D.C.’s 2015 D-Day

Today is the start of D (as in Don’t Come to Work) Day for feds in the Washington area. Traffic planners predict that Sept. 22-24  will be the equivalent of three presidential inaugurations held back-to-back in warm weather.

Pope Francis and Vice President Joe Biden (who lives on  the grounds of the Naval Observatory) will be staying across the street (Massachusetts Avenue) from each other. Can you say gridlock?

To say that security will be tight and traffic horrible is to state the obvious. This could be the worst we’ve ever seen.

Thousands of civil servants are being urged to stay home (either on leave, or as teleworkers) if they can. By some estimates up to 25 percent of the several hundred thousand feds in the metro area plan to telework part of the time.  It is possible that the use of sick leave may jump this week.

Traffic, for the middle of this week, could be as bad as it was after 9/11. And that is assuming normal movement, not some kind of “incident.”

People who drive to work (the majority of feds) are being urged to take Metro (our subway).  The problem is that Metro has a habit of being very late or suspending service at the most inconvenient  times.  Regular riders know how to cope, but first timers and infrequent users  may be uneasy riders in for a frustrating adventure.

Some government contractors work almost exclusively from home. For them this will be just another work day.

The good news — if there is any — is that telework has come a long, long way in the last couple of decades. In the beginning, agency managers fought tooth and nail against it. Many because they simply didn’t trust employees out of their sight.  But times have definitely changed. Now the word is work from home if you can, especially this week.

If Congress and the White House were smart — “if” being the operative word — they would have scheduled the potential Oct. 1 shutdown for Sept. 22.  As it is, the politicians who are begging feds to stay home this week are increasingly likely to order people not to come to work starting next week.

So if you can stay home, or you live in Austin, Indianapolis, Seattle or somewhere well beyond the Beltway, consider yourself lucky. And if you have to come to work, honk if we pass on the road.

Either way, be careful; this too shall pass!

Nearly Useless Factoid

The U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington has four clocks that measure time with rubidium atoms that are heated and cooled using laser radiation and a microwave cavity.

Source: U.S. Naval Observatory

At 10 a.m. Sept. 23 we’ll be talking with retirement experts Tammy Flanagan and Philip K. Gardner about how to maximize your retirement income. They’ll focus on what the employee and employer should be doing for retirement prep and OPM’s role in the process.

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