Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days ago I was unemployed. I was sitting in the living room of the home that I had lived in for five hundred and nine days. I was depressed, probably eating a huge bowl of sugary cereal that helped pack on the three hundred and thirty pounds that I carry today.
I was listening to Matt Lauer and Katie Couric report another meaningless story that I wouldn't remember one hundred and twenty minutes later. Willard Scott was stuttering through the names of more one-hundred-plus year-old people. The morning was like the fifty-six mornings that had immediately proceeded it: lonely, depressing, and utterly empty.
I was at the lowest point in my life that morning. One hundred and six days earlier I had resigned from the job that I had worked towards my entire life. It turns out that my dream was not all that it was cracked up to be. For the next fifty days I worked in another meaningless job in a company so relevant that today (two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days later) it doesn't even exist.
I quit that job because it was even worse than my "dream" job. I was "better" than that. Apparently better was unemployed. I had a job interview that afternoon at an staffing service. The day before, I had received a call from a well-known company in downtown Cincinnati stating that they were going to call the next day to offer me a position. At least that was starting to look up.
Ann Curry was rambling on about something when everything changed. At first, I thought that I was just adding some excitement to my already dreary day. My life sucked, after all. No one's could be worse.
Katie Couric broke in at 8:53 with a breaking news story. I'll never forget listening to a woman named Jennifer Oberstein recounting that she heard a loud boom and looked up.
"We were all just saying how strange it was that a bomb would explode this high up" she said.
I watched with sad interest as the tower burned. "So sad," I thought. There must be hundreds of people on those floors.
Jennifer Oberstein continued, but the smoke was all that I could see. I kept thinking, "It has to have been a plane. What a horrible accident."
I called Amy at work. She must have been the first person at CFC to have heard about the crash. I called her within 30 seconds of seeing it on Today. We had a quick conversation and she wished me luck at my interview later that day.
8:53am to 9:03am...sad, but an "accident." I was honestly getting ready to turn it off when I saw a flash of orange and heard the eye-witness say "Oh! Another one just hit! Something else just hit! A very large plane..."
I know that this sounds cliché, but nothing mattered anymore. My boo-hoo Eyeore life in the safe U.S. of A. wasn't so safe anymore. I watched in horror as they played and replayed and replayed the footage. Each time I prayed for it to be different. It never changed.
"You have to move from a talk about a horrible accident to something deliberate." Boom. Matt Lauer said it and when I realized it, I almost fainted. To be honest, as I type this, my heart is going so fast that I have to rest from typing for a minute or so every couple of minutes.
I got up and got my dress clothes for my interview in Blue Ash. No shower this morning. Good thing my hair looked decent. I was going to watch this until I had to rush out the door to make the interview.
Fifty-six minutes later at 9:59am was when I realized that this was going to be the single biggest event in my life, bar none. When that first collapse happened, and I did the quick math in my head, the casualties were staggering.
My interview was at 11:00am and was a forty minute drive. I had to leave when it got to be 10:10am.
I listened to 700WLW on the way there. They were just playing ABC's coverage. It was chilling. I turned it off. I drove in silence. I prayed for the first time in months.
When I arrived at the office for my interview everyone was standing in the lobby looking at a TV Cart wheeled from some nearby conference room. Dust. That's all I saw. Dust everywhere.
It was 10:40am. Men and women alike were openly weeping. I listened to the newest headlines that had unfolded since I turned off my radio at 10:20am.
Second collapse.
Pentagon hit.
I didn't know what to do, so I just walked up to the office. It was totally empty except for one woman staring at a computer. She kept saying, "Come on. Come on, Mary." Her face was streaked with make-up and salt.
I just stood there. I waited about 10 minutes and then blew my nose. She walked to a bathroom somewhere in the office and I heard water.
She walked out wiping at her face with paper towels.
"Mr. Mayer?", she asked.
"Meyer."
"Sorry. Sit down, please."
She stared at the computer again. Willing Mary to do something. All I saw was a list of names in green. It was just a regular-looking DOS screen...think old school library screen.
Then I noticed one name about halfway down in red. "Mary ....." I couldn't make out the last name.
"So you need a job?" Strangest interview question that I've ever received.
"Well, yes.", I said. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the monitor.
"Should we do this another time?"
"No," she said with a sniffle. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay.", I say. "Can you believe this?"
"What?"
"The Trade Center and Pentagon."
Her eyes went back to the computer. She hit a button and the green-on-black screen reloaded. "Mary" was still red.
"Mary works there."
"Where?"
"Tower 1. I talked to her yesterday about a client that was transferring from New York to Dayton. The woman was looking for temp work in Ohio."
"Mary works for this company?"
"Yes. She does my job in New York."
"Why is her name red?"
"That means that her database is offline. It only goes offline for maintenance. That only happens on the weekend."
"She was in Tower 1 this morning?"
"Yes. She sent me a message through the system about our client."
It was then that she started crying again. I sat there for five minutes while she cried. I wanted to hold her, but I had only met her 10 minutes earlier.
I did the cowardly thing and left. I never heard from her. I never called.
The rest of the day was a blur of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. I remember hearing about the field in Pennsylvania.
The next day I was to receive a call with a job offer from the firm in downtown Cincinnati. I didn't hear from them by lunch. I called in the afternoon and was told that a hiring freeze was placed on the company...there headquarters was across the street from the WTC. They moved from Tower 2 after the bombing in the '90s.
A week later I was told that the hiring freeze was permanent.
Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days after the attacks I sit here and type this up. My life is drastically different. I have a great job, a wonderful son, a wonderful marriage, a strong relationship with my Lord than I could ever imagine possible...it almost feels unfair.
Two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four innocent people died from that attack. America was united. Flags lined every street. Lee Greenwood came out of retirement. Both political parties stood side by side on the capitol steps and sang "God Bless America" with tears streaming down their faces.
Everybody hung "Never Forget" posters in their cubes.
I see one of those posters every now and then. Mostly, I hear people fighting over health care and clunkers and socialism...have we forgotten? We're all on the same side here...
Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days...I didn't hear one mention of the attacks at work today. No moment of silence at 8:46am like we have every year.
We forgot. I prayed in my little cube. I thought about how insurance underwriters (my job) died on that day. I thanked God for all of my blessings...and I didn't promise to never forget.
I promised to always remember.
I was listening to Matt Lauer and Katie Couric report another meaningless story that I wouldn't remember one hundred and twenty minutes later. Willard Scott was stuttering through the names of more one-hundred-plus year-old people. The morning was like the fifty-six mornings that had immediately proceeded it: lonely, depressing, and utterly empty.
I was at the lowest point in my life that morning. One hundred and six days earlier I had resigned from the job that I had worked towards my entire life. It turns out that my dream was not all that it was cracked up to be. For the next fifty days I worked in another meaningless job in a company so relevant that today (two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days later) it doesn't even exist.
I quit that job because it was even worse than my "dream" job. I was "better" than that. Apparently better was unemployed. I had a job interview that afternoon at an staffing service. The day before, I had received a call from a well-known company in downtown Cincinnati stating that they were going to call the next day to offer me a position. At least that was starting to look up.
Ann Curry was rambling on about something when everything changed. At first, I thought that I was just adding some excitement to my already dreary day. My life sucked, after all. No one's could be worse.
Katie Couric broke in at 8:53 with a breaking news story. I'll never forget listening to a woman named Jennifer Oberstein recounting that she heard a loud boom and looked up.
"We were all just saying how strange it was that a bomb would explode this high up" she said.
I watched with sad interest as the tower burned. "So sad," I thought. There must be hundreds of people on those floors.
Jennifer Oberstein continued, but the smoke was all that I could see. I kept thinking, "It has to have been a plane. What a horrible accident."
I called Amy at work. She must have been the first person at CFC to have heard about the crash. I called her within 30 seconds of seeing it on Today. We had a quick conversation and she wished me luck at my interview later that day.
8:53am to 9:03am...sad, but an "accident." I was honestly getting ready to turn it off when I saw a flash of orange and heard the eye-witness say "Oh! Another one just hit! Something else just hit! A very large plane..."
I know that this sounds cliché, but nothing mattered anymore. My boo-hoo Eyeore life in the safe U.S. of A. wasn't so safe anymore. I watched in horror as they played and replayed and replayed the footage. Each time I prayed for it to be different. It never changed.
"You have to move from a talk about a horrible accident to something deliberate." Boom. Matt Lauer said it and when I realized it, I almost fainted. To be honest, as I type this, my heart is going so fast that I have to rest from typing for a minute or so every couple of minutes.
I got up and got my dress clothes for my interview in Blue Ash. No shower this morning. Good thing my hair looked decent. I was going to watch this until I had to rush out the door to make the interview.
Fifty-six minutes later at 9:59am was when I realized that this was going to be the single biggest event in my life, bar none. When that first collapse happened, and I did the quick math in my head, the casualties were staggering.
My interview was at 11:00am and was a forty minute drive. I had to leave when it got to be 10:10am.
I listened to 700WLW on the way there. They were just playing ABC's coverage. It was chilling. I turned it off. I drove in silence. I prayed for the first time in months.
When I arrived at the office for my interview everyone was standing in the lobby looking at a TV Cart wheeled from some nearby conference room. Dust. That's all I saw. Dust everywhere.
It was 10:40am. Men and women alike were openly weeping. I listened to the newest headlines that had unfolded since I turned off my radio at 10:20am.
Second collapse.
Pentagon hit.
I didn't know what to do, so I just walked up to the office. It was totally empty except for one woman staring at a computer. She kept saying, "Come on. Come on, Mary." Her face was streaked with make-up and salt.
I just stood there. I waited about 10 minutes and then blew my nose. She walked to a bathroom somewhere in the office and I heard water.
She walked out wiping at her face with paper towels.
"Mr. Mayer?", she asked.
"Meyer."
"Sorry. Sit down, please."
She stared at the computer again. Willing Mary to do something. All I saw was a list of names in green. It was just a regular-looking DOS screen...think old school library screen.
Then I noticed one name about halfway down in red. "Mary ....." I couldn't make out the last name.
"So you need a job?" Strangest interview question that I've ever received.
"Well, yes.", I said. She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the monitor.
"Should we do this another time?"
"No," she said with a sniffle. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay.", I say. "Can you believe this?"
"What?"
"The Trade Center and Pentagon."
Her eyes went back to the computer. She hit a button and the green-on-black screen reloaded. "Mary" was still red.
"Mary works there."
"Where?"
"Tower 1. I talked to her yesterday about a client that was transferring from New York to Dayton. The woman was looking for temp work in Ohio."
"Mary works for this company?"
"Yes. She does my job in New York."
"Why is her name red?"
"That means that her database is offline. It only goes offline for maintenance. That only happens on the weekend."
"She was in Tower 1 this morning?"
"Yes. She sent me a message through the system about our client."
It was then that she started crying again. I sat there for five minutes while she cried. I wanted to hold her, but I had only met her 10 minutes earlier.
I did the cowardly thing and left. I never heard from her. I never called.
The rest of the day was a blur of NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX. I remember hearing about the field in Pennsylvania.
The next day I was to receive a call with a job offer from the firm in downtown Cincinnati. I didn't hear from them by lunch. I called in the afternoon and was told that a hiring freeze was placed on the company...there headquarters was across the street from the WTC. They moved from Tower 2 after the bombing in the '90s.
A week later I was told that the hiring freeze was permanent.
Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days after the attacks I sit here and type this up. My life is drastically different. I have a great job, a wonderful son, a wonderful marriage, a strong relationship with my Lord than I could ever imagine possible...it almost feels unfair.
Two thousand, nine hundred and seventy-four innocent people died from that attack. America was united. Flags lined every street. Lee Greenwood came out of retirement. Both political parties stood side by side on the capitol steps and sang "God Bless America" with tears streaming down their faces.
Everybody hung "Never Forget" posters in their cubes.
I see one of those posters every now and then. Mostly, I hear people fighting over health care and clunkers and socialism...have we forgotten? We're all on the same side here...
Two thousand, nine hundred and twenty-two days...I didn't hear one mention of the attacks at work today. No moment of silence at 8:46am like we have every year.
We forgot. I prayed in my little cube. I thought about how insurance underwriters (my job) died on that day. I thanked God for all of my blessings...and I didn't promise to never forget.
I promised to always remember.
1 comment:
Wow. Not much to say but very powerful post. I hope things get better soon. Good luck!
-Robert
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