Just A Regular Work Day

So, it’s a normal winter day. One, one and a half inches of snow overnight, and I get to work on time, cold and unhappy, ready to go home before I set foot on campus.

7:05 am. Richard calls me asking if we are indeed closed, because he saw on the news or heard on the phone that we were. I know better and don’t allow my heart to leap as I hang up on him and check the school’s automated voice system for “Weather. Physical Closings.” Nope. We are not closed. Richard is as disappointed and confused as I am.

“Everybody else is closed, except us.” I know and I wonder why, again. Why? I want to say it’s a Catholic thing (it’s a Catholic university), but the other Catholic schools are closed. I want to say it’s a quirk of the current president, but the president before him was just as inconsiderate when it came to icy streets and snow drifts. So, I don’t know. Just a regular work day for us.

Nothing sucks, nothing grates, nothing wears and tears like being at work, trekking around the campus, schlepping paper towels and toilet tissue, and knowing that almost everybody else in the education system in the city has the day off.

Lord, why can’t I work some place where they close the school at the first sign of snow, as the first flake swirls towards the ground, as the temperature dips into the thirties. Other schools and businesses wave the white flag when there is half an inch on the ground, if they hear someone in the vicinity almost slipped on something that might have been a patch of ice…

Why couldn’t you have given me a job at one of those places, Lord, a place were people have sense?

And, yes, I hear you, the reader, saying, thinking: You have a job.

Yes I do. But, I didn’t want to be at work today. I wanted to be at home, snug in front of my computer with a glass of caffeine-free tea in my hand, while other people were at work!

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels