One Early Morning's Work

Think of this as the "Before" photo. I never did manage to get an "After."

I took this photo eight years ago. As a Lot Tech for a car dealership, one of our jobs was to come in early on snow-days, to help clear the lot. Our job was shuffling whole rows of cars back and forth so the plows and Bobcats could reach all of the snow. Depending on how intense the snowfall was, the other Lot Techs and I would have to come in several hours before opening, sometimes as early as 3am!

It would always be blistering cold when I drove in. Back then, employee parking was rented a couple of blocks over, so I'd trudge my way back to the dealership. Sometimes, I'd catch a glimpse of a Bobcat on the dealership's roof parking, grabbing scoop-fulls of snow to be dumped off into the designated troughs at set intervals around the building. The sound of that much snow hitting the ground sounded like a cross between a very short avalanche, and a fireworks display gone wrong.

Now, usually, we'd make a list of all the keys the previous night, check them out, and string them onto hoops to keep them in their proper order. The next morning, we'd each grab one of these rings, and walk out to our designated row to start the cars. This was to help melt some of the snow and ice off; though we still got showered with plenty of snow, as we got in and out of the cars. Then, after the plows had gotten all the aisles cleared, we'd move the cars forward, row-by-row, and then back again while the plows cleared the next aisle.

It was steady, rhythmic... and tedious. Sometimes, cars would have dead batteries, and someone would have to rush inside to find a jump-box to jumpstart it; hopefully. Otherwise, the plows would just have to work around it. By the time we were half-way done, dawn would just barely be graying the dark sky. And then, of course, we'd have to move the edge rows, on the north and south sides of the lot.

This night of prep was mostly the same, but we decided to try something "clever." Before we left for the night, we accordioned all of the cars to one end of the lot. This way, the plows could clear half the lot, and we'd only have to move the cars back once. No more hopping in and out!

Well, obviously, that didn't quite go as planned. You see, we couldn't just put the cars back into their proper places after the first half of the lot was plowed. Instead, we had to move all of the cars en masse to the other side of the lot, into a second solid block of cars. And only then could we park them back in their spots.

Only, that was made much more difficult, because the white parking lines were now invisible under the compacted snow! And in moving the cars around, there was general confusion as to which makes and models were parked where. So, the Lot Techs and even some of the Sales Reps who had started filing in early had to finagle some 150-ish cars back into their proper spots, all while keeping the rows nice and straight for the customers.

As a result, the sun was well and truly up by the time we finally managed to get to the edge-rows, and customers had started trickling in, prompting the Sales Reps to get back to work. And a day that had started cold and black had turned bright and blinding! And once all that was done, there was still one last job: retrieving all of the keys to return them to the lockers.

We got the job done, and all was well. But suffice it to say, we had an unspoken understanding that we would never, ever try to be clever about snow days again.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!