[tristor]

I don't know if it's directly due to Covid, as the grandparent asserts, but it's pretty indisputable that the quality of customer service has eroded across pretty much every industry sector, at least in the US. This could be due to companies generally being short-staffed, but it does seem like even when you interact with someone the intelligence level (or maybe more charitably, the experience level) of the people you interact with has gone down.

[vlunkr]

Yeah I can see that. Calling big companies has been terrible forever, but customer service in physical stores has gone downhill. Mostly they all seem short-staffed. Seems like lots of stores let people go, and didn't replace them in favor of self-checkout systems.

[VBprogrammer]

Really grinds my gears when you go into a physical store and they say "oh, we don't have that but you can order it on our website!"

Bit of self reflection required about thier likely employment prospects.