by Kerry Dougherty

Many years ago, when I worked at The Washington Post, I overheard one of our national reporters griping on a Friday afternoon.

I wasn’t eavesdropping. You could hear him across the canyon of a newsroom.

“No one in the effing federal government answers their phones on Friday,” he shouted, slamming down his phone and adding a few more descriptive expletives about the goldbricking official he was trying to reach.

(Note to those under 40, picture this: There was a time when office workers were tethered to actual telephones with spiral cords. These communication contrivances rested on desks and were equipped with heavy receivers that made a most satisfying noise when smashed back into their cradles in anger.)

Some time after that outburst, probably at the end of a slow-news week, a group of us simultaneously tried to reach several dozen government officials at 3 p.m. on a Friday afternoon for a quick metro story. We wanted to see who was working. Besides us.

If memory serves, the answer was no one. I can’t find a copy of the feature story. We thought it was highly amusing. It’s doubtful the federal workers on the receiving end felt the same way. Continue reading.