Nope. It’s not snowing. Yesterday a few flakes fell, amounting to nothing and today, once more is bright and sunny. It’s way too warm for this time of year!
Last year, at this time, it was very seasonal.
My Christmas tree looked so good.
Maybe I’m daft, but I love snow.
This was not always true.
Certainly not when I lived on Long Island,
and worked at JFK Airport.
Snow and aeroplanes are not a good mix.
And driving to work in a blizzard,
knowing what the day will be like,
no, that was not fun!
Passengers did not seem to understand.
We always felt most of them parked their brains,
somewhere outside the airport.
“What’s the hold up?!” they would yell.
“Um, the airport’s closed?”
There would be a massive crowd of
frustrated would-be travellers,
moaning about how we were going to “ruin their Christmas”
If you said “we are not responsible for the weather,” they would get all huffy.
and they would start demanding, telling you what “the airlines have to do!”
“You have to get us a hotel room!” They had no concept that every flight, of every airline was delayed or canceled and that all the airport hotels were full hours ago.
“Then get us a hotel in the City!” Ya, and how are we going to get you there? This was before the rail link was built, back in the good old days, but I doubt, even now, it’s easy to transport a flight load of passengers into the City. Way back when, British Airways were actually very generous to stranded passengers. Later on, unless you had a very expensive ticket, or made a really big stink, you were on your own!
I can’t say what they offer now. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
Sometimes, when your shift was over,
you couldn’t go home because the roads were closed.
Maybe, you could stay “on the clock” because of the stranded passengers. Not that you could do anything for them:
“I need you to re-book my connecting flight”
Awkward when you can’t guess a new arrival time.
“Well I want my bags back!” That was always special, because the baggage room was overflowing with thousands of bags, mostly in containers. Where were you going to find one dufus’ bag in that lot?
Stranded passengers needed a lot of baby sitting. They liked the appearance of a uniform they could go and bitch to.
They might persuade you to issue a meal voucher,
then came back to moan some more because
the food was all gone, or it stank.
In the morning, if the new shift managed to fight their way through snow drifts and abandoned cars,
you were dismissed and you could wait an hour
in the freezing cold for the parking lot bus.
Then, if you could find your car under a snow pile
you had the delight of defrosting, scraping ice
and digging the damn thing out.
Hopefully you weren’t blocked in by the snow plow.
It was really exciting after you’d been up all night,
fending off passengers.
Then you had the treacherous drive home.
In those days, snow was not a welcome sight!
So, on behalf of all those people who work in aviation, or who have in some way to battle the elements, I must celebrate that it is way too warm for December!
Apparently it’s the wrong type of cold here so no snow until February. Hope the forecast is wrong.