Suddenly, it’s okay to just not turn up

Recently we have noticed an unhappy trend. People book into our courses and then don’t show up on the day. I’m not unsympathetic, and I know that life can be unpredictable, but we’re seeing this occur in numbers well beyond the reasonable.

Not only are people failing to show, they are failing to let us know that they won’t be coming, and not bothering to apologise afterwards. We teach in the alternative economy, so people learn permaculture in the first half of the day and help out in the garden during the afternoon. The help in the garden “pays” for the course. We chose this model because we wanted to make permaculture more accessible, and because we believed that getting hands-on experience in an existing permaculture system would inspire people to start their own. It’s been hugely successful and we usually have a wait list for courses, so when six out of ten people don’t show it’s not just the lack of consideration for us and other students, but for those that could have come if they had cancelled in time.

My lovely friend, Rhonda, suggested that this post-COVID trend might be something to do with the courses being free, so I’ve been asking around. It turns out that last minute cancellations and no-shows seem to be trending. Everyone I speak to is noticing the same thing, regardless of whether or not there is money involved. Many restaurants are now requiring a security deposit which will be forfeited if you don’t turn up and one of our favourites tells us it’s actually turning out to be an unexpected boost to their income. My physiotherapist is considering something similar. He tells me that even with a phone reminder and the easy option to cancel by replying with a single letter ‘N” they are still getting a surprising number of no-shows. A friend with a window cleaning business is getting abrupt cancellations on the day they are booked to work.

It used to be considered impolite and inconsiderate to do this. If you made a commitment you either kept it, or let others know as soon as possible that you wouldn’t be able to do so. I can understand how a few years of people genuinely having to cancel at the last minute would have had an impact, but I also think there’s a residual “fuck it” factor. Many people experienced the other side of this behaviour during COVID. Events and holidays were cancelled. People lost their jobs for failing to have a vaccination, or for refusing to reveal whether or not they had been vaccinated. I think even the most robust of us went down the COVID rabbit hole and found a version of ourselves we didn’t particularly like. There’s a lot of accumulated anger, and trauma, and frustration, and grief and not a lot of places to put it.

Lately I’m reminded of the devastation I felt following my father’s early death from cancer. At just 58 he was gone, and people were initially compassionate and supportive, but around the one year anniversary of his death there was a noticeable shift. Why was I still sad? Surely a year was long enough! Time to just get on with life. (For the record, grief has no time line and in my case the second year was when it really hit me that all of those special days, like birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries and happy achievements were going to be the days when I most grieved for my Dad, for the rest of my life).

Unlike my Dad, I don’t think COVID is gone. I think what stopped was the public policy around reporting numbers and imposing restrictions and wearing masks and proving we had been injected or suffering the consequences. Suddenly, we were not being told the numbers, although people have undoubtedly continued dying. The press conferences stopped. The advice from the Chief Medical Officer was silenced. There was an initial sense of relief. We could all get back to normal.

But we can’t. Friendships, marriages, work relationships and families have been broken. The vehemence and anger of the pro-vaccination vs the anti-vaccination debate has created a conspiracy of silence where we seem to have all tacitly agreed not to speak of it. There is no debriefing, no calm analysis or reflection, no forum for common ground or shared grief. “Let’s just all pretend it didn’t happen and move on.”

I do understand the reluctance to revisit what felt like an emotional battlefield. I tried to stay calm and rational and supported people that both chose to vaccinate and chose not to vaccinate. I also had moments of madness. One of my closest friends is now estranged, and just like students that fail to show, she simply dropped out of my life without farewell or explanation. Perhaps this is at the heart of what we’re seeing. People no longer have the emotional bandwidth to deal with even mild conflict. Many are still heightened, quick to anger and quicker still to hide. When faced with the risk of push back versus the annoyance of simply failing to show, the “fuck it” factor kicks in; we take the line of least resistance.

I don’t know if time will heal these wounds. It feels like some a fundamental piece of our social contract with one another has been excised. Every human for themselves.

I’m getting the train to Sydney again on a regular basis to visit my daughter and my grandson. I notice that more people will leave a bag on the adjoining seat, and even when there are no seats left, those joining the train won’t ask them to move the bag. I try to get the single seat at the rear of the carriage so I don’t risk catching anything and passing it on to the baby. I understand. But I’m the only person in the carriage with a mask and it feels like wearing one makes other people uncomfortable.

Maybe the problem is that we are all feeling the pressure to pretend that COVID didn’t happen and to move on. I can’t do that and I do wonder what the cost of denial might be to the mental health of others. Trauma not processed is lingering trauma, and a lot of what we’re seeing is fight, flight or freeze behaviour. That won’t change until we find ways to honestly and compassionately deal with the trauma of the last few years.