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In reply to the discussion: Coronavirus has people calling the police and shaming neighbors on social media [View all]LisaM
(27,758 posts)We haven't gone up there since the shelter-at-home order in Washington, but I am on a couple of local online groups there and people are nasty, posting instructions on how to rat out your neighbor. They have particular disdain for weekenders and tourists, and of course are far more tolerable of locals who go off-island to shop at Costco every week.
I think a lot of it is (as with most things) confined to a vocal minority, but I realized that a lot of it is people complaining about things that bother them to begin with, now with the weight of local authority behind it.
I realized that I did this myself. We live in an apartment complex with several buildings, and we are in the one that has the (currently closed) office. We've been approached in the last few days by delivery workers (they look like gig workers, they're not coming in UPS trucks or anything), asking where to go to drop off groceries or packages. Sometimes they can't reach the recipient by phone. So not only are the recipients dropping the ball, we are now confronted with social distancing issues for someone else's packages. i admit it, I got pissed. I posted something here, but worse, i posted a really strongly-worded diatribe on our online bulletin board asking our neighbors to be available for their own packages and to be sure to direct people to their own buildings, since people were letting multiple delivery people into our building and one day there were something like 50 packages piled up in the lobby, signaling a potential 50 people being let into our building, 50 potential infectious germ carriers.
I don't think I was wrong to complain, but my tone was terrible and I realize that it brought to the surface all my annoyance with the incessant package delivery that goes on in our apartment, which has significantly increased since I've moved here just five years ago. We used to have a nice little bench in our lobby, it's been replaced by an ugly package locker. Every day when i come home, there are multiple Chewy packages and Blue Apron boxes in the lobby. Amazon delivery people are constantly trying to get into our secure lobby even though (when the office is open) they are supposed to go there. I let my aggravation with this inform my tone of asking my neighbors not to send everything to our building now, which i shouldn't have.
All of this is a long way of saying that it sounds as if people are taking this opportunity to complain about things that have been bothering them all along. They do have reason to want people to observe the shelter-at-home restrictions, but in the case of the small towns, there is obviously a contingent that resents weekenders, and in the case of the front-yard wrestling, there are probably people who never liked it and now have their chance to gripe about it.
I'm sorry I ranted at my neighbors in the tone that i did, but I think that at least I caught myself before it got worse.