WASHINGTON — From Northern Virginia to suburban Maryland, furloughed friends are, no doubt, chatting on their cells, swapping emails and meeting for coffee.

A small group of furloughed federal workers came together today in a community meeting room in northwest Washington to commiserate about their plight.

“We’re all going through the same thing … people just want to talk, we don’t want the judgmental, we don’t want to get into screaming matches or political arguments, we just want to talk,” says the organizer of the gathering, Adele Dantzler, a human resources trainer who is furloughed from the General Accounting Office.

Dantlzer says she got the idea to have a community meeting of furloughed workers when she woke up one morning at 4 a.m. in a panic.

There’s a need for people to come together and talk