Though I have never been anyone's boss, from what I gather from those motivational posters, management is all about teamwork, attitude and wishing you were outside. So it can't be great for your organization when the government shutdown forces you to declare some employees nonessential and others essential. When the shutdown is over and everyone has to work together again, not a lot of employees are going to want to pair up with nonessentials when they do those trust-building exercises where you fall backward into one another's arms.
It's so awkward at government agencies right now that many are ditching the term nonessential, instead using nonexcepted, nonemergency and, in the case of the guy who ran the panda cam at the National Zoo, nonappreciated. Some U.S. Representatives, like Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore, simply declared everyone on their staff essential. I predict that Moore's staff will work extra hard and accomplish a lot until they notice that their paychecks have bounced.
But in most federal government offices, where staffers were allowed to talk to me only off the record, things are tense. Essentials strut around half-empty offices, bragging about how much easier it is to get work done without nonessentials stopping in their offices to chat about girlfriend problems and other things that aren't food, water and oxygen. Even families are being divided. Beverly Viands was sent home even though she is an administrative contracting officer for the Defense Contract Management Agency, which is a title that I have to believe contains at least one essential word. Even if contract is considered only semiessential, it appears twice. Meanwhile, her niece and nephew, who are in a nonmilitary department, went to work. "It was certainly alarming to think that Social Security was still operating," she said. Yes, Viands knows that many people depend on their Social Security checks, but she has the "authority to warrant government," which I'm pretty sure is exactly what most Americans want done to our government right now.
After five days of doing nonessential stuff at home, Viands got a call telling her that upon further reflection, she is in fact essential. Those five days of nonessentialness won't linger in Viands' mind, since she deals with tanks, planes and, though I can't know for sure since it's a military secret, tankplanes.
For the rest of our federal government, however, there's a danger in having turned the subtext into text. Because while we don't like to admit it, we all know who's essential and who isn't. That's why doctors have so much attitude, farmers get free Willie Nelson concerts and your contractor shows up whenever he wants. If TIME had to furlough employees--which is a hilarious impossibility--I know how I'd be labeled. The journalists who cover politics and world events would continue to work, while those of us who write about ourselves would be sent home. Which actually wouldn't be that big of a deal since we already write from home. And honestly, we talk about writing way more than we actually write.