A Note on Snow Days
I’ll be honest, I didn’t exactly get to experience the joy of seeing your school’s name flash across the TV announcing a snow day. You see, I was homeschooled K-12 before it was a pandemic requirement. I did however, have a pretty cool mom that let us kids take snow days pretty often or even a few hours of snow play.
I am and will forever be pro-snow days. Not just for kids but for adults too.
Years ago when I was somehow getting by mentally in my bank-teller days (seriously, be nice to your teller) I remember dreading the snow. Not because I hate snow, I actually love it and winter, but because I was now part of the working world whose boss did not care if you literally couldn’t drive out of your driveway. You were expected to risk your life for that $10 an hour position and to only serve maybe 7 customers in a day because everyone is literally snowed in. Seriously. I remember wrecking and calling in that I can’t make it and they gave me (some) empathy and gladly docked my vacation time for the missed shift.
Eventually it was a snow storm years later that ultimately led to my outright refusal to risk mine and another employee’s life for a job I was burnt out enough from that I took a pay cut and quit for somewhere else. Our lives are more important. Mental health is more important. It is because of that mental health choice that I truly believe helped me find my path to this amazing career and (a much larger salary) that I now have.
This morning I didn’t fret when I saw the inches of snow that blanketed my street over night. I didn’t fret because I have the luxury of working from home. Thanks to a pandemic and an office-based job that involves almost zero customer service, I can literally do this job from the comfort of my fuzzy robe and Yankee candle scented home. Today, I am thankful for all those snow days I had as a kid, for all those awful snow drives I experienced in my late teens and early 20s to work, because I can truly take in and appreciate what I have today.
So I don’t care who you are or what you do - take a snow day. It’s good for the soul, you can thank me later.
- Liz
