Disasters / Emergencies, Federal Government, Technology

Snow Day!!!

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Yay. Snowpacolypse 2.0! Snowmageddon! The Snopture!
(Wait, there’s more….)
Dandruff 2010. The Winter of Our Snowcontent. Weekday of Marital Sex — 2010. Waiting for Snowdot. Entirely Seasonal Weather for February!
(Okay, I’m finished.)
Who has the day off? More to the point, does having a “snow day” even matter anymore?
Telecommunication kills the snow day, after the jump.


USA Today has an article about how the digital age has really destroyed the concept of a “snow day.”

The ability to work from anywhere also means snow days no longer offer a break from work. Many are like Nicko Margolies, a communications assistant at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit.
With the federal government shut down, his office closed. Margolies worked at home.
“No snowstorm, no matter how big, will keep me from working. I lost heat, but I had my space heater and network access, so I kept on trucking. It’s actually a seamless transition from home to work,” he says. “The only difference is I’m in my pajamas.”

Yeah, I mean I’m working — and so are you. And chances are this snow day bait-and-switch started happening long before you became a professional. Did anybody else have parents that would ruin your school snow days with manual labor? I can still remember the old lady who lived next door offering me not nearly enough money to shovel her driveway. I refused (what is it about old people that makes them unable to grasp the concept of inflation) and was happily playing Nintendo when my parents busted in and forced me to shovel her driveway … for free. SOBs. I freaking hated snow days.
So I can kind of understand this tipster’s frustration with Kirkland & Ellis:

DC is in the middle of record breaking snowfalls, the Federal Government is closed, and it is a literal WHITE OUT in the District. Yet Kirkland sees no reason to close its office and have their employees stay home. Seriously? Are you kidding me? …
Yes, when you make the decision to close the office and send all of your billers home, you are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a day, but is that really more important than the safety of your employees? Have associates and paralegals work from home. Why make a little secretary or mail room worker get out in this weather to trudge to the office in conditions that they probably can’t even see their hand in front of their face? Or worse, force them to take their PTO.
HEARTLESS!

If K&E is going to force people into work, at least they could offer what JPMorgan is offering its employees. According to Dealbreaker:

JPMorgan just sent out a memo to employees notifying them that in the event the snowpocalypse is really bad, they can reserve cots to stay over.

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Are you working from home on this so-called snow day? Let us know in the comments.
JPM: Don’t Worry About The Snow, You Can Spend The Night [Dealbreaker]
The meaning of ‘snow day’ has changed [USA Today]

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