OK, Amazon: WTF is wrong with you??

[Brigid]

I am watching for closings on a local station. It is snowing heavily right now, with 6-9" expected by tomorrow afternoon, and just about everything you can imagine is closed. BUT THE AMAZON FULFILLMENT CENTER IS OPEN!! That's right -- IT'S OPEN!!

[quinnox]

1. do you work there, I guess I'm wondering how do you know this

[Blue_Adept]

2. Lots of places never close

Just the nature of it.

I used to work at Fidelity and we never had snow closure days. My girlfriends company doesn't either since they service clients worldwide and someone has to be there to deal with it.

[Brigid]

5. I'm watching the closings on local TV.

I don't work at Amazon, but I'm watching to see if my school (Ivy Tech) is closed. I saw Amazon listed as being open. Unbelievable!

[Blue_Adept]

7. How many other companies are listed as being open?

Or is Amazon's fulfilment center the only one being listed?

[Brigid]

8. As far as large workplaces, it's the only one.

Mostly it's closings of schools, churches, libraries, and the like.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. You can bet the US Postal Service is open as well

[Blue_Adept]

14. WTF is wrong with the post office?! :D

It's weird that Amazon is being singled out as being listed as open tho.

[nadinbrzezinski]

15. The processing plants open in conditions that boggle.

For them to close you need near blizzard conditions.

[Blue_Adept]

17. Yup.

I had a bunch of packages that my carrier picked up today (always glad to see me with packages since it means lots of pickups on his route) and I just said I wanted to get it all out before the snow.

"No problem. I'd pick them up tomorrow if they were ready. See you then."

Dependable and hearty guy. Which is why I tip him nicely at Christmas and meet him outside as often as possible to save him a few steps.

[kestrel91316]

3. Has someone died or been injured because of this? Just curious.

[Blue_Adept]

4. There's lots of amazon hate around here.

Plenty of love too, but just like any company, it's polarizing with anything and everything they do.

[Brigid]

6. Not that I know of.

But this is ridiculous. I have only to look out my window to know that.

[steve2470]

9. I'm sure it's profit related

meaning, some bean counter(s) have calculated that closing it costs them $X,000 dollars a day. Can't have that.

[MerryBlooms]

10. Online order auto reply?

[tkmorris]

12. I am not too bothered by that

For me, the real test is how they handle those employees who are unable to make it in for their shift. If they try to stay open and get done what they can, while having some understanding for employees who are late or unable to show up at all, I have no problem with it.

[WillowTree]

13. Our offices never close if we have heat and electricity.

The only reason we were closed the day after the 2011 blizzard was because the building, which we don't own, wasn't open. Smart decision. Gave them a chance to get the parking lot decently plowed, among other reasons. But our downtown office, where most people commute using public transportation, was open. And our suburban office was open the next day.......and I went in.

This one really shouldn't be a reason to close down most places. It's already starting and they'll be working on all of the primary and secondary roads all night. If Wednesday wasn't my regular day to WFH, I'd be going in. This is Northern Illinois in the dead of winter. Those who can't deal with it should quit whining and move South because this weather is just a fact of life occasionally in these parts. If anyone is surprised by that, shame on them.

[Blue_Adept]

16. The timing is key.

In our area, just west of Boston, the storm is expected to start after midnight and really get underway in a heavy way during the morning commute and through 1pm. That means it's impossible to get things cleaned out there with all the people going to work. So no lead-in/overnight to get it cleaned up. So it makes sense for a lot of places and schools to close here. If the storm was starting much earlier in the night and done by morning, most places would be open because the plows would have all night to get it done.

[mythology]

20. They are way to fast to close things here in the Boston area

Driving in snow isn't nearly as hard as people want to make it seem to be. Leave earlier and take your time.

I was dumbfounded when I moved out here for grad school and every winter the school closed several times due to snow even though almost all students live on campus. When I was going to school in Colorado the only time school closed was once for 2 days when there was nearly 3 feet of snow.

My job tells us to work from home any time there's more than a couple of inches of snow which is just silly and generally a wasted day because seemingly nobody at my job actually works when they are working from home.

[Blue_Adept]

22. School closures are trickier.

A lot of that has to do with liability as we've changed to a lawsuit happy culture in a lot of ways.

It's also different than it was years ago when I was growing up because the bus services have all been privatized, the drivers aren't people that live in town anymore (often live a good bit away) and the buses aren't in town either. When they were essentially owned and operated by the town school system, at least in the suburbs, it was all under direct local control. Now there's a lot more fingers in the pie making decisions.

[MADem]

26. Because parents don't want to pay for bus service (which used to be free in the old days)

many parents take their little darlings to school. This means they have to get up early, dig out the car, get plowed back in by the plows going by, dig out again, get the kids to school, go home, dig out again x2 in order to be able to go get the little darlings at close of business.

Many just say "Screw it--take the day off." Way too many kids stay home on snow days. Easier to just call it and tack it on to the end of the year....

The bus took me and my peers to school, when we didn't walk. The only issue was wading through waist deep snow to get home on really bad days!!

[WillowTree]

23. Schools are one thing. Businesses are something else.

When conditions are seriously bad, those of us who have the ability to telecommute are allowed to do so. I'm in IT, so that's nice for me, though I don't take advantage of it because of weather unless I just plain can't make it in.

We're a service company and we serve millions of people in places like Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico who don't really care about our weather conditions. And this is our busy season. Our Customer Service Reps can't call it in and, because of the nature of the work we do, our customers have to be able to reach us unless it's truly an emergency situation, especially right now.

The conditions you describe would never justify our CS units not being available. Here we're talking about 6-9" spread out over about an 18 hour span, which means that the road crews will have been working on it all night as it comes down and, as I said, the primary and secondary roads should be, surely not perfect, but passable. Not a reason to close the office.

[PeteSelman]

18. I work in the snow. In the rain. In the heat.

In the cold.

Guess what? It's going to snow again overnight here and guess who's going to work tomorrow anyway?

What's the big deal?

[WillowTree]

24. What Pete said.

[Art_from_Ark]

35. Snow is a very big deal in places where it is rare

Even more so in places like Fayetteville, Arkansas, which has lots of hilly streets that can become quite slick and treacherous, especially during a freeze-thaw-freeze type of snow event. It used to be the policy of the University of Arkansas that classes would never be cancelled due to snow, but after one particularly bad snow, where students, professors, etc., couldn't even get out of their driveways, or were involved in some of the numerous traffic accidents that occurred on that day, the university decided it might be a good idea to cancel classes on bad snow days.

[TheCowsCameHome]

19. Those that can make it in will, the others won't

6-9" over 24 hours isn't exactly a catastrophe.

What if every business closed in a moderate storm?

[oldhippie]

21. I grew up in upstate New York ......

... and never heard of a business closing due to snow. It snowed from October to May. I remember my freshman year at college in Potsdam that it was snowing the morning I walked to the gym for our Physics final. It was June 7th.

[Cha]

33. I waded through LOTS of Snow to make it to work on

the day after a record breaking snow fall, on Christmas Day 2003, in Little Falls, NY. I called my boss and she said: "How did you get through!?" I was so proud.

[Brigid]

25. Clearly I'm in the minority here . . .

But looking out my window and seeing near whiteout conditions, then seeing that an employer made a point of announcing they were open, just struck me as absurd. Essential services are one thing; a freaking warehouse is another.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

27. Only 6 to 9 inches?

Heh. My place of work has shut down once in ten years, and that was last year for the Nor'Easter Nemo that dumped 22 inches on us and the state shut down all the highways in both RI and Mass.

[Brigid]

28. That's on top of what we already have.

I just think it's ridiculous for non-essential services. YMMV.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

30. I don't disagree

Where I work, if you can't make it in, you can't make it in and they don't flip out or anything. But it does mean whoever is there has to stay there. But if they can't leave anyway due to travel conditions, they are usually fine with getting paid OT.

[WillowTree]

34. Surely your roads had been cleared from the last one before this one started.

And it's already halfway past where both of us are. Relax! This really isn't going to be as awful as you've made up your mind it will.

[brewens]

29. Two years ago we got hit with the worst snow storm in years. I knew it was coming and had

strategically parked my truck which is not really equipped well for snow travel a couple blocks away up the main hill I might not be able to handle. Then I parked a couple blocks from work and walked down another hill just in case. So I had transportation on pretty much level ground most of the way to and from work. It was pretty bad too by our standards. The city guys couldn't clear and sand everything all at once.

Once at work though, I had to take the blood center bus out of town to a blood drive. I tried to get it called off telling my supervisor I wasn't sure it would be safe. They are really reluctant to call off blood drives. He said to try it and if it was really too bad, I could always turn back. It really wasn't that bad. The trip was in daylight both ways and a bus like that is pretty sure footed in the snow. Someone forgot to tell the donors it was safe though, only two showed up! That was Wednesday.

It thawed briefly and then got cold and froze hard. That did it! Everything was called off for the next two days. All schools in the area, even two universities shut down. The first time in my adult life I had two snow days and a weekend that I was prepared to enjoy. In bad weather like that I really wish everyone could just bag it and take a couple days off. There is definitely something to be said for being snowed in, provided you are properly supplied with beverages, food and a stack of DVD's you haven't seen!

[Skeeter Barnes]

31. People want their shit NOW, not after the snow melts. We will not be inconvenienced.

[mockmonkey]

32. Where I work...

it never closes. But, they leave it up to you to decide whether it is safe to travel or not. If enough people call in they excuse everyone.