Snow - A Santa Or A Grinch?

Snow. For little kids you hear a scream of joy (visions of snowball fights, snow angels, snowmen fill their head). For adults there is this groan (unless you're a school teacher because around here you're guaranteed to get out of work for even the chance of flurries). There's a mad rush to the grocery store (apparently we can't live without milk and bread). The frantic watching of TV in hopes your work or school closed. Then the waiting. I for one did get the obligatory milk but also margarita mix and champagne to help wait it out.

Part of me still likes snow. How can you not like it? It's so beautiful and everything just sparkles, especially with all the Christmas lights. The other part of me that knows it would take a massive blizzard for my work to close dreads it. That part reads up to 12 inches as meaning "great, I might get in an accident on the way to work on Monday".

The funny thing is in NJ my work was super flexible about snow. Come in if you can, if you can't not a big deal. They plow roads in NJ and there isn't as much ice so driving in snow ends up being not as huge of a deal as driving in snow and ice in VA. Still my first snow storm up there we got 18 inches (which was more than I had seen in awhile coming from VA). I was like a little kid playing outside with K's dogs, enjoying a snow day and the best part - roads were clean by mid-day so off to the mall or Starbucks.

I'm not going to bash my job specifically here (even though their policy is they won't close unless its some earth shattering event) but I'm going to bash companies in general that don't think 12 inches is enough to close. My dad called me this morning to tell me the mall was opening at 8am. Is it really worth it for Victoria Secret (or anywhere else) to open and drag some poor high school kid out of bed? I mean they may get five customers all day - fools that drive SUV's and saw the commercials and think they can tackle a snowbank. We'll be lucky to be plowed out on Monday.

I can understand companies that say essential personnel - like fire departments, police, hospitals, security, power companies. But the key here is essential personnel - you don't really need the VP's secretary back in the office to get the hospital running, or the power back on, or the police out on the roads. Essential personnel should be people that you need to keep the city going not randoms. Essential personnel knew when they got hired - get an SUV for the few times you might need it to get to work. They get overtime or extra money or whatnot. I don't get extra money to try to navigate my 2000 Mazda though 12 inch snowbanks. My car couldn't even get in the driveway last night and there was barely an inch on the ground. Now I'm hoping I'm far enough in my yard that a plow or some stupid kid doing donuts in the street won't hit it.

So snow is my Santa and my Grinch. I like seeing it for all of an hour or maybe even half a day on Saturday. But I'm ready for 80 degree weather and to melt all of this away. I'm convinced I was born to live somewhere with a beach and warm weather all year - I just need to win the lottery first.