The most obvious long-term impact 9/11 had on my place of work is that employees now have to enter through a different door than we always had. The new entry has security cameras, a keycard ID system, and a narrow, fast-closing door so a rogue Al-Qaeda member would have a tougher time skating in behind someone legitimate.

The only problem is that this new employees-only door was once a loading area on the back dock, so there’s a big industrial-size scale embedded in the floor. It’s covered with a scrap of carpet and usually put in some sort of locked position so it doesn’t register weight. But every once in a while, someone unlocks it, and every employee walking into work gets weighed. It’s like we’re walking into a heavyweight fight or something.

Even worse, the scale is way off, so people appear to be 30 to 50 pounds heavier than they really are. (At least I hope so — if not, that bagel I eat on the drive over has many more calories than I thought it did.) It’s great fun to watch people walk in, catch the soaring needle out of the corner of an eye, then depressingly watch it settle at some Shallow-Hal-in-reverse version of reality. Really gets people in the right frame of mind for a productive workday.

07 January 2002

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