Dissemination at its Finest

Hey-ho, chaps and galchiks!  For those who may have missed it, Minot ND is undergoing a particularly bad flood, just short of the 500-year scale and displacing some 12,000 or more of its citizens.  Largely situated spread across two great hilly inclines, flooding in the town’s valley area has effectively cut it in half along north and south lines.  The main road through town (Broadway) being closed to civilian traffic for dike and levee constructing purposes, the only major route bridging the town’s two halves is the highway bypass on its western extremity.

Thursday, 23^rd June saw an unexpected increase in waterflow, making for a sudden rise and a call for additional evacuations in nearby neighborhoods.  Understandably, the one route left available for the public (the bypass) was thereafter congested with trucks, trailers, and other vehicles, brimming with evacuees and what belongings they could bring along.  It was (still is, mind) a state of emergency, and Minot businesses were asked to close shop for the evening to both allow displaced employees time to shift themselves and to lessen unnecessary traffic on the already overburdened thoroughfare.

Many businesses answered the call; the Dakota Square Mall, Minot’s largest employer, shut its doors at four in light of the emergency.  Yet one firm stood up and said ‘open for business.’  The company I work for, as it happens.  It’s a local restauranting firm, and though I’ll leave it unnamed it’s the type with ‘Investors’ thrown into it to inspire confidence and clarify its goals (much like any number in the landlording and loansharking industries).  It decided that its three restaurants (including the local Applebees franchise) would remain open, “for the people” we were later amusingly informed (when asking what they in corporate were thinking).  But rather than handing out sandwiches at the cot-filled stadium down the road, it was simply business as usual.

Yes, the dispossessed and wretched refugees were foremost on the company’s mind, I thought blithely to myself as I drove into the veritable sausage grinder of bypass traffic.  When the queue moved it did so at coughing fits, one jerk at a time.  A two-minute drive turned to forty, all told; not such a bad translation in cities accustomed to the daily traffic jam (here’s looking at you, Houston).   But hardly of any use when people are trying to ferry back and forth between their safe places and endangered homes.  Certainly not of use when dumpers loaded with dirt and sand have to squeeze by on the shoulders with their precious cargoes.  And at the back of my mind I wondered if the bypass would even be open after my shift was up, possibly stranded myself on the south side of town for a week or more.

All sour grapes, of course, the truths we lie to ourselves when we want something.  For me, a night off; for the firm, three restaurants filled with kitchenless, hungry refugees - a restaurateur’s dream.   But once past the traffic work was a breeze; inevitably empty.  So empty, in fact, a suit from corporate was making the rounds with the tersest look of surprise.  Restaurants empty?  But the Whos have no kitchens, no jumdrummers!  Clearly things of greater import were afoot, and misery is not the most marketable demographic.  And though I’m no economist it must certainly be a loss of some sort, running three fully staffed kitchens for no clientele.  

But knowing a bit of German, I can (and will) appreciate a little Schadenfreude when the opportunity comes along.