I’m scheduled for an oath ceremony to become a citizen on 20 April. If it is shutdown on that day I’ll notice, otherwise probably not so much.
They seem to be monthly in the Sacramento area. I wasn’t available for the March one for a work trip, and the May one will probably be right when my first child is due, so I’ll be pretty annoyed if I miss April.
Yes. My mom is a federal employee and will not be going to work until this is resolved. I live about 200 feet away from the DC line in Maryland, so my services won’t vanish, but any DC area resident is getting absolutely snowed under by coverage of this stuff.
I was only 7 during the 1995 shutdown but I vividly remember my mom being home from work for weeks and hearing about Newt Gingrich incessantly. My brother was 5 and had been hearing my parents talking about the stuff and worrying so much that he decided to call his little baseball mitt “the budget” and would walk around with it on his head announcing to us that he’d “balanced the budget.”
Yes, I keep in contact with co-workers at my old agency and am pretty peeved on their behalf. I can’t help feeling like I picked the perfect time to scram. This is the type of crap I was really tired of by the end of my tenure. That and the endless commentary on the stupidity/laziness etc. etc. of federal employees. I got 3 job offers in a crappy economy after leaving to go back to school, and at significantly higher pay at that. I will never go back to public service.
I won’t notice. If you’re not essential, you shouldn’t receive a salary, and your organization shouldn’t receive funds. Why is the government paying for non-essentials?
Well, in my case I accidentally laundered my passport along with my jeans, and I almost did not get into Argentina last week due to its condition (my Argentinean DNI helped smooth things over at the last minute). If I get called to go to Japan for work related business before I can renew it I’m definatelly effed.
You are using a different definition of “essential”. For example, passport applications will be stopped during a shutdown as it is considered non-essential. This means that stopping it won’t mean an immediate risk to life or property, but it is still a legitimate function of government that really ought not be abandoned permanently.
In theory that is the definition of “essential”: we should shutdown what we can, but aren’t prepared to let planes fall out of the sky by throwing out all the air traffic controllers, etc. In practice I have a harder time understanding the distinctions that are made, but just because someone won’t cause an immediate loss of life or property doesn’t imply to me that it isn’t a legitimate function of government.
Wrong.
ETA: Actually, I was wrong. Excepted employees won’t get paid during the shutdown, but will ultimately get paid, according to OPM.
Yup, I’ll notice – half to 2/3 of the people who work in my building won’t be showing up for work, probably about half of my immediate colleagues for certain. Our IT infrastructure won’t be supported if certain parts of it go wrong. Folks here aren’t best pleased about it.
My husband is NPS. His job is considered ‘essential’, but the not getting a paycheck part couldn’t come at a worse time. My hours at my job have been cut in half.
Just when I thought we wouldn’t drown as much this month as I thought…
I remember the 1995 shutdown. We had just had baby #2 and it was 1 month before Christmas. I had to return all the Christmas presents and cancel the family portrait.
I was a temp federal employee the last time this happened. I was totally freaked out. What happened was that I got laid off, my boss took me out for a goodby party and I applied for unemployment. A couple of days later, I got called and told to come back, going by the guidelines, my boss had to take me out to lunch. It was in her handbook and on her employee check off list.
I worked for a week and got sent home again. Lunch happened. I got called back because they started funding again and worked for another week or so. Lunch happened again. A few days after that, I got called back. Yummy food. I think I got laid off 4 or 5 times. The last time she called me back, she told me that she was bringing peanut butter samwiches for my welcome lunch. We both laughed like loons.
The end result with that mess was that she worked overtime and the gov paid me for all of my offtime because it wasn’t fair for good faith employees to suffer. :smack: It didn’t make sense at the time and it doesn’t now. I sure hope it works that way for all of the current federal employees.
Apparently we won’t be getting the tax refund I was counting on if the government is shut down, so yeah, I’ll notice. :mad:
Sorry for all of you that will be affected =(
Only thing that will impact me is perhaps getting my prescription drugs [I am on Tri-Care’s mailer program and my 3 month supply is due to be sent shortly.]
On the [perhaps] plus side, I have a doctor’s appointment coming up, and I can ask her to just duplicate all my prescriptions so in a pinch I can just go and get them at the local CVS.
Yes, since I’ll be sitting at home rather than being at work.
You’re in Rockville, you can just come on up to Gaithersburg and help me paint then. You’re not going to get paid though since I have to balance my own budget. I do have beer though.
You can get a new one from the county or state you were born in, in a matter of days, if necessary.
Federal employee here, quite certain I and my colleagues are nonessential personnel. We’re supposed to report for work on Monday morning regardless of what happens today. If there’s a budget vote pending on Monday morning or early Monday afternoon, they will keep us around until that happens, but we’re not allowed to do any work. Not even allowed to fire up our computers to surf for porn. If no timely budget vote is pending, they will send us home shortly after we report for work.
If there’s a shutdown I’ve got plenty of savings and can coast for a long time; it’ll be a good opportunity for me to catch up on stuff around the house. Bottom line is that a shutdown will be a net-positive for me personally, although I recognize it will be a financial crisis for many, and a collective facepalm moment for US taxpayers.
An acquaintance of mine is a federal prosecutor with ongoing investigations, and he says the uncertainty of it all is causing problems for him and his colleagues. He doesn’t know whether he will be exempted from the shutdown, and he has appointments/court dates next week, and as a result doesn’t know what to tell the people he’d be meeting with. He won’t find out until after the shutdown; if he’s nonexempt, then at that point it would be illegal for him to contact these people and let them know he’s not available.
During the three-week shutdown in 1995 my brother-in-law worked at Rocky Flats, where he and his colleagues were considered essential personnel and had to work through the entire shutdown. He said morale there was pretty low, knowing that most of their fellow federal employees were enjoying a bonus three-week paid vacation while they continued to work.
My husband will be out of work as long as the shutdown goes on, so we’re hoping for a quick and painless end to the mess. He’s actually hoping for a 2-or-3-day shutdown so he has an extended weekend to get some stuff done around the house, but if it goes on too long we’ll get nervous. He’s a contract employee, not a fed, so he probably won’t get any pay at all for the days he’s not allowed to work.
DoD contractor here, so I’ll be off.
However, unlike the federal employees in my office I’ll still get paid on the normal schedule, provided I take annual leave.
OPM’s statement is essentially just a political prediction. It’s true that under current federal law, the Government cannot accept unpaid volunteer services, but Congress can incorporate exceptions to that law into whatever legislation finally ends the shutdown. Politically, it would be hard to stiff any workers who actually had to work.
Those of us who get furloughed, though, may well wind up wholly or partly unpaid, at least at higher income levels.
Mmm that may not be the most foolproof plan ever. Cops can still write parking tickets, and the towing companies they employ charge you, not the gov’t.