America, meet the dog that ate your homework. Its name is Sept. 11, 2001.
I started wondering about this phenomenon about 9:30 on the morning of the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington D.C., when I was trying to battle my way into Chicago on Metra while apparently most of Chicago was trying to battle its way out. Well, not out, exactly. A handful of young dot.commers were waiting for the Wendella boat that morning, the one that would drop them at Navy Pier, like kids who had suddenly gotten a reprieve from a spelling test because somebody called in a bomb scare and the cops were still checking the lockers. They’d been sent home for safety’s sake, and why waste a beautiful day in Chicago, right?
Thus began the 9/11-if- you-didn’t-lose-it-how-can-you-use-it mentality. For me it culminated in a recent stay at what is billed as Iowa City’s best full-service major-chain, pamper-me-silly hotel. I checked in late, and first thing looked at the faux leather-bound list of services, which said room service ended at 10:30 p.m. With relief, I unpacked, reached for the phone and called down for some dinner.
“Oh, sorry,” said the voice at the other end. “Room service ends at 9 p.m.” Being a city slicker, I expressed what I like to think of as polite chagrin, and the young man explained that they hadn’t had room service after 9 p.m. since “the events of Sept. 11.” I suppressed the urge to ask what in the Sam Hill had happened in Iowa City on Sept. 11 and said instead that I would come down for something. “Oh,” he said, “we don’t serve food in the hotel after 9 p.m., because of the events of Sept. 11.”
Now, it’s altogether possible that something perfectly awful happened in a certain Iowa City hotel on Sept. 11, and the whole grisly event got overshadowed by national events. But my guess is that they needed to cut costs, that faux leather-bound hotel bible was already printed, and they figured it was a great excuse. If a customer complains, just start humming “America the Beautiful” and call in the National Guard. Truth is, a decline in travel because of terrorist fears may well have spurred them to close the restaurant early as an economy measure. But why not say, “Hey, we ran out of money”?
Turns out, this is not an isolated incident. Ever hear of United Airlines? That’s the company with the great theme song (thank you, George Gershwin) but that just a little over a year ago could no more get you where you were going than it could give you a polite answer as to why you weren’t going to get there. It was, to bespeak an image popular among parents of children in college, hemorrhaging money. Its pilots wouldn’t work overtime and its flight attendants were getting surly–and these were not naturally surly people. It was 2000 and a go-go economy but this behemoth airline couldn’t seem to get it together for its employees or its customers.
Now, lo and behold, we find that United, despite massive and undeserved taxpayer-supported relief, may go under. And guess why? Sept. 11! Did they pay a pittance for airline security and treat coach-class passengers like they expected them to say “moo-oo” as they trudged toward their too-small seats before Sept. 11? Absolutely. But now that United is faced with the economic conditions that come not just with national catastrophe but with national catastrophe coupled with horrendous management, they wave the flag–trying to make a white one blend in with the red, white and blue.
But this is not just United’s tawdry story. Like one of those ’50s horror movies, this thing keeps on getting bigger. According to Newsweek, a task force for the Financial Accounting Standards Board–no, really, stay awake for a moment, it’s worth it–says the attack on the Trade Center and the Pentagon didn’t count as an “extraordinary” event for accounting purposes. To be fair, even high-profile accountants (a remarkable concept in itself) think this is goofy, but they point out that they are talking strictly long-term money, and their point is to separate out those companies that will use Sept. 11 as an excuse for pre-existing problems from otherwise healthy companies that suffered irreversible losses resulting from the attacks.
Seems a lot of companies are blaming their bad-management woes on Sept. 11. Too bad the Cubs’ Don Baylor didn’t think of that: “Well, we felt this thing coming and the heart just went out of the team.” Just think if Derek Jeter went into a late-season slump: “After Sept. 11, I just couldn’t seem to swing that bat.” On campuses throughout America, students tell their professors, “Gee, I’ve been thinking so much about the events of Sept. 11, I haven’t really been able to concentrate on my homework.”
I have to admit, I was tempted myself. The weekend following Sept. 11, we were expecting nine 9-year-olds for a birthday sleepover. I could have claimed Sept. 11 fever and canceled the whole thing–like, maybe till next year. But it seemed cowardly and unfair and downright un-American.
Right now I wish a lot of other, bigger, folks had felt the same.
