State of emergency?

Back in the day, we lived in Albany, NY, as Mr Charm worked for the state govt.  Now Albany essentially consists of a large hill running from Schenectady down to the Hudson River.  All the state offices are down by the river, and all the state employees lived somewhere on the hill, with some exceptions.  It's a great place to get stuck in traffic in a snowstorm, and city officials officially took note of this by placing large boxes full of sand at strategic intersections.  Because it gets lots of snow.  Not as much as Buffalo, but enough to serve as a topic of conversation.

So the then governor, once, when we had a decent sized snowstorm, hoping to ease a terrific traffic cluster****, informed  state employees that they did not have to come to work unless their presence was "essential."  They would get paid anyway.

Naturally, they all got in their cars and slid down the hill to work lest someone should think that whatever they did was not "essential."