"How dare you close early during this SEVERE storm!"

[HALFHUMANHALFZOMBIE]

Lady: "but it's not THAT bad!"
(My manager and I look at each other, to set the scene here, it's snowing like crazy and the wind is fierce through this whole conversation).

Lady: "It took me 40 minutes to get here and I just came to pick up my son's laptop, can't you just get it for me quickly?"

If the weather's so bad she wouldn't bitch about the 40 minutes.

Screw these Retarded customers if the store is close you get the hell outta there... Trespasser.

[Tithera]

Years ago, when I was still delivering newspapers...some old bastard called the company, and complained because his paper was late. Never mind that we got roughly 3 *feet* of snow the day before.

I had a similar situation when I still had a paper route. It was back in '03 during the summer. I had just got back from softball practice early because some pretty black clouds were rolling in( I live in Ohio and my town doesn't usually have tornados, but all the adults are freaked out that we will someday) so I was rolling my papers when warnings were going off on the T.V. and radio. It was just my lil sister (then 10) and myself(then 13) at home, my older sister was staying the night at a friends(it was a friday) my mom was still at work in the next town over and my dad was somewhere in Virgina(he's a truck driver, then an over the road driver). I couldn't get a hold of my grandma to come and watch my sister while I went to deliver my papers because she gets freaked out when tornado warnings go off on the T.V.. So, I turn it to a cartoon, tell her to stay here, and if the tornado sirens go off, to run over to our neighbors house really fast.
So, I'm off on my cross town routes ( I was doing a friend's while she was out of town and at the time, she lived across town from me as was her route from mine) I'm on my bike, looking over my shoulder at the clouds coming in from the west. A get done with my friend's route and am half way down with mine, when it starts lightning. The rain hadn't started yet, but i knew it would eventually, so I pedal fast, not caring wheter I make it on the porch at this point. Then, I'm about 2 or 3 blocks from my house when the wind picked up and the sirens went off. And, this is also the point I realize, the none of neighbors were home. So I am panting, but pedally like a maniac down allies and literally through yards, randomly throwing papers, not caring much where they land because I was 1) scared for my sister because she doesn't know 2 shits about what to do during a storm and 2) I was riding on a metal bike, now completely soaked (it started raining about a minute after the sirens blew) and it was lightning really bad. I get home, just let my bike lay in the lawn get in the house and head into the basement with a hysterical sister. It eventually blew over within 20 mintues, with the power out for another hour Turned out, there had been a tornado touched down in the next town over, west of us, causing them to set off the sirens. Our town to this day still has not had a tornado.
About an hour after the power comes back on, I get a dozen or more phone calls from the people on my route, complaining that their paper wasn't on the porch. It old them what had happened, but they still complained. About 3 minutes after I get off the phone with the last complaint, my upervisor Jane calls and starts yelling at me about papers missing and not on porches. I told her what happened and she didn't believe me (she was out of town, but still got calls on her cell, so she didn't know about the weather). The next, I quit on the grounds of "safety first for carriers and families. If they wanted their papers so bad, they can drive up to the gas station and buy it themselves."
Yeah, sorry kinda long, but it is my first post and I want to make impression.Thank you for listening to my long, long rant.

[Bloodsoul]

So outside of the time I spent actually working today, I've spent most of the day reading stories from this site and I have to say.. hearing about your tale felt like being stabbed in the heart. I've seen people come in through storms, I've seen people do all sorts of things just to get what they want or because they didn't get what they wanted, but to be angry over a lowsy newspaper in the face of danger like that? Wow...

[PW_Elle]

Icky

Buying my People magazine and doubletallmochajavachaipunkinlatte is NOT frivolous!!!

Gross. You just told me you ordered a two shot of espresso chocolate coffee with chai and pumpkin, with milk and a little foam. That sounds completely disgusting.

[BookstoreEscapee]

Gross. You just told me you ordered a two shot of espresso chocolate coffee with chai and pumpkin, with milk and a little foam. That sounds completely disgusting.

Hey, don't look at me, I only drink hot chocolate

[Jack7957]

I can't even imagine how you people deal with the insane snow/ice/popsicle type weather.

It's easy if you're used to it. Plus we don't have to worry about our homes being blown away, or buried in mud, or ripped apart by an earthquake.

Here's a lot of photo's from the storm back in Febuary.
Your Snow Photos; Our RAW Footage

[NightAngel]

The weight of snow like that could easily cave in a roof. The houses are buried in snow... literally. I'm guessing power outages, road and school closings.

[Jack7957]

The weight of snow like that could easily cave in a roof. The houses are buried in snow... literally. I'm guessing power outages, road and school closings.

That's why I mention being used to it, we know to clean off the roofs. There really weren't any road closings, just roads that hadn't been cleared yet. They concentrate on the main roads first, then the secondary. No power outages that I heard of though.

[Crawling_Chaos]

That's why I mention being used to it, we know to clean off the roofs. There really weren't any road closings, just roads that hadn't been cleared yet. They concentrate on the main roads first, then the secondary. No power outages that I heard of though.

I live in Western New York, North Tonawanda(That is in between Buffalo and Niagara Falls) to be specific. Yes I am a witness to the "October 13th Storm". We also get blitzed by snow, hardcore. In fact, we had some nice Lake Effect come blazing in on Feb 6th which turned the highway from West Seneca down past Hamberg ice and veritable salt-flavoured proto-slushy. Totalled my car that day, no one got hurt, but I know must deal with a car payment.

As I said before, I was a witness to the "October 13th Storm". Basically the whole Buffalo-Niagara region was subjected to 50+ mph winds, freezing rain, snow, and the nice fact 90 percent fo our trees still were HEAVY with leaves. All this combined to produce some of the most spectacular tree-snapping I have ever seen. I mean there were literally city streets that looked like lumber yards or recently felled tracts of land. You had wood splinters, branches, and whole trees just buckled over. In fact, the Town of Tonawanda was literally a maze of detours as some streets lost 80 percent of their standing trees. Needless to say, this resulted in power outages and other fiascos, including unscrupulous people selling generators to folks in need, only to have those people find out the box had cinder blocks in it. Generator theft was also quite high, I mean your talking city authourities CHAINING generators to the lamp posts they were powering to prevent theft. All in all, the region is still cleaning up brush in some areas from it.

I also remember in 1999, my senior year in high school, when we got buried in this freak, heavy, blizzard. When all was said an done, we had to have the Natianl Guard come dig us out with dump trucks and other equipment. In some areas, the snow was literally high enough to crest the street signs. My senior class was hving a ball with this, mainly because school was closed for a whole week and we lost none of our standard vacation days.

Anyhow, I do remember people during both incidents being petty at times. People wondering why their pizza was taking so long and other such nonsesne. Persoanlly though, I would rather deal with snow than anything else.

[bean]

see, our district manager, whom i call grimace (no love lost. i hate the bitch) spends more time trying to turn a holiday book drive into a contest between stores rather than an honest charity that she doesn't care what kind of condition the weather/roads/people's cars are in. a foot of snow and the salt truck/plow fleet hasn't been out yet? get your ass to work. snow, then rain, then sleet, then back to snow, then more freezing rain, and then a lttle more snow mixed in with rain and sleet for good measure? wrap your tires in chains and serve the public. we're here to make money, not worry about your safety.

/end

We had pretty much that exact pattern in January. Except it also knocked out one phase of our 3 phase power, taking out most of our compressors (grocery store), phone system, and registers. We didn't open until noon (normally opening at 8), I showed up 10 minutes early for my 5:00 am shift. Since the phones were out, most employees didn't show up (they tried to call to see if we'd be open).

Nobody got written up for the no shows - in fact, the store manager personally went up to everybody who did show up and thanked them for trying to make it in. I wound up making breakfast for everybody who did show up at the store's expense

On the other hand, at 4:30 am when I left my apartment, the roads really did suck, but I still made it to work on time (complete with bald tires). The roads were sanded/salted around 6:00 am. And it was also really amusing watching customers walk face first into the electric doors, then look right at the "Closed due to power problems" sign, then start pounding on the doors. A lot of us laughed and waved back.

We did lose anywhere between 40k-75k of food though.

[Hemily]

The weight of snow like that could easily cave in a roof. The houses are buried in snow... literally. I'm guessing power outages, road and school closings.

not only caving in roofs, here, we had snow falling from the roofs and into the streets, a 16 year old girl died from it, and a TV crew got a bit too close, they where interviewing a couple people about the snow slides from the rooftops, then one came down and hit the camera, was a bit of a wakeup call for the people