Comics I Don’t Understand

Shut Down

Cidu Bill on Jan 4th 2010

Is this really a thing? Are stores less likely to shut down during major storms than they used to be?

Filed in Bill Bickel, CIDU, Retail, comic strips, comics, humor | 41 responses so far

41 Responses to “Shut Down”

Tim Jan 4th 2010 at 12:05 pm 1

When I lived in ND, they needed to physically barricade the roads from the Air Force base to the town, because otherwise people would go to the mall and Wal-Mart during killer snowstorms. People don’t stay home the way they used to.
Elyrest Jan 4th 2010 at 12:05 pm 2

I worked retail for a number of years (1980’s & 90’s) and we never shut the store because of a snow storm. I was living in the snow belts of both New York and Pennsylvania at the time and we had a lot of snow too.
Elyrest Jan 4th 2010 at 12:07 pm 3

To add to what Tim said - people would intentionally go out in the storms because they said they had nothing better to do or it was exciting. I thought they were crazy.
Erica Jan 4th 2010 at 12:23 pm 4

When I worked at good ol’ Ames in WPA in the early 2000’s, we knew that if the weather was considered dangerous, that we would be slamming busy. It absolutely never failed.
vintage_schwinn Jan 4th 2010 at 12:35 pm 5

I don’t think anyone shuts down any longer. A friend of mine called in during a storm & was told to come in or be fired. This was during a state of emergency. You know, when the *government* tells you to stay off the roads of else. I guess he was expected to fly to work that day.
Daniel J. Drazen Jan 4th 2010 at 12:44 pm 6

I could so easily go into Old Coot Mode and start reminiscing about the Blizzard of ‘67 and Chicago getting shut down. That was back when we got our groceries from a Mom n Pop place that ran out of milk and bread in a big hurry. Is it even possible to shut down a big box store short of demolishing it?
James Schend Jan 4th 2010 at 01:06 pm 7

If it makes you feel better, Seattle does almost completely shut down when the snow hits 18″ or so. It happened last year around this time.

But in our defense:
1) Seattle isn’t equipped to handle heavy snow– we only get more than a foot about once a decade, max.
2) We’re all really laid-back people, so nobody cares if the city’s not running for a couple days.
Sari Everna Jan 4th 2010 at 01:28 pm 8

I’ve got to kind of echo James, above. Except worse.

In the lower mainland of BC(Vancouver and surrounding municipalities), I swear people practically have heart attacks at the mere suggestion of snow. I realize that our wet snow can make driving quite difficult and that we don’t get snow often, so we’re not good at dealing with it, but the overreaction is amusing to me. Still, I grew up here and I still don’t understand.

It seems we’re the exact opposite of the comic. That being said, where people are more used to snow, they’ll be less bothered with it. Also, people are stupid sometimes and will do things like drive in bad conditions to the store. Even though they don’t need to.

On another note, cars are safer than they once were, just as a matter of development. It’s possible that this sort of trend reflects people’s increasing confidence in the protection their cars provide. Whether that confidence is well placed in this sort of situation is arguable, but I just thought I’d throw the idea out there.
Cidu Bill Jan 4th 2010 at 01:32 pm 9

Offhand, I’d think people would be less likely to venture out nowadays, with computers providing both contact with the outside world and shopping opportunities
Karen Jan 4th 2010 at 02:07 pm 10

I was living in Connecticut during the Blizzard of ‘96, and working at the Danbury Fair Mall. I honestly cannot remember the mall getting closed down. The bus lines stopped running briefly, and wasn’t I lucky that i had my first car, and could drive in all that to get to work? Of course, the news anchors were giving out bulletins to drivers to be careful, because the plowed snowpiles were so big they would hide children who were trying to cross the streets, and some kids had gotten hit by drivers who were taking turns too quickly. Fun times!
Karen Jan 4th 2010 at 02:09 pm 11

I do remember the Blizzard of ‘78, when I was a kid living in Toledo, Ohio. Our front door and downstairs windows were completely covered. My mom got so sick of us whining about being bored that she told us to go dig a tunnel to the mailbox so we could fetch the mail. The grocery stores were unreachable or closed, but my dad was able to walk to the corner store (a mom n’ pop, the owners lived next door) to get bread and milk. If anybody had suggested driving to the mall, they’d have been considered certifiable!
Chakolate Jan 4th 2010 at 02:50 pm 12

I think it depends a lot on where you live. If you’re in West Virginia, half an inch of snow means they close the schools and the whole state is frozen. Here in Chicago, it takes at least 3-4 feet to close anything.
Sarah Jan 4th 2010 at 03:09 pm 13

Funnily enough, last February London had a foot of snow and the place shut down, no one went to work and the kids where off school. If that happen here in Ireland, it would pretty much be the same. Sure I remember about 10 years ago, we got a couple of inches of snow and the place shut down.
Singapore Bill Jan 4th 2010 at 03:23 pm 14

It depends on where you are.

To expand on what Sari Everna said, I used to work for a major Canadian bank. We had a call centre in Vancouver and one in Mississauga (a godforsaken suburb of Toronto). Every time anyone in Vancouver even thought they saw a snowflake, the place would shut down and Mississauga would get slammed with all the extra calls because “there’s snow in Vancouver!!!!!!!” Keep in mind that this was just not the collossal wimps of Vancouver not coming to work, this was an official company shutdown.

Would you like to guess what happened when Mississauga got a weather forecast for 30cm of snow overnight? We were told we should remember to leave early for work so we wouldn’t be late and that we were expected to be on time.
turquoise cow Jan 4th 2010 at 03:33 pm 15

I live in suburban New Jersey and I worked in a supermarket until almost two years ago. We had plenty of snowstorms during which there were very few customers and a good portion of the employees called out, but never did we actually close the store. The day before, it was crazy as anything. We used to joke that the guys in corporate were giving money to bribe the weathermen because the threat of snow was guaranteed to jump sales up.

I now work for the corporate office, and I have seen no evidence of such a plot, but it could be hidden. And the office has occasionally closed early in the last two years due to snow, mostly to be nice to the crazy people who have long commutes. They also have set up a hotline that can be called to say if the office will be opening late or not opening at all. According to my boss, at one time they did open late, but they didn’t update the message until he was already on the road, by which point he wasn’t going to turn back, and another of his coworkers did come in later and found that nearly everyone had come in at the ordinary time anyway.
turquoise cow Jan 4th 2010 at 03:39 pm 16

@Chakolate my cousins from Ohio lived on the shores of Lake Erie and regularly get feet of snow all winter long. School is rarely closed. They relocated to Virginia a few years ago and it snowed. Barely an inch was on the ground and everything was shut down. Not delayed opening, but completely shut down. My cousin’s high school age son was totally confused.

Also, in the recent blizzard that covered the northeast, the news station reported that in Virginia, numerous people were stranded in their cars because the snow was too bad to drive in. I wondered at that report if the snow was really that awful or if it was simply that Virginians didn’t know how to drive in snow.
Cidu Bill Jan 4th 2010 at 03:44 pm 17

It’s not always the amount of snow or how accustomed to it the locals are: Our town fathers saw fit to build the place on a roller coaster — a very spread-out roller coaster — so it takes only a little bit of snow or ice to make the roads dangerous. When midwesterners talk about how they get around fine during massive snowfalls, I remind them that they live in the flatlands. Very different animal.
Newlin Jan 4th 2010 at 04:42 pm 18

In the District of Columbia area, people relish the opportunity to finally have an excuse to use their four-wheel-drive sport utility vehicles when it snows. TV newscasters have to periodically exhort people to use some common sense and not pass snowplows which
are perceived as moving too slowly. Some of the traffic videos are terrifying.
And it isn’t just that people “don’t know how to drive in the snow”; as so many people move to DC from elsewhere, those who /did/ know have forgotten, or have gotten way out of practice.
padraig Jan 4th 2010 at 05:16 pm 19

In the upper Midwest the schools are perceived as wimps that will close for anything. But if the malls close, people say “whoa” and check their flashlight batteries and fuel up the portable generator.

As for snow driving, we Northerners are pretty dang cocky about our zero-traction maneuvering skills, but even we get irritated at the guys with the “I bought a 4WD so I wouldn’t HAVE to slow down in the snow, so get out of my way or eat slush” guys.
Jeff S. Jan 4th 2010 at 05:24 pm 20

Grew up in Springfield, MO. The grade school and high school were associated with what is now Missouri State. That meant, we only shut down when the university shut down, and that was once… after my brother walked me the mile to school. The drifts were so high, they were over my head. I might have been in second grade, so he would have been a junior. We had no recourse but to walk back home. Apparently, I cried all the way home because I was freezing.

I’ve pretty much lived in Oklahoma most of my adult life. For a while, I worked for JCPenney in one of the malls in Oklahoma City up until 1988. I remember going into work and the place was packed. I made out quite nicely that day (commission sales in home electronics). Of course, this was before the interweb.

I had some front-wheel drive compact car, and I ended up pulling 3 different cars out of the snow on the way to work because I could get traction on the road. People forget how to drive when the white stuff falls. Big snow storms are rare this far south. However, we do get the tornadoes in the summer to make up for it. Lucky us.
DonBoy Jan 4th 2010 at 05:46 pm 21

OK, here’s a theory: more stores are now in malls (note the escalator in the comic, which isn’t proof but is suggestive). Malls are more likely to be accessible by major roads, which are kept in better shape during a storm, and to have a plow service that keeps the parking usable. So maybe you really can do more during a storm than you used to.
nonegiven Jan 4th 2010 at 06:15 pm 22

Our recent Christmas Eve blizzard knocked out power for 9 hours and we had no water for 5 days from Christmas Eve through New Years Eve. The generator wouldn’t start because it was too cold and I still couldn’t get my front door open on the Sunday morning after Christmas. I think they said it was 4″ but it was a foot deep in the driveway.
Nicole Jan 4th 2010 at 07:25 pm 23

At the risk of repeating what has already been said. No things do not shut down in blizzards the way they used to. My company’s policy is very clear, even if you have the ability to work from home (I do) you are supposed to make your best effort to get in. In the nearly 10 years I worked there they never closed for weather.

This is a pet peeve of mine. We are supposed to be the most intelligent species on the planet, yet in a life threatening blizzard, we get in our cars and go to work or shopping. There is always a major accident every time … occasionally resulting in deaths … and next blizzard we do it again

and besides … if global warming was real there wouldn’t BE blizzards
Charlene Jan 4th 2010 at 08:28 pm 24

Nothing on the Prairies closes down, ever, for cold weather or snow. It can be -50 with a raging blizzard giving zero visibility and everything will still be open. There can be snow up to your armpits and everything will still be open. Some Prairie cities have hills that make San Francisco look flat, and still everything is open.
Jeff S. Jan 4th 2010 at 09:21 pm 25

Nicole, during the sleet/snow storm that occurred here in Oklahoma on Christmas Eve, we drove from Tulsa to Springfield, MO, always just ahead of the major part of the storm. It wasn’t until we got there that we found out there was a 14 car pile up in Oklahoma City on the same highway we were on.
Chakolate Jan 4th 2010 at 09:25 pm 26

@Bill: “When midwesterners talk about how they get around fine during massive snowfalls, I remind them that they live in the flatlands. Very different animal.”

Quite right - Not only are the roads mountainous, but very few people have snow tires or chains, and there simply aren’t the road crews with salt trucks that we have here.

@Newlin: “And it isn’t just that people “don’t know how to drive in the snow”; as so many people move to DC from elsewhere, those who /did/ know have forgotten, or have gotten way out of practice.”

Not only people who move away from snow zones, but also people who still live in them, but haven’t driven on snow since last spring. A few years ago the first time that winter the roads got treacherous, I was behind a squad car and they accelerated away from a stop too fast and did a 180 in the intersection. Oops!
Nicole Jan 4th 2010 at 09:34 pm 27

Truth or dare — I am not immune to this stupidity either. Last year a dance band that I really like (no one you ever heard of .. I promise) was recording a live album. I drove about 6 hours (normally a three hour drive) in a raging snow storm to be part of the recording. I guess we all have out breaking points
Cidu Bill Jan 4th 2010 at 09:50 pm 28

I think bands just bring out the crazy in people: Last winter (or was it the winter before last?), when Boston was hit with a blizzard that closed the colleges and shut down the T, my son walked across the city to see a band play — with no certainty that they’d actually made it into town.

Of course he didn’t tell us about this until well after the fact.
bAT L. Jan 4th 2010 at 10:15 pm 29

I live in Wisconsin and work third shift in a call center that never closes. I mean never. The longest we’ve ever been empty was for a mandatory fire drill, and I heard a few people still tried to stay behind. Even when the University that contains the call center in which I work closes, we’re still open. We’ve had multiple feet of snow and -40 Fahrenheit weather, but remained open through it all. Wisconsin is also, as CIDU Bill said, very flat, however.

I also once had a girlfriend from Tennessee who loves snow, but never gets to see any of it. The most she’d seen and remembered was barely enough to cover the ground and people were rushing inside afraid to drive on it, and places were closing down left and right. Anyone who drove on it acted like they had no control as well. It wasn’t that slippery, they’ve just probably heard stories about how bad it was to drive in snow. I remember her saying Tennessee has more hills than Wisconsin, but I’m not sure they would lead to driving as bad as she described.
Usual John Jan 5th 2010 at 12:00 am 30

In the blizzard of 1978, I have been told that the food trucks couldn’t get through in Boston for two weeks. But Boston only got 27 inches of snow, and granted that that probably understates the actual snowfall (the official readings are taken at Logan Airport, which tends to get distinctly less than other places in the region), I can’t imagine anything like that reaction today.

In the recent snowstorm in D.C. (officially 13 inches, but as much as two feet in some areas), stores really did close, even though it was the Saturday before Christmas, usually the busiest shopping day of the year.
David N Jan 5th 2010 at 12:24 am 31

East Tennessee at least has some nasty hills, and tends to get ice with snow. A lot of my family lives around Knoxville, and reports the same thing about drivers there.

Here in Albuquerque, if there are snow closings people will absolutely head for the malls or Walmart or wherever. And whine that stores aren’t open, or fully staffed. And that the parking lots and sidewalks aren’t cleared for them. So the comic made me laugh - so true here!
The Bad Seed Jan 5th 2010 at 01:13 am 32

I assumed this strip meant to connote that more people had 4-wheel-drive and could get out, but in this day and age we definitely all should have less need to ever leave our homes. Our big pre-Christmas storm here in southeast PA didn’t actually affect my life in any way, because I stocked up on easy food beforehand, then I logged in and worked from home, in addition to finishing my Christmas shopping from home. As long as I have electricity, I’m golden.

By the way, when I worked retail (large dept store) for a couple of years in the 1980’s, we were only completely closed one day because of winter weather (2 ft of snow with a couple of inches of ice underneath and also on top). Another evening I made it all the way to the store in a snow and ice storm for the 6-9:40 shift, then - still in my coat and gloves - immediately sought out my boss and told her that the traveling was already so bad that I was going to turn around and go home right then (because it was only going to freeze more and get worse). Man, if she hadn’t been standing with HER boss when I told her that, I’m sure she would have decked me right then and there!
The Bad Seed Jan 5th 2010 at 01:22 am 33

p.s. I lived in Knoxville 1991-1996, and I can vouch for the above comments about Tennessee drivers. I quickly learned that the best thing was to stay at work and let the panickers rush homeward at the sight of the first 2 flakes of snow, because they would all smash into each other. I’d wait until there was at least 4 inches of snow on the ground and everyone else was either already home, crashed, or spun out in a snowdrift along the highway, and I’d have a nice safe drive home.
Nicole Jan 5th 2010 at 08:34 am 34

Years ago I worked for a company that did occasionally close for bad weather. In 1993 we had what was the worst winter in my memory. Frigid, frigid cold for weeks interspersed with snowstorms that would dump more than a foot of snow. Anyway my company had set up a weather hotline so you could call to see if they were open. It was yet another Nor’easter and the radio was predicting two feet of snow .. surely they would be closed … nope. Not even a delayed opening. So I bundled myself up got in my car and drove two and a half hours to work (normally 45 minutes) . As I stood at my desk taking off my coat, the secretary was walking around telling everyone that the company was closing in a half hour…….. After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I put my coat back on and left for my two and a half hour drive home.

That’s what I call planing
nonegiven Jan 5th 2010 at 10:10 am 35

My son was in Cambridge during the 78 blizzard. He slept on the couch at work rather than try to walk the (normally) 10 minute walk home in waist deep snow.
Keera Jan 5th 2010 at 10:44 am 36

Here in Norway they never close anything for any reason, unless there is actual damage to the building or the road’s out. To this day, I have no idea what a “snow day” is and right now, I’m writing surrounded by a foot of snow and in freezing -7C. (My neck of the woods has the same climate as Seattle, but continental Europe’s having a Siberian invasion this winter.)
RobynS8971 Jan 5th 2010 at 11:29 am 37

I once tried the “roads are bad” excuse, but I happened to work to a road contractor and the big boss threatened to send a plow for me. Opted to put the VW Beetle in gear and made it just fine, can’t beat a rear engine for traction!
Sari Everna Jan 5th 2010 at 11:41 am 38

Siberian invasion sounds like a great band name.
Elyrest Jan 5th 2010 at 01:56 pm 39

Sari Everna - There is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, but you’re right Siberian Invasion has a ring to it.

http://www.trans-siberian.com/
Keera Jan 5th 2010 at 04:36 pm 40

LOL, Sari!
Mark in Boston Jan 5th 2010 at 08:36 pm 41

nonegiven: I walked home from Cambridge to Boston during the 78 blizzard — three miles. I had recently moved from Schenectady, New York where I routinely walked home through blizzards like that, at least five times per winter.

In Schenectady they don’t even reschedule golf tournaments for blizzards like that.