After the snow comes the slush.

If you were out shopping Wednesday, then you know it was tough enough getting around in the South Sound, what with the snow-compacted washboard streets. And good luck trying to find a place to park that wasn’t flooded with puddles or peppered with ankle-high ice.

Consider the people responsible for clearing those lots.

“It’s not very easy, trying to find someone to do it,” said an employee at Hogan Enterprises. “We just don’t get this very often.”

The company manages shopping centers in University Place, Gig Harbor and Tacoma.

“A parking lot sweeping company usually does it,” said the employee, who didn’t want to be named. “If you’re not contracted, it’s hard to get anybody.”

She said she’d been on the phone for two hours trying to find someone who could clear a handful of parking lots. Either the companies she called were too busy – or they weren’t answering their phones or returning messages.

One company that did answer was Nature’s Helper Northwest. Owner Mark Castoriano said his company, which operates in King and Snohomish counties, was “slammed. There’s too much chaos out there. Everyone’s calling, from Lake City, Issaquah, from Woodinville to Tacoma.”

If he could dispatch a vehicle to a parking lot, he said, he was charging “anywhere from $600 to several thousand.”

At the Tacoma Mall, where parking areas were sometimes hard to negotiate Wednesday, manager Steve Heim said the inner and outer ring roads had been plowed and “they’ve put sand down on the parking aisles. If we try to plow while cars are here, we end up trapping customers.”

“It’s not possible to plow every square inch,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to keep customers safe.”

At Bellingham-based Haggen Food & Pharmacy – which operates groceries in Washington and Oregon, including Top Food in the South Sound – the ice, the old snow and the new slush led to the opening of a companywide emergency operations center, said spokeswoman Becky Skaggs.

“We’ve had some challenges in some areas getting plows,” she said. “We’ve been able to work with some construction companies – they’re quiet this time of year. It’s given them some business. There’s been a lot of people working hard.”

A few of the company’s lots, she said, “are just a mess. Portland’s a disaster.”

Along with making sure customers could park and walk safely to and from the stores, Skaggs said there are other concerns that come with storms such as the ones we’ve seen this week.

For instance, shopping patterns have changed. On the positive side, what with the holiday season itself, the company had stocked its stores with a higher level of merchandise. And this year, customers started buying early, Skagg said.

But now, with so many people unable to travel, more families were shopping “for an unexpected Christmas dinner at home.”

Then come the concerns beyond snowplows. It’s not just about getting shoppers in and out.

“There are issues with garbage and cardboard pickup, and the armored car pickups,” Skaggs said. “Now we’re looking at the loads on our roofs. The icicles hanging off the stores themselves.

“It’s kind of a snowball effect,” she said, with something of a chuckle.