Schools are closed. Flights are cancelled. The federal government is shut down. But you? You’re still expected to get your job done, just at home rather than the office. For many workers, a fun little perk—which used to come in the form of an unexpected vacation day due to a big snowfall—is long gone thanks to telecommuting. Gotta love technology.
Blizzard or no blizzard, it’s business as usual for today’s wired workers. Forget building a snowman with your kids. You’ve got conference calls and e-mails to attend to. And also, since the kids are home and you must work, you’ve got some extra work to do: You’ve got to find someone to watch them.
The snow day, once a reprieve from the grind, is now just an added inconvenience, a minor complication in the usual work week. What a snow day isn’t is fun, as USA Today laments:
The ability to work from anywhere also means snow days no longer offer a break from work. Many are like Nicko Margolies, a communications assistant at the Sunlight Foundation, a Washington-based non-profit.
With the federal government shut down, his office closed. Margolies worked at home.
“No snowstorm, no matter how big, will keep me from working. I lost heat, but I had my space heater and network access, so I kept on trucking. It’s actually a seamless transition from home to work,” he says. “The only difference is I’m in my pajamas.”