Working in the Social Security Administration’s Auburn office, Christine Lizotte typically helps Mainers manage fixed incomes, enroll in Medicare and interact with the federal bureaucracy.

On Wednesday, she spent her lunch break instead helping coworkers find food pantries.

“It’s dead silence in the office right now because people are just trying to make it through the day,” she said on the third day of the federal government shutdown.

Offices like hers quieted this week after Congress failed to pass a spending bill before an Oct. 1 deadline, causing furloughs, forcing some workers to show up without pay and limiting government services, including some at Acadia National Park . The last shut down was during President Donald Trump’s first term, running from late 2018 to 2019.

But this

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