Well, I spent 40 hours at work

[conuly]

And I'm getting paid for every last one of them, including the 6 hours when the house slept and so did I. Normally, we're not actually supposed to sleep on an overnight shift - but almost everybody really does, so it's more like "don't get caught" - but c'mon.

For everybody at home, leaving without a replacement is not simply a fireable offense but an actual, factual crime. Also, I'm not sure how I would've gotten to the bus. I mean, it's right outside the door, and buses were running all night, but man, it was brutal out there. We needed a little shoveling, and neither I nor manager wanted to shovel, so we had to wait for the neighbors to get their sidewalks and then sorta patch us into theirs. (The transportation issue is also why I'm not blaming any coworkers who didn't come in. It was impossible. I genuinely don't think that this was a fixable issue, Staten Island got a lot of snow.)

In retrospect, what probably ought to have been done would have had to have been done in advance:

1. Manager should've taken as much discretionary money as possible, agreed to let staff order Chinese or whatever for two, three meals - something that reheats nicely - and offered to pay all our carfare home in advance, and then used that to straight up bribe at least one extra staff member to stay over the storm. With three of us, we could've had one on each floor and also could've more easily arranged sleeping shifts so somebody was awake at all times.

2. She also should've called up the families of those residents who frequently go home for an overnight and asked if they'd take their relatives from Sunday afternoon until Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. That's suboptimal for a lot of reasons - there's a reason they all live in a residence instead of with their families! - but it would've lightened the burden on us significantly if we'd had even just our two or three easiest residents away visiting their sisters and brothers.

But we all survived! My replacement actually showed up at midnight last night! But she declined to wake me on the grounds that I wasn't going home at midnight, and she was quite right. And then another staff member showed up this morning, and 90 or 100 minutes later my bus finally showed up. (And yes, I do insist on getting paid for that last hour and a half as well. I wasn't just sitting around, I was doing laundry, and supervising on the basement so that everybody else could handle the upper floors, and walking the guys out to their van so nobody slipped on ice.)

I'm home now, I showered, and I have the rest of the week off, off, off. Yay me!

If this happens again, I'm bringing a change of clothing.

Comments

[malada]

Reminds of a time back in the analog TV days (think big honking tape decks) when a winter storm was coming in. We were warned to bring extra food, blankets, clothes and a sleeping bag to work. The management was there and provided pizza and other snacks. I was able to get a good night's sleep since back then we shut down the transmitter at midnight.

After that I always had a change of clothes, granola bars, snacks and other small items at work just in case. Thankfully now all that can be done digitally and remotely. \

Glad you made it through!

[redbird]

Well done, and hopefully your manager will do a bit more/better advance planning for the next blizzard, which hopefully is a few years away, or at least a few weeks.

[hilarita]

That's a lot of time at work! Hopefully managers will review what happened and come up with a better plan for the next big weather event. What you suggest sounds quite sensible, so hopefully they can do that or something like that!
And hooray for the rest of the week off, and a shower!

[topaz_eyes]

You made it through! Yeah, I hope you get to discuss this at a debrief because these are all good suggestions. Surely they knew far enough in advance about the storm to plan staff and supply contingencies.

Enjoy the rest of the week off, you earned it!

[greenwoodside]

Glad to hear you survived!

And hope it all feels at least somewhat worthwhile on payday.

[gingicat]

Wow, and you also do one of the hardest jobs. Go you.

[dine]

I'm glad you survived, and are back at home! rest up - you've earned it

management definitely needs to develop better plans; there was enough notice to prepare so things were less stressful

[conuly]

Mmm. It probably is harder with more impaired people. These people are all fairly independent - we can mostly let them do their own thing so long as someone is present.

[halfshellvenus]

Wow, what a marathon!

But a triumph for you and all the other people who had to stay on!

[tielan]

Glad you're home again, getting paid, and got some sleep.

[magid]

Wow, that is a *lot* of hours in a row; I’m glad you were able to get some sleep!

And like everyone else has been saying, I hope this is used as a learning opportunity for better management next time there’s a challenge like this.

[adafrog]

Yay you!

[rebeccmeister]

I'm so relieved to hear you made it through. Totally right on the change of clothing. I hope it will be possible to give useful input to Manager. Definitely a tricky situation to manage and be in, regardless.