September and the back to school season (although many schools are not going back) have always signaled the end of summer, vacations, Summer Fridays (remember those?) and in many quarters, a shift in thinking and energy, and time to put our noses to the grindstone once again. We know that entrepreneurs never really unplug, but the above is how it is for most of the population.

Of course, this post-Labor Day will no doubt be far from business as usual, despite the fact that this just in: According to the CDC, only 9,210 Americans Died From COVID-19 Alone – Rest Had Different Other Serious Illnesses. As the CDC quietly reported, “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.” Given this, and the decision by many elected officials to ignore this information, rather than the New Normal, we prefer the term the Great Reset. Interesting the number of theories that had been either floating in the ethers and/or enacted that were put to the test or, in some cases, put to an overdue litmus test. In no particular order, consider the following:

1. Universal Basic Income: during the lockdown, it was called unemployment benefits, but tomato, tomahto, free money – same difference. Result: the national debt skyrocketed as the Wall Street Journal asked  Is $600 a Week in Extra Unemployment Aid Deterring People From Seeking Work?

2. Working Remotely. Companies had little choice but to allow employees et al to work remotely, and from all reports, it’s all well and good. Still, it’s only been a few months, although maybe seemingly longer for others (Divorce rates in America soar by 34% during the COVID-19 pandemic with marriages crumbling three weeks into quarantine and newlywed separations doubling to 20 percent). Yet back in 2013, when then-CEO Marissa Mayer eliminated Yahoo’s work-from-home policy, as Fast Company reported, Yahoo Says That Killing Working From Home Is Turning Out Perfectly After receiving tons of heat for taking away workers’ remote privileges, Yahoo now says that things are working just as planned: engagement and productivity are up. And heads up: Big Tech has already announced that they will offer salaries based not simply on skill level but also on the local COL/salary rates. Also, given Big Tech’s penchant for H1-Bs, how long will it be before even domestically based remote workers are replaced by those much less expensive offshore remote workers? Once Pandora’s Box is open, there’s no putting the lid back on.

3. More Seats = Increased Revenue. We’re sure that at some point, some highly paid consultants gathered focus groups and reported back to the airlines, movie theaters et al that if they decreased the size of the seats, they could increase the number of seats available, and profits would be up. Makes sense, no? That didn’t quite work out in a social-distancing world now, did it?

4. Office Efficiency: Cubicles/Open Office Plans. Again, might have seemed like a good idea at the time but in the Reset, not so much. With a large number of workers all in basically the same room, no wonder, as CB Insights reported, “in the US, 2 out of 3 workers still feel uncomfortable returning to the workplace.”

5. The Lure of the City/Urban Sprawl. For a long time, the growth of urban centers seemed to know no bounds. Now it seems that Millenials are abandoning the Big Cities. Truth be told, it was only Covid in part: it was also the politicians and their policies due to Covid who killed much of the draws of living in or migrating to the big cities (Cuomo’s coronavirus rules: No dancing, no cornhole, no karaoke, no kidding). As a result, millenials et al have moved on to so-called second or even third tier cities. When it comes to NYC and San Francisco with their unaffordable rents, let’s face it, you were paying for the night life, the restaurants, the culture, the opportunities and the experience, and once the thrill is gone, or in this case, taken away, well, time to move on. Unfortunately, sometimes there’s just no going back.

6. Remote Events and Conferences. There’s always a silver lining, and now that conferences, networking events, panels, etc have gone remote, the experience, in at least some cases, has gone global and you may meet people whom you might never otherwise had encountered. On the other hand, there’s no real replacement that the kismet that in-person events offer.

7. Amazon delivers. Business certainly picked up for Amazon during the lockdowns and why is it that all of those Amazon boxes were immune to the virus? It’s no wonder that Bezos surpassed the $200B personal worth mark. And note to self: towns/cities/states that had enforced ‘no plastic bag’ laws rescinded them during Covid, as reusable bags are not necessarily as sanitary as single-use plastic ones. Could be that part of the Reset should be to return to the Old Normal, for sanitary reason…

8. The Local Economy Reset? Why is it that larger chains, such as Walmart and Home Depot, for example, were allowed to keep their doors open and/or ship while, say, local grocers and hardware stores were deemed ‘non-essential?’ Deliveries were delayed and weren’t those moms and pops called ‘convenience stores’ for a reason?

9. Tech may finally be emerging from its rut. Is the ‘game over’ mentality abating? The lockdowns kicked in and Zoom rose to prominence from out of nowhere, despite the fact that it had been around for a while. Where Twitter once held absolute sway, we see more and more Parler invitations, and it’s no wonder, considering Twitter’s censorship – even when it came to Covid tweets that were not in lockstep with the media’s talking points. For quite a while, tech seemed to be more or less focused on making incremental improvements to what existed as opposed to truly innovating. The lockdowns might have revealed white spaces that might otherwise have been missed and leave it to entrepreneurs to find and seize opportunities.

10. Dating in the Age of Covid. We know people who’ve met via dating apps during the virus scare, and people who put pairing off on hold. We’ve yet to see if there will be a Covid Baby Bump – pun intended – and considering that a New dating site allows Jewish mothers to set up dates for their children, seems a certain segment of the population is getting impatient…

The idea of the New Normal has been drilled into us ad nauseam, but it seems people have their own ideas and haven’t lost the ability to keep their own counsel. Rather than capitulate to Draconian measures mandated by politicians who’ve given themselves unlimited emergency powers without expiration dates, many people social distanced their way to other parts of the country where life seemed more, well, normal. The rules may change, the technology may change but human behavior, for the most part, does not. Cramming employees into open offices, for example, where there was no privacy, which decreased productivity and where you were subjected to your co-workers phone conversations, both public and private, was not conducive to fostering good – or healthy – work environments, Inc pointed out long before Covid (9 Reasons That Open-Space Offices Are Insanely Stupid). Hopefully, the seeming health crisis – and social distancing – will lead employers to start reconsidering some of their policies.

Will the cities come back? As Forbes noted (Mayor Bill De Blasio Plans 22,000 Layoffs, As People Flee New York City In Droves), “New York has endured Sept. 11, the financial crisis, strikes by municipal workers, blackouts, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and many other challenges, but always seemed to find a way to rebound and reinvent itself.” True that, but this time the problems in the various cities, most notably New York and San Francisco, are due to the disastrous policies of the leadership itself. In their case, the New Normal just won’t work. The systems can be rebuilt, but to use the language of tech, you have to start with a hard reset. Onward and forward.