Ever since the days of being the admin asst (and first line of contact) for the public works department in _______, Indiana, I developed my own personal de-stressor for my own survival. It’s tailor-made for the winter months, which are hell on earth when you work for a PWD.
For the uninformed, PWDs get all the flack from taxpayers about plowing, weeds, downed trees, rights of way, easements, utility foul-ups, sewer and storm water issues and anything else you can think of if it pertains to your yard, street, driveway, and even neighborhood. The taxpayer wants everything fixed immediately and did I mention they wanted it done Right Now?
“ ‘Yes ma’am, we (never ‘I’) understand that you’re still snowed in on day (one, two, three, or four) of our snow emergency as declared by the county of Hamilton AND the state of Indiana.
‘Unfortunately, cul-de-sacs are last on the list to be plowed, because Town policy dictates that we must clean the major thoroughfares, minor thoroughfares, major collectors and minor collectors **before **we can get to your out-of-the-way, pain-in-the-ass, no-one-other-than-you-cares-about cul-de-sac.’ ”
And yes, I paraphrased that. But you get the gist.
Or, there’s this. One of my personal favorites:
“ ‘Nossir, on behalf of the Town and the PWD, I sincerely apologize for the loss of your mailbox post during this snow emergency as declared by the county of Hamilton AND the state of Indiana. Please send your particulars to the PWD, care of the municipal town hall, public works department, and as soon as we can, we will be out to replace your mailbox post at no cost to you.’ ”
No, I didn’t paraphrase that, and yes, we always fixed any mailbox post we trashed during plowing.
Snowplows, despite their existing weight when you factor in plow and truck, have to build up a certain amount of speed in order to successfully ‘push’ snow and get it off the road and out of the way.
Snow in any form is astonishingly heavy when you get enough of it compressed, such as inside the curve of a snow blade in front of a truck running anywhere from 30 to 45 mph. It’s plain, old physics.
At times, there are casualties, such as poorly-secured mail boxes on their posts that get whammied by that wave of snow as the plow goes by. I lived in a neighboring town for years where my box got knocked off regularly during plows. No big deal, because I never did anything to fix the problem in the first place. Not the city’s problem. ***My ***problem.
I went and just whacked it back down on the post and went on about my business. Never reported it, never complained. A non-issue for me. Obviously, YMMV depending upon where you live. :rolleyes:
Multiply those two scenarios by the dozen or more eight hours a day, five days a week for a week or two or three, and you begin to grok why I developed my de-stressor, which is…
A bathtub full of water hot enough to boil you, with roughly six feet of bubbles in it, a good book, a half-ton of vanilla-scented candles, Comcast’s best classical musical channel playing in the background, and - most importantly - a ridiculously-large glass of Sauvignon Blanc or Malbec (in a plastic safety goblet, of course) and the bottle stuck in a bucket full of ice if appropriate.
It’s all in the details… 
