I was deemed “essential,” so during the shutdown I worked without pay. I was one of the lucky ones with savings as well as a working spouse. Like many other Americans, most federal government workers, including many single mothers, lived from paycheck to paycheck and were the sole breadwinners for their families. Most of my colleagues were deeply distressed by the way they were treated during the shutdown, as well as by the president’s constant depiction of government employees as an unaccountable privileged elite feeding off the rest of the country.
