I know my friends in Minnesota and similar areas, where snow is pretty much a daily occurrence for a large portion of the year, are going to scoff at this, but hear me out. In places where snow is not a daily thing and we don’t have snow tires or SUVs or whatever to be equipped to deal with it—and, instead, snow happens every few weeks throughout the winter—people should just be able to stay home to be safe.

I’m not saying this should even happen throughout the duration of the snow—just until the plows get to hit the streets and it’s made safe to drive. The fact that my friend—and every driver around her—nearly died on the way to work today makes me beyond incensed.

And the fact that her employer threatened to fire her if she didn’t come in makes me even more pissed off.

Since when is $7 an hour—or any amount of money, really—worth risking your very life? Since when is the existence of a person worth a job? In the west, where all we do is work until we kill ourselves to death, I suppose person does equal job. But that’s not how it should be, and if people aren’t equipped to drive in the snow they shouldn’t be forced to do so.

My friend cried today. She said it was like driving blind; she couldn’t see through the snow, many streets (particularly those around where she lives) were not plowed and she slushed through it, going off the road several times in her small car. You might call her stupid for even attempting to driving in it (over the hills, no less), but when your job is threatened and there aren’t other jobs available, this is what we’re stuck with, isn’t it? Risk your life to pay your bills to… what? To live? Because working to live like so many are today, with even less leisure time than previous generations, just isn’t cutting it.

If the roads are not safe, if there is zero visibility, people should not be made to go to work—end of story. I understand that there are some professions where this simply won’t work; brain surgery, law enforcement, and other activities still have to carry on. But when that happens, such people should be given extra protection (such as the snow tires mentioned above, and other safety precautions).

Other businesses, however, that the world can go on without for a day—from subway sandwich making to dry cleaning—should just be able to take a snow day without employees fearing the loss of their jobs. And if not, employees should at least be protected with the right to decide if it’s safe for them to drive or not without that fear hanging over their heads.