Snow update

I guess I never updated everyone about the snow.... So, we basically had an unbelievable 5 snow days! Friday Feb. 5th was an early dismissal of 4 hours. Monday, Feb 8th through Thursday Feb 11th were full snow days. Friday Feb 12th and Tuesday Feb 16th were 2 hour delayed arrival days. That all adds up to 5 days - although I came in on time the delayed arrival days and worked from home for many of the full snow days, so it wasn't really like a super-long vacation really.

There hasn't been measurable snowfall in ten days but that doesn't stop the streets from being a complete mess. Some sidewalks still aren't shoveled so that means pedestrians have to walk in the streets. Many streets are only one lane because there is so much snow piled up on both sides of the street that there is only a clear space for one car to get by. Some streets that are plowed have ridiculously high snowpiles on the curbs, making visibility difficult when trying to make turns. It aggravates me that there seems to have been very little effort on the part of the city, county, state (whoever is responsible) to go back and do any kind of clean-up plowing. At this point, the plows could have easily come back through and made more room available on these one-lane streets. This weekend has been helpful because it's been in the upper 40s - some of the snow is starting to melt.

At work, my Executive Director berated the entire staff at our monthly staff meeting on Tuesday afternoon. She went on about how just because the office was closed for that long, that didn't mean that everyone should do no work. And, we should have all been checking emails and voicemails remotely. She didn't want to hear anyone say anything like "swamped" or "digging out" because of their heavy workload. And, she said that this would have been a great opportunity for those of us potentially interested in teleworking to show her how much could have been done from home. She finished by suggesting that maybe we should not use our flex day for that pay period since we basically got paid for not working all those days. Well, we were all shocked by her reaction and her assumptions and the more we thought about it, we got furious. Why does she jump to the conclusion that we did absolutely nothing during the time off? And, well, really, isn't that's what is supposed to happen the office is CLOSED! Pretty much every person in our office did check their email during the week and many of us conducted teleconferences from our homes. There is obviously a big difference between telecommuting and trying to get some things done with our limited resources during a natural weather disaster. But no one said anything to her and we all just muttered to ourselves about how wrong she was. Although most of us refused to give up our flex day as she suggested - it's one small act of rebellion. I thought about it but in the end, I took my day off. After all, I pretty much got everything done that I needed to do. I'm no longer swamped in the slightest.