Archived Store in Houston with Team Trapped Inside.

[60SecondsRemaining]

They had only a couple of days at most before it started raining, and nobody knew how bad the rain would get until it was already flooding.

Days is a lot of time.

Is Texas Ready for Hurricane Harvey?

That's just one story of about a billion that was published before the storm started. I found it in like 10 seconds. People knew. They knew it could be potentially catastrophic and didn't prepare accordingly. Regardless of evacuation or not, common sense should dictate that it was a poor situation to put your team in.

 

[SquishySquishy]

As a srtl I was threatened with termination twice because I wouldn't open the store during a state of emergency. I know it happens, but leaders in that situation have a moral obligation to keep people safe. I pushed back hard on the challenges they made and eventually they backed down, when a state of emergency is declared there is no argument for keeping your store open.

I'm sure you, a SRTL (if that is correct), singlehandedly convinced a DTL + STL to close your store. Because leadership.

 

[Flow Warrior]

There is a store in Houston where Flood Water rushed in so fast that it trapped the team inside for at least 4 days. Maybe more. I could share all the details... Like Unlimited OT if they are working, sleeping conditions etc. But instead I will drop the link to the Reddit AMA from the TM trapped inside.



I think this is just nuts that they weren't closed before the storm rolled in. But then again, My store was warned about an incoming blizzard and our Governor order everyone off the roads in our area but we had to stay open throughout the storm. I was GSA/Service Desk/Cart Attendant/Cashier and I had to close down Food Ave and Starbucks because those TM's just left when they saw it getting bad. Only 6 of us in the store working and we all thought we would be stuck there that night.

I can't say much as it would reveal to much about me, but that is the Meyerland store in Houston. Its in the 100 yr flood basin and sadly its flooded bad.

 

[Flow Warrior]

They had only a couple of days at most before it started raining, and nobody knew how bad the rain would get until it was already flooding.


I can understand the mayor's point of view on this. I don't know if you've ever been to Houston or driven through it during rush hour, but there are a fuckton of people living there. If he had given the evacuation order, there would have been 6.5 million people fleeing on the one major highway north and the one major highway east. It would end up being a far greater catastrophe if all of those cars were on the road when the flooding began.

Yep and yep. you want to see how really bad it is go to abc13 News -- KTRK Houston and Southeast Texas News

 

[60SecondsRemaining]

I'm sure you, a SRTL (if that is correct), singlehandedly convinced a DTL + STL to close your store. Because leadership.

I didn't convince them, I just closed the store. I was there, they weren't.

They didn't feel that was the right decision. A state of emergency was in effect, I argued it was the only decision that made sense.

I also hard shutoff all of the lights in the building and called in the hvac, pulled cieling tiles to circulate heat, etc. I didn't just walk out, but I made sure that it was a minimum amount of people there to prep the building and then left, while it was safe.

Being a leader doesn't always jive with making money. There are times when it's an acceptable business loss to ensure the safety of your employees.

As far as your implication that a senior wouldn't carry that authority, it was more a situation where I said "This is what will happen, if that is unsatisfactory then you have a key as well."

 

[DannyDawg]

Statistically, from what I've heard, more people died during the mandatory evacuation in 2005 than now. So I'm not sure you're evaluation of what the mayor should have done holds water.

Bad pun there.

They're not even close to the point of counting bodies or totaling damage for this storm. It's still ongoing

 

[Redzee]

If this is on the level it's a management fubar. Just 4 tms. No one else? Maybe they'll get a pass on the red card quota.

 

[Redzee]

^ when did I get promoted to team leader?

 

[redeye58]

*whispers*
Shhhhhhh.....it's a secret; corp doesn't know yet.

 

[Hardlines God]

^ when did I get promoted to team leader?

Your title is based off of your forum account's statistics if you haven't manually changed it (such as myself, I set mine to my work title). These were added in maybe a week ago.

 

[Yetive]

^ when did I get promoted to team leader?

Hope you got a good raise .

 

[Redzee]

Sorta embarrassed for not noticing. Thought it might be something like that.

 

[Hardlinesmaster]

Hope you got a good raise .

I got no raise.

 

[Yetive]

You can give yourself a raise.

 

[qmosqueen]

Some stores open

http://m.chron.com/business/retail/article/Harvey-again-forces-massive-retail-closures-12045456.php

 

[Ringwraith917]

Did they get water inside the store?

 

[redeye58]

Bottled or run-off?

 

[Backroom81]

I can understand the mayor's point of view on this. I don't know if you've ever been to Houston or driven through it during rush hour, but there are a fuckton of people living there. If he had given the evacuation order, there would have been 6.5 million people fleeing on the one major highway north and the one major highway east. It would end up being a far greater catastrophe if all of those cars were on the road when the flooding began.

This. I-45 traffic is a parking lot in both directions between Houston and Conroe (about an hour north) during rush hour when it's just handling people going to/from work. The evacuation ahead of Rita turned literally hundreds of miles of highways into complete gridlock and they were trying to leave well ahead of the storm. Houston is also very flat and a large amount of the highways aren't on higher ground. A full evacuation would have trapped hundreds of thousands of people in their cars while the highways flood.

These are a couple of sections of I45 right now:

 

[qmosqueen]

 

[qmosqueen]

Best Buy a little too late for that appolgy

42 dollars for water.


Best Buy explains why it charged $42 for a case of water in Texas during the hurricane in 'a big mistake'

 

[SFSFun]

Best Buy a little too late for that appolgy

42 dollars for water.


Best Buy explains why it charged $42 for a case of water in Texas during the hurricane in 'a big mistake'

The Dasani is the kind meant for single bottles at checkout coolers for $1.79/bottle. 24 of them is $42.96. If you want a regular 24 pack of water, don't go to fucking Best Buy.

 

[WalksforMiles]

Here is message from corporate

Hurricane Harvey Target Store Closure Information

The specific store where these TMs are stranded in is NOT on the list.

However, it damn well should've been. As the area where the store is located is prone to flooding.

If corporate did even a spec of research they'd know to close all the damn stores in and surrounding Houston.

 

[Tessa120]

I avoided the news for several days, this is stuff I don't like seeing, I haven't followed a landfalling hurricane since Katrina unless it was heading straight for me.

I went back through the archives on Weather Underground, and it looks like this sort of rain wasn't predicted. They talked about 40 inches of rain - over several days, not all at once. Even after landfall occurred they talked about the storm surge and gave a paragraph towards expected rain at the end. The computer models that best predicted this (and even they fell short) are the normally less reliable ones.

This rainfall, this amount of flooding, came literally out of nowhere. The lack of an evacuation probably saved a lot of lives, looking at the roads, cars would have ended up as water-filled coffins. Yeah, places should have been closed, but that's true for every hurricane, and it never happens. I was typing documents for customers touring our place of business (there were 13 groups of customers that day) when a hurricane (name too identifying, but it was nasty enough for the name to be retired) went over us. So it's a fault of nearly every business owner, not just Target, to be open.

And the flooding literally came out of nowhere, no one expected anything like this. So while there's plenty of blame for the businesses, they were operating from the same computer models as the rest of us.

I suppose my post sounds pro-business, it's not, I think staying open is flat out ridiculous and I wish we had strong unions like my friend from Quebec says they have so it wouldn't be a matter of go to work under dangerous situations and continue to have a paycheck or do what's safe and get fired and starve in the street. I'd love it if businesses could be ordered closed without a mandatory evacuation being attached. But this was about as close to an act of god as anything, since absolutely no one saw this coming. Rather than play the blame game, maybe turn this into a learning tool, one that will stay instead of one forgotten after a calm hurricane season or a warm winter with little snowfall. Maybe start lobbying for mandatory closures laws. I don't know.

 

[HRZone]

Jenna some good thoughts. I will say though that I feel it's always better to overestimate a storm then underestimate. The first few storms after Katrina they over prepared and they ended up being relative duds but they kept people safe.

I do wonder if complacency has set in as we move further from that incident.

 

[Cart king]

No matter what this is a cluster fuck on all levels. As @HRZone hinted to I think complacency has become part of the problem. Thing that pisses me off the most is the people who are taking advantage of this weather politically or economically.