The Work Thread

Ganymede

When your bosses pull you in because you left early on Tuesday due to panic and tell you not to... because they have panic attacks too and that if you're going to be panicking, you should just come into their office and cry with them.

I wish I had this skill, but I don't. I cover my emotions with laughter. I laugh a lot, actually.

I mean, it sort of makes people at work uncomfortable, but my other mode is killbot, so --

Rinel

@Ganymede said in The Work Thread:

I wish I had this skill, but I don't. I cover my emotions with laughter. I laugh a lot, actually.

I mean, it sort of makes people at work uncomfortable, but my other mode is killbot, so --

That was me before HRT. But now I'm going through puberty 2: hormonal boogaloo, and everything makes me cry.

silverfox

Delayed starts are a rip off. Either give the full day off or don't! Attendance is horrid on late start days anyway, and parents have to call in late or take the day themselves because their kids have extra time unsupervised.

Plus a bunch of kids don't get breakfast.

Grumble.

Ganymede

@silverfox

Delayed starts can suck my parts.

They are worse than someone just going to the first knuckle. Bitch, you go deep or you don’t.

I never understood these. I have had many Americans try to explain. Everything is a weak excuse.

Some of us also have to work, and courts and patients don’t give a shit if you have kids or what the weather is like. Shut down or don’t.

More frustrating than a Democratic caucus.

silverfox

@Ganymede

I'm sure it has something to do with mandated hours but it is still redic. Plan in snow days with extra days off through the year and then cancel those days if you need to use a snow day. Or just stay open another day or to at the end.

Ganymede

@silverfox

Or, you know, just open on a snow day at the normal time like the rest of us broke-ass motherfuckers who can't just take a fucking day off because guess what no union at-will employment, yeah?

silverfox

@Ganymede

... wow. Hostile much?

The point of a snow day is because it isn't SAFE for herds of children to be on the road. High Schoolers who drive themselves are at an INCREASED likelyhood of a fatal accident in weather like this. Moreover we put 50-60 kids in a bus and send them off on icy streets with a prayer that nothing happens.

Should your boss take your safety into consideration? Yeah. They should.

Should the rest of us put the kids at risk when there is an easy way to NOT put them at risk?

Yeah. I think it is worth it.

Ganymede

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

... wow. Hostile much?

Absofuckinglutely.

sips coffee

But I'm getting better now.

My bias comes from growing up in a metropolitan area. I took buses until I was 11, and then the GO Train and subways thereafter. My school hardly ever had snow days and I grew up in Canada. So, yes, there's a part of me that points and laughs at people in Ohio when there's a dusting of snow on the ground.

I am aware that most roads in the United States are so poorly engineered that they are likely a contributory cause of most accidents. I am also aware that children in buses and teenagers on the road are also a contributory cause of most accidents. But I am also reasonably certain that, around here, the road conditions are seldom cured by waiting a couple of hours. Extra time will not make the snow melt when it is below 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

And the statistics don't support the practice. It is specious to suggest that the decrease in accidents has to do with snow delays.

But here are some really novel ideas which might actually do something:

We should stop using timeliness as a factor when calculating absences so that kids can take their time getting to school in bad weather.
We should not tie school funding to attendance and other factors that can be affected by bad weather.
We should let the teachers figure out what the best practices are based on their location.
We should be spending more money for public education and reject the idea of vouchers.

I will always support teachers, even if I don't agree with them; I'm just venting here. But given that a large number of families require two incomes, snow delays are a frustrating complication. Thankfully, they are becoming more accepted in legal arenas -- I can't tell you how many times Judge X has been late to docket because, guess what, he has kids -- and we can hope for some change where a termination due to tardiness resulting from a snow delay is considered illegal.

silverfox

We should stop using timeliness as a factor when calculating absences so that kids can take their time getting to school in bad weather. -- This is a school by school decision. Every one I have worked at has requested we do not do attendance on bad weather days for 30 minutes after the "start" time. (In Arizona this was when it rained which made my Colorado grown butt laugh till I realized they all had road tires and had ZERO traction.)

We should not tie school funding to attendance and other factors that can be affected by bad weather. -- What would we tie it to? Honestly curious. I have some ideas, but I'd like to know your thoughts.

We should let the teachers figure out what the best practices are based on their location. -- This already happens at the district level. Each district independently sets their own policies for bad weather days.

We should be spending more money for public education and reject the idea of vouchers. -- I do agree with this.

Ganymede

@silverfox said in The Work Thread:

We should stop using timeliness as a factor when calculating absences so that kids can take their time getting to school in bad weather. -- This is a school by school decision. Every one I have worked at has requested we do not do attendance on bad weather days for 30 minutes after the "start" time.

To my knowledge, this is not how it goes in Ohio.

We should not tie school funding to attendance and other factors that can be affected by bad weather. -- What would we tie it to? Honestly curious. I have some ideas, but I'd like to know your thoughts.

Attendance is probably one of the dumbest factors. Just because a student doesn't show doesn't mean a teacher doesn't. In Ohio, school funding is mostly tied to district property values. Although this has been held to be unconstitutional in the state, it has not been altered because no one has proposed a different standard.

In my opinion, it should be tied to three things: (1) property taxes; (2) income taxes; and (3) commercial taxes. The surplus above a median value in an aggregated area should be redistributed to districts not performing as well.

We should let the teachers figure out what the best practices are based on their location.

Again, upon knowledge and information, not in Ohio.

Auspice

I get angry a lot when people who have never left the northern half of the country mock the southern half about winter-related delays.

Why does the south shut down when it snows? Not because they're 'pansies,' but because they don't have the infrastructure. If the northern half also lacked the salt trucks, the snow plows, and even the roads that were built to handle the cold (in the south roads are built with hotter tempts in mind, not colder), they'd have a damn hard time, too. Think of all the times it snows suddenly and the roads never got salted (first major accident I was in was driving from Columbus to Cincinnati after just such a snow storm and I hit black ice on I-71 and got hit by an 18-wheeler)? That's the south. Every. single. time. it snows.

It's a big fuckin' pet peeve of mine when people start mocking southern states for 'can't handle the snow.' Yeah well, Sally, that sure is some nice infrastructure you're privileged to have up there handling that snow so you don't have to.

Alamias

@Auspice I swear, if it ever snowed in So Cal (Not in the Mountains where you would expect it) I can't imagine the carnage and chaos it would bring.

JinShei

@Auspice we have the same here. Sure, we grind to a halt when there is snow or ice, but most of my area is on a 45degree slope, or on a road so narrow we have to drive back a way to pass something coming the other way (or both), with streams across them and all manner of things.

Ghost

@Auspice We get a lot of that where I live. "Dumb people drive slow in the rain".

Reality is we get so little rain per year that all that gas, oil, fluids, etc all build up on the roads dry, and then when the rain comes out some roads get slick. Presto oil-slicko.

You make a good point about lack of snow infrastructure. Not a lot of people think about dried-then-moist roads here, nor do they consider that cities that dont expect X dont invest in Y.

A legit tornado would royally fuck my town.

Ganymede

@Auspice said in The Work Thread:

It's a big fuckin' pet peeve of mine when people start mocking southern states for 'can't handle the snow.' Yeah well, Sally, that sure is some nice infrastructure you're privileged to have up there handling that snow so you don't have to.

Cities have the infrastructure. The country does not. The 401 in Blenheim Region isn't fun to drive when it's snowing.

But we still drive it to go to praccy.

Sunny

@Ganymede

Country roads are infrastructure. I guarantee you the country roads in Alabama tilt different and have a different physical makeup than those in Montana.

Ghost

@Ganymede said in The Work Thread:

But we still drive it to go to praccy.

Gotta brave big city drifts if you want those big city slams.

Auspice

@Ghost said in The Work Thread:

You make a good point about lack of snow infrastructure. Not a lot of people think about dried-then-moist roads here, nor do they consider that cities that dont expect X dont invest in Y.
A legit tornado would royally fuck my town.

(interesting. the board crashed and lost my reply)

Regions/states/cities build for what they got.

The buildings in SoCal are built for earthquakes.
Look at the houses in coastal Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, etc: they're made for hurricanes.
The roads in the southwest look different than the roads in, say, New England because they are built for the hot, dry weather.

Climate change has fucked a lot of this up, but for a long ass time, what we've had has worked save for those weird years. My first winter in Austin, it snowed 3 times. Each time was a 'dusting' (one time it was about an inch) compared to up north, but people who had been here 10+ years told me it was the most snow they'd seen here. It hasn't snowed at all this winter. In fact, save for a fair bit of rain, it's been mostly 60+ during the day (a lot of sub-40 mornings, but) and from what I can tell, that's more the norm for Austin. So that's what the roads, the infrastructure (infrastructure being more than just the physical build) are setup for. Because up north, y'all would be a big ol' struggle bus in the 115'F summers. But Austin is just like whatever, c'mon down to Barton Springs for the day.

The US is a big country. We gotta structure different regionally for whatever that region deals with seasonally.

Auspice

And lemme put something on the opposite end of the spectrum:

In Maryland (and then Ohio the years I lived there), in the summer if it went over a certain temp (like, 90, 95'F ish)... there'd be PSAs about heat warnings. Stay inside. Stay cool. Conserve energy by turning off lights and using fewer electronics (since ACs or fans would be running more). Outdoor recesses would be cancelled.

They don't do that in TX.

Ganymede

@Sunny said in The Work Thread:

Country roads are infrastructure. I guarantee you the country roads in Alabama tilt different and have a different physical makeup than those in Montana.

I will warrant that.

I suppose I should point out that I'm talking about Ohio. We get snow here annually. Snow is not a surprise; snow is not a rare occurrence; and snow is expected. And the engineering of the roads here is not so different than the country up north.

It could very well be that people here are just shit drivers too.

But, anyhow -- snow delays are my peeve. The bright part is that I'm no longer blaming it on my children.