This may boil down to a rant, so take with a grain of salt if you don't care. For context, I am 24 years old, working in rural Michigan in a town of blue-collar factory workers and retirees. My job is retail auto parts sale and delivery, meaning when I am not at the counter, I am often on the road. The only vehicles we are provided for delivery are FWD hatchback Ford Focuses or Fiestas. I make 15$/hr, which isn't bad for the area, but not amazing pay when all my living conditions are still college town prices. Average workweek is 5 10-hour days, plus 5 hours every other weekend.
Currently, we are getting hit with a winter storm. The news said 9-10 inches by the end of tomorrow, but the way things are going, it might be by the end of tonight. There are also 25mph winds. Schools cut the day short at noon, and repair shops have started closing around us because almost all the customers have recheduled or canceled. The road conditions went from shit to horseshit in only 3 hours of my 10-hour shift. When some of the older customers heard customers were canceling at the auto shops, they began referring to them as “cowards” for canceling.
When news started breaking that schools were closing early and preemptively for tomorrow, the local populace started voicing to us retail workers that its bs because in their day they still would have to go to school and the bus would make it through just fine. They also voice that it's not that bad outside.
I am a fairly good driver if I say so myself, more than capable of driving on these roads. However, i have had friends from high school die to roads like this before, which makes me antsy being on them. Some custo.ers come in expressing concern that we deliver in these vehicles and that we might want to consider closing early for safety instead of driving home in the dark. This is met almost immediately with “Psshh, we've stayed open in worse.”
I get that I need the money, especially in todays economy, but I really think the way the weather is going. I would rather be at home than driving the worst vehicle choice. Why can't the diehard bootstrappers understand that just because we CAN drive in this shit does not mean we WANT to.
Addition: Unrelated to the weather, but I learned one of my coworkers is out of sorts emotionally today because it is the 3rd year, to the day, he found his friend after they had taken their life. This was told to me by my boss with permission from the coworker, so we understood if he seemed out of it. The boss, however, also added snippets that it's been 3 years, other stuff has happened in life, and that he shouldn't be getting so worked up over it after so long. I just feigned approval and brushed his comments off, and have been supportive for the coworker. I can't change how the entire region feels.
Rant and venting wall of text over. Thank you if you read it all.