[throwaway22032]

Yes, this matches how I feel.

The world was just very different pre-2020. It's all just gone phone call nonsense. Everyone is slacking off, productivity is through the floor, endless queues for everything, shortages, public transport use way down, etc.

I haven't even had a proper full time job since then because as far as I can tell literally 0 work from office jobs exist any more. They just went extinct.

The idea of even using an indicator like inflation to capture this is weird because there's been a qualitiative, not quantitative, change in what life is. It's not just "before but a different % of things".

[phantomathkg]

Explain why you think people is slacking, please?

[spaceman_2020]

I can’t say why. But work seems to have no “gravity”.

Like in my brother’s government job, coming into office was a given. You could have serious career repercussions if you were slacking off.

Then the lockdown happened and work moved online. Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.

Now they’ve got in-office mandates again but some of the workers just don’t come in when they don’t fee like it and just log in from home. And no one seems to care or even mind.

Work has started feeling optional, not essential.

[Goronmon]

It's funny that you haven't actually said that less work is getting done. It just sounds like you are saying that "working from home" is equivalent to "slacking off", even if you didn't intend it to come out that way.

Maybe people were always "slacking off" at their jobs, they just had to work harder to hide it when people were in the office?

[arcturus17]

I posit something similar in a sibling comment, because productivity indicators have not significantly dropped and I doubt the impending recession has anything to do with a newfound collective laziness.

[hotpotamus]

I've been on calls where half a dozen people are trying to find someone to complete some repetitive technical task that isn't easily given to automation. I suspect the idea was to find some poor junior type person to take on the task (preferably in a "best-shored" location). Typically it was me, a senior, who would say, "let me put on some headphones and listen to music, and I'll just work on it". But if I wasn't in those calls, I wonder how many more person-hours would have been spent on something that would take me an afternoon at the most to complete.

All that is to say is that it seemed like there are tons of people caught in a Bullshit Job situation where the job seems to be mainly trying to foist the work off on someone else. And I suspect that a lot of the work they're trying to find owners for is of highly questionable value in the first place.

This was long before the pandemic too, but it does seem like an awakening that other people had in pandemic times.

[arcturus17]

Are there any indicators that real productivity has in fact declined?

An alternative hypothesis is that a lot of time spent at work was bullshit (ie, unproductive) to start with - only many people have realised it now.

[jjav]

> Everyone was slacking off, including the managers.

That sounds mostly like a good thing. Turns out that killing oneself for maximizing productivity wasn't a smart move, or even necessary for things to work ok.

[M2Ys4U]

Not going in to the office is not the same thing as slacking off.

[throwaway22032]

General attitude is obvious, people just don't care as much about their jobs as they used to.

The WFH thing is an example - people have started to treat going to work as some sort of optional annoyance.

[tankenmate]

During the 1750s the average work day was 11 hours, 208 days a year (2288).

During the 1860s the average work day was 16 hours, 311 days a year (4976).

During the 1920s the average work day was 8 hours, 243 days a year (1944, and productivity was up according to Henry Ford).

Most tech employers in China pre COVID, 10 hours a day, 297 days a year (2970).

Netherlands pre COVID, 5.8 hours a day, 234 days a year (1357).

US pre COVID, 6.9 hours a day, 239 days a year (1649).

Which one of the above examples cared the most about their jobs? Which was the most productive? In terms of business profit PPP? And wage PPP?

[throwaway22032]

I don't care how many hours a day people work or about your abstract economic figures.

What I care about is that when I go to book a driving test, I can get one. I could do that pre-2020. I now can't.

This experience has been replicated across the economy.

Things have stopped working properly.

As far as I'm concerned your "PPP" is intellectual masturbation.

The population is unhappy because structural changes, not only limited to coronavirus, have meant that work doesn't pay.

[AlexandrB]

> What I care about is that when I go to book a driving test, I can get one. I could do that pre-2020. I now can't.

Sounds like a supply and demand problem. The marker solution would be to increase wages for driving testers and attract more candidates to these positions.

[throwaway22032]

Yes, across the entire economy, because it's not just driving tests, it's everything.

What we actually did, is to print money and give it to people for not working.

And so, as in the article, 20% inflation. Oops!

[AlexandrB]

This is pure anecdote. Any evidence of this besides personal experience? I've had a WFH job since before COVID and everyone seems very engaged in what they're doing.

[throwaway22032]

Yes, the evidence is my life. I don't need to convince you, why should I?

What does your one job have to do with the general situation of the country? The issues with waiting lists are well publicised.