn't been specified that for animal care, it was ok to go out more than once a day. We didn't have a garden.

I remember trying to wear different clothes so I wouldn't be conspicuously the same person going out 3 times a day, before hearing that horse owners were allowed to do whatever they wanted that broke the rules of lockdown, as long as it was something for their horse. It said a lot about what sort of people the govenment was thinking of first.

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PipalaShone@reddit

No one ever said you couldn't walk your dog!

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Watchkeys@reddit

You're right. They only said we could only go out once a day, for exercise. Nobody said anything about animal care needs for quite a while, and when they did, it was about horses.

So, you're right.

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PipalaShone@reddit

I think that they expected you to use your common sense when it came to pet care, and had to be more specific when it came to horse owners because most don't have their horses at home.

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Which-World-6533@reddit

Pretty much.

Even from the first days of the lockdown there weren't "police in the streets". Anyone who went outside could see that plainly.

I live a short walk from a police station and walked past it multiple times. No-one gave a shit.

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Watchkeys@reddit

Do you think that? At the beginning of the first lockdown, people in the city I lived in were afraid that there would be policing in the streets for people they caught outdoors more than once a day.

Your hindsight is very clear; did you have it at the time? People who lived alone weren't even considered in the first lockdown, let alone animals. Common sense would dictate that solitary confinement isn't going to work, but there was no guidance on it for quite some time.

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Which-World-6533@reddit

They only said we could only go out once a day, for exercise.

No one ever said this.

I went out multiple times a day. No-one cared. I certainly didn't bother with different clothes.

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Watchkeys@reddit

'What you did' isn't really in question, lovey.

Here's the guidance '"Exercise with your household (or support bubble) or one other person, this should be limited to once per day, and you should not travel outside your local area." and that was in Jan 21, the 3rd lockdown, so there had been considerable easing up by then as the government recognised that the initial guidance had been too harsh.

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TheHootOwlofDeath@reddit

As a horse owner, I don't remember being able to do whatever I wanted?

I do remember friends (several are nurses) who had horses on full livery being unable to see their pets because they didn't care for them day to day (their yard owner did).

I was luckily able to see mine every day because I was DIY and had to muck out and feed every day (obviously wearing a mask). I used to travel with vets bills so I could prove that I was genuinely travelling for a reason.

Temporary-Zebra97@reddit

First lockdown, called into one of the offices which involved driving the M62 and M60. Usually motorways that are very busy and at certain time does a passable impression of a NCP car park.

Instead of being arrested for reckless endangerment due to admitting to driving with impaired eyesight, and being fined to the max for breach of covid rules, the coppers just went 'oh yeah, that makes sense. Fair enough. On your way mate.'

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Changeyourusername_@reddit

Getting into trouble for sneaking relatives in to say goodbye to their family members.

We lost my sister and had similar experience

But they wasn't allowed to carry coffin . But push it on wheel

Only trouble was church floor was on a slope

My brothers and dad chased coffin down aisle...

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Emergency_Pea_2232@reddit

I’m sorry, I know it would not have been funny for you at the time.

But I just snorted at the mental image, Benny Hill music playing.

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Ruu2D2@reddit

It good job lot of us had dark sense of humour so giggle

But other did not cope with it at all .

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kellyelise515@reddit

Would your sister have gotten a good laugh? My mom’s friend was shipped back to her home state when she passed and the RR lost her somewhere. Everyone said she would have gotten such a kick out of it that it kinda made it sting less.

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Ruu2D2@reddit

She would kick everyone butt first

Then laughed .

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BananaHomunculus@reddit

Getting the strangest illness I've had which was basically a savage fever with neck and head pain and nothing else that lasted 10 days.

I tested for COVID, I called the doctors because I feared meningitis.

I had blood tests and X rays and it was just viral.

But ever since this happened I have not felt the same. Like it's changed a core part of my genetics or made something permanently wrong.

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CaptainMcClutch@reddit

Realising it wasn't affecting my lifestyle at all, I work alone in an office and relax at home. The only big change was wearing a mask during my work hours.

Everyone else seemed to be missing out on xy and z, and I was reaping the benefits of my favourite podcasts putting out more episodes. Just made me realise how little I go out and socialise.

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FuckedupUnicorn@reddit

Going to Covid deaths and there being an imaginary line on the ground where I had to kit up to cross it. Worked all the way through and amazingly didn’t catch it.

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BalasaarNelxaan@reddit

I work in the criminal justice system and for years whenever funding came up we were effectively told that we weren’t a priority and we needed to make cuts. Basically we weren’t essential.

Then COVID hit and suddenly it was essential that we were all still working.

Made us chuckle a bit!

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Flosstopher@reddit

Where I worked there was a huge song and dance about us getting clear screens, proper signage, masks etc the lot!

They didn’t turn up until June 2022…

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BalasaarNelxaan@reddit

Did they put tape on the floor too and you had to stay within your tape lane? 😂

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Flosstopher@reddit

Yep 😂

I had my own office and it was used as a passing place in the corridor when I wasn’t in. The panic and confusion when I was sat at my desk and there was nowhere to pass was hilarious

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RonBonxious@reddit

Tiger King

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Standard-Spite-6885@reddit

I never watched it but felt like I had just with all the memes and clips that were everywhere online

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Hcmp1980@reddit

Welsh government kept super maretail open but because they felt bad about the small shops that had to close, they said we could only buy 'essential' items from the big shops.

My bluelight filter was on, but I had to screenshot this when it originally came up on my feed, and now every year when I get my 'on this day' reminder of it it's so surreal. "Thinking of meeting others in the park? Don't do it!".

It had some benefits.

My partner had nearly two years paid maternity leave because the uncertainty about how it would impact pregnant women had them start hers really early, paid, and then she took the maximum.

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LikeEveryoneSheKnows@reddit

Same here. Literally fell pregnant in March 2020. Timing was...not ideal, but wouldn't changed her for the world.

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Visible_Pipe4716@reddit

My daughter was born Jan 2020, just managed to get round all close family before everything went tits up. It was September before she saw anyone other than my wife and our cat 😅

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Tall_Station1588@reddit

Me too! And being asked while pregnant "Are you scared? What will you do if the baby gets COVID? What will you do if you get COVID while pregnant?" thanks everyone - really helpful for my pregnant mental wellbeing!

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My first argument with the police was during lockdown my cousin rang me to say she couldn't wake her nana do got ib my car and went round rang my mum as it was her sister , it would normally have been my mum dealing with grown up stuff , walked in the house to realise my aunty was dead , had to ring the police etc , got told off by the police for being there walked out n said OK you deal with them sat in my car for 2 mins before the copper came back to ask to come back in and help him explain to my cousin that her nana was dead , next thing I knew there was a knock on the door and the entire family was there ,poor copper didn't know what to do for the best , it was the first time I'd realised the extent of what was kinda wrong with my cousin still don't know for sure but I know she wasn't as old mentally as she was physically, but never noticed it growing up

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10deadpuppets@reddit

The clapping…it has to be the weekly clapping.

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happylurker233@reddit

Crying on my kitchen floor apologising to my two month old that we couldn't go anywhere or see anyone. That daddy had to work and we had to stay home alone. Of course she didn't know and I had no idea I had PPD. No baby groups, no in person health checks, no dental appointments. I apologised to my human potato like she cared or was aware.

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EvenSea4967@reddit

Honestly since having a baby a couple of years ago I have thought about new parents and toddler parents in this time so much

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flanmagnet@reddit

It was a weird time. We were lucky in the sense that we were at the tail end of 2020, so restrictions weren't as strict as they had been at the start.

I could have my husband with me for one. I can't imagine what people went though being alone and giving birth at the start of it all. Birth is traumatic enough with someone, I can't comprehend the amount of trauma doing it alone.

I just wanted my family so badly. And we spent 5 days in the hospital before we could go home. My sister and brother in law had come through from where they lived as it was in the "suitable distance" and were staying with my parents, both on the list of being high risk. Theyd all self isolated before coming together in our "bubble" and then the night we got home, they all had a quick cuddle before my sister and Brother in law had to rush back home due to the restrictions going back up again.

On the positive, when I had my baby in COVID, there was no pressure to be put doing things like you'd normally have when having a new baby. So I didn't feel the guilt of being at home in my pyjamas all day whilst we both learnt how to feed and get into a routine.

It was weird however, passing a new born through open car windows to relatives staying in their cars to meet the baby after they'd all done COVID tests 🤣

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Standard-Spite-6885@reddit

I was living in Vietnam as things were shutting down globally. I caught one of the last flights home and was stuck in Moscow airport for a 22hr layover.

I was exhausted, so paid to sleep in one of those pod things. Twice, airport police came by with guns to inspect my passport.

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Johny_boii2@reddit

Going down the aisles in specific directions. I actually miss it, but if you had accidentally walked past the item you wanted you had to walk all the way around again

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Humble-Bag-1312@reddit

The pandemic was at its peak and my boss telling me and a colleague we were "using too much hand sanitizer".

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I worked for the NHS at the time and spent months locked in an old victorian office frantically processing bank staff applications. I think I onboarded about 150 nurses, healthcare assistants and radiologists in the first few months. Everything was still done on triplicate forms which had to be completed in person so I had to come up with systems to get round it, and had to had all the physical copies through a window once a week for the payroll team to do their bit!

Had to deal with a few "characters" including one nurse with no critical care experience who had been working in aesthetics who was demanding to be placed in CCU (of which she had no chance, we needed nurses as backfill for the skilled experienced staff being pulled from other wards). She took her complaint right up to the head of nursing and beyond. Mad bitch.

Oh and the emergency nursing lead forcing through the bank posts for his two biomedical scientist pals who lived 300 miles away and screaming at me as they were not on the system, as I did not physically have the option to add none nursing staff to a fucking nursing roster system!!

One good thing was several weeks in we were told we could email the bank staff reports tonthe matrons rather than the usual print out 3 times a day and run round the hospital trying to find where they had decided to hold the meeting this time to physically hand them over 🙄

ooh-sheet@reddit

I would have too. I felt like I was going mad, while living with people who were advised to stay 2m away from me regardless.

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Poo_Poo_La_Foo@reddit

I think the hotel food would be the worst part 🥲

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decobelle@reddit

I did a quarantine hotel in Auckland and the food was amazing. It was almost constant too. Not long after you'd finished breakfast and your morning tea arrived.

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BoopingBurrito@reddit

In the quarantine hotels a lot of the time it wasn't even regular hotel food, it was genuinely worse. I remember seeing photos.

Folk were being given bags at 6am with food for their breakfast and lunch (with no fridge to store things in) - a shitty cheap instant porridge pot, a sandwich with half a slice of ham and a bit of burger cheese between two slices of stale bread, a piece of fruit, a small carton of fruit juice, and some sort of cheap, stale, baked product like a muffin or biscuit.

I live 40 mins from my family and I can't drive, so for a few months the only people I saw were my colleagues (love them all) and 24 people in a mental health inpatient unit.

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kellyelise515@reddit

I enjoyed lockdown (as screwed up as that sounds) because I could do anything I wanted instead of catering to my family.

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chiefgareth@reddit

My life barely changed during Covid. Went to work as normal every day.

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EndearingSobriquet@reddit

bizarre stuff happened

LunarWoIfy@reddit

My daughter was born 2 weeks into the first lockdown. She had severe tongue tie, which meant we found out that she couldn't feed by boob. We were advised to immediately switch to formula. My husband went out on his bike, since he doesn't drive, at 10pm to buy some for her.

When he eventually got home an hour and a half later finally with some formula, he told me that he had to go to several different stores, because all but one were completely sold out. He was told people were panic buying formula as a substitute to milk, which they assumed would taste just as good on their cereal and in their tea.

Fuck those people and fuck covid.

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DisneyBounder@reddit

My baby was formula fed and I remember the panic when I went into my local Sainsbury's to pick up a tin like I usually would and there was barely any left. I bought the very last tin of Cow & Gate and messaged my sister in a panic because what if I can't feed my baby? Luckily she told me that you can buy Formula on Amazon Pantry and they sold it in boxes of 6 tins as standard.

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In the conservatory reading, darkness is just about to fall and I almost jump out of my chair on surprise as my street in unison starts banging pots...

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MesocricetusAuratus@reddit

Everyone being annoyed they had to actually respect others' personal space... and me being like "this is the best thing ever"

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MonkeyHamlet@reddit

I was made redundant in the pandemic. One of my mates dropped off five cans of Strongbow and a book on serial killers in our front yard, knocked on the door and ran away.

I spent a bit of time in ITU, seconded there from my ward, and the absolute mentalness of going through the whole PPE rigmarole even though you knew the mask you were wearing was from a box that should have been binned as it was past the safety use-by-date.

Looking outside the window of the ITU department and seeing the fire engines lined up, flashing their lights and colleagues clapping for each and every one of us. Feeling your heart swell with pride for each other, whilst also being quietly shit scared about everything. To the next week, being sat on the sofa and just cringing at the noise outside, hoping they dont wake your son!

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sequeena@reddit

The doorstep clapping. The first one I did in my back garden because in my head we were meant to be keeping our distance and my neighbours front door at the time was barely an arm width away from mine (stupid new builds). My best friend had a right laugh when I told her, it was only then I realised we were doing it at the front door.

Meanwhile my husband's working 12 hour shifts in ICU.

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nerdybritguy@reddit

The "seated immunity" scenario, specifically after late September 2020 when both the "rule of six" and the mask mandate rules were introduced. As soon as your party of no more than six people sat down at an assigned table, you were apparently encased in an invisible forcefield that temporarily deactivated the highly infectious respiratory virus. But if you stood up to go to the toilet or leave the venue, you immediately became an extremely risky biohazard again and must wear a mask.

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SamW1996@reddit

Sea shanties were a thing for a time.

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There are many many things as I worked on a Covid ward from beginning to end. It was absolutely horrific and ruined my mental health at the time but I made some lifelong friends in some colleagues.(probably trauma bonding tbh because we were all like wtf) . A few things I can say off the top of my head - They wouldn’t supply us with masks at the beginning but still expected us to go into the ‘red’ Covid bays. Matron came down and said we must go in to care for our patients (at the time we thought we would die if we caught this and take it home to our families) Sadly, a few staff had died already at this point. Me and one other staff member said ‘ok, you go in there without a mask then!’. She wouldn’t.

I pushed a dying elderly lady’s bed to the cracked window in the sideroom so that her husband of 60 years could hold her hand through it (with gloves on). The nurse in charge came storming in and I got given a sharp warning and the bed pulled away from the window. As soon as the nurse left the room I pushed the bed back to the window again. That husband didn’t care if he caught Covid- he just wanted to be holding his wife’s hand in her last moment.

Deep…. But on a lighter note - I remember driving out the hospital road and there were crowds of people clapping and cheering (I was so exhausted I was in a daze after most shifts) It felt surreal and I couldn’t take it all in. They had ambulances, fire engines and police all park outside the Covid wards with their sirens on, The rest of the hospital staff came out and stood (socially distanced) and clapped us, for like 20 minutes. There was a dj booth in the middle of them all playing absolute bangers.

Lots of kind people sent stuff into us- one item being little knitted mask holders for the back of our heads to stop our ears getting sore from wearing them 24/7. This was before we were given ffp3 masks and visors for air generated procedures. The holders were all different patterns and different materials. They were actually so cute!

I remember obviously having to shower/change everytime we left the ward- I would get home and have to strip in the doorway and then go straight upstairs to shower and to my room as I couldn’t be around anyone.
Then when they laxxed the rules a bit I had a few mates round in the garden. We all had our own blanket and sat two meters apart & sang shit like that Carol Baskin, killed her husband, whacked him’ and did stupid tik tok dances whilst drinking rum.
They were all terrified to touch anything I had touched or go near me but Christ it felt good to have some laughs.

Cancer diagnosis strangely aligned accurately with the lockdowns

Bed bound smoking the herb daily and yammed the strongest painkillers, in and out of consciousness for 18 months played Zelda and rinsed hbo series, felt like a fever dream

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fnaaaaar@reddit

I made a fort in my living room

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psychobabble666@reddit

Old fanny pad face

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Sammiebear_143@reddit

Ordering takeaway. Hearing the doorbell. Having to wait the obligatory 30 seconds before opening the door to receive it from the doorstep having allowed the driver sufficient time to get to the bottom of the path. Bringing the takeaway indoors and placing it in the middle of the kitchen floor and doing a whole bizarre process like being part of a bomb disposal team, before opening it up to eat. I can't fully remember what we did, but a photo of such a scene came up in my Facebook memories a couple of weeks ago!

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TulipTattsyrup99@reddit

Drove my son to a Doctors appointment. We were instructed to wait in the car, and text them our car reg when we arrived. The GP came out in full crime scene suit, complete with overshoes, mask and goggles, and stood in the pouring rain, shouting through the car window, which we weren’t allowed to open. Madness.

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Defiant-Tackle-0728@reddit

I was one of the first confirmed cases in Northern Ireland.

Ended up in hospital. Came home 3 weeks later. Couldnt for the life of get a tesco delivery, didnt have the energy to get to the local shop, thankful for delivery apps for the basics.

Took 3 phone calls to even get my usual prescription, given I was ordered to stay home and shield cos of other health issues.

Woke up two days later to find two big boxes of food and household essentials from folk down the allotments, and an "old friend".

Still dont know which friend it was.

Joephps@reddit

[ Removed by Reddit ]

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marknotgeorge@reddit

I worked from home all through the pandemic. This was all very well, but I needed a new desk as the one I had was a cheap thing from IKEA, and really too small.

So when IKEA re-opened 'for essentials only', I took my chance and travelled the 15 miles to the nearest branch after work. I stood in the socially distanced queue hoping to get in before closing, watching people come out with plastic potted plants.

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pocket__cub@reddit

I'm 5'3 and had longer red hair (sort of cut into a mohawk, but I was wearing a cap and it had grown out). I was walking into a field which I thought was a short cut to my mate's house and I heard what sounded like someone running towards me. It was another man, taller than me... He looked at my face, saw a goatee, paused then ran away.

I honestly think this man may have been an opportunist who initially thought I was a woman going into a field alone, however when I told my mate she felt that I was overthinking it. He looked surprised, then awkward to me before running off and he was only a few feet away. The whole area was really quiet.

It was weird and creepy.

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FriendlyManCub@reddit

I work at a payroll company I IT. Monday morning we're told we have to collect info and pay people furlough by Thursday morning. 3 days scrambling to implement a system that we were still working out Tuesday night. I've had enough tight deadlines that I'm not too surprised, but that was something else.

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thepandancake@reddit

I lived alone and on my birthday 4 friends sent me birthday cakes. Full sized. I’m type 2 diabetic now.

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Jazzlike_Quiet9941@reddit

Best part was not caring and knowing it would all blow over!

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Redfreezeflame@reddit

Two weeks before lockdown, we took in my mother in laws cat. She was self harming due to the stress of their household (tbf fully get it) and we thought we could give her a break. We were not allowed pets in our flat so two weeks were all we could do, and she was reluctant to part with her too as she was about 9 then.

Lockdown hit, could not give back the cat. It also meant our flat couldn’t be inspected! She ended up thriving and loved the hoard of plants I collected in that bizarre period where everyone got really into plants. She loved that flat. Everyone decided she was happier with us and that was that!

She passed earlier this year. I miss her so much. She is the only thing that got me through early covid, being so afraid of the future unknowns. But having her snuggled next to me as I tried to work from a laptop on my sofa made it all seem a little more manageable

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stumperr@reddit

Going to work with my friends to work together but not being allowed to sit next to each other on the train

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yachtie12@reddit

I have a few. I work in education for nhs. The mad rush to train volunteers and healthcare workers who hadn’t worked in a while. I trained socially distanced over 600 people we didn’t really use in a few weeks. Thankfully we had a big team and the local university let us use their halls.

We had just started recruiting overseas nurses. April first lockdown I waited for a bus of 15 nurses to arrive as their visas ran out in the middle east and they couldn’t get into their home countries. We quarantined them for 2 weeks and I did daily door checks

Arguing why I needed Ppe to train and why I could train clinical skills online. Having to evidence how I trained socially distanced. I did that.

Realising my neighbour was also alone and having a socially distanced cup of tea each night at our front doors. We loved that 30 mins each night. Equally I discovered lots of walks near me. Plus lots of birds and squirrels appeared despite living in the city centre.

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LCPO23@reddit

I'm a nurse, after work I'd come home and strip off in the porch, throw all my clothes into a bag and immediately wash them and have a shower before I even said hi to my family.

Said clothes had literally been worn from house to car, car to changing room and back. I wore scrubs at work!

I'd walk around with antibac wipes from the car to the house so anything I touched was clean.

Complete and utter paranoia.

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Albert_Herring@reddit

Dancing in my living room to a livestream audience of a few thousand viewers on Reddit.

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baby_oopsie_daisy@reddit

Crying with joy in Morrisons at being able to finally get hold of some loo roll after a week of having to use kitchen roll for toileting purposes.

Working as a nurse and we got gifted a big box of fresh fruit and veg and my team and I feeling like we'd be given Fabergé eggs.

The local Sikh temple providing rice and Dahl every lunch time at work and after 6 months feeling really ungrateful that I couldn't face any more dhal.

My local supermarket let NHS workers skip the queue to enter if we showed our badge and one old dear had a right go that I didn't have to queue and another woman tried to steal my badge, had a literal fight outside the shop, luckily kept my badge.

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BubbhaJebus@reddit

Being sequestered in a quarantine hotel for two weeks. In some ways it was awesome, but in other ways it sucked.

Our house became pretty bored so my mother who I was isolating with at the time decided we should start doing puzzles and she bought like 10 different puzzles and wherever I would go there would just be puzzles all over the house, pretty weird tbh 😂

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beebee1212@reddit

Having to switch off my 59 year old Dad’s ventilator.

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CosyColouringBooks@reddit

I got told off by a woman in front of me in a queue in Home Bargains because I was standing to close to her, even though I was stood on the X and was also wearing a mask.

Also, queuing to get into Asda and remembering the whole queue snaking around the shop carpark with everyone standing just behind the upturned trolleys that acted as a safe distance marker.

The whole thing was absolutely ridiculous.

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ShinyHeadedCook@reddit

Lmao I was freshly single. Thought was going to be a while so ordered a fleshlight and developed a serious mastirbation addiction for a while !

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ElijahJoel2000@reddit

I was one of a handful of uni students stuck on my campus over lockdown. They had used some spare tables to set up the parcel collection point into a convoluted slide so they wouldn't have to hand anything over to us directly.

We did similar with flour!

It was really hard to get bags of flour in the supermarket, so my mum bought a couple of catering style sacks online. I have a very strong memory of sitting on the kitchen floor decanting it into small ziploc bags, and the stash lasted quite a long time. We gave some to the neighbours as well haha

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pixeltash@reddit

Our autistic son mainly lived on pasta.

Before lockdown kicked in, it was insane to try and buy his usual amounts of pasta for the week and being shouted at by people for daring to buy more than one bag of pasta.

I did try to go to an Italian warehouse for pasta but it was absolutely crammed.

As lockdown came in, it was simpler for my night shift essential working husband to do the shopping at 6am, when the staff knew he was an essential worker so he would be regally waved to the head of the queue every couple of days to buy enough pasta to feed our son.

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Unhappy_Potential_27@reddit

My Sister spent 5 weeks in hospital during covid. Lots of elderly patients came in from care homes into green wards untested that had covid and had to be moved to red wards. She couldn't be scanned without approval, couldn't be prescribed expensive drugs without approval and they wouldn't operate unless an emergency. Then she was told to go home and isolate before an operation when she'd already been there a month. She refused to leave. Funniest thing was after operation high on morphine she ordered nearly £60 worth of penny sweets (free delivery) and didn't know until she was home and got a delivery message. I was more upset I didn't get any.

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FlexyPasta@reddit

The weirdest thing is that I only have good memories of it: the sun shining in London, tanning in my garden with the flatmates, eating sitting on wooden benches in the middle of Soho streets, waking up everyday just to work out and then listen to a podcast. More drinking and outings in London fields.

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Due-Parsley953@reddit

Nothing too weird, but I was furloughed from a genuinely shit job full of shit people and I spent months walking the Berkshire downs in some of the most glorious weather.

I went for a walk in the woods near our at-the-time home, about half way around my usual route I felt I needed the loo. Thought it'd be quiet, so I went to go in a bush. Just as I'd unzipped, I heard a noise so I hurriedly did myself back up and ran along the route I took.

The hurrying had wakened my bowls and so things were getting desperate. Again, I was interrupted as I began to get myself into position. Running again lest I have to explain myself, I took an unusual turn.

Now beginning to panic, I saw a stream with a railing that I thought I could sit over. As I got closer to stream I realised there was a house directly overlooking it. I couldn't face the thought of someone looking out of their bedroom window at my arse hanging over 'their' stream. Inexplicably, I started running again.

Finally, I found my self at the end of my road. Calmed myself down and began to carefully walk towards the house. After 2 steps, I shat myself.

Threw the pants and jeans away.

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Mountain-Sea2898@reddit

I was supporting care homes when they had suspected infections, mostly by turning up so the staff felt supported. First time it happened I called the registered GP who told me to get everyone onto a DNR (ReSPECT). Literally getting everyone to agree they didn’t need emergency services or resuscitation. Bring on the enquiry.

It wasn’t Covid.

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Bitter_Tradition_938@reddit

A patient spay at me during a difficult shift and told me she has CV-19 and she hopes I die, because I’m a foreign c*nt who came here to take their jobs. She did not have a job, but hey ho. I’ve never been happier due to wearing PPE.

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Additional-Lion6969@reddit

I was a lorry driver worked all through it, I was travelling down the M5 for half an hour nothing in my mirrors nothing infront of me nothing came the other way, after about 10 minutes it started to feel odd, 20 I was starting to wonder if this was what post apocalypse would feel like

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StunningLynx8795@reddit

All of a sudden, I was a ‘critical’ and ‘essential’ worker who still needed to show up instead of going in furlough like seemingly everyone else I knew (in the UK). When it came to our pay review, however…

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koduse@reddit

I was a morris dancer. To stave off boredom and have some semblace of social contact our Morris side would have zoom meetings where one musician would play (just one, due to time lag) and the dancers would dance. Of course the dancers would be out of time too due to the same lag issues, not to mention all dances are done in sets so you'd have to imagine what the others were doing.

Later on, under rule of six we'd meet up in a local park. There would be six dancers and a smaller group of musicians who, in theory at least, were seperate groups. Passers-by were generally interested in this (at a distance, naturally). One exception was an man who angrily told me the dancers and musicians weren't separate groups at all and we were cheating. He wasn't entirely wrong, to be fair, as I would dance and then go home in the car with my husband who was a musician. But he didn't know that.

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spaceandthewoods_@reddit

Living in an area that was 99% populated by students, as the only non student household.

By the start of April the whole suburb of the city I live in was a ghost town because all the kids went home. The back garden fences between my house and all the other student houses on my street were only waist high, so if I went into the back garden it was like I had a whole streets worth of private garden oasis stretching out before me. Really did feel like I was the only survivor of some apocalyptic event

It stayed that way until late September

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yourefunny@reddit

My wife experiencing an attempted mugging... For toilet roll. We were living in Hong Kong and this very small man tried to steal my much taller wife's loo roll! She kind of laughed and ignored him untill he was literally pulling on the rolls. He didn't succeed.

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oowhat@reddit

I was out for a run one evening and went down a path that led to a cul-de-sac. As I came round the corner I noticed a lot of people stood at the end of their drive ways with pots a pans and there was one woman in the middle of road who shouted "OK, Now!"

Seeing people having conversations leaning forward so they could hear at 2m distance . It always looked like a fight was about to start

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Sweaty-Possession-19@reddit

Doing CPR on covid patients early 2020 and wondering if I was going to A) catch it B) give it to my family C) all of us die.

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Squeegee_Dodo@reddit

Going to one of my antenatal appointments and sitting in the waiting area, socially distanced from the other pregnant women, all of us alone because we werent allowed to have anyonevwith us, all wearing masks, no one speaking. There was an electrician doing some with on the door that led to the exam rooms, not wearing a mask. I don't normally complain, but I complained that day.

My husband and I had both been furloughed at the beginning of the first lockdown, but he wasn't allowed to come with me to my appointments, meanwhile, this total rando was apparently fine to be puttering about in the waiting area, sans mask. I temporarily saw red.

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Lonely_Touch_43@reddit

Going to a ‘rave’ around the ‘things are opening up’ days where we all had designated tables and had to remain seated 🤣
Also my partner smashed a mug over his own head out of frustration one day, we really were going crazy in that flat but I was simultaneously almost an alcoholic and the fittest I’ve ever been🤣weird times

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SoggyWotsits@reddit

I’d just finished chemo and got a letter saying I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, but I could open a window for fresh air. On the plus side, it gave my hair chance to grow back!

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Rage_PagesArtist@reddit

The deaths of two friends of mine, both morbidly obese and anti-vaxx as was en vogue in that crowd, has always shook me; how can you die from something you never had to get in the first place? How could your politics enter your health discussions and cost your kids their father? Weird to see evil work up close

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JonBarghestTheAuthor@reddit

Looking like Lion-O from Thundercats because I couldn't get a haircut in months and it turns out my hair has a lot of volume!

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kholekardashian12@reddit

I had to take an Uber with most unhinged driver. He was going on about 5G towers causing brain damage and said his mrs' son's friend took a covid test at the hospital and brain fluid started coming out of his nose. He read it on Facebook, so it couldn't be a lie. I tried to gently challenge this and he got irate and asked me what I do. I said I was studying for an MA and he said, word for word, 'What do you know about the world? All you do is read books all day! I'm out here with the PEOPLE!'.

He also said lock down had been really hard for him and when his wife came down stairs one morning to find him drinking, she told him he had to get back out in the world and do Uber again. 'So I finished my pint and got back straight back in car.'

I just started agreeing with him after that. I felt bad for him because he was obviously not in a good place. Still gave him 5 stars since he had my address lol

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99redballoons66@reddit

In October 2020 when my area was in Tier One, I went "clubbing" which was sitting down at picnic tables outside a nightclub, in groups of six, getting drinks by table service from masked waiters and listening to DJs.

At one point someone came up to our table to ask for a light, and security shouted at him to get back to his table.

Later the DJ played something that people started singing along to, and security made them change the record because it was making us sing and singing was high risk.

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beansquirtjuice@reddit

Being a care worker and being told to use the back door to enter the house so I wouldn’t have to walk through the living room near the two clients. Err I’m gonna be washing their teeth and fanny’s later I think I’ll have to be quite close. Just stupid bonkers politics

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Lassmeetsbored@reddit

A man spat at me and my baby in Sainsbury’s because I was wearing a mask. Didn’t really register what had happened until I turned around and saw him yawn over an elderly couple behind me also wearing masks, and made some comments about us being sheep. Funnily enough he didn’t do anything to my much larger husband - also masked - who was a little in front of us in the aisle.

Also the hazard tape around parks and swing sets. Weirdly dystopian image to think about now.

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HorseyBot3000@reddit

This will get buried but

1st lockdown - being passed a prescription for antibiotics for a tooth infection through the tiniest gap in the door of the dentist’s. Queueing for them in the boots car park with a police wagon 20 feet away watching all the folk waiting for their medicines to be passed out of a window.

2nd lockdown(?) November time. Sneaking out to see my family because we thought the family cat was going to have to be PTS and saying my “goodbyes” only for it to be a false alarm.

BlaMenck@reddit

The drive through covid testing with the long test sticks you had to shove right up your nose.

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Moppy6686@reddit

Working in America and having someone flash their gun when I asked them to pull their mask up.

They didn't, so i radioed my boss and she said "i empower you to ask him again."

I hid in the bathroom.

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revenant647@reddit

Also in the US, I went to a gun store and was the only person wearing a mask in this little store full of people except for the FedEx guy who came in. I was standing there wondering how many of those people were going to die

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Cheap-Vegetable-4317@reddit

Not enough.

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_cake_tease@reddit

You were there too long, you hid in the toilets though. 😀 I would've too.

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BlackStarDream@reddit

I went out wearing a mask early on since I already had some... and people started coughing at me in the streets.

Completely forgetting that the point of the masks was to keep the Covid in.

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mjstokes85@reddit

Buckethead in Nottingham, a man who stuck a bucket on his head and cut eye holes out to go to the local shops.

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Being told that I had genuinely ruined someone's day, because I put on a my work-branded mask as I stepped up to serve him.

Customer simply didn't want to see any of us wearing it as he did not like it. I said there's unfortunately nothing I could do as it was work issued and we have to wear them. Walked away from the till in a huff, swearing and cursing.

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Ruu2D2@reddit

My family had weekly Skype family calls . Where they do quiz etc

My husband was essential worker and I work at hosptial .we both were working super long hours ,in stressful jobs

Margotkittie@reddit

Being in the queue at the till at at Morrisions and watching an unmasked boomer arsehole peel cash off a roll in his pocket, licking his thumb between each note, before reaching around the perspex screen to try & hand it to the horrified heavily pregnant woman on the till.

For some reason he was horrified & mystified in equal parts when me, a middle-aged, grey haired, fat frump, called him a selfish cunt.

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stebus88@reddit

At the start of it when you couldn’t find toilet paper anywhere, me and my fiancee at the time seriously considered implementing a rule where we wouldn’t bother wiping our arses but would have a shower after every shite.

Our local supermarket got a huge stash in shortly after so we never got much of a chance to test the rule. It feels like a fever dream looking back!

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Nemariwa@reddit

Sitting crossed on the verge outside my sisters house and having conversations with her family while they were sat on their driveway. I live alone so that was main form of face to face contact.

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sleepyprojectionist@reddit

A chap that I used to work with in a call centre moved on to work at one of the big telecoms companies.

He ended up getting promoted to a delivery manager role of some kind shortly before the pandemic.

Thanks to “helping us all stay connected” he got an MBE.

It’s completely surreal. He was just a bloke that I occasionally went for a pint with, and now he has letters after his name.

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DuckieWuckieNL@reddit

Someone putting rotting meat outside her neighbours house because she left the house regularly. She was a MEDICAL key worker too…

Tissue pile ups.

Water pile ups.

Fights in supermarkets.

People advocating for people to be killed.

£3000 quarantine systems.

The opening up to close down and then open up and create tiers.

So much to say.

Good lord lol

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Dazzling-Ad6085@reddit

My husband coming home from his work everyday with beauty products and apples which he had been given.

It was a strange time

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skrew86@reddit

To this day I'm not sure why sheep stayed at home and wore masks when they dared to go out

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GotAKit-Kat@reddit

Taking the dog for a walk and, half way through, taking the TV remote from my pocket and then realising I'm still wearing my slippers.

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lankymjc@reddit

My Grandad was diagnosed with cancer, given two years to live. None of us could go visit him.

On the plus side, he's blown through the two years and is still kicking to this day!

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SamVimesBootTheory@reddit

Well I guess it's not a memory as such but at some point during lockdown I brought a video game (Assassin's Creed Odyssey) digitally and somehow completely forgot I had brought it until some time later and was staring at my game library in confusion

Similarly my older brother had brought Borderlands 3 and played a lot of it during lockdown and somehow forgot he'd played the game, but I'm the one who remembers him playing it.

And on a less fun one, I think it was on the tail end of lockdown or we'd just come out of it but basically in a fandom related discord server I was in we had an incident which I think if it hadn't of happened during 2020 would've likely just been dealt with a lot differently and just been a nothingburger but what it turned into was a three day long server raid and almost took the entire fandom with it.

Basically I still don't know all the ins and outs but basically some disgruntled people within the fandom who had been fairly popular within just kicked off a complete shitstorm. Now for additional context this also happened as BLM was kicking up which meant the internet was especially tense during this time.

Now the server from what I remember didn't exactly have an outright politics ban but like a lot of non politics focused servers it was sort of I think an unspoken 'don't get too hard into it' and someone had posted a link to fundraisers related to BLM and one of the mods removed said link under the guise of like not trying to upset people with Current Events (tm) which in hindsight wasn't the best idea but anyway this was basically the inciting incident that lead to this like three day long raid of sorts where various accusations were thrown around about all the alleged sins of the fandom, and a lot of it was stuff that like no one had any idea over as it was a lot of stuff that was def in the camp of like 'personal arguments that'd happened in DMs or other servers' so it was like 'idk what you expected the server mods to do if you like... didn't bring this up' and the creator of the media in question was also being blamed for stuff when like very little of what'd happened was anything they had any real influence over (they were present within the server but didn't mod it)

And the server mods basically lost control of the situation as those inciting were going at the speed of light and posting to tumblr as well so it lead to a very one sided narrative taking foot and the people instigating I think didn't really care about solutions and it just felt like they'd sort of just sat on all these alleged issues until the 'right time' to crash out rather than you know bringing things up as they happened so action could be taken.

Just before lockdown we genuinely needed toilet roll, I went to 3 shops before finding some, then hid them under coats in the boots incase someone broke in to the car.

Making my husband sanitise his hands after touching the garden gate after going out for our daily walk.

Worrying I’d be arrested for going to M&S in the next town over. I was pregnant and craving Colin the caterpillar cake. I’d waited in a queue on Ocado for over 2 hours and it was out of stock 😒

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n8te85@reddit

Being stopped and threatened by the police after driving less than a mile to my local outdoor space (for my permitted exercise). I tried explaining that driving meant I come into zero contact with anyone instead of using the narrow tow path along the Thames and passing what seemed like the whole town. She wasn't having it and said that I would get a fine next time.

After deciding to complain, I received a phone call and written apology from the Sergeant who agreed that a little bit of common sense should have been applied.

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mhoulden@reddit

Trying to go on the B&Q website and facing a queue of hundreds of thousands of people.

Work didn't change much. We all worked remotely anyway. I was shielding because I was undergoing chemo and preparing for a stem cell transplant. The team supports corporate VPN systems so there was plenty for us to do.

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McSheeples@reddit

I'm a singer and had a few productions go tits up for the first lock down. Then the zoom music started, which was interminable. When we could perform again the rules were bizarre. We had to rehearse with masks on, although they could be taken off when singing solos. We were spending hours in a room together, wearing a mask was an exercise in futility when we were all taking them off to sing stuff all the time. I was also studying a module in infectious disease with the open university so I was even more aware that the rules were a bit pointless. Pro tip, don't study health sciences in the middle of a pandemic...

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livrim@reddit

Holding the hand of a 35 year old patient who was scared to die alone while their family ‘visited’ through the unit’s iPad and I was wearing outdated and inappropriate PPE but there being no other choice, as a student nurse. Second weirdest was helping my supervisor complete last offices for the same guy two days later on my next shift, in complete silence with my visor fogging up through my tears. He died genuinely thinking COVID-19 was the end of humanity.
Third weirdest was not being allowed to buy more than two bananas at Aldi and worrying about if we had enough toilet roll.

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andyfantastic999@reddit

As I worked in education, I could drive to work. It was weird driving down the M4 and M32 and rarely seeing another car.

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Silver_Macaroon1875@reddit

I was working in central London. From Essex to Blackfriars in 50 minutes and seeing maybe 5 other cars. Awesome, but really not so.

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overworkeddesigner_@reddit

Becoming friends with a squirrel that used to visit our balcony and making it a little wooden picnic table

Getting on an empty 12 car train every night was quite unnerving. Just before the start of Covid, I re-read John Wyndham's 'Day of the Triffids' and coercive every night I got that train just reminded me of that opening where he wakes up in the hospital and finds himself alone

We also went to a socially distanced gig at The Barbican when restrictions were lifted a bit and it was basically just little islands of people with blocks of taped off chairs in between.

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SautedMorsel@reddit

Watching football in the pub with no audio on and the landlady refusing to turn it up because “the particles will spread with the noise”

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Mean-Construction207@reddit

My cousin who lives super close bought me a colouring book (because i'd complained to her that the adult colouring books were too complicated and not relaxing). I dropped a halloween bucket down from my 3rd floor windows, with cat5 cables tied together for rope, for her to put it in!

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Born-Wasabi8016@reddit

Me and my mates riding around the countryside on our bikes with backpacks full of beer and getting shitfaced in the woods like naughty teenagers.

We hear voices coming through the trees and think we're gonna be rumbled.

They came through the bushes and saw us sitting there half cut, we all stared at each other for a few seconds. One them raised a bottle of wine in the air and we all cracked up laughing.

Turns out it was some teachers from the local school doing exactly the same as us.

People wearing masks alone outside or in their cars.

When cloth masks and vaccines were shown to be ineffective at preventing omicron infections, and everyone pretended they didn't hear that or something, and continued policing each other.

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Particular_Bug_3737@reddit

If the tv had told people that the virus only exists above 4 feet, there would have been people crawling round Tescos on their hands and knees the next day.

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Late_Manufacturer157@reddit

Didn’t witness it personally but when she arrived home from work, my sister in law stripped off at the back door of the house before going in.

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Silver_Macaroon1875@reddit

I had to go I to work pretty much for the duration - for the first few weeks my wife made me strip in the porch and put my clothes in a black bag before she would let me in the house, much like a murderer I presume.

flavouredicecubes@reddit

Having a photo of some chickens on my phone so that if the police stopped me and asked why I was outside nowhere near a shop I could say "I'm going to feed my chickens, as is my legal right".

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downandoutitis@reddit

Watching a live stream of my Nana’s funeral, whilst my mum was sat on her own. Madness.

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EldritchSanta@reddit

The medical staff who had helped care for my terminally ill mother breaking the social distancing rules to hug us after she died.

She died at home, not from Covid. It's rough time to remember, but on the whole it was a good death.

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xerker@reddit

Being told I was too close to someone in a queue which only had me in it was a particularly weird one.

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reducedtoashes@reddit

Sitting in the car in the car park of the MetroCentre shopping centre in Gateshead scranning Nandos and playing Among Us on our phones with our friends who were parked in the next parking space.

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JDLoxx@reddit

My Mum who was always healthy got sick, totally unrelated to Covid, died on Easter Sunday just after lockdown in a hospital 200 miles away and I never got to see or speak to her as she was in a coma.

When it was suggested by some well meaning social media post that if you had COVID to put a tea towel through your letterbox to symbolise to your neighbours that you had COVID and might need help. Bonkers.

Also outdoor bin washing. One local bloke started a bin washing business when we were all scared of bin men spreading COVID through touching bin handles. That progressed into a van and cleaning equipment. He's still going, we recently tried to book him for a one off bin clean and essentially got told no sorry we need to book at least 6 sessions (either fortnightly or monthly).

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Crochet-panther@reddit

I went to collect my office plant the day we got sent to work from home (the week before official lockdown). I wasn’t allowed in the building and my manager appeared with a crate of all the plants in the office which then had to live in my spare room for 18 months!

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One-Raspberry4189@reddit

The one hour queue to get inside Tesco then following the arrows that directed people around the store. That was insane especially the exaggerated moral panic from others if you broke the rules.

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Repulsive_Dig_133@reddit

Driving out at 6.30am during the lockdown, and all the birds (mainly pigeons) were just standing on the road, hundreds of them ! They knew something was up. Ducks came to my garden too. Never happened before or since.

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QuintusCicerorocked@reddit

I sent a google image of an anaconda that made it look like it was in my house to a friend for no reason at all. I just…felt like it, I guess. I had never done this before, and haven’t done it since.

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BobBobBobBobBobDave@reddit

Getting made redundant, signing on for unemployment, looking for another job, finding another job, starting a new job and meeting all my team, etc.

And managing to do all of it whilst barely leaving the house.

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Particular-Cup-4202@reddit

sitting in my pants and playing football manager all day and not feeling the slightest pang of guilt

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I was in Year 10 at the time. It was the realisation that when we came back in Year 11 in September 2020, all the work we’d done over the lockdown literally meant nothing and everyone wasted their time because none of it counted toward our final grades.

That and someone kicking the maths teacher out of the online lesson lmao

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Disastrous-Emu2013@reddit

Not leaving my flat for two weeks solid as I designed the form for my NHS Trust that was used to record all swabs taken and had a complex conditional logic algorithm that we had to constantly update every time another change in circumstances was added (always at 4pm on a Friday 🙄) have you been out of the country in the past 14 days?, have you ever touched a frog? etc., I’d become so anxious about going outside my partner had to take me out at midnight in the car to get fresh air and I had my head out the window like a dog

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Srddrs@reddit

Omg I have a great story for this.

A friend moved in with me after she broke up with her boyfriend. At the time I was living at home with my parents.

My friend, let’s call her Lucy, was quite lax with the rules. She was newly single and was def hooking up with people. She brought them back to the house a lot which I wasn’t super happy about but I didn’t really feel like I could stop her.

My family managed to get to their house in Scotland that they live in for half the year. They were coming back, and Lucy had had a boy over the night before. They came back an hour earlier than they said they would, so this boy hid under the desk in the study until the coast was clear and he could escape. It was one of the weirdest, most surreal moments of my life. I couldn’t stop myself from thinking how insane it was that he couldn’t just say hi.

I also remember the completely mental food with a drink rule, and how you had to wear a mask to walk to your table in the pub but then took it off when you were sitting down.

I remember the plethora of STAY 2M APART signs, usually with arrows, but printed on A4 paper, so nowhere near 2m apart.

I remember the zones, so if your street was in one zone, the pub couldn’t be open. But the next street might be in a different zone, so the pub on their street could be.

I feel like we all collectively lost our heads accepting this absolute nonsense. It was wild.

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It was like that for those of us who worked in hospitals, however it was like you were also waiting for things to kick off during the first lockdown too. As if the hospital was going to go from a ghost town to hell on earth at any second.

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ibiacmbyww@reddit

My partner at the time completely losing the plot and giving in to OCD. This manifested in many ways, but the one that stood out to me was them living in just their bathroom and the tiny corridor to the front door, for 4 months. Not even for covid-related reasons, because there might have been a wasp in their flat. I was forced to watch them fall apart from afar, utterly powerless to stop it.

Bit of a downer, I know. We're no longer together, but they're doing a lot better now.

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eggs_and_ham_i_am@reddit

Both my wife and I worked all the way through. We weren't "essential workers" but also my work couldn't be done from home so I went in every day as per normal. My wife occasionally could work from home.

Anyway, our two kids had to go into school who'd opened up especially for parents that had to work. Our kids were social separated at school. The whole assembly hall had been marked out with a grid pattern and all kids had to be two squares apart at all times.

Some days, our two kids were the only ones in, yet still they were forced to stay apart.

Then at the end of school, Id pick them up and they'd get released separately with the teaching assistant getting one, bringing her out to me, then going and getting the other.

They'd then just both get in the car together and we'd all go home and mingle together.

It was all so stupid.

Proud_Pound5825@reddit

Me and my friend would send eachother care packages via taxi. Candles, face mask, chocolate, teabags etc and smuggle in a 20 bit and some raws👌

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Hour-Estate-2962@reddit

Being shouted at by going out for a walk with my friends very early on in the first lockdown.

My friends were my housemates

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Evening-Web-3038@reddit

Doing jury duty during covid was interesting!

The waiting room was about 10% occupancy with people sitting about 10 seats apart (mandated). It was a huge ass room so I couldn't imagine the noise and general mither if it was full of people!

They had a one-way system in place and you basically had to walk all the way to the other end of the room, and then all the way back just to use the toilet! So I typically sat at the entrance of the one-way system so that I could sneak out using the entrance when the receptionist person wasn't looking.

Lots of waiting in line 2 metres apart, blocking the judges who were coming out of offices etc. They also had these shitty plastic barriers in between each juror which was about 0.001% effective in stopping transmission of Covid. It was the most stupid-ass thing I've ever seen lol. And the deliberation room seemed to be an actual court room to allow us to sit a few metres apart.

Final_Blacksmith7447@reddit

Getting my dream promotion two weeks before the entire company shut down aka firing everyone at the same time. Walking out with half assembled totes and boxes of desk stuff with my coworkers at the same time was wild. So many people like quietly crying.

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YourSkatingHobbit@reddit

My nearby shopping centre had to put up a pictorial guide on how to wear a mask properly, but what made it ridiculous was that they had to revise it to add more pics of the incorrect ways to wear one. The funniest/dumbest was one with the mask over the eyes. I asked a shop staff member if that was just a joke, and with clear exasperation he went, “unfortunately, you’d be surprised.” I guess sometimes I do underestimate the stupidity of the general public. (I did see someone wearing a mask gathered under their nose like a moustache, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised).

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