First One There... First One to Leave?

Now that I have my bearings and know most of what I need to know, things get annoying. One of these annoyances is the voices on the elevator. They are pretty specific and include sayings like "2nd floor, going up", "4th floor, going down", and my personal favorite, "this elevator is full, please wait for the next elevator". Before today, I accepted them as serving a disability function, for people who are blind or optically impaired, but today I realized they were probably just put in so people addicted to their Blackberrys don't just work from the elevator the whole day.

Today was the big hearing, I got there a little earlier than usual, and the first line-holder rode the same elevator as I did. I forgot to mention that yesterday the federal government shutdown at 2pm because of projected weather conditions for the drive home, and some schools closing early. The federal government shutting down means nothing to your office unless your boss says it does, and because we are now a Minnesotan office, we won't be shutting down too often, but it wasn't bad (in Minnesota terms) and I was fine with our choice to stay until 9 and be ready for today rather than be there at 4am this morning. Back to the original story, so I was surprised to see this young man there so early, as we received an email this morning (for those of us who signed up to be notified of federal government closure) that read:

Federal agencies in the Washington, DC, area are OPEN under a DELAYED ARRIVAL\UNSCHEDULED LEAVE policy. Employees should plan to arrive for work no more than 2 hours later than they would normally arrive.

So when I did put away my coat and sit at my desk with no mail to sort (which usually comes right at 9am versus 11am today) the phone calls started coming. Paraphrasing all of them together, they were asking "Is the meeting still at its regular time"? It was still at 10 am, and the room did not get any bigger. We turned many staff and press personnel away, and they weren't very happy with us. Because a member of the cabinet was in our presence, we invited the police who were a little less polite than we could have possibly been, but got the job done a little faster. The meeting went off fine, the phone calls kept coming, and three of us took turns playing bouncer at the front door. This is a dangerous place to be, because while all staff want to get in, some staff need to get in, to talk to their boss, and it is hard to decipher between the two requests. But we are all still alive, even with people presenting us a few angry faces followed by turns and stomping away aimed our way. After that, Mr. Peterson testified before the budget committee, and we did the rest of the afternoon chores when our boss was nice enough to let Gabe and me off at 4:00. So I got my phone fixed, which wasn't able to receive incoming calls, and was home by the time I am usually let off work.

With all the drama today (Mr. Petersons testifying was a lot of work to put together I'm sure, although I had no part in it) the rest of the week is pretty mellow. We will not have to work President's day either, which I found out is never a guarantee because national holidays are just "another day" in a Congressional Staff's calendar. This is ironic as the people who make the laws to make something a national holiday may be the only ones (or some of the small percentage) working.