I live in Maine (southern Seacoast), and work in New Hampshire, I’m used to snow, driving in blizzard/white-out conditions, it snows, it’s winter, this is normal, you just deal with it as it comes.
Work is understanding about people calling out due to inclement weather, do what you feel is safe, that said, we almost never close due to weather, in my 5 years with this company, we’ve only closed once, and that was due to the NH governor declaring a state of emergency (2013 winter Nor’Easter, IIRC…)
We’ve gotten an official snow day just once since I’ve been here (~17 years) – the Valentine’s Day 2007 blizzard. Otherwise I’m not essential and can let my boss know I don’t think it’s safe. That happened once this winter. Last year the garage door iced over and broke so I was late having to deal with that!
I work for the school system, in special ed. When the schools have a snow day, I don’t go in. When there’s a 2-hour delay, I go in at 10:30, since school starts at 11. It’s a definite perk, because if the weather is bad enough for me to worry about driving safely, well, the schools won’t be open anyway.
Our district distinguishes between 10-month employees (teachers, etc.), 12-month employees (principals, central office staff, etc.) and emergency personnel (building services). On many snow days, it’s just the students and the 10-month employees that don’t have to go in. Sometimes, they’ll close and give the 12-month employees a 2-hour delay or telework. And then there are days like today where the whole system is shut down.
My mother was a directory assistance operator for a couple of decades. She was considered essential personnel and in fact once my father drove her to work during a blizzard when the roads were closed.
When I volunteered at the zoo, the keepers were (well, are) essential, and volunteers were requested to consider themselves so as well. Animals still need to be fed, obviously.
Presently, no, it’s not considered essential that I be at work during bad weather. I can do whatever is needed for my job at home as long as I have a working phone and internet.
Years ago, though, I was chief safety officer and a first responder for a company with extensive field operations. Even if they’d pull the guys out of the field due to weather, if anything happened to the equipment on the client’s site, I had to go out immediately and file a report and to supervise any employees working on reclaimation efforts. I’ve had county sheriffs come and collect me on a snowmobile to get out to the job site when it was really bad.
No, but then again I work in a field (elective surgery) where there really aren’t any “essential employees.” If there’s disaster-level weather, we simply shut down.
Back when I delivered newspapers we would be fired if we didn’t show up, no matter how bad it was.
One night the agents were called in and told to be there, the warehouse had no power, no lights and the trucks didn’t make it because they were stuck on the highway.
We were still expected to show up but we could come in late without being penalized the usual $75.
I was talking with an ex-coworker the other night and she said the policy had changed. Somebody, somewhere, the police? governor? told the newspaper to cut it out.
I’m embarrassed to admit that my father will call The New York Times if his paper isn’t there, even if there is a blizzard. I’ve been trying to convince him to read it online but he’s a Luddite. (And then he’ll call me to recommend an article, saying something like, “It’s on page A6, in the upper right-hand corner.” Not realizing, of course, that I read the paper online and have no sense of where articles appear.)
I work for a university. Not only am I not essential, I’m not even supposed to work from home on days the school shuts down due to weather.
Win Place Show, I wouldn’t worry too much about those weather people. I know that some hospitals will put doctors and nurses up at a nearby hotel if there’s serious weather predicted and they don’t live in the neighborhood, so I’d be surprised if the news stations didn’t do likewise.
I work outside utility construction and I’m required to work regardless. Amazingly enough, no matter how bad it is out or how much snow we get, my little Honda’s (civic and now Fit) always manage to get me there just fine.
I work at a university library. I think our director is essential, but none of the rest of us are. However, we try our best to keep the library open and running with a skeleton crew so that students on campus can come in to do their work and basically have somewhere they can go so they’re not trapped in their dorms. Any personnel who come in on a snow day get internal comp time. I live a mile from work and usually walk there, but I have such a non-essential, non-necessary job that I don’t bother to come in on snow days unless I’m thinking of taking extra days off in the future.
Today school was closed and it snowed about a foot here, and there was no way in hell I was going to walk through this storm to get to my office, only to sit there and do nothing. I’d rather do nothing in the comfort of my own home, thank you very much, and I did!
I run my own business so I can decide if I need to go to work or not. I’m an a well water contractor and an electrician. Water and electricity are essential services so if I need to be somewhere I am allowed to go there. Generally however me showing up in the middle of a snowstorm isn’t going to resolve the issue so I’ll just spend my time at my home or shop prepping for whatever I’ll need to do when the weather passes and deal with the damage left in it’s wake.
When I was teaching secondary school I was sort of an essential employee in that they needed a certain number of staff in to maintain a safe adult-student ratio. However, the only real essential employee was the caretaker/janitor, because they were the ones who had to open up the school, mae sure the heating was on, etc. That’s why caretakers in the UK traditionally either live on school premises in a dedicated house or live very nearby in housing that’s often subsidised.
However, if public transport is down so that there’s no realistic way the students can get in, the teachers aren’t expected to come in either. This is London and not many of the teachers at any of the schools I worked at came in by car, and even if they had they might not have been able to get in. If the school had paid for taxis then that would have cost a fortune and the teachers still might not have made it in (and expecting the teachers to pay would be ludicrous given the costs involved for most of them).
We rarely have snow days in London anyway. I can count three over the last ten years - some schools had a few more - and that was unusually high.
So how do the essential services cope when there’s a snow day? Well, hospitals here usually have some staff accommodation very near the hospital and obviously they have some staff who were already there and now can’t leave. I guess the staff there just have to double up their jobs for the day even if they’re rostered off on the few really bad snow days, and electives are cancelled.
London Zoo also has a small amount of on-site housing for staff too and perhaps this is one of the reasons. Hotels often have a few live-in staff here too and pub landlords nearly always have a flat above the pub; hotel and pub staff cannot afford central London rents and on those snow days it would be physically impossible for them to get to work.
Transport strikes or cancellations due to bomb threats, etc, are probably the other main reason this is necessary and they happen a lot more regularly than snow days.
When I was in the military, I was usually considered ‘essential’ during snow storms and such. I was an aircraft mechanic and we had to keep the aircraft ready to fly.
One of my favorite Dilbert cartoons has an announcement in the office building that due to bad weather, all non-essential personnel can leave work early. In the next pane the Pointy Hair Boss is looking out a window towards the parking lot and says something like “Easiest round of layoffs ever!”
Healthcare worker here so yes I must go in. Luckily work rents big suvs and trucks to come get us if needed On the other hand my cousin sent me a pic on her way to wish this morning (this is a southern state) showing the roads COMPLETELY iced over. She works for a car manufacturer there and still had to go in. Totally ridiculous in my opinion.
I’m also in a university library, and we are not an essential service on campus: if the campus shuts down, we do too. Essential services include facilities for the dormitories (gotta keep the heat on), food service for the dorms, animal care in the research labs and things like that.
I previously worked at a university where the library and associated staff were considered essential employees and expected to report. They’d fought hard for that long before I was there and honestly, it didn’t make sense. I understand wanting to be seen as essential to the academic life of the university, but I’m not risking myself to be there. It was a campus that was almost entirely commuter students, so if the university shut down, there was almost no one there who might come in to use the library.
On the other hand my cousin sent me a pic on her way to wish this morning (this is a southern state) showing the roads COMPLETELY iced over. She works for a car manufacturer there and still had to go in. Totally ridiculous in my opinion.