A Winter Story or "Why Doesn't Anyone Want to Work?"

I used to live in Richmond VA. I spent twenty years there. In many ways, it's more like home than the place I grew up ever was. For many reasons, it's a relatively small city with a relatively high concentration of wonderful human beings. Because of this, it has a number of other excellent things to offer. There's a vibrant arts community, encompassing nearly every kind of art, it's a walkable city, a great food scene, easy access to the James River and the park system built on it, etc. There are many reasons to love Richmond, those are just the most obvious. 

Like any place, it has it's less wonderful aspects. As much as I love Richmond, it's still very much a place where many of the institutional and social structures of the Old South echo loudly. The racial divides. The class divides. It's a city with a strange politics though too. There's something a bit wild in them. It can be seen across the racial divides, though not shockingly, less so across the class divides. It's somehow fitting, given my experience with the city, it would end up being the site of one of the most recognizable images from the BLM protests of 2020. Radical isn't quite so dirty a word there as it is so many other places. I hope someone more well suited and whose acceptable accreditation decides to write a decent book about these aspects of twenty-first century Richmond, especially given the number of volumes already dedicated to it's place in history as the capitol of the Confederacy. The city, its people and the evolution it has undergone since the turn of the century deserve it. This is life in America though, so deserve ain't got nothing to do with it. 

One of the other less than enjoyable things about living in Richmond can't necessarily be put on the city itself, be it the residents or the city government. It's a problem for the entire state, which is now grabbing some national attention, a complete inability to deal with any accumulation of snow. 

Historically, it hasn't snowed very much in Virginia, and the way Virginians think about preparation for snow is more or less encapsulated by the idea that even if there is some accumulation, the chances are very high the roads will be passable in a day or two. It rarely stays so cold for so long that the combination of warming temperatures and what little infrastructure they have isn't able to make roads traversable within twenty-four or thirty-six hours. There's always plenty of easy jokes for people from snowier climates make about snow shutting down The South. Having been someone who moved from a snowier climate to The South, it's easy to understand the appeal. Once you've lived in a snowier climate, and you've moved to The South for more than one or two winters, what you really end up with is an appreciation for the infrastructure which makes it possible to not experience a near complete societal shutdown down when there's more than an inch or two of snow. Who knows what climate change is going to bring though. If the predictions of more severe weather in all climates is true, snowstorms like the one which has stranded drivers on I-95 overnight might be more regularly occurring. Virginia isn't a place which rushes to accept changes in perspective though, so there's slim chance they'll change before another five or ten of these instances. Though if anything is guaranteed to change the perspective of Virginians with relative speed, it's the interruption of commerce, which brings me to an experience I had while living there. 

It's a decade or so back now, between 2008 and 2010. I was working in paint store. It was the kind of joint selling paint to commercial painters, mostly. The customer based was people who paint newly constructed homes and offices or the kind of people who paint apartment units when one tenant has left and they're trying to rent it anew. There was a small retail space, with a warehouse full of commercial products. It was also about fifteen or twenty minutes outside of Richmond. There was a small retail space, where we'd be able to provide for the occasional homeowner looking to start a project. One of the nice things about living in Richmond city proper is that it only takes about that long to get into rural Virginia, adding to the variety of things one could add to their lives, while still living in and having easy access to everything the city itself has to offer. I was living a stones throw from the line which technically delineated Richmond from one of its surrounding counties, in the county. 

Snow was predicted in the forecast on this particular day. There's a misconception that The South is the only place where the prediction of snow will consume every conversation, especially the more superficial and genial variety. It happens up North too though. The difference isn't in the obsession it inspires in conversation, but in the material reaction. Even after twenty years, I still don't understand why milk, bread and eggs were the items Richmond residents seemed to feel were worthy of hoarding in the face of a coming snowstorm, and don't think I ever will. The thing to note here is it's nearly impossible to not know when snow is predicted. Everyone will be talking about it, and even your local convenience store will suddenly be short on some things it wouldn't normally be. If there's any prediction of an accumulation over three or so inches, everyone who possibly can prepares to stay home for a day or two. Everyone who has spent more than two winters in Richmond knows what happens to the roads. It's not every single year there's an accumulation which shuts everything down, but it's never more than three years apart either. 

This was one of those storms, and it was predicted to be one of those storms. I can't remember exactly what the predictions were for accumulation, but I know we were all expecting at least a day or two of basically impassable roads. The store I was working in was small, and the overwhelming majority of its business was done in the morning. The store manager and assistant manager would open at six am. I'd come in around eight. They'd leave around two and I'd be there by myself to close up at six. 

On this day though, the snow started to fall around noon. An email had been sent out from the district office in the morning, telling us the decision whether or not to close would be made on a store by store basis, in consultation with the district manager. By around one pm, as we saw the snow was beginning to accumulate, the store manager called the district office to find out if we could close up. "We'll let you know," was the answer. The manager, assistant manager and myself all agreed there was no reason for all three of us to be there and they left. 

Usually, the four hours I was alone were an exercise in figuring out how best to productively waste time. If it were now, I'd bring a book and read. Then, I was younger. I was also still more in the grips of attempting to at least act as if I didn't live in a world so utterly insane even though I believed it, and was a decade from consciously accepting that as a person with a severe mental illness, continuing to try and act in concert with those norms was probably going to kill me. I'd spend as much of the time as possible finding something to do. Like so many people, my early employment experience was subject to a very regular dose of the philosophy which is unfortunately summed up by the dictum, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean." As if we were somehow stealing if we weren't, as Prince once put it so beautifully, "doing something close to nothing, but different than the day before." On regular days, those hours I spent alone were spent doing a lot of something close to nothing, though it was rarely different than the day before. Stocking shelves, sweeping floors etc took very little time in such a small retail space. Occasionally, a homeowner would come in trying to find what was best for whatever project they had in mind. It was unusual to see more than two or three people, on a normal day. Even more rarely, a commercial customer would come in to pick up whatever they needed for the next day.

On this day, I did my usual something close to nothing, and then basically sat and watched the snow fall. By about two pm, it had intensified to look like the kind of storm I'd gotten accustomed to in the few years I lived in New York's Hudson Valley. It was clear it was going to be a real snowstorm. I called the district office. The answer was still the same. 

The radio was always on, and by about four pm, the weather reporters were saying the accumulation was between three and four inches, and the storm was going to go on for at least a few more hours. I called the district office and, again, got the same answer, "We'll let you know." This time though, it was accompanied by "Don't call us, we'll call you." 

By six, when it was time to close up, there was between seven and eight inches of snow on the ground. There had been no call from the district office. The store was in a strip mall, with a fairly sizable parking lot, and there were only two other cars in it. I got in my 1994 Honda Prelude, which I might add was light enough to get blown around pretty well in a good spring thunderstorm in Virginia, and started what was normally the fifteen minute ride home. 

It ended up being one of the more anxiety and dread inducing two hour drives of my life. The route home was a choice between a trip down I-95 or down some of the rural roads. I started on 95, witnessing a shocking number of cars, trucks and semi's which were either pulled to the shoulder by choice, disabled on the side of the road, sitting on the highway waiting for emergency services or already with emergency services due to accidents. The second vehicle I watched spin across two lanes into the median convinced me to get off 95 and try the rural roads. It's impossible to say whether they were better or worse. Fewer disabled vehicles and less traffic, but still a number of disabled vehicles, including an SUV I watched slide into one of the drainage ditches on the side of every rural Virginia road. They were trying to make a turn, and either didn't try or weren't able to slow down enough. I stopped, asked if they were alright (which they were) and if they wanted a ride, but the driver decided to they were going to call for a tow and wait with the vehicle, despite my attempts to convince them otherwise. As best as I could estimate in the few days after, I saw between forty and sixty disabled vehicles. Forty to sixty might seem like a wide range, but it's not like I was trying to count every one. I had other things on my mind. In a short few miles on 95 alone, I know I saw at least thirty.

Looking at the pictures from I-95 in Virginia today and yesterday reminded me of this experience. In thinking about it, it also encapsulates the basis about what's happening with people's changing attitudes about work and labor. 

I stayed in that store, watching the snow fall, even as I knew it was getting more and more dangerous on the roads. We weren't long from the economic collapse of 2008, and the "recovery" was only just getting started. I wasn't willing to risk losing the job. In some ways, I was also trying to be a good employee. I was angry too. I was angry with myself for not quitting or just taking whatever consequences would have come from closing the store and leaving. I was angry with the district manager for not closing all the stores in the district, including mine. Of course, in every conversation about it afterward, those were the binaries. Some people would say, "I would have just closed up and left. Let them fire me if they want to," or others would say, "Well, at least you have a job," and then these responses would dictate the direction of the discussion from there. 

Where the conversation rarely focused is how acceptable and normal it is to put workers in the position to have to make that decision, no matter what they decided. It wouldn't ever get down to the idea that my physical safety and financial well being were worth risking what in the most positive of scenarios would have been a few hundred dollars in profit. At best, a commercial customer could have come in to pick up enough paint to still be able to get some work done the following day. The profit from something like that wasn't going to be more than two or three hundred dollars, at best. It was more likely to be around one hundred dollars. It's not like the company I was working for was going to cover medical expenses, should I have been injured in a car accident after leaving. I didn't have health insurance, I was a part time employee, and even though they did offer part time employees health insurance, it would have taken half of my wages to afford it. Virginia's employment laws are far from what anyone would call worker friendly, and getting any kind of compensation in court would take years. The likelihood it would be granted was similar to that of the hand you wish in filling up faster than the hand you shit in. Even I hadn't been physically injured, the loss of use of my car would have spelled disaster. I wasn't making enough money to have something put away in an instance like that, and a ten year old car with over 100,000 miles on it wasn't something I was insuring for every variable. Even if insurance were to cover it, it was still going to mean lost wages, paying the deductible etc. 

That's what our normal has been. Low wage workers, the ones who are least able to afford just quitting a job which is putting that little value to their well being, have been the most expendable, and not just in employment terms. They've been expendable in relation to their entire well being. "Well, you can just quit." It's true, I could have quit, and still, would it have been so much different elsewhere? It wouldn't. A person making two hundred thousand dollars a year can afford to leave a job, even if it means they have to sell their homes etc. They're not going to be on the precipice of homelessness and all the things which come with the economic precariousness of low wage workers. We never examine the real question about why it's perfectly normal to put an employee/worker in the position to have to make the decision about walking out in order to protect their well being. It's been fine for employers to make the kinds of decisions that result in the kinds of pictures we've been seeing from I-95 in Virginia. 

Back then, when I had this experience, we were coming out of the economic collapse of 2008, and companies were scrambling to get back to being in the black and dreaming of the record profits they were experiencing before Wall Street tanked the world economy. Now, employers are dreaming of getting back to pre-COVID profits, and staring the reality of the omicron variant in the face. The predictions for this storm were there ahead of time. Everyone in Virginia understands what the state is capable of where dealing with snow is concerned. The majority of those people and vehicles stuck on those roads are the result of the combination of decisions which place the value of human well being below the necessity for profit. One clear decision was to have people come into work. The other is less obvious. Having the infrastructure to deal with the kind of snowstorm Virginia now experiences every few years is more expensive than not having it. The calculation has been that it's not worth it to pay for it (which means taxes for someone) if it's not definitely going to be necessary every year. That calculation isn't taking into account what it means for working people whose employers aren't going to put the immediate well being of their workers ahead of even a relatively small profit. We don't like to believe it, but it's far more the norm than it is the exception, and we have evidence of that on I-95 over the last few days. 

It's literally unthinkable that, even with the obviousness of Virginia's inability to deal with accumulated snowfall, it could be normalized to decide whatever was supposed to happen today isn't important enough to put all those people in jeopardy. It's unthinkable that it would be less acceptable for employers to put people in these positions, where workers would have to make these choices. 

At its foundation, this is why people are willing to risk not returning to low wage jobs after the pandemic lockdowns. For some of them, it's probably the first extended period of time without having to make decisions like this. This is what it all boils down to. 

Next time someone decides to come up with whatever explanation they use for the "labor shortage" that boils down to "people are lazy," think about how what I've just said relates to a pandemic which is soon going to reach a million dead.