Quake Day? NJ state workers sent home Friday was total nonsense (Opinion)

Remember the Canadian wildfires?

We all went to work in the haze that seemed kind of like fog but also kind of orange and maybe our eyes even burned. We drove home the same way, perhaps reacquainting ourselves with the button on our dashboards for recirculated air rather than outside air.

But the point is we went to work. We stayed. We put in full days. Even when the event actually could have been causing some respiratory distress to sensitive people, unlike the lack of damage and lack of injuries from Friday’s earthquake, we went to work, and we stayed.

Back during the fires we heard of roofers donning goggles and breathing with respirators just to put in a full day. Yet state workers with indoor jobs were allowed to go home early as Gov. Phil Murphy closed down state offices.

That ridiculous response seems to have repeated itself with Friday’s earthquake. While every private sector job I know of stayed and worked and finished like any other workday Murphy closed government offices and sent workers home at 3 p.m. Not much has been said about the move but what other reason could it be?

It was an unplanned early dismissal for thousands of state workers and to what end?

Bridges and overpasses hadn’t come down. Highways were fine. Even NJ Transit had already gotten beyond their delays for doing safety checks of tracks and were back on schedule. So, why?

Especially aggravating was the closure of all Motor Vehicle Commission offices statewide. The same MVC where people now need appointments to transact business. People took time off from their own jobs just to get there only to have the rug pulled out from under them finding locked doors and cancellations.

Really Gov Murphy? Why?

One MVC worker called in Friday to our show and expressed her own frustration. She was told shortly before three they were shutting down and she recognized customers were not only going to be highly inconvenienced but they’d no doubt take it out on MVC staff.

She also confirmed there was seemingly no reason other than the earthquake the governor would have had to send them home. Computers were running fine, no building issues, nothing else that she could think of to account for it.

I suppose it’s a good thing the governor can’t run for a third term. If so, he probably would have given them a week off.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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