Who says being a civil servant isn’t exciting? Where else could people go from hoping to get a day off before Christmas to praying that they will still have a job on Dec. 25.

Did your mother warn you there would be days (sometimes decades) like this?

Just a few weeks ago, feds starting contacting us to ask about the status of a potential pre-Christmas “holiday“.

Many people noted that Christmas falls on a Friday this year. They wanted to know what the rule-of-thumb is about mid-week time outs. The short answer is that there is no rule-of-thumb. Except when Christmas falls either on a Saturday or Sunday. Then it’s a good bet feds will get a bonus day off either on the Friday before or the Monday after.

What does or doesn’t happen depends on lots of things, including who is President and the economic condition of the nation at the time. For instance, on Dec. 5, 2014,  President Barack Obama announced that nonpostal feds could have Friday off, since Christmas fell on a Thursday. But that was then.

Since the speculation started things have changed. Congress is once again making noises about a potential government shutdown. D-Day is Friday, Dec. 11.

Earlier there had been considerable talk and speculation that disagreements between the GOP-led Congress and the White House could lead to another shutdown. The government closed (as in was shutdown) for 16-days in 2013. That shutdown, caused by a political impasse, came after a number of agencies had furloughed tens of thousands of workers because of the sequestration squeeze. During the furloughs, nobody was paid. After the shutdown, people got paid, but much later than usual. In addition to being incredibly stupid, wasteful and potentially dangerous to the public, it appears that neither side learned anything from the shutdown. Feds were paid, eventually. The key word being “eventually”. Many went without a paycheck for up to two weeks. That, for people who live paycheck to paycheck, was no fun. And hardly a vacation.

So in just a couple of weeks, we’ve gone from being excited, like little kids before Christmas, to being very worried, like before major surgery. In this case on your purse and wallet. How will it end?

Will you get a bonus day (or at least half day) off on Thursday, Dec. 24? Or will you be sitting at home, not knowing when you’ll get back to work and whether you will get back pay, for being forced to do nothing?

Who said working for the government isn’t exciting?

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

During the Christmas season, a total of 8.5 million lights are strung throughout Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.

Source: Disney by the Numbers

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