Anybody have stories of 9/11/01 so-what-itude?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I remember thinking that. How many planes are there? Are we under attack? Are bombs coming next? I do not grasp how anyone could have been watching it live and thinking, oh, yeah, whatever. However, one sees things differently from a distance. I think the asshole prize has to go to Elza B’s boss. How you could be in the frickin’ Empire State Building on 9/11 and not worry you’re next or at least see how easily it could have been you just blows my mind. I’d understand ambivilance from Florida. I do not get ambivilence from New Yorkers.

My mother worked in Jersey City (or maybe it was Hoboken, I forget), in a building that is right on the Hudson. They stood at the office windows and could see the towers. They literally watched live the second plane hit and the towers falling down. Her boss (who was Israeli) was continually trying to herd them back to work, under the opinion that terrorism was nothing to get excited about. As if they were going to be able to pay attention (or even care) about petty office tasks with their panoramic view of the burning World Trade Center. However, I’m not sure he was an asshole. I think he was just used to nearby buildings being bombed. He let my mother go immediatly when my dad called to tell her my uncle (a NYC fireman) had been at ground zero when the towers collapsed, and she wanted to go wait with the family for news (and yes, he turned up ok).

(Not 9/11 related-- I had a vendor I worked with that was trying to schedule a business seminar in Baton Rouge, LA a week after Hurricane Katrina. Amazingly, there was not a single meeting place, nor a single hotel room to be had. File that under O for Obtuse.)

22

There is a huge difference between continuing on stoicly with what you are meant to be doing, and being an insensitive dick. Most these stories are clearly about people being dicks, except perhapse Eve’s story. And then only Eve would know the person who wrote “I know things are kind of hectic up there, but can you get us those revisions in the next week or so?” was doing so insensitively or with the spirit of well life must go on.

23

I had just landed in upstate New York to teach a training class, the first day of which was on 9/11. i was terribly torn about what to do. I was just the teacher, I didn’t have the authority to call off the training, and call centers (which is what this was) tend to stay open no matter what.

I spent the day trying to balance between taking breaks so we could huddle around the conference room TV and see what was going on, and trying to get people to focus on the training session. It wasn’t easy at all, for them or for me.

So, in some ways, maybe I am that guy… although I really DID care about what was going on. I just knew I had to get the stupid training done.

Looking back I think it probably balanced out okay… but it wasn’t enjoyable.

24

That was my reaction too. It didn’t matter that I was 700 miles away. I was watching it all live from the very first minute, and all I could think of was my kid at school. I actually called the school to see if I needed to come pick him up. I was told the school was locked down and they would call if they decided to dismiss them. Everywhere I went that day I watched the skies, worried that more were on the way.

I visited NYC a couple years after the attacks, it was my first time there. Even then, two years later, and having no personal connection to the city myself, I cried when I saw the skyline where the towers should have been. Hell I still cry when I see replays of the attacks today. I guess I’m just a emotional person.

25

Still I cannot but come back to this absolutely fantastic piece by Ian McEwan, written so soon after the event: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,,555275,00.html

For the thread: I was busy at work in a summer job with a catering firm at an airport. No TVs, we were busy working, albeit with the usual radio station giving inept bulletins. And yes, some of our concerns were very simple, because half the flights were cancelled, but most of the rest were just dreadfully delayed, and we had simple problem like running out of space in the cold stores.

26

Hell, homegrown terrorism is nothing new in the US, either. I remember being at work when the OKC bombing happened and everyone was pretty stunned from that too. What I meant is more like that I’d never in my life seen someone fly a plane into a building, live on television, like I did that morning, and I was still not entirely sure I wasn’t in some nightmare.

Plus my workplace is in Chicago, and daily I take a train into a station only a couple blocks from the Sears Tower. I was half-afraid that one of those unaccounted-for planes would be going there next - and for a while, the plane that crash-landed was projected as possibly heading towards Chicago, before turning around and finally crashing down in Pennsylvania.

27

Some more stories, both in the thread itself (I think) and the link in my OP, here. Reactions include African-Americans who felt so dissociated with the white majority that they couldn’t see much impact on them personally, and folks with such bad histories with federal law enforcement that they actually rejoiced.

28

My boss made us turn off the tvs and go back to work. I never forgave her for that. She just said, “This thing is going to go on a long time…” Of course, the next day, we were told that we were going to be off work (without pay) for a week or so until things settled down.

29

It did happen before. They just didn’t use a big enough bomb. I remember trying to send something by messanger to Wall Street back in '93. I was a little miffed that they wouldn’t deliver my package. “What do you mean someone bombed the World Trade Center?”

During 9/11 everybody in the office was watching on TV. The guy who owned the company, worth well over $100 million, came by at one point and mumbled something like “It’s so overwhelming. All you can do is get back to work to distract yourself from the tragedy of it.” Everyone ignored him.

30

I lived in Newark, NJ during 9/11. We could smell the smoke and dust from across the river, and the whole city shut down in the afternoon following hours of chaos and panic. When I got home, I turned on the TV to find none of the channels working (the transmitters were on the WTC). The profoundness of the tragedy hit me right then (don’t ask me why) and I burst into tears.

A couple of hours later, I instant-messaged my sister, who was living in Alabama. I was telling her how awful it was, and she replied, “I keep wondering how any of this will affect me.” It was just about the most inappropriate thing to say at that moment. As much as I love her, I believe I cussed her out.

I’ve come to realize that for many Americans, the whole event existed only in TVland.

31

I didn’t have a boss on site on 9/11. I was the boss. I was in a remote training facility in Vancouver BC. The word came in that all Ford facilities were shutting down world wide.
I gave my students a choice we could shut down, or go ahead and teach. They voted for teach.
I found myself having a hard time concentrating. (wonder why?)
I recall telling my class that this was like Pearl harbor, or the Challenger explosion. They would always recall wher they were when they heard.
One of those students was back in class about a month ago. He reminded me of what I said and told me I was right.
Anyway we finished class that day about 2. I sat up most of the night watching the news.

32

I can’t say I was “whatever” or cold or oblivious about it, but maybe I was just a bit cynical. You decide.

I woke up to the news that morning, and went to work. I was then at a trophy shop, where we did engraving, custom hats, trophies, all kinds of oddball stuff.

I taped some American flags on sticks (4x6 inches) to our sidewalk sandwich board around 1:00.

By 3:00 they had been stolen. No big loss.

As I was leaving that day around 4:00 (I had been called in for my kidney/liver transplant), I told the office manager, “Buy more flags. A lot more. People are going to want to buy flags, so restock now.”

Cynical? Or just realistic? Capitalistic?

33

I used to work for assholes in temp agencies in New York, so I believe this story 100%. Meanwhile, was anyone trying to place orders?

34

Nope. In fact, one of our biggest clients was on the 102nd floor of Tower 2, and we had two temps up there - one of whom wasn’t able to check in until after 1 PM that afternoon - we honestly thought she was dead (the company itself lost half of their employees, I believe…it was one of the biggest company losses that day). The phones were all hit-or-miss anyway - my cell phone didn’t work at all, and we had to try to get out to our families over and over before the call actually connected most of the time (and yes, I charged my long-distance calls to the company…at that point, I didn’t give a sh*t). So even if we did have people trying to get through (doubtful), the phones were so screwed up that they probably couldn’t.

I’m pretty sure the agency went under a year later. Serves the bastard right.

E.

35

What happened to one of my former asshole temp agency bosses regarding 9/11 was even better. This was all in the news so I’m not going to be too vague. She went to jail for fraud! She owns an agency in the Wall Street area and lives a block in from the WTC. She claimed that her home was damaged and that she was too traumatized to return for quite a while - months after she ordered her workers back to the office in the building next door to her home. Turns out she was living in the Hamptons at the time and the NYC apartment was being renovated. Anything that looked like damage was actually just renovation. She filed claims for damage and whatnot to insurance companies and other funds, essentially double dipping even though she was not entitled to a penny. She even filed claims for her rent at a ritzy hotel uptown which she said was the only place that would take her dog. Meanwhile, she’s made her reservations well before 9/11 because her home was unliveable because of the renovation that she pretended was damage from the towers falling. And, sow that she is, she tried to blame her accountant, but a whole box of correspondence was found which showed that she ordered him to make all the claims. She really is horrible.

36

From my personal English point of view that was great. Very much “don’t let the bastards win” and also patriotic in the request for more flags (OK it is allso Capitalistic, but you knew people would want flags. As long as you didn’t raise the price of flags after the instance which would have been very bad. )

37

For a second I thought you were referring to the owner of the WTC. He was so distraught he wanted the two planes counted as two different incidents so he could double his insurance payout.

38

My monster-in-law, on the phone in Ireland.

Me: Oh my God, what happened today… I can’t believe it.
Her: Yes, well, I have my own problems.

And my otherwise lovely colleague. Her sister was in the basement of WTC1 trying on her wedding dress when the first plane hit, and was calling and calling from her Manhattan apartment, and finally got through to her four hours later in hysterics. My colleague hung up after about 10 minutes, turned to me with a :rolleyes: and said “she’s such a drama queen!”

The same sister was getting married in Ireland two weeks later. The hotelier called her a couple of days after 9/11 saying “we need to know the numbers.” “I’m sorry,” she said pointedly, “I don’t know how many people will be able to make it from New York.” “Well I really need the numbers; we might have to cancel your booking otherwise,” to which she replied “I can’t give you the numbers because I don’t know how many of my fucking guests are dead!” (Sadly, a few were.)

39

I was working for a bus company running 250 buses full of Chicago Public School kids. Right about 10 am, I got a phone call from the CPS people - everyone was going home, as soon as we could make it happen.

Ran back to my office, where we all made phone calls to drivers to have them come in 2 hours sooner than they would have normally come in. We stayed busy sending people and buses wherever and however we could, and finally got the last kid dropped off at about 3 PM.

I started driving home, the Dan Ryan was deserted. I could literally cound individual cars all the way home on thr Ryan and the Stevenson. On the way home I got a phone call from the VP of one of my competitors asking me if I wanted t talk about a job working in the suburbs, rescuing a new location he had just opened a week before that was being run into the ground by the manager he hired over the summer.

That amazed me enough, but when I finally took the job, and started on October 1st, I saw the local newspaper that came out on 9/13. The lead story on the top of Page 1 was all about the bus problems at the local high school. Under that, in smaller type was some mention of events in NY.

40

The morning of 9/11, I went to class. In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have, but I was in shock, you know? Besides, it beat the hell out of sitting alone in my dorm room, trying obsessively to load CNN.com and IMing friends in Atlanta and San Diego, typing Oh my God so many times that the letters wore off the faces of the keys. It was my freshman year of college, and I’d only been there about two weeks; the only people I knew here were going to be in class.

We went to class. Understandably, the number of people who actually wanted to talk about Aristotle (which was the day’s topic) was exactly zero. The professor, however, encumbered as he was by the demands of the syllabus ( :rolleyes: ) would only allow us to talk about Aristotle. This lead to a class discussion that was less than lively.

After our break (this was a long class), one of my fellow students, a girl named Amber, comes in and says something to the effect of Oh my God, the towers just–.

At that point, the professor cut her off, saying that we weren’t here to talk about the attacks, we were here to talk about Aristotle. At that point, another classmate named Aaron (who was all-around a stand-up guy) said, “Yeah, I’m sure the towers’ll just stay like this–” He held his arm out, tilting it so it was at about a 60 degree angle. “–until we’re done talking about Aristotle.”

This, of course, was a sentiment with which the entire class agreed (though, personally, I would have added a few choice four-letter words; it’s probably better that he said it, in retrospect). The professor was entirely unabashed, which seemed to be par for the course with him. Even after having another class with him, I still thought he was kind of a jerk for that.