Thanks to COVID and work from home and smartphones and Teams/Zoom, I’ve gone from an hour commute each way to a constant stream of meetings, texts, emails, IMs, etc. that must be addressed immediately, from 8am to 6pm. I don’t think the “back in my day” folks fully understand how much more people are asked to do now. I once obliterated an older colleague when he complained that youngs these days don’t put in half the hours he used to. I was like “Um, you used to go to the print office and wait four hours for prints to come out, take them back to the office, proof them, then take the documents to the courthouse and file them in person. In the same time, I’m responding to 100 emails, reviewing 20 documents ON MY PHONE, conducting 3 conference calls, listening to 2 coworkers’ breakdowns, and drafting, reviewing, printing, proofing, and submitting the documents you used to sit and wait for.” To his credit, he said I was right and I never had a problem with him again.

All of which is a long way of saying that, sometimes, more often than I would like, I can’t just “go to the restaurant” because of time or because I’m no longer commuting. For all their problems, the apps mean that I’m eating fewer frozen pizzas and more poke bowls and salads.

I can’t think of the last time someone working a register was anything more than polite. 99.9% of the time, we don’t speak in any meaningful way. Their work neither adds value to nor takes value from my day. Which, to be clear, makes me want their jobs to be much, much better. At least give them something to sit on, for goodness sake.

Not to mention schools release at like 2:30. Need your kid taken care of after that? It’ll be a few hundred $/mo for an after-school program. Sorry working parents.