I’m older than the average bear (yes, Tammy, I’m stating the obvious!) and it’s true I did walk to and from school when I was a kid even though it was NOT 6 miles each way up hill and rarely did we have school called off for snow. For 17 years my daughters attended Greenwood Lab School at Missouri State University and in all that time, the university may have cancelled classes half a dozen times. Canceling school because of snow just didn’t happen!
However, our society has turned into a bunch of litigating wimps and at the slightest sign of a flake (snow, that it), school is out for a snow day. That’s why I was not a bit surprised when a major snowfall (read: most snow we’ve had in a couple of years, total of 4-6 inches) fell overnight, you guessed it – no school. So please tell me why it only took me an extra 5-10 minutes to get to work and not one single person in my office was late. Methinks it’s the mindset some folks have acquired. Oh well, just a few more weeks until spring and I should retire with the knowledge that I have NEVER stayed home from work because of the weather – EVER.
Today marked 23 years of employment for me at Cox – a milestone I never considered on that first day of employment. What I remember is a sense of fear mixed with excitement because I was taking a new position that was wide open for me to create. My wonderful boss gave me my annual evaluation today and we spent most of the time reminiscing about work experiences and my goals for Life 2.0 – a term he readily embraced even though he’s light years away from that day himself.
Soon we’ll have a new staff member in our office to start the process of officially passing the baton from me to the next director and in turn down to her new assistant. Reality is starting to set in and I’m ready! But first I need to check the reality of the Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries – here’s hoping “none of the above” won out over the usual suspects!
I agree, it does seem like even in the past ten years that we’ve seen an increase in snow days. Of course SPS’s current superintendent had all that trouble last year when he DIDN’T cancel school at the beginning of the ice storm, so I think he is being “extra cautious” this year!
On a similar note, my boss was expressing her outrage at the school of nursing being closed for all these snow days. She said that those nurses-in-training will be expected to be at work when they’re out in the real world and working at the hospital, so why shouldn’t they start now while they’re in school? They’re in for a rude awakening!