There were a few times in recent weeks when Sophia Casey found herself mindlessly walking toward her laptop, ready to scan for new work messages as she's always done at nights and on weekends. Then she would see the computer — powered down, closed and unplugged — and remember: furlough.
The Pavlovian twitch to constantly check email had begun to ease just when Congress voted Wednesday to send Casey and her colleagues in the federal government back to work. Back to the office, and to whatever mountain of messages waiting in the inbox after 16 days away.
Casey's total: 1,563 emails. Just looking at them started to give her "a little headache over my right eyeball," so she got up and walked away.