closures

It's Thursday night, about 24-30 hours until landfall for Hurricane Ike. We closed shop this morning and by the end of the day, so had our major competitors. I know for sure that a smaller competitor was at least open during daytime hours. Driving around town today, it did seem a little bit emptier than normal but most stores were still open, though some have boarded most of their windows. I believe a significant number of businesses will be closed tomorrow even though the storm is turning further north towards Houston. The decision to close or stay open needs to get made far enough in advance that your employees have time to make their own preparations if leaving town becomes necessary. Unfortunately, that decision point must be made far enough in advance that we can all end up looking overly cautious if the potentially impending disaster doesn't materialize.

This evening, I did a drive-by of the work yard to make sure everything looked normal and then went looking for a bite to eat. It was interesting to see that McDonald's and Burger King were both closed at about 20:15 while Sonic, Whataburger, Taco Bell, and the Subway where I ended up eating were all open. I was hoping to get a $5 footlong sandwich and eat half for dinner and save half for lunch tomorrow. Tragically, they were out of bread and I wasn't too keen on waiting 35 minutes for the new bread to bake and cool. They told me a lot of out-of-towners had come through today. I have been seeing a disproportionate number of people with boats and campers on the road the last two days. Imagine that. Back on point, I opted for a personal pizza cooked in that super oven they have that can probably bake a 17 pound turkey in 4 minutes. This isn't meant to be a food review, but it was fair though some bites had some aromatic overtones that I couldn't quite place.

Back to which stores were closed and which ones were open. I should also mention that many local eateries were closed though I suspect two fundamentally different reasons for why the biggest of the big, McDonald's and Burger King would be closed while many of the other household names were open. It's the same reason we're closed and I like to call it liability. And bigger companies, through size alone, must be inherently more cautious when it comes to worker safety because of how the risk/reward equation is balanced. So what does McDonald's really lose by closing a day earlier than their competition? Some lost revenue which sucks for the local manager, but life goes on. What does McDonald's gain? Well, it's really about what they are even less likely to lose. Because now they've given their people enough time to evacuate, haven't coerced anyone to work while the wind rattles the storefront, and a little bit of goodwill from their employees. That last one especially because 36 hours ago, this storm was gunning for Victoria and the city was on the verge of issuing a mandatory evacuation order.