Spoiler Alert: If you live and work in Miami, or New Orleans, San Diego or Death Valley you can probably skip this one. Unless…

Unless, and this covers a lot of territory and folks, you are one of the many who love it when we inside-the-beltway Swamp Rats take it on the chin. Or get hit with a blizzard which, in this area, is anything over a couple inches of snow. Then all bets are off, except that our world shuts down. At least in the past. There is something about the D.C. area (which is a river town full of hills and traffic circles) that make us go a little nuts when it snows. Even tough guys from Boston, Duluth and Chicago succumb to our fears and ineptitude when there is snow. Like the first of the year blizzard (in some spots) that just swept across the nation.

Normally a big snow storm (or even a little one) means a shutdown in the D.C. area. Especially of federal offices. Back in the day (before COVID) nonemergency employees were told to stay home if we had ice or snow. The government even changed the term from “nonessential’ to ‘nonemergency’ workers to remove the stigma of a government shutdown.

But now with two years of remote working in our resumes, hundreds of thousands of nonessential — sorry, nonemergency — employees were and/or are working from home, when before teleworking they would have the day off.

With 6 out of 10 feds working from home or remote locations in many agencies, snow days are fast becoming a back-in-the-day story we old-timers can regale/bore younger colleagues who are new to the workforce with. We can talk about the fun we had sleeping late (sans kids) or taking the little ones (who were also on snow days) to the park or nearest sledding area.

Thanks to our brave new world environment many of us who previously got and enjoyed snow-days are now left with just our memories.

So how’d you weather the “blizzard?” Is teleworking not-such-a-treat when it eliminates a snow day? Love to hear your story! mcausey@federalnewsnetwork.com

Nearly Useless Factoid

By David Thornton

Humans aren’t the only species that views fresh snow as an opportunity to play. Japanese macaques, also known as “snow monkeys,” enjoy playing with snow, including making snowballs and rolling them down hills. And when they start getting too cold, they warm up by bathing in hot springs.

Source: Atlas Obscura

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