slothropbeen both sides of that counter
marighostThat comment also sucks when working holidays, particularly Thanksgiving. “They should let you be with your families!” Ok thanks, get out!
TerranFenrirExactly.
“Stfu, I need my stat pay”
KazuyaDarklightYeah that’s why, if I say anything, I thank them for being there.
If that person wasn’t there, you’d still be open though. From what I have seen of people going in during a holiday, they are all overworked with no time off and cannot get what they need beforehand, leading to them being essentially forced to.
Depends on the store. I worked at a big box hardware store and every public holiday you’d have old geezers just milling about wanting to strike up a 30 minute conversation with you about some esoteric project they’ve been working on for the last six months while you’re frantically mixing four different customer’s custom paint colours and trying to point other customers in the direction of things that have huge signs already directing customers to.
It’s a degrees of the same, they’re lonely and would be telling their kids/grandkids if said family weren’t also being forced to go to work. Next time you’re run into one, I’d encourage asking why they aren’t with their family/with loved ones.
I’ve gone to places on holidays only because I knew they were open. It wouldn’t have been a big deal at all if they weren’t open.
At least some places like New Zealand have a surcharge on public holidays.
NateNate60Most of the time, it’s the store being open that causes customers to come in. People expect places to be closed on holidays, so they check online. If the store’s listing on Google Maps or whatever confirms it is indeed closed, most people will just say “oh dang, too bad”. If it actually ends up being open then they go, buy their stuff, and then make a sympathetic comment to the employees.
The catch 22 is that the companies are opening on these days to catch the customers that come out. People go because the store is open, the store is open because people go. If people consistently, collectively didn’t go in, the stores would close.
but what fraction of those people are those that wouldn’t just go the day before or after closure instead?
The only gain the store is making is customers who need something that day and will go to another open store instead
Exactly…? If no one goes in, the store gains no benefit (only expending the cost of being open). But stores will open just on the off chance of customers coming in. And customers do go in, because the stores are open. Sometimes they go in and don’t even buy anything.
If you want retail employees to be able to spend holidays with their families, don’t go shopping on holidays. Make it unprofitable to be open.
nah. I’m not taking responsibility for shit management. I don’t care if they’re open or not, and I think they shouldn’t be, and it doesn’t change how much money I spend at their store, so they should close to save the labour costs. but it ain’t my responsibility.
I agree and that’s how i operate. However the counter argument to this is, if a store is open and no one shows up at all then next year they will not open because there was not a single sale. Not sure how acurate that is in terms of corporate BS but that is the general counter argument i hear.
That’s how the grocery store I worked at, Save A Lot, from 2014-2025 operated. Being open was based on the sales of the previous year. It also wasn’t uncommon that we’d just close after a few hours if no customers showed up. It’s what made me dislike customers on these days even more cause if they stayed home, I’d actually be able to go home early (or if I worked the closing shift, I wouldn’t have to come in at all).
Serious question: Is it about the tone or would you rather nobody comes? I mean it’s the same working hours for you. Where I live, shops are closed on holidays and Thanksgiving isn’t one so don’t ask me if I might be that customer.
When I worked retail, I would have rather nobody came at all. Store would then close up early for the day and I wouldn’t have to deal with the public for minimum wage.
The entire economy can’t just shut down because of some snow. Realisitically the most dangerous part about that weather is the driving, if we just built public transit, their commute wouldn’t even be that different from a sunny day. If you dress for the weather you’ll be fine.
RickyRigatoniYes it can.
Is this a technical argument like, “It absolutely can shut down. It shouldn’t, but it can.”
Or are you arguing that it should shut down for a day? If so, do mean for holidays or more like a general strike? In either case, would there be exceptions?
The economy will survive if businesses aren’t open for a day or two in places the weather is angry
My area experiences snow 2-3 times a week regularly. Thats a bigger issue than a handful of days a year.
“Experiences snow” is different from “gets dumped on for hours and hours straight like those once every year or two level storm”.
We get a lot of lake effect snow. The bigger storms aren’t cleaned up for several days and in major situations like that, sure shut non essential services down, but I’ve heard people make this same argument about a light rain so I’m always a little skeptical is it actually the weather or do they just want any excuse not to come in.
Okay, I see what you mean, now. I think I was interpreting “shutdown” in a more absolute sense and “economy” in a broader sense. I was concerned more along the lines of utilities, EMS, etc being unavailable.
ComradeSharkfuckerErm actually, have you considered that line go down?
As long as people don’t go driving around in cars unnecessarily, heavy snow and storms aren’t that bad to get around in. Buss lanes are usually the first to be plowed and walking in a snow storm is always so cozy. Just wear a lot of layers.
People with mobility issues and even just people with shorter legs can struggle to walk around in a snow storm, especially when budgets vastly prioritize car lanes over sidewalks and pathways.
And if you do have to drive its fine so long as you leave earlier to account for slower speeds and some delays like plows or accidents.
Yes disabled people exist. They shouldn’t be out and about in a snow storm. Please don’t go driving around in it though. You’re in the way of the plows doing their job and you are not as experienced as the buss drivers. You’re likely to get stuck and cause an accident. We can let some days be exceptional days, everything doesn’t have to work all the time.
I have to drive a van for work, no way I’m convincing my 70 year old french canadian boss that some snow is a good reason to shut down working for the day.
Tell that to the danish public transit system shitting itself because we’re getting a bit of snow tonight. In reality, there’s a better chance of you being able to drive your car to work, than the train being able to go. Because your car isn’t bound by minimum speeds, but if the train can only go 10 mph because of snow and ice on the track, it’s just not feasible to run it.
That sounds like an infrastructure specific problem. Many countries have trains that work reliably in snowy conditions or have train cars designed to clear tracks for other trains.
If no one plowed or maintained the roads, your car would struggle too.
The problem is brake length. If you get ice between the steel rails and the steel wheels, you’re going to have a very very long brake length, that is already pretty long for a train. It doesn’t have to snow a lot for ice buildup to occur, and having a plow to clear everything everywhere becomes less feasible, the better your rail coverage is. If for example you take the railline where I live. It’s about 2 hours long at train speeds. If you were to put 1 train on that line, that just continuously cleared the rail, you could clear it once every 2 hours. If it continually snows, that’s likely not going to be enough for the trains to safely opperate. Now my line is really not that long compared to the rest of the country. It’s roughly 120kms long. Compared to the 2615 km of train tracks we have, you’re going to need A LOT of trains that can get rid of the ice buildup. You’re also going to need A LOT of people to work those trains, people who wouldn’t be needed 98% of the year.
So sure, you could just throw billions and billions at the problem, but it’s just not going to happen, and it probably shouldn’t either.
You seem to know a lot about trains and snow. Tell me, how is it then that Sweden and Finland continue to have trains in the winter? Or Switzerland or upper Austria for that matter?
I don’t know a lot about trains and snow. All I know is what I’ve been told every time trains are cancelled here in Denmark because there’s snow on the tracks, or because a few leafs have landed on them.
But it doesn’t take all that much to realize that a very small contact area, with low friction materials, with a slippery surface inbetween makes trains a lot worse at both speeding up, and slowing down.
If train is late its not because of “few leafs”. Wet, smushed leafs pack on the rails like film that slows down both acceleration and braking, because there is not friction, but there needs to be shit ton of them.
Ice effects supricingly little to acceleration/braking. Trains are so heavy that the pressure on the tracks melts the ice allmost instantly. Bigger problem is the snow, that starts to pack on parts of the train.
Id imagine big part why trains in Sweden and Finland stay on time is because train companies know trains move slower in certain times so they adjust the schedule accordingly.
That’s rough. I thought operating rail systems in inclement weather was a mostly solved problem.
dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️Trains on rails have basically no traction, since the contact surfaces are steel on steel. Anything that makes them slippery becomes a no-go as soon as hills are involved, and stopping is also significantly impacted.
Having them not require tires is a solved problem, but as you can see that comes with some compromises.
LemmyoutofhereThey have grit dispensers for the wheels for this exact problem in snowy areas.
sockinggoodWhen there was some ice and snow in my country, the cars and busses didn’t work. Trains were still going, so more reliable indeed.
OfCourseNotThat's one way of saying you haven't commuted by bus, train, or subway in your entire life, I guess.
Yeah, public transit is great for many reasons, but reliability in bad weather is not one of them.
Maybe you’ve just never got to use good, high quality public transit.
It’s a region dependant luxury. Where I live, transit has tons of tweakers and unstable people. Especially during winter. The city doesn’t bother cleaning blood off the walls for weeks after a stabbing.
I’d love some proper investment into transit and security on said transit, but I’m not holding my breath
Probably not the best in the world, but I would consider my city's public transit network way above the average for what I know. It's lovely most of the time, just not at rush hours when millions of people have to be moved at the same time, and specially in bad weather.
I'm not sure what your standard for high quality is but I'd bet that even the best one gets overwhelmed in these situations and it's an absolute hell to ride as well.
Edit: even though I think it is still good, It just came to mind that trains have been crashing as of lately in my country. So the quality could fall due to corruption and capitalism at any moment really...
If its over capacity every rush hour then they should consider running more trains and more frequently around those times, or depending on the trips taken, invest in another transit line to ease congestion.
You cannot oversize the infrastructure for that 1% peak use. It's just not feasible. It's the 'mOaR trains/rails/busses...' instead of lanes. There isn't any efficient way of moving that much people around in that little time, imo the solution has to include distributing the use of the resources, like with wfh or even flexible schedules (honestly we should aim for just working less. We humans are doing and making too many things all the time...). What do you do with so many busses and trains just 30 min after the rush hour when almost no one rides it? I've seen those massive parking lots where the American yellow school busses lie the 99% of the time when they're not swarming all the roads, our current lots for busses and trains are quite big already I don't think they can be scaled that way. And then you have drivers and other workers...
Unlike more lanes, more trains is far easier to implement, cheaper, and basically takes up no space. The extra trains can be used to swap out during maintaince and repairs. They can also be deployed during abnormal congestion such as concerts or sports events.
If our cities will let robotaxis on their streets, i see no problem with robo trains which are literally attached to rails to guide them and would be far easier to implement emergency safety features like auxiliary brakes.
I think I know which country they are talking about. I wouldn’t call it over capacity, but at capacity which still means metro every 3 minutes and every train is full. The experience of so many hundreds of people moving in and out can definitely be overwhelming. Combined with the noise, the heat in the summer and the smell, even if it’s on the better side of the scale world wide is still far from ideal.
If its at full capacity its time to consider expansion unless the city has strict rules in place to limit growth.
In Hong Kong, the day after a Category 5-equivalent typhoon hit, the metro system was back up again within two days with apologetic announcements that some trains were slightly delayed due to debris on the track.
fishosif we built public transit
It’s almost like they’re implying it needs expansion and improvements. Maybe if you read past the first sentence without waiting to be immediately outraged, you’d have caught that.
No, I've read the whole comment. And I think it's wrong all of it. Of course we should build good, robust, and reliable public transport networks. But I think those shouldn't be oversized in excess. In this case I consider much more efficient to shut down or downsize the economy, than to prepare busses and trains, and rails and roads for events that doesn't happen that often.
'Sorry boss, the union has put out a message that today we aren't working.' is what it should be.
'Sorry boss, the union has put out a message that today we aren't working.' is what it should be.
If a job doesn’t pay well enough for snow tires it must not be that important