weather, bah
Oct. 29th, 2012 07:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingIt was mizzling as I walked in to work just before noon, and the rain has continued off and on (mostly on) ever since. Around 4pm the wind finally began to pick up intermittently, to the point where as I was walking home around 5:45, one particularly strong gust nearly turned my umbrella inside-out.
As for why I was walking home at quarter of six instead of half past nine... well, around 2pm Mr. Speakerphone (aka our owner) called for PM (my manager) in a right swivet, saying that the rain was falling sideways in Elmira, our sister store was closing early, and we needed to close and send our employees home ASAP because OMGWTFBBQ STORM!!!
PM said that A) it was still hardly raining in Ithaca, B) there was no wind worth mentioning, and C) it was Monday. There was way too much stuff to do (mag returns, newspaper returns, trash & recycling, P&K order to put away, coffee-to-go ground for Tuesday, rolling tobacco divvied into small Ziploc bags for sale, etc.) to close right then! End of conversation.
Ten minutes later Mr. Speakerphone called back. The weather had gotten even worse in Elmira. The smoke shop HAD to close early for everyone's safety. 4pm at the latest!
PM held out for 5pm and Mr. Speakerphone reluctantly agreed.
The upshot is that I lost my lunch break and also about three and a half hours of pay for the week. I suppose it made some economic sense to close since there were hardly any people out shopping by 5 o'clock, but we'd actually been pulling a decent profit earlier as people frantically stocked up on tobacco and reading materials in case of who even knows what disaster scenario. Which seems frankly silly to me. I mean, Ithaca is not on the coast; therefore we get no storm surge. Ithaca is not on a river; therefore our flood risk is minimal. The temperature is predicted to stay above 40 Fahrenheit all night; therefore we get no snow. Just steady rain and wind, and even then the strongest gusts shouldn't top about 50mph. Yeah, okay, soggy earth and strong wind may well knock down a bunch of trees, which may well cause power outages, but so what? An ordinary summer thunderstorm can do the same, and often does.
I find it very hard to be actively scared by those prospects.
As for why I was walking home at quarter of six instead of half past nine... well, around 2pm Mr. Speakerphone (aka our owner) called for PM (my manager) in a right swivet, saying that the rain was falling sideways in Elmira, our sister store was closing early, and we needed to close and send our employees home ASAP because OMGWTFBBQ STORM!!!
PM said that A) it was still hardly raining in Ithaca, B) there was no wind worth mentioning, and C) it was Monday. There was way too much stuff to do (mag returns, newspaper returns, trash & recycling, P&K order to put away, coffee-to-go ground for Tuesday, rolling tobacco divvied into small Ziploc bags for sale, etc.) to close right then! End of conversation.
Ten minutes later Mr. Speakerphone called back. The weather had gotten even worse in Elmira. The smoke shop HAD to close early for everyone's safety. 4pm at the latest!
PM held out for 5pm and Mr. Speakerphone reluctantly agreed.
The upshot is that I lost my lunch break and also about three and a half hours of pay for the week. I suppose it made some economic sense to close since there were hardly any people out shopping by 5 o'clock, but we'd actually been pulling a decent profit earlier as people frantically stocked up on tobacco and reading materials in case of who even knows what disaster scenario. Which seems frankly silly to me. I mean, Ithaca is not on the coast; therefore we get no storm surge. Ithaca is not on a river; therefore our flood risk is minimal. The temperature is predicted to stay above 40 Fahrenheit all night; therefore we get no snow. Just steady rain and wind, and even then the strongest gusts shouldn't top about 50mph. Yeah, okay, soggy earth and strong wind may well knock down a bunch of trees, which may well cause power outages, but so what? An ordinary summer thunderstorm can do the same, and often does.
I find it very hard to be actively scared by those prospects.
