September 11, 2001

[Travis-Store724]

I will never forget where I was on September 11.

It was the first day of our setup for the Christmas section at the Mancheser, NH store. I was aligning some peg hooks on one aisle when Cheryl, our electronics associate called me over the intercom, I could tell from her voice something was wrong, I thought perhaps she had a shoplifter.

I ran to electronics, she was standing infront of one of the little five inch B&W tvs watching the local stations ABC coverage of a plane crash into the WTC. At this point those on the network coverage werent sure what type of plane and she had said to me a small plane crashed into the building, as soon as I saw it I told her that was a large airliner. I stayed and watched a minute or two and returned to what I was doing assuming it was some sort of accident.

Shortly afterwards she called me over the intercom again, sounding worse than the first time, I ran back over and she told me another plane crashed.  We stood watching the coverage for several minutes.

At this point everyones moods were changed, no one wanted to work, but we had to.  Shortly after returning to what I was doing Dave White our store manager arrived and did his usual walk around before he went to the office to get started on his day. He came to the christmas area first to see how we were doing, I immediately asked him if he heard what happened and he said something along the lines of 'Yea, Jordan's coming back, isnt it great.' I looked at him and said "Dave, two airliners crashed into the WTC towers"  He took off to electronics and grabbed a tv and went to his office with it.

He returned to the floor later and said to us "The towers are gone"  My reply was "Are they that badly damaged?"  He said "NO there gone, they collapsed"

Two hours earlier no one thought our moods could diminish any more, yet they did.

Many employees wanted to close and go home, but we were informed by the higher ups that we were to maintain normal operating hours.

Later that afternoon an older lady came in looking to buy a large American flag, and when informed we had none she got very angry and began rudely complaining to our replenishment manager. He basically told her that Ames doesnt keep a warehouse full of flags for a national tragedy to occur that drives people out to buy flags to show their patriotism.