Frustration daze

The past two days have been frustrating, and even alarming. I ran errands yesterday, three stops and I was the only one who scanned-in using the Covid Tracer App (and the non-scanners didn’t sign in manually, either).

First stop, a computer store I often go to for stuff. They had the hard drive I went there for, but most of their shelves were empty (because such things come from China and it’s been hard to get stuff shipped here for about a year now). Customers were mostly good about physical distancing, and perfect at checkout.

I then went to a home centre store. Again, non-scanners didn’t sign-in manually. My frustration was that the *one* thing I went there for I couldn’t get because the relevant part of the aisle was closed off while they did stock-take. Customers mostly ignored physical distancing.

Then to a supermarket to pick up some stuff for the week. One non-scanner grabbed some hand sanitiser on the way in—but didn’t sign-in manually. Customers were pretty bad about physical distancing, but better than at the home centre.

Today I was supposed to get a delivery between 8am and noon, a time I booked last week. At 10:07 I got a text from the delivery company asking me to confirm my address. At 12:56pm I got another text telling me the item was “out for delivery”—56 minutes past the scheduled delivery time.

At 1:48, I got yet another text asking me to book delivery for a package. I hoped that meant that the order is coming on two separate days (I ordered two things), and not that they arbitrarily decided to re-schedule the delivery. I did as I was asked, and and that delivery is scheduled for Friday between 8am and Noon. Yeah, sure it is.

Well, it turned out the delivery company arbitrarily moved the delivery to Friday. No explanation, they just did it. I’m almost always home on Fridays, anyway, so if it really happens, it won’t inconvenience me.

However, once I get the delivery, I’m going to complain to the company I ordered from because of the appalling service from the delivery company they used, and also because it already wasn’t even close to the target delivery times stated when I ordered. It makes me wonder whether it’s worth it to order from them at all in teh future, and I know they’ll want to know that.

I obviously fully realise that my frustrations are “first world problems”, which, coincidentally, is the world I live in, but among all my annoyances and frustrations, the thing that bothered me wasn’t the challenges I faced, it’s that even now—EVEN now—people are still not following Level 2 rules. What the hell is wrong with those people? Do they *want* us to go to Level 3 lockdown like Auckland has three times now? Because they’re sure acting like it.

And that’s the thing about all this, and the point of my little tale of woe: The mounting frustrations put me in a bad-ish mood, BUT, I still followed all the Level 2 rules. No one has any excuse to not do the same. IMHO.

I have a feeling I’ll have more reasons to complain about such appallingly cavalier behaviour in the future, with or without any more frustrating days.

This is a revised and greatly expanded version of something I posted on my personal Facebook.