Very rarely will we get a ‘snow day’, I think it’s been a few years since it happened. If we do make it in on such a day, there is usually a free lunch or something offered.
Years ago, at a sucky job, I called in on a snowy day. My boss said he can send someone to pick me up in a 4 wheel drive. Without really thinking, I said ‘no thanks’, and hung up.
mmm
My company doesn’t care where I do my work or what time I do it, as long as the customer is happy.
My current customer is the USPS. They have a *THING *about getting to work through any weather . . . : roll eyes:
I work at a college, so there are occasional snow days. Sometimes, we may be allowed to take personal time if there’s a storm.
I work at a university that was renown for not closing for any reason (when I myself was a student, we only had one weather-related closure and one flooding related half day in 4 years). But then a professor was killed trying to drive in on a snowy day several years ago. Now we get snow days.
It’s complicated.
I work retail, in a Big Box Store.
Smaller stores belonging to the same company may close due to bad weather, the large ones like the one I work in do not.
On the other hand, in bad weather, sales are down, customers are rarer, deliveries are delayed . . .employees are needed, but not as many as normal.
So in general, if you decide the weather is crappy, and you can’t get to work, no one will hold it against you (unless they already think you are flakey). You are probably hourly, and if you have personal days or vacation time, you can use them, otherwise, good luck making up your hours (more likely if it snows earlier in the week).
The last major snowstorm we had, Thursday was mega-busy, people preparing for bad weather. Friday the snow came in late (mid-morning) (and I wasn’t scheduled to work, so I stayed home). Saturday, I could see that at least some of Friday’s deliveries had made it, but Saturday’s were mostly delayed. I did get free hot chocolate and free lunch. That’s not typical, but wasn’t surprisng either.
In five years, I was once told to stay home because it was going to be -20F the next morning. Another time, it had rained hard for the weekend before and the roads were flooded. I was maybe halfway to work, having taken a dozen detours, when I got a call telling me not to bother if I didn’t need to get anything urgent off my desk.
That’s it for officially sanctioned weather days although, if it was so miserable that I decided on my own to stay home, no one would care about me taking the personal day assuming there wasn’t some major project to get out.
Most of the people at my office can work from home. I was told if school is closed I can stay home too.
That means I have to work with excited kids running around the house though.
Last time it snowed in Barcelona was in march of 2010. The previous time was in november, 1999. Several of my college classmates touched snow for the first time in the snowfall of march of 1993… I think the previous one was the huge one of 1966, before anybody in that class had been born. We might be due another in a couple of years.
When it happens, the whole city collapses. We’re already lousy at driving when there’s water coming out of the sky, despite that being a common occurrence in the fall; snow? Even the little men in the traffic lights are freaking out! So, and given that my current job accepts WFH pretty routinely, I think anybody claiming that he worked from home in such a day would be more likely to get responses of “you mean you didn’t go out to see it???” than “no, you have to come to the office!”
Same here. Many folks work remotely several days a week so we all have home offices and the proper software to work efficiently from home.
I work in a government office and it has closed a few times for blizzards, etc in the 10+ years I’ve been working here.
I am fortunate to work for a company and have a boss that understands if you need to stay put during a snow or ice storm which the PNW just had last week. No need to use my PTO for these events which is nice.
I live and work in Austin. Central Texans are basically allergic to snow. It’s hard to learn to drive in something you’ve only read about or seen every 3 or 4 years. Since so many of the state and university workers and professors live out in the boondocks, a brief dusting of snow or ice gets us a delayed start. There’s a lot of complaining about it, but they don’t have a lot of choice.
I’ve got some experience driving on snow, but I won’t drive if its snowing or icy. My luck, the first person I’d run up against would either be the extra cautious extremely timid driver who ends up slamming on the brakes and skidding into me or it would be the “I know how to do this!” jackass who is going to drive like it’s a balmy day in June no matter what. I hate 'em both. Besides, there’s a hill and a wall and a bridge and a creek that I do not want to meld with.
DOD stuff, so I can’t work from home.
Nava, you make me smile. 
I’ve been working in northern Canada for about 20 years now, with many years of schooling before that. In all of those years with multiple employers, I have never once had a snow day or worked for a place that closed due to bad weather. I’ve been late for work a couple of times in the past digging my truck out, but I was still expected to show up. Even when it’s 40 below with a minus 60 wind chill and five foot visibility from falling snow.
I think there’s a sort of perverse Canadian pride that we can handle things like that. It doesn’t hurt that we are prepared for it.
Same here. I remember during a really nasty blizzard I walked to school and there was all of six students there out of 200ish. I ended up in the library reading all day, which young-me thought was the best school day ever.
Come to think of it, I don’t think schools around here quite completely close, either. But the staff would be something like one assistant principal and half of the security guards, plus any teachers who absolutely had to go pick up those tests to grade anyway and braved it. They’re certainly not going to be bringing in any subs on those days, which means me.
Federal employee in Washington DC. If the government shuts down, I get the day off, unless it’s my regularly scheduled telework day, in which case I’m obliged to telework (or take leave). The government also has an intermediate status that allows people to take a day of leave without having asked for it beforehand (i.e., leave is deemed approved for anyone who wants it). That doesn’t really affect me; as a lawyer, I don’t have to get permission, but it’s useful for the staff.
We’ve shut down a few times due to hurricanes.
What’s fun is explaining to clients who may be in California or Chicago that no, we have worked ahead due to the coming storm and we cannot accommodate your request.
Fortunately we’ve had no damage to the building except for loss of power.
I lived in San Antonio TX during the 85 blizzard. The mayor (Henry Cisneros) shut the city down. I had moved there from a city in the mid-west with massive snowfalls.
I had to teach my neighbors how to clean snow off their cars. Start at the bottom so the stuff at the top just slides off. And yes, I had my mid-west snow brush in the car.
Yes, but my campus tends to call a snow day at the very, very last possible moment. Several days I’ve driven over in really shitty weather and received text notification when I was pulling into the parking lot.
I work in and through Dallas a lot. It snows (and ices) every single year in Dallas. At least once and usually 3 or 4 times.
Yet somehow their deep-seated Texan attitude is “It never gets cold or wet in Texas; every day is 100F and parched, pardner.”
So the TX DOT and the local authorities all have exactly the same plan for snow / ice prep: “Ain’t gonna happen, pardner.” And the same plan for snow / ice removal: “It’ll melt in a couple hours, pardner.”
I recall Dallas utterly crippled in (IIRC) 2012 for 2+ weeks after first it did, and then it didn’t. Both their plans A & B failed utterly.
Idjits.