If they came in today, maybe they WILL come in at three in the morning...

I don't understand people.
Environment Canada had been on red alert for days. "Major Crippling Extreme Snowstorm/Blizzard/Kyag" Due Saturday night", they shrieked. (Kyag: Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.) Living here in Southern Ontario, you get used to this sort of thing: the media goes into a frenzy on the mere speculation snow might fall. I'd understand this sort of behaviour in, say, south Texas...but this is Canada, which is supposed to be "the true north", eh? Besides, more often than not, they forecast a foot, we'll get an inch.

This Time We Mean It

Browsing various weather sites, I started to think we might actually get some sort of storm this time round, not just a light dusting. The official public forecast had a little addendum after all the doom-mongering to the effect that there was a "high degree of certainty" among all the various weather models that this was a major storm and there would be no missing it.

Various forecasts called for anywhere between 20 and 50 cm (8" to 20"). Everybody agreed on the winds, gusting up to 70 km/hr (45 mph), which would produce whiteout conditions and generally wreak havoc. This was all supposed to start last night and continue throughout the day. Side streets would be impassable. Plows would be taken off the roads. Asses would be receiving big smacking goodbye kisses hither and yon.

I woke up this morning to 10 cm (about 4"), with almost no wind. But within half an hour we had freezing rain and the wind was picking up. By the time I got to work, we had normal winter weather conditions...for my dad's place, a few hours north and right in the buckle of the snowbelt. The roads were not pretty and getting worse by the minute. To be honest, I hadn't seen it snow this hard here in Waterloo for several years. "Nice slow day at work", I thought.

And it was. But not near as slow as it should have been.

I had to repeatedly restrain the urge to walk up to a random shopper and say something like "excuse me, sir. What in the almighty BLEEP are you doing in here? Will you starve to death if you don't buy those pear slices today? I mean, hey, we appreciate your patronage, but we don't ask that you risk your life!"

Then I heard we were going to be open Boxing Day. Again.

I don't have to work, so it shouldn't concern me. But it does--because it's yet another example of consumerist society run amok.
The cold, hard facts about Boxing Day at our store: we've been open two years in a row now, and if you took all the customers we served on Boxing Day 2005 and 2006, added them to the customers we'll serve on Boxing Day 2007, and hell, let's add in next year's as well...you'd still have a slow day. PEOPLE DO NOT BUY GROCERIES ON BOXING DAY. And why? Because they bought all their groceries in the three days leading up to Christmas. Also because they're too busy buying electronics.
But there will be a few customers, a very few, and heaven forbid we give them up. So we'll be open on Boxing Day for your convenience. We'll lose our shirts, but that's not important.

The call-in show on 570 News today (a repeat from earlier in the week, or believe me, I would have been on the phone posthaste) was on the topic of Wal-Mart, and how they're now open 24 hours during December: good thing or bad thing? The overwhelming consensus was that this was fantastic, and about bloody time. I listened with steadily growing anger until somebody finally spoke for people like me. "You don't have time? Make time. People had time twenty years ago. Nobody was clamoring for the chance to go out and buy stuff at three in the morning."

Amen to that, brother.

Besides, I'm willing to bet the Wal-Mart parking lots aren't exactly stuffed full at 3 a.m. In fact, I bet they're pretty much empty. But there's still the odd customer, see...

And here's where the Train of Logic runs clean off the Rails of Reality. What are people buying at Wal-Mart at 3:00 a.m? Mostly Christmas presents. Maybe the odd bit of grocery--most Wal-Marts in Canada still have a pitiful grocery selection, anyway. But because they might be buying the odd bit of food, all grocery stores have to extend their hours at the very least.

As we have. It was announced sometime in November that not only would our "summer hours" (open 'til 10 p.m. instead of 9, six days a week) be permanent, we'd also be open until 11:00 on Fridays and Saturdays. The rationale was this: "the malls are busy right until they close. We will be there to satisfy our customers' grocery needs."
I could get behind that sentiment, I really could...if our customers had grocery needs at that hour in the winter. Their cars are stuffed with Christmas gifts and all they want to do is go home. Who can blame them? It explains why, in the twelve extra hours we've been open so far, we've served something like...twelve customers.
Nevertheless, next year I bet we'll be open 'til midnight. Unless, of course, we're open 24/7/365...all hail the Great God Capitalism.