Snow Shovel Shuffle Gets the Love
The word at work is there’s like a $250 fine for not shoveling the snow in front of your business but for the purpose of motivating employees the fine has now been exaggerated to $700 a day.
Either way, Seattlest set out Friday with shovel in hand and spent almost 45 minutes picking at maybe five square feet of frozen asphalt before catching word of a small bag of rock salt. That shit helps. Fortunately Home Depot, Lowe's, Fastenal and every other major purchaser of bulk winter goods collectively failed to have the foresight to stock enough of the product. Sharing said shitty foresight, we too were caught with our pants down and had to spend the next several days in snow shoveling hell.
By Monday the snow shoveling was notably easier and by Tuesday huge chunks of semi-white snow were being upheaved with freakish ease. We even took to smashing huge patches of slushy side walk snow into those new digital parking meters for effect. We were sore but it wasn’t the hell it had been.
As Seattleites handle the “drastic” winter conditions --with varying levels of patience and hostility--the fact has been established they have no problem showing love and gratitude for a decently shoveled stretch of sidewalk. For a normally guarded and to themselves city like Seattle to be so forward with its appreciation was a pleasant shock. Passing pedestrians of all stripes and sizes have been thanking us for almost a week and it doesn’t get old.
Initially we would tell them of the supposed city ordinance against snowy sidewalks, playing the role of know-it-all do-gooder. Eventually we learned to keep the dorky shit to ourselves so people would think we were doing it out of the kindness of our hearts. Stupid gracious pedestrians, all grateful and innocent--we love you.
Photograph courtesy of one of the best, Slightly North, from our Seattlest Flickr pool.
