The company was still booming then.
The office in St. Joseph felt alive every day. Phones ringing constantly. People riding scooters through the halls. New hires coming in. Departments growing.
For the first time in my life, I genuinely felt like I had found my place.
Then one morning the calls started getting strange.
Customers were complaining about problems transferring files. The queues started stacking up unusually fast. It wasn’t tax season or any of the times we normally expected chaos.
Something just felt off.
At some point I wandered into the break room and saw the televisions.
I was devastated almost immediately.
It was 9/11.
I stood there watching in shock as the news unfolded in real time. The towers burned while reporters tried desperately to explain what was happening.
People slowly started gathering around the televisions. Some employees returned to the phones after a while, but many of us just stood there frozen.
I honestly don’t know if management simply understood how serious everything was or if I had enough standing in the company by then that nobody questioned where I was.
Normal work suddenly felt meaningless.
I watched both towers get hit.
I watched them fall.
I watched the reports about the hijacked planes and the passengers who fought back.
I knew immediately that this was one of those moments that would live in history forever.
The calls continued stacking up while the entire office seemed emotionally frozen.
Eventually I returned to my desk, but even there the news kept following us. Early internet news sites constantly refreshed on computer screens while everyone tried to understand what was happening.
Many customers still had no idea what was going on.
I remember taking calls and telling people they needed to turn on a television.
Suddenly nobody cared about transferring files anymore.
Nothing felt important compared to what was happening.
The strangest part looking back was how ordinary the morning had started.
One minute we were worrying about software problems and support tickets.
The next minute the entire country had changed.
I don’t think any of us fully understood it yet, but something about America felt different after that day.
The future suddenly felt less certain.