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My first self realization moment was a black Thursday. I said pretty much the same, reflected on it later as most neurodivergents do. And haven’t gone to a black Friday/Thursday since. One I didn’t need the shit, two if I really want it then I can wait a day.
Also on something like blisteringly humid 40°C days, where you’re only doing inside service but tables insist on eating outside
Like bro, I’m a person too
I remember on 9/11/01 people coming into my job like that: “so crazy huh? Can’t believe you guys are working. Anyway, let me get a half pound of potato salad.”
I don’t mind as long as it’s said gratefully. Like they hoped for a miracle and you’re it.
That comment also sucks when working holidays, particularly Thanksgiving. “They should let you be with your families!” Ok thanks, get out!
If that person wasn’t there, you’d still be open though. From what I have seen of people going in during a holiday, they are all overworked with no time off and cannot get what they need beforehand, leading to them being essentially forced to.
Most of the time, it’s the store being open that causes customers to come in. People expect places to be closed on holidays, so they check online. If the store’s listing on Google Maps or whatever confirms it is indeed closed, most people will just say “oh dang, too bad”. If it actually ends up being open then they go, buy their stuff, and then make a sympathetic comment to the employees.
I agree and that’s how i operate. However the counter argument to this is, if a store is open and no one shows up at all then next year they will not open because there was not a single sale. Not sure how acurate that is in terms of corporate BS but that is the general counter argument i hear.
Exactly.
“Stfu, I need my stat pay”
I would usually respond something along the lines of well, people still show up so we’re here. Don’t miss that line of work one bit.
Yeah that’s why, if I say anything, I just thank them for being there.
Serious question: Is it about the tone or would you rather nobody comes? I mean it’s the same working hours for you. Where I live, shops are closed on holidays and Thanksgiving isn’t one so don’t ask me if I might be that customer.
The entire economy can’t just shut down because of some snow. Realisitically the most dangerous part about that weather is the driving, if we just built public transit, their commute wouldn’t even be that different from a sunny day. If you dress for the weather you’ll be fine.
But why can’t the economy shut down for a few days?
In the past the economy had to shut down because of bad weather regularly, now we have all those machines and produce much more efficiently.
The economy is tired. It needs to shut down sometimes. :(
Have you hugged your economy today? ;_;
In the past they worked a 6 day work week. They’d only call it off due to weather if they had no infrastructure to handle the current weather.
We could institute not working and shutting things down anytime it snows, it also means your municipality will likely gut their snow clearing budget as they won’t justify clearing the streets unless its going to be used for economic activity. They’ll instead wait for the snow to stop and only run clearing operations then as it would take less passes with the plow compared to constantly clearing and salting/sanding.
That’s one way of saying you haven’t commuted by bus, train, or subway in your entire life, I guess.
Yeah, public transit is great for many reasons, but reliability in bad weather is not one of them.
Maybe you’ve just never got to use good, high quality public transit.
In Hong Kong, after a Category 5-equivalent typhoon hit, the metro system was back up again within two days with apologetic announcements that some trains were slightly delayed due to debris on the track.
It’s a region dependant luxury. Where I live, transit has tons of tweakers and unstable people. Especially during winter. The city doesn’t bother cleaning blood off the walls for weeks after a stabbing.
I’d love some proper investment into transit and security on said transit, but I’m not holding my breath
Probably not the best in the world, but I would consider my city’s public transit network way above the average for what I know. It’s lovely most of the time, just not at rush hours when millions of people have to be moved at the same time, and specially in bad weather. I’m not sure what your standard for high quality is but I’d bet that even the best one gets overwhelmed in these situations and it’s an absolute hell to ride as well.
Edit: even though I think it is still good, It just came to mind that trains have been crashing as of lately in my country. So the quality could fall due to corruption and capitalism at any moment really…
If its over capacity every rush hour then they should consider running more trains and more frequently around those times, or depending on the trips taken, invest in another transit line to ease congestion.
I think I know which country they are talking about. I wouldn’t call it over capacity, but at capacity which still means metro every 3 minutes and every train is full. The experience of so many hundreds of people moving in and out can definitely be overwhelming. Combined with the noise, the heat in the summer and the smell, even if it’s on the better side of the scale world wide is still far from ideal.
If its at full capacity its time to consider expansion unless the city has strict rules in place to limit growth.
You cannot oversize the infrastructure for that 1% peak use. It’s just not feasible. It’s the ‘mOaR trains/rails/busses…’ instead of lanes. There isn’t any efficient way of moving that much people around in that little time, imo the solution has to include distributing the use of the resources, like with wfh or even flexible schedules (honestly we should aim for just working less. We humans are doing and making too many things all the time…). What do you do with so many busses and trains just 30 min after the rush hour when almost no one rides it? I’ve seen those massive parking lots where the American yellow school busses lie the 99% of the time when they’re not swarming all the roads, our current lots for busses and trains are quite big already I don’t think they can be scaled that way. And then you have drivers and other workers…
Unlike more lanes, more trains is far easier to implement, cheaper, and basically takes up no space. The extra trains can be used to swap out during maintaince and repairs. They can also be deployed during abnormal congestion such as concerts or sports events.
If our cities will let robotaxis on their streets, i see no problem with robo trains which are literally attached to rails to guide them and would be far easier to implement emergency safety features like auxiliary brakes.
if we built public transit
It’s almost like they’re implying it needs expansion and improvements. Maybe if you read past the first sentence without waiting to be immediately outraged, you’d have caught that.
No, I’ve read the whole comment. And I think it’s wrong all of it. Of course we should build good, robust, and reliable public transport networks. But I think those shouldn’t be oversized in excess. In this case I consider much more efficient to shut down or downsize the economy, than to prepare busses and trains, and rails and roads for events that doesn’t happen that often. ‘Sorry boss, the union has put out a message that today we aren’t working.’ is what it should be.
Yes it can.
Is this a technical argument like, “It absolutely can shut down. It shouldn’t, but it can.”
Or are you arguing that it should shut down for a day? If so, do mean for holidays or more like a general strike? In either case, would there be exceptions?
The economy will survive if businesses aren’t open for a day or two in places the weather is angry
As long as people don’t go driving around in cars unnecessarily, heavy snow and storms aren’t that bad to get around in. Buss lanes are usually the first to be plowed and walking in a snow storm is always so cozy. Just wear a lot of layers.
My area experiences snow 2-3 times a week regularly. Thats a bigger issue than a handful of days a year.
“Experiences snow” is different from “gets dumped on for hours and hours straight like those once every year or two level storm”.
We get a lot of lake effect snow. The bigger storms aren’t cleaned up for several days and in major situations like that, sure shut non essential services down, but I’ve heard people make this same argument about a light rain so I’m always a little skeptical is it actually the weather or do they just want any excuse not to come in.
Erm actually, have you considered that line go down?
Okay, I see what you mean, now. I think I was interpreting “shutdown” in a more absolute sense and “economy” in a broader sense. I was concerned more along the lines of utilities, EMS, etc being unavailable.
Public transit suffers in bad weather just as much as car traffic.
Trains just end up moving slower, trees fall down on tracks. Busses are just big cars and need to drive on the same roads as the cars do.
Subways give zero shits about inclement weather.
In my city there are many stretches that run in the surface. The station I took when I was a kid gets veniced once a year or every other year when it pours and shuts the entire line or maybe just a chunk in the middle of it. It’s very much affected by the wether, maybe a bit more than roads since they always set up an auxiliary bus line to cover any shut down.
When there was some ice and snow in my country, the cars and busses didn’t work. Trains were still going, so more reliable indeed.
If a job doesn’t pay well enough for snow tires it must not be that important
Snow tires make roads safer in winter but certainly aren’t nearly as safe as a train or tram on rails would be. You having snow tires also has no effect on the other motorists, whom may choose not to use snow tires.
Removed by mod
There should be the opposite of a dollar store right next door to a regular retail store. Everything’s marked up by a factor of 10. It’s open 24/7/365 come hell or high water, like a waffle house. It doesn’t sell much unless everything else is closed. Employees get hazard pay as a function of sales. If sales go up, so does hazard pay.
This is basically a gas station. Open 24/7 and sells common stuff like bread and milk, but you often pay significantly more than at a groccery store due to convenience.
[Facepalm]
I just reinvented the convenience store.
“They make you work on a holiday?” says the reason they make you work on a holiday.
Look it’s just fun to go out in the snow 😅
in the winter, I push my errands out until there’s enough snow to slide around in, if I have to drive
you’re telling me that I get to go drift (reponsibly, of course), I get a basically empty store with nobody blocking the aisles or anything, the parking lot is wide open, and the checkouts have no lines? fucking sign me up
I really think the argument that “people who go into stores are the reason the store is open” is kind of dumb. The reason the store is open is because the owners want to make more money, and they think they can do that by staying open. I had to do the errand sooner or later anyways, it makes no difference to the amount of money I am spending at your store if I go in today or tomorrow. but it’s more fun and convenient for me to go today. if you were closed because of the weather, I would be mildly disappointed, and then forget about it in 3 minutes because I’m having fun sliding around.
blaming the customer in this situation is like blaming the customer for your boss paying you below minimum wage.
I don’t have much guilt over using a grocery store or gas station on a holiday. Retail or restaurants, on the other hand, I’ll try to avoid. Not all businesses are equal in daily necessity.
I’m in retail management. My mom told me she had a baseball sized tumor they needed to be removed.
I was like “I don’t know what to say I haven’t prepared for this. All I can think right now is ‘you’re still coming in tho right?’”
