9/11 Thoughts

I have been doing some pondering this week while the rest of the country remembered the five year anniversary of 9/11. I thought I would share a few thoughts on how this affected the companies, as I didn't even know many of you five years ago. 9/11 was a very strange day as was the week that came after it. On September 11th I woke up around 9:30 listening to the radio saying something about Word trade center, and then I heard something about the Pentagon, it was one of those weird moments when you're not sure if you are awake or asleep. As soon as I heard the Pentagon I was like "what the heck, are we under attack" I never got out of bed as fast as I did that morning. I turned on the tv and for the next 3 hours I didn't do anything but watch TV. At that time we had a secretary and I told her don't worry about coming in that day. I finally went into work around 1 on that Tuesday. Boy was it weird. I tried my very best to get TV reception in the building. I accomplished it, however it was tricky and so fuzzy. The entire time I was there I just stared at the TV. At this time it was Benson Communications only and we had three people including myself. Chris Beatty didn't make it in till late in the day and we just watched TV once he got there. We only had one person really stop in that day, and if memory serves me it was Matt Schwartz from Edward Jones. He was just starting his business and we just talked back and forth about how amazing it was. That is really where my friendship started with Matt. I then made an observation that I had 200,000 dollars in Audio Video equipment and I couldn't even see a clear TV channel. At that moment of observation I said I need to get satellite TV right away. I told myself I would never be at work again without network news. However, we haven't hooked up the cable since we moved across the street, and that really bothers me. Once Benson is in its perminate place we will be getting cable hooked back up. It just costs way too much money to have cable moved especially since Benson has moved about five times since we moved in. Okay enough about that.

During that week after 9/11 the phone didn't ring one time till the Monday of next week other than family. Business stopped. Everything. Unfortunately it hurt Benson pretty bad financially. Business prior to September was pretty good, for being the 1st full year of Benson being in existence. It took Benson six months to get back to business as usual prior to 9/11. At that time we really were only doing computer repair. No one cared about getting their computer fixed. What lessons did I learn from 9/11? (These are just person experiences and something that really might not work for everyone).

a, Always have satellite/TV in your place of work
b. Be diversified at things you do (helps if business slows down)
c. Allow employees to be with families and run on a very low staff at the office (nothing really is going to get done anyway)
d. Always have a reserve account for emergencies in case business quits for weeks, employees still want paid.