I’m a furloughed federal worker in Arizona. I DoorDash to survive

Nearly every night, my husband and I load our four kids into our gray Volkswagen Tiguan. With my husband in the driver’s seat, I open the DoorDash app and we hit the road. We’ll drive for the next several hours, flitting from chain restaurants to homes, hoping to make enough money to feed the children in the backseat.

We do this because I’ve been furloughed. Until Oct. 1, I worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs. I monitored and oversaw crisis calls from veterans who contacted the department’s hotline, ensuring they received the information, services and resources if needed. In late September, I accepted a detail to a new role, but before I could start, the federal government shut down. In the new detail, I was no longer considered an “essential worker,” and so I was shut down, too.

I haven’t been paid in more than a month, and with the shutdown now the longest in American history, I don’t know when I’ll get to go back.

My husband, Myron, works as a bricklayer during the day and pulls double duty with me at night. I’m not comfortable driving or going into crowded public restaurants, so he takes the wheel as we make our way around Surprise, where we live. Sometimes we venture as far as Glendale, picking up orders from popular restaurants — McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A, Cracker Barrel — and dropping them on doorsteps. We’ll work for two to three hours each night, hoping to earn $200 a week to cover our grocery bill.

We’ve made it into a family-bonding game of sorts. The kids — I have five, but the oldest is grown and out of the house — guess which restaurant we’ll be heading to next. Then they take turns hopping in and out of the car with Myron to fetch orders from the restaurant. I’ll send a GIF to the customer to let them know we’re on the way, and then I’ll drop off the food and give a friendly wave to any doorbell cameras. We repeat this process four or five times a night. 

My mother suggested I do this shortly before the shutdown began. She’s also a casualty of government cuts, opting for early retirement from the VA earlier this summer due to a reduction-in-force. Like me, she’s turned to DoorDash. So far, it’s been a lifesaver for us.

I sought a job as a federal worker partly because of the excellent health insurance benefits for my children. I absolutely love the work that I do, the people I help and my colleagues. But when I began working as a federal employee five years ago — first as a corrections officer in Texas — I never imagined a situation like this. I never thought my family would struggle to make ends meet because of political gridlock in Washington, D.C.

I’m the primary breadwinner in my family, and losing three paychecks — so far — has hurt. We’ve taken out a $6,000 loan to cover basic expenses, deferred a car payment and put groceries on a PayPal credit card. We used to explore the Arizona wilderness on the weekends, hiking and mountain biking through nature, but that’s a luxury we can no longer afford. We’ve stopped buying expensive organic food and subsist on cheap boxed mac and cheese, ramen and cheese balls. We spend money only on absolute essentials.

Our loan will run out soon — we anticipated it would last us a month and a half, which is just about up. We can’t just keep borrowing money, but once that loan is gone and our credit cards are maxed out, I’m scared about where that will leave us financially. I don’t know what we’ll do if we run out of money before Congress agrees on a deal to reopen the government. I try not to think about it.

Instead, I keep myself constantly busy. I’m interning (unpaid) at a nonprofit while studying for a master’s in social work at Grand Canyon University, and I oversee the homeschooling of my children. I bury myself in those pursuits so I don’t have to think about the numbers in our bank accounts. As long as I don’t have to think, my mind doesn’t race and I don’t feel overwhelmed by the cliff we’re rapidly approaching.

We might already lose something important. I’m 38, and my husband and I were hoping to have one more child. For years, we’ve undergone expensive IVF treatments. We had to turn to embryo adoption and our transfer was scheduled at the end of the year in California, but that seems out of reach, because we can’t afford the treatment right now. I keep holding onto hope that once the government reopens and paychecks resume, we can pick up where we left off. Each passing month is a reminder that time isn’t on my side. 

We were also hoping to buy a home this spring, but the shutdown may force us to continue paying $2,500 in monthly rent in Surprise. We’ve been saving up for a down payment, but qualifying for a mortgage requires good credit, and this shutdown may be severely damaging mine. Affording a home is hard enough without a government shutdown getting in the way.

I can’t help but feel that the government — federal and state — has failed our family. I’ve applied for unemployment benefits from the Texas Workforce Commission because my base wages are technically earned in that state, but I’ve yet to see a cent. Meanwhile, I can’t work until Congress gets its act together. I want to get back to my job, helping veterans in need. I want to not worry about the grocery bill.

Until then, though, if you’re in the West Valley, don’t be surprised if you see me waving at your doorbell cam when your delivery order arrives. If you can, please leave a good tip. We could sure use it.

As told to Morgan Fischer.