Are you going to pay the legal fees?

[MadMike]

Back when our tyrannical ex-manager was still in charge, one of my coworkers tried to call off because it was snowing heavily, and he felt that the roads were too bad to drive in. The manager told him to come in anyway. On the way there, coworker hit a patch of ice, and slammed into the curb hard enough to blow out his tire.

Naturally, when coworker finally made it in, he was not happy, and let the manager know this in no uncertain terms. He sarcastically asked if the compay was going to buy him a new tire, and the manager just said he'd "look into it." Which we all know means he wasn't going to do a damn thing.

[Sapphire Silk]

Quoth mosspack1

it basically stated that employees with four wheel drive vehicles were expected to show up for their shift regardless of weather conditions. Oh and you are also expected to pick up co-workers that do not have four wheel drives.

I am pretty sure refusal to do so is not a legitamate reason to fire an employee but I imagine management will find some way to penalize the person. Especially if NC is an "at-will" state. (I do not live there so I have no idea)

It all depends on how hard ass the employer is. In North Carolina, management by intimidation in health care is pretty much the norm.

I've worked with employers who've used this threat any number of times. Usually, they'll say if you can't drive in they'll send someone to pick you up. But it's up to the employee to decide whether or not to actually get into the car. I've never heard of anyone actually getting fired.

I have had employers who'll let employees sack out in empty patient rooms between shifts to encourage them to stay and work. Call outs in bad weather are common, and the remaining staff (especially the licensed staff) cannot leave until they are relieved by the oncoming shift.

I've been snowed in before, several times. Working 16+ hours because you have no relief is not easy; you're pretty much done after 12 hours.

[Seshat]

As well as basic driving instruction, my parents' company did advanced driving instruction, including 4WDing.

Actually using a 4WD as an 'extreme conditions' vehicle is NOT, repeat NOT the same thing as ordinary driving. So much so that for certain types of outback driving (eg, running pipelines), the companies that do the work had a pretty much standing appointment with our driving school to keep their drivers' certifications up to date.
I don't know whether this was a government requirement, an insurance liability thing (many insurance companies would reduce premiums if you had a suitable certificate), or the companies had found it more efficient. Or all three, for all I know!

I've nearly skidded out on mere rain-slick road - and that a properly surfaced road at that. 4WD or not, there's no way I'd risk my life driving in dangerous conditions just for an employer.

However, if I were an essential employee (and I do mean emergency services of some sort, or otherwise 'the city breaks down without me'); I'd probably do an extreme-driving course and have a kitted out 4WD. And yes, I'd offer to pick up other essential employees.
But it would be of my OWN choice, not the company's. And it would be because I wouldn't want my co-workers doing 16+ hour shifts. Not out of loyalty to the employer, but for the patients and co-workers.
And actually, being me, I probably wouldn't 'cause my reflexes aren't up to extreme-conditions driving. So add another proviso: if my reflexes were up to it. Heh. yeah, I'm loading this down with conditionals.....
Oh: and I'd get whatever compensation I could for the extreme-driving course, either from my employer or the govt as a tax break. And my insurance company would hear about it too. May as well try for lower premiums!

[Sapphire Silk]

What she said.

There's 4WD and then there's 4WD. "All Wheel Drive" is NOT the same thing as 4WD.

4WD basically works best on wet, muddy, or dirt roads. It can help in snow IF, and only if there is not a lot of ice. 4WD is useless on ice; it has to be able to grab the road to do its job. In fact 4WD is actually more dangerous than rear wheel drive on ice.

As a health care worker, it truly does suck when someone calls out due to the driving conditions, because it means you're stuck until you get some relief. But I would never ask anyone to endanger their safety just so I can do the same thing to go home.

And while there are some people who abuse bad weather as an excuse not to come to work, most really don't. The weather at the hospital might be fine . . . and blackout conditions at the worker's home.

I had a student call me once to tell me she wasn't coming to clinic because the ice (we get a lot of ice storms here in North Carolina) was so bad where she was. I told her to do the safe thing and stay home, and didn't dock her for absence. We ended up leaving the hospital early anyway, because the college canceled classes for the day (if classes are canceled for any reason, we have to leave the hospital).

[wolfie]

Quoth mosspack1

Although I do not remember the exact wording of a sign on an employee message board at a nursing home in NC, it basically stated that employees with four wheel drive vehicles were expected to show up for their shift regardless of weather conditions. Oh and you are also expected to pick up co-workers that do not have four wheel drives.

If they're making it a condition of employment for some workers to provide taxi service for others (from your description of the sign, sounds like it), it raises various legal issues.

- Carrying passengers for hire (if it's a job requirement, it's considered "for hire", even if you don't get paid for it) requires a different class of driver's license (in Ontario, in a bus with fewer than 24 seats - or an ordinary car - not for school purposes, it requires an "F" license instead of the usual "G"). If you don't have that class of license, you're facing serious consequences (and so is the employer, for requiring an unqualified person do carry passengers for hire).

- The vehicle needs to be licensed and insured for "use on the job" (as opposed to commuting) and carrying passengers for hire.

- Presumably the time clock is at work. This means that you can't clock in until AFTER performing part of your duties, and have to clock out BEFORE doing another part of your duties. Can anyone say "working off the clock"?

I'd be inclined to tell my manager "The transfer case is broken - I can still drive it in 2WD, but it doesn't work in 4WD, and for what I use it for, I don't need 4WD, so I didn't bother getting it fixed".

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

Quoth bainsidhe

While it's entirely possible this was a douche employer/manager that posted the sign, it's also possible it was meant as a deterrent against the chronic complainers that will whine and cry if a few flakes fall on their car. Any excuse to get out of working, really. And if it's a holiday or weekend, all the better.

Sorry to sound bitter, but having worked fast food & retail and getting screwed with call-outs has made me suspicious of people claiming they're "snowed-in". Telling them someone will give them a ride will change the story to "snowed-in out of town" or some other emergency.

While this definitely is a valid point, couldn't the employer have found a way to put these kinds of people on notice without exposing themselves to humongous potential liability?

[protege]

Quoth mharbourgirl

As much as I agree with you, sometimes the claim IS legit. At least it is when I'm forced to call in for snow. See, where I work (and now live) is very often a few degrees warmer than where I used to live with my inlaws. The area around Halifax Harbour can have dramatically different results from the same storm, e.g.

Same here. I live well outside the Pittsburgh city limits. We usually do get more snow and ice than people inside the city, or even slightly north of the city. When we had the last big storm (2010), we got about a *foot* more snow than they did. The night that storm hit, it took a good 3 hours to get home, and yes, driving was bad. That weekend, we got an additional 2 feet of snow Meaning, that I didn't even bother attempting to dig the car out. Snow was coming down faster than I could remove it. Following Monday, I had to call in and tell my boss that there was no way in hell I could get to work. Sure, my block was clean (there's an elementary school around the corner), but where would I go? The rest of my street--not to mention the damn borough--was pretty bad. Where I live, I have to either go up a steep hill, or down a steep hill to get out. Plus, with the city's horrible street-cleaning reputation, I wasn't about to take a chance. I'm sure he was pissed, but oh well. I don't get paid enough to put my life in danger getting to work. I've been at my job the longest, have the longest commute (about an hour), and I rarely call off. If I'm calling in to tell you I can't get there...trust me, I CAN'T* get there!

[Grendus]

In Texas, the weather is almost never severe enough to call off, but I did have the misfortune to have to work one overnight shift where we had freezing rain. Fortunately, they were understanding about the class I had later that day (that hadn't been cancelled yet) so I could get out when my shift ended... but my car doors were frozen shut. After half an hour of finagling with an ice scraper, a water bottle, and a lot of brute force I managed to get passenger side door open, crank the heat up to full, and wait another 45 minutes for the front window to thaw enough to see. Then it was a 20 minute drive turned three hour odyssey to find a route home that didn't include more than a 10 degree incline. And with all of that hell, we still had a pretty decent trickle of customers coming into the store when I left to justify the managers asking everybody to stay and calling around to find more staff. Retail will out, I suppose.

All that to say: if an employer ever told me I had to come in during hellish weather like that, regardless of my vehicular situation, I'd show them a new place to post their notice.