Tom Temin I think the big difficulty or the one of the major difficulties is even knowing you’re going to get paid at the end of it doesn’t help with the situation of a month or so when you don’t get paid and you’ve got to still live through that period until you do get paid.
Abe Grungold True. You can be paid if your agency is going to allow it, but there is a possibility that you won’t be paid. But to experience a federal shutdown, you cannot take annual leave, you cannot take sick leave, and you basically have to be available to receive the email or phone call from your agency to go back to work. So you can’t just jump on a cruise ship for a week and have some fun. You have to be available and see if you have to report back to work.
Tom Temin Yeah, a lot of people say, oh gosh, they get a vacation and they’ll get paid for it at the end. But in fact, they have to be standing by for resumption of federal work and yet they can’t do any work while they are home. You’re not allowed to work. Correct?
Abe Grungold That’s correct. You’re not allowed to turn on your government phone. You’re not allowed to use your government computer and all your assignments or duties that you are working on on a day to day. Regardless of how urgent they are, they come to a full stop. So you basically have to be prepared to go back to work when they do call you back.
