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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
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.
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.”
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.
Not to mention that many places take volunteers to work holidays since not everyone celebrates. And it’s not uncommon to get a bit more per hour from it.
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.
The catch 22 is that the companies are opening on these days to catch the customers that come out. People go because the store is open, the store is open because people go. If people consistently, collectively didn’t go in, the stores would close.
but what fraction of those people are those that wouldn’t just go the day before or after closure instead?
The only gain the store is making is customers who need something that day and will go to another open store instead
Exactly…? If no one goes in, the store gains no benefit (only expending the cost of being open). But stores will open just on the off chance of customers coming in. And customers do go in, because the stores are open. Sometimes they go in and don’t even buy anything.
If you want retail employees to be able to spend holidays with their families, don’t go shopping on holidays. Make it unprofitable to be open.
nah. I’m not taking responsibility for shit management. I don’t care if they’re open or not, and I think they shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t change how much money I spend at their store, so they should close to save the labour costs. but it ain’t my responsibility.
“You” the general public, not “you” mrgoosmoos
Exactly.
“Stfu, I need my stat pay”
Yeah that’s why, if I say anything, I just thank them for being there.
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.
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.
I don’t mind as long as it’s said gratefully. Like they hoped for a miracle and you’re it.
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.
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.
People with mobility issues and even just people with shorter legs can struggle to walk around in a snow storm, especially when budgets vastly prioritize car lanes over sidewalks and pathways.
And if you do have to drive its fine so long as you leave earlier to account for slower speeds and some delays like plows or accidents.
Erm actually, have you considered that line go down?
My area experiences snow 2-3 times a week regularly. Thats a bigger issue than a handful of days a year.
And your area probably has the infrastructure to deal with the snow.
In areas where it’s a few times a year it doesn’t make sense to maintain a fleet of vehicles to make conditions safe.
They probably just pour salt on everything and then wonder why all the plants and fish are dying.
Given buddy’s outfit in the meme, I’d reckon they get snow pretty often. Sure if you get 5 cms of snow in Florida, thats a weather emergency. 5 cms of snow in Minnesota is just business as usual.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
Yearly flooding is infrastructure neglect and poor design, not a flaw inherent to the subway.
Tell that to the danish public transit system shitting itself because we’re getting a bit of snow tonight. In reality, there’s a better chance of you being able to drive your car to work, than the train being able to go. Because your car isn’t bound by minimum speeds, but if the train can only go 10 mph because of snow and ice on the track, it’s just not feasible to run it.
That sounds like an infrastructure specific problem. Many countries have trains that work reliably in snowy conditions or have train cars designed to clear tracks for other trains.
If no one plowed or maintained the roads, your car would struggle too.
The problem is brake length. If you get ice between the steel rails and the steel wheels, you’re going to have a very very long brake length, that is already pretty long for a train. It doesn’t have to snow a lot for ice buildup to occur, and having a plow to clear everything everywhere becomes less feasible, the better your rail coverage is. If for example you take the railline where I live. It’s about 2 hours long at train speeds. If you were to put 1 train on that line, that just continuously cleared the rail, you could clear it once every 2 hours. If it continually snows, that’s likely not going to be enough for the trains to safely opperate. Now my line is really not that long compared to the rest of the country. It’s roughly 120kms long. Compared to the 2615 km of train tracks we have, you’re going to need A LOT of trains that can get rid of the ice buildup. You’re also going to need A LOT of people to work those trains, people who wouldn’t be needed 98% of the year.
So sure, you could just throw billions and billions at the problem, but it’s just not going to happen, and it probably shouldn’t either.
You seem to know a lot about trains and snow. Tell me, how is it then that Sweden and Finland continue to have trains in the winter? Or Switzerland or upper Austria for that matter?
I don’t know a lot about trains and snow. All I know is what I’ve been told every time trains are cancelled here in Denmark because there’s snow on the tracks, or because a few leafs have landed on them.
But it doesn’t take all that much to realize that a very small contact area, with low friction materials, with a slippery surface inbetween makes trains a lot worse at both speeding up, and slowing down.
If train is late its not because of “few leafs”. Wet, smushed leafs pack on the rails like film that slows down both acceleration and braking, because there is not friction, but there needs to be shit ton of them.
Ice effects supricingly little to acceleration/braking. Trains are so heavy that the pressure on the tracks melts the ice allmost instantly. Bigger problem is the snow, that starts to pack on parts of the train.
Id imagine big part why trains in Sweden and Finland stay on time is because train companies know trains move slower in certain times so they adjust the schedule accordingly.
That’s rough. I thought operating rail systems in inclement weather was a mostly solved problem.
Trains on rails have basically no traction, since the contact surfaces are steel on steel. Anything that makes them slippery becomes a no-go as soon as hills are involved, and stopping is also significantly impacted.
Having them not require tires is a solved problem, but as you can see that comes with some compromises.
They have grit dispensers for the wheels for this exact problem in snowy areas.
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.
“They make you work on a holiday?” says the reason they make you work on a holiday.
It isn’t like they can send you home. I know, I know, no raindrop feels responsible for the storm, but the people who give half a shit aren’t nearly numerous enough to get companies to stop this, even if all of them stopped going.
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.
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 don’t need to go to the grocery store daily because I have a refrigerator.
I don’t need to go to the gas station daily because I don’t drive hundreds of miles a day.
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.
Me when there’s blizzard conditions outside and three people have died but Taco Bell is still open
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?’”
