Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

@kinsey Hah! Well, it's confirmation that there are a variety of opinions on this.

At first glance the voting seems clear as mud, but the result would have been more definitive had I asked a different question. Thus far, "5 PM sharp" is clearly outnumbered by "open a few minutes early". Once it's over I'll extract the thoughts expressed in the thread and present all the results to the staff and owners. There may be points raised here that change some minds.

Again, I thank everyone for participating.

@mekkaokereke Part of the peace treaty ending the 30 year civil war in Guatemala was to revamp the corrupt police. Guatemala has a national police force, not local police departments.

I was living in Guatemala when this was implemented. They fired everyone. 35,000 police, top to bottom, fired.

Spain is considered the world's experts on policing. (They invented the idea of civilian police long ago.) And they implemented the process.

The whole country had no police. And me, I'm thinking "We're all gonna die. Criminals will run rampant." But guess what happened? Nothing happened. The crime rate went down. And this was when I learned that the vast majority of people are good and honest, and all they want is to live their lives in peace.

Why did crime go down? I believe it was a combination of police corruption being part of the crime problem and the people themselves. Because there were no police, the people were extra vigilant and the criminals knew it. Criminals realized: "Now is not a good time to do crimes. The police are not here to arrest me and keep me safe. I'll probably be lynched in an extremely unpleasant manner." (True.)

This was good because the process of building a new police force took longer than expected, months. Only those who had graduated high school (for real with good behavior, no equivalency test) were considered. Any officer with authority, sergeants and above had to have earned a college degree. All had to pass the stringent training set up by the experts from Spain.

It all turned out great. Wages were boosted way up so that cops didn't need bribes in order to support a family. They were provided with all new equipment. The whole manner of the new police force changed to what you find in Europe. But during the transition process, nothing significant happened. And I realized that we in the U.S.A. are brainwashed into believing that cops protect us from crime. They don't.

@mekkaokereke @ristkof Yup, I don't doubt it for a second. I went for a year and a half with an expired inspection sticker before I finally got pulled over. I'm sure it would have been much quicker if I were black.

I mean, inspection stickers here are brightly colored with a holographic pattern. You can't possibly miss the color of the sticker on an oncoming car. It's an easy catch for a cop to write a slam-dunk $135 ticket.

People here in West Virginia (who are almost all white) argue there's no such thing as systemic racism. And they truly believe it.

@elaterite Beautiful. I should have tried that when we had our crazy cold snap here in West Virginia a month ago. It hovered around zero F for several days.

I was focused on the boiling water to snow trick, which needs colder temps around -20F and forgot about the soap bubbles. Phooey.

@notpike I like that heater.

@peterbrown Understood. Thank you.

The poll is still running but I want to thank everyone who has voted and expressed views and opinions. This poll is turning out much more useful and informative than I expected.

Thank you all!!!

@kevinrns Because what's being done is all the prep -- salad made, bread prepped, tables set, candles lit, fireplace started, coffee made, broiler preheated, on and on. They're not ready for people to come in until 5 PM. It takes hours to get ready for customers to come in.

That's why people are divided on the question of whether to open a few minutes early.