If you are sick and tired of shoveling your car out storm after storm, be glad you're not Rick Hall.
"The average person has to do one or two or three at home, we’re doing 200-plus, every single time it snows," said Hall, the customer relations and inventory manager at a Toyota dealership in Watertown. "We have to clean them, move them, plow it out, put them back and so forth, so it’s a lot of work."
A little extra work went into making sure things were ready for Presidents Day here, traditionally a big day for car dealers.
But amidst the well-dressed sales associates, impossibly-gleaming cars, and the red, white and blue balloons in this vast showroom, there was one thing was missing here on this President’s Day: customers.
"Customers are tired," Hall said. "Their kids have been home from school, they’ve been cleaning out their cars, they’re pretty tired."
Car dealers aren’t alone. Local businesses — from restaurants to retailers — have been hit hard by the record snow. So much so that the Gov. Charlie Baker and Mayor Marty Walsh have urged folks to get out and shop. But Hall says at least one area of their operation is booming — the service department.
"My doors frozen, it won’t shut; my doors frozen, it won’t open; my engine lights are coming on," Hall said. "All kinds of things are happening due to the cold weather so our service department been terribly busy helping people with that."
And unlike, say, restaurants, who won’t get another crack at a snow-free Valentine’s Day, Hall is confident that — for them — a slow winter will mean a busy spring.
"We know what will happen once everybody catches up to dealing with the weather," he said. "Then people will be surging in through the doors and business will be booming once again, even if it’s a little quiet right now."
Until then, Hall — and the rest of us — will have to just keeping shoveling out and soldiering on.
