In general, I don’t talk politics on here, but now that the government shutdown is FINALLY over, I couldn’t help but address it – by telling the stories the news networks don’t. Telling what it’s like to live in the DC area during a shutdown.
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So how did it effect our area?
First, there’s all the people who were furloughed. I don’t know what that’s like, so I can’t really speak to that. I can, however speak to my family and friends, and how it effected us.
Chris works for a company that sells software to the government…they’ve been doing a lot of training recently, since a lot of their contacts were furloughed..
My parents live near Quantico marine base, where a lot of military families get stationed, work, and do training. There’s a commissary on base…which was closed during the shutdown. Guess who’s grocery store was out of bananas, bread, and milk the first weekend of the shutdown? Yep, the one my mom goes to. Not horrible, but annoying.
My sister works part-time at Walmart – they were crazy busy and out of everything too. Then the customers start getting angry and blaming the retailer. Um, it isn’t their fault that your commissary is closed!
I work for an accounting firm, and we often provide services to government contractors. If they’re not getting business from the government, we can’t get business from them. Audits got put off that will now need to be rescheduled. Taxes and accounting reports weren’t completed, which is now going to make more work for our people. It’s definitely a ripple effect.
My father-in-law is in the foreign service and they live in Italy. There’s a few things they’ve been waiting on answers on, and they couldn’t get them since the government was closed.
One of the few bright spots was the lack of traffic. I’m not looking forward to that coming back tomorrow, but I’m just glad things around here are going back to normal.
Did the shutdown effect your area or your family?
5 Responses
Yes! Goodness gracious. I work for DoD so our employees were only furloughed for a short time. But my husband is a government contractor and won’t get back pay for the 16 days he was at home. This is completely catastrophic to our finances! 🙁
I was pretty sheltered from the shut down although I have military family friends who were impacted quite a bit. Interesting perspective you shared…
It really was interesting to see how it infiltrated into so many things, and people who don’t work for the government were effected.
Oh no! Definitely not good for your finances – glad he’s back to work now!
These last few weeks have been so hard. My husband didn’t work and may not get paid for the last three weeks… .that’s $6000. 🙁