Adults are throwing tantrums—at the restaurant, on the plane, at home. blame the pandemic

Mr. DiDonna says he got snapped. “Do you love me that much?” He barks. The other person argued back, with Mr Didona responding with “a sprinkling of four-letter words”. “Afterwards, I was infatuated.”

Theater producers in Seminole County, Fla., say they have a short fuse these days after 18 long months of the pandemic, decisions about masks during rehearsals, employee vaccinations, and whether and how to continue performances. “It’s the navigating that’s exhausting,” he says.

If it seems like more people have had a short fuse lately, you’re not wrong—at least, not according to restaurant servers, airline employees, and customer-service trackers who say they saw a wave of tantrums. Is. At home, at work and out in public, many of us admit to blowups, which we soon regret.

Psychologists say the renewed gloom from the Covid-19 delta variant after a burst of optimism from spring vaccination makes the current pandemic phase more gruesome than the previous one. They say it is becoming increasingly difficult to mobilize empathy or control our knee-jerk reactions.

“When you anticipate that something temporary is going to happen, you are able to absorb higher levels of stress,” says Pauline Wallin, a psychologist in Camp Hill, Pa. “When things don’t work out as expected it makes us more likely to be aggressive with ourselves and with each other,” she says.

Companies that track consumer behavior are seeing unusually high levels of consternation and dissatisfaction. Customer satisfaction is at its lowest level since 2005, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index, which tracks the behavior of 300,000 consumers across 46 industries. Tired consumers are prickly and demanding, and companies may not have the resources to provide all the products and services they did before the pandemic, says Claes Fornell, founder of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based data analytics firm ACSI. LLC, which conducts surveys. and provides customer-satisfaction analysis to customers.

He says the pandemic has created product shortages, labor shortages and supply problems. He says the gap between supply and demand—along with unusually high levels of tension—is creating friction, which sometimes results in aggressive negotiations.

Airlines have been a hot spot. The Federal Aviation Administration has launched more than 750 investigations related to unruly passengers so far this year, up from 146 in 2019.

Restaurant staff say they are seeing more patrons acting up. A recent survey of food service workers, including servers, bartenders and hostesses, found that 80% said they considered virus-protection measures either hostile, according to a May survey of more than 2,000 workers by One Fair Wage, a nonprofit. Have seen or experienced the behavior. advocacy group, and the University of California Berkeley Food Labor Research Center. Reports of bad behavior ranged from rudeness to sexual harassment to mask policies, says Saru Jayaraman, a social science professor at UC Berkeley and lead researcher on the report.

Betnese Mamuye, a 23-year-old server at Kaldi’s Social House in Silver Spring, MD, says wearing a policing mask has become part of her job, making matcha lattes and very veggie sandwiches more complicated and tiring. She recently asked a customer to put on her mask when she got up from her meal—to which she replied, “That’s stupid,” she says.

Pre-pandemic, “typically you get a concussion a week, and you bounce back,” says Brandi Felt Castellano, co-owner of Apt Cape Cod, a restaurant in Brewster, Mass. closed for a day. Give employees a pay break after what they describe as poor customer behavior.

She endured humiliation all summer long after her waitstaff demanded customers to know why a table wasn’t available for them or why a cup of coffee didn’t come out early, she says.

“It started to affect the way employees felt — about themselves, their willingness to come to work.” When closed for one day in July, a sign told customers: “If you can’t be kind, you can’t dine!”

Tension is spreading in other workplaces. Jessica Carlson, a director of supply-chain operations in Washington, DC, says she recently lashed out at her boss and threatened to quit. The frustrations of virtual communication with her coworkers provided an immediate spark, but the stress of the pandemic has been weighing on her for months, she says. “It’s unnatural for me to go up to my boss, cry hysterically and say, ‘I’m leaving,'” she says. “I snapped.”

Her owner, James Wells, says he let her talk. “Everyone has their own moment where they need to get out,” he says, after a quieter and more concrete conversation.

It is particularly difficult to absorb the emotional toll of the pandemic as Ms Carlson cannot rely as much on her usual stress relievers. She says crowds and masks have made gym workouts less appealing, space restrictions make it harder to visit beauty salons and she is now cautious about visiting older relatives.

Anthony Willen, a sales director in Arlington, VA, says he yelled at his wife after a recent home renovation in which some equipment was installed incorrectly. In retrospect, Mr Villan says his anger was not really about the equipment, but rather stemmed from the stress of the pandemic of recent weeks.

Their two children are going back to school, but are not yet eligible for vaccination. He worries about how the delta version will affect classes and quarantines. And the family’s pandemic pup has acquired a taste for slippers. “I was exaggerating for all these outside pressures,” he says.

The argument, he and his wife say, flew away after a few minutes. His wife, Rebecca Villain, says, “He apologized without saying anything, but I knew he was dealing with a huge disappointment. And who could blame him.”