January 23, 2005 Snow Day Day Snow, snow, my gods, the SNOW! The last time I saw snow this high was in the blizzard of '78. Back then it was worse, because snow had accumulated for weeks beforehand, so when the huge amount of snow hit, there was simply no place to put it. I remember climbing on the roof of my parents' garage without having to use a ladder. We built snow forts that we could stand up in without hunching over. Now that I'm all grown up, I shouldn't be as delighted with the snow. But I admit, when I woke up and pulled the shade, I couldn't do anything but laugh. The snow had completely covered my car, but the drifting left a lot of Mom's car uncovered. There was a pile of plowed snow (from the street) as tall as me, just about. The walks were indistinguishable from any other part of the landscape...it was just a sea of white, and the snow was still falling at a steady pace. I got up, showered, dressed and headed downstairs. All Mom and I could do was stare out the window. Mom had managed to push the cellar door open enough for the dogs to go out, but they didn't quite know what to do once they got outside. The snow was up to their shoulders, so peeing must have been quite an event. We decided that we couldn't do anything until the snowfall stopped (no use in shovelling twice when it's that high and there's nowhere to go anyway), so we each settled into our respective "offices" (her new home office, my comfy-chair office) and started work. Dan had told me yesterday that, while the design employees weren't expected to come in during this weather (it was a state of emergency, after all), that we all had laptops and would be required to work from home. I had sent out a message to the global firm, stating that requests would have to come in via our voicemail system or through a form I had created especially for e-mail requests. I explained that no printing could be done today, and that handwritten copies would have to be sent via the main fax line (which converts faxes into images and e-mails them to a special in-box), rather than the design line. On Saturday, I made calls to the two employees who were going to be in on Sunday who weren't there on Saturday, leaving messages for them to come in, if they could, to pick up their laptops (they both leave their laptops in the office). One of them showed up, with his very nice girlfriend, who told us that our fish has a scale disease. She said she'd look it up, so we'd know what kind of drops to put in the water. Laurie explained to him how to log into the system via broadband, and he said he'd talk to RCN in order to get himself hooked up. Stephanie, I instructed on how to connect through the broadband in her dorm room. Tamra doesn't have broadband, so we tried to explain how to connect via her dialup, but she didn't quite understand, so since it was slow, I sent her home early to try and connect. She called towards the end of the shift, telling me that she'd tried everything, but couldn't get the connection between her home site and work. I told her to call IR and leave a message (they're always on-call), and we'd try it again tomorrow. So this morning, I called Tamra, and she said she'd already talked to the IR folks, and we did a little test e-mailing, and everything was set. The woman who hadn't called me back on Saturday wasn't in the office (she lives very close by, and there was a good chance that she would end up walking there), and hadn't responded to my voicemail about getting her laptop. I called Dan to find out what to do about this. After all, he had instructed us that we were expected to work from home, that the department was in no way closed. When I called, he said, "Well, it's a snow day!" I asked if that meant that everyone that I had put on-call for documents during their regular shifts could stop waiting for me to call, and he said, "Of course not!" So what was the incentive to bring home your laptop, I asked him. He didn't have a good answer to that. Should Jessica take PTO time (Paid Time Off) because she didn't get the message, or couldn't get to the office before the storm was too bad? There didn't seem to be a good answer. Jessica did call later in the day, saying that she had misunderstood my call. In the past, when we had desktop machines, a snow day meant just that. Snow was on the ground to the extent that it would be dangerous to come in, so we closed the department. If anyone lived close enough to the office, they would be rewarded for coming in by getting a comp. day to use anytime they wanted. It was a good system, and having laptops really shouldn't change all that. I think there are only a couple of solutions to this problem. First of all, to initiate a policy change on the day before a major blizzard is just plain wrong. Tell people that they'll be expected to work from home in inclement weather, and require them to take their laptops home with them at all times (because you never know what the situation is going to be). If they choose not to come in for their shifts, then they have to take PTO time. Or...give the employees an incentive to work from home, like a comp. day, on days when it's impossible to come into the office. Enough people use up their vacation time at a fast enough clip that they'd love to have an extra floating day off on their schedules. People from other shifts would even be willing to work from home, I bet. Those who are regularly scheduled for that shift and elect not to come in must make up the time or take PTO. Or...just declare a damned snow day, already and close the office. We're a global company with offices around the world. If our office can't be open because of the weather, then we should be closed. End of story. We take a snow day and tell the consultants to go to other offices for support. In Europe and Asia, they weren't affected by the storm here. Sure, a consultant might need to wait until that office opened, but the Asian offices usually open by 7 or 8pm our time. To get something back that's due the next day would be no problem for them. My real concern is that I think Dan made up this "work from home" rule to only apply to the weekend shifts. Because our company isn't officially "open" during the weekends, we're the only resource available (no other design office in the whole world is open on weekends). I really have no doubt in my mind that if this storm hit on a Monday, we'd all be told that the office was closed, and that we should report it as a snow day on our timesheets. The same thing happens every year with Easter Sunday. We're all required to take PTO for that day because it always falls on a Sunday, and since the company isn't open on Sundays, they forget about those of us who are required to work during that day. Design hasn't been open on an Easter Sunday since I've started, but we've always had to lose a vacation day in order to close the office. So at the end of the day, I wrote Dan a very long, very detailed letter explaining why I thought this newfound policy was unfair, and why it was wrong to start a policy with no warning to the employees. I'm sure he'll have his own reasons for doing what he did, but I can be assertive when need be, and I'm not going to back down on this one. We'll see how it goes on Monday. At any rate, nothing came into the department (not even the large document that was scheduled), so it was a moot point. I called Tamra, Mark P. and Stephanie to let them know that they were "let out early" at around 5:30, figuring anything that came in after that I could handle on my own. The city has told all state employees to stay home tomorrow. Our company didn't grant us the same favor. One thing I did do, inbetween checking for submissions and making phone calls, is snowblow out the driveway. Chris bought a snowblower on Friday, and it is a massive machine. I felt like Tim Taylor from Home Improvement when I got a hold of that baby. The giant plow-pile in front of my driveway? Decimated. The driveway and walks? Like cutting through butter with a red-hot knife. I wanted to use the snowblower on every driveway on the street, but unfortunately, it's a gas hog, and we have to keep enough gas for the next storm. I've never enjoyed dealing with snow so much in my life. The only drawback is that a lot of snow blows back onto you, so I was a complete snowman by the time I was done. I hadn't worn a hat, just eargrips, so my hair was one solid mass of ice. Chris wore a hood and coveralls, but he was so iced up, he couldn't really move with any ease. I made Mom take a picture of us in front of the new snowblower. It's a film camera, so I'll post it once she gets the roll developed. I'm sure (if it came out), it'll be a very funny picture. Our neighbor next door came by with his little snowblower and helped get the areas where the massive machine couldn't reach. Blizzards tend to bring out the best in people (unless they're in supermarkets). Something about being trapped where you are makes people want to help one another. I also spent some of my time on the regular internet, searching for things for the design website. I'm rebuilding it from scratch, and I want to find cool applications that will work for what I'm looking for. So far, I found an applet that tells you what time it is anywhere in the world, and figured out how to do the type of forms I need for submissions in Dreamweaver. I like to hand-code, but Dreamweaver gives me the code that I can use and then copy and paste into what I already have. I expect to have sample pages ready to go by the end of this week. Then I wrote a letter to someone I haven't had contact with on the web for quite some time. It in response to something this person had asked, and I decided to give my take on it. To my surprise, I got a response, and it was much nicer than I expected it to be. I learned my lesson with Susanne. Sometimes, you just have to reach out. Do I think we'll become the bestest of friends forever? Not really. Correspondents? Quite possibly. IRL friends? I'm open to the possibility. It's just nice to know that the whole concept of "give out something positive, and you'll generally get something positive back in return" isn't a total crock of shit. Speaking of Susanne, she gave me a wonderful critique of my play Parthenogenesis. She said she didn't know how to critique writing, because she's an actor, but I think that actors have better instincts for what works and what doesn't than other playwrights many times, because they have to envision what they would do with the role. Basically, Act I is in great shape, I build up the tension and get everyone into hot water. Then, as I am wont to do, I let them all off the hook way too easily in Act II. I need to make major revisions here, because a fully-functional set of characters who can reason and love their way to the conclusion of a highly-charged set of circumstances is a big letdown. I already suspected that, but it was good to get validation that most of the play is pretty darned good, it's just that I need to be meaner to my characters. That's always been my problem. I like my characters too much to be mean to them. The fact that I'm going through plays like this is amazing to me. A year ago, I wouldn't be able to approach this. A year ago, I'd be daunted by the snow. A year ago, I wouldn't have reached out to a former friend and see if we couldn't make amends. A year ago, I couldn't have confronted my boss about something I thought was unfair. A year ago, I wouldn't have taken my work-from-home shift and done something productive with it, when there were no documents in the queue. I'm am a very different person than I was last year.