State of emergency

Yesterday the state of Maryland was under state of emergency due to the exceptional snowfall . Like many other in the area, I was snowed in. 300 yards away from the somewhat plowed street and the access road buried under 3 to 4 foot of snow. My options to go to work were to walk (a 6 miles/2-hour option in ideal conditions and oh yeah we are in the US so most of the roads do not have a side walk and it would not have mattered anyway because who would care about plowing the sidewalk, nobody walks in the US right ?) or to find a ride ( imagine the odds of getting a taxi or to convince a coworker to give me a ride on a day like this in a place that last has seen this much snow over 50 years ago). So I whipped out my laptop and worked from home. 

Yesterday, It took the contractor until 4PM to cut a path through from the street to my house and this morning, I was able to get to work. Most of my commute was on a layer of snow rather than bare pavement with quite a few ice patches. I got quite the scare a few times seeing other cars dangerously swerve and barely avoiding having an accident. Not exactly ideal. And apparently much better than yesterday. Here are the remarks posted by some of my colleagues about their trip to work yesterday : 

 "What a stupid idea it was to open the office today. I nearly killed myself on 100 about 3 times when the right lane would randomly disappear."

"Slid through Pointer Ridge, then almost blew through the intersection for 301 even though I was going about 7 mph I couldn't stop! How is it possible there is still so much snow on a major road? WTF? So, I came home"

So I was really shocked to find out that my company is looking into docking 1 day of vacation from anyone that did not make it in the office yesterday, regardless of whether they worked from home or not. Not exactly a motivational move, and also not the first time something of this sort happens. I've never worked for a company where wielding the stick seems to be the preferred method to manage the employees before. Even in this gloomy economic climate, I'm debating what to do about my job. 

And there comes the cherry on the cake: 

New round of snowfall started this afternoon and we are expecting another 8 to 20 inches depending on which forecast you believe in. Left work at 5:15 PM, got home at 6:30PM (yes for just 6 miles). Found on my front porch, a letter from the HOA board of directors that made me mad. In a nutshell it said that since our snow removal contractor doesn't have equipment to handle such a heavy snowfall (nor did he get in gear soon enough to rent it ahead of time so they were all gone to people that have better planning skills), we should only be piling snow in our front yard and other grass areas (we already have piled it 6 to 10 foot high) because really we shouldn't put any in the parking lot. What a bunch of BS. The HOA board of directors hired this contractor rather than a bigger company not because of the cost but because the smaller contractor made landscaping prettier. Frankly I don't care whether the 3 patches of grass we call common grounds are not perfectly groomed. I'd much rather not have to break my back with snow removal because of the HOA's contractor has inappropriate equipment. Heck I'd happily pay extra not to have to deal with this situation anymore. 

Done venting for the day :) 

On the plus side, I worked most of the day with a very nice customer and my daughter ate meat tonight. And it wasn't even that difficult to convince her to try. That kinda offset an otherwise crappy day.