On Super Bowl Sunday, the Chicago area was hit with a whopper of a blizzard. They say it was among the top five storms ever to blow across the area. Of course, with no way for everyone to navigate through 20+ inches of snow to get to work the next day, Street Level Studio had to deploy Plan B. The main component of the plan is to all work at home. We've gone to great lengths to prepare for this type of situation with remote access to digital files, up-to-date software on home computers, point people, conferencing, and sharing files. With that said, there is a different reality when the actual snow accumulation prevents access to our studio building.

As it turned out, a couple of us made our way in and indeed found our building smothered in snowdrifts. With a little elbow grease and teamwork, we managed to shovel our way in pretty quickly. As fate would have it, we had a really serious deadline to meet by the end of the day—two catalogs had to be completed for a client presentation the next morning, and being on-site allowed for quick action and a central point of control for everyone else who was snowed in.

At 4:59 that afternoon, PDFs were sent to our client with the completed job. At 5:03 we all received a satisfying "Thank you for a job well done" email. So, like the Post Office saying goes—"The mail always goes through," we can pretty much guarantee that the job will always get done on time, even with nearly two feet of snow on the ground.

Web Developer Zach was able to make it to the office, and he dug out a path from the back parking lot to the side entrance.