A woman was in the Zeox Tower on 9/11 and asked to leave when the attacks happened. Her manager told her to walk it off because of a deadline and fear of disappointing "Crusher," the general manager. The story illustrates a workplace that prioritized deadlines over employee safety.
9am.
Zeox Tower (described as the tallest building in North York).
Crusher.
Manhattan, New York (native New Yorker).
Frankly, I was also pretty miserable. And I thought that work sucked. I thought it was. It was just not going to be fun. I was straight out of school. It was my first like, real job in the corporate world and it was a pretty toxic environment, actually.
Really? Okay, wow, let's get into it. What made it suck?
I had leadership that was. Well, let's just say I learned how not to lead from my leadership. And we had situations. A crazy story. For instance, on 9 11, I was going into work as everyone was. It was 9am and I heard the news and I'm actually a native New Yorker. I'm from Manhattan, so. So thank God my husband got through to my parents right away. We knew that my family was safe. But it was a very terrifying day. And I said to my boss, I need to go home and be with my family. We were also in the tallest building in North York called Zeox Tower. And I didn't feel safe and I felt super nervous and uncomfortable and scared and I just wanted to be home with my family. And they said, but you have a deadline tomorrow. What are we going to tell Crusher? Crusher was the nickname of our general manager at the time. So they said, just go down to the atrium, you and walk it off. Like just walk around, don't look at the news and when you're ready, come back up and you'll finish your presentation for tomorrow.
Crusher was the guy's nickname.
That was his nickname.
Wow. It sounds like something I would say to someone, really.
But I was very young and not ready for that answer. And that was just one of the examples of an environment like did not put people first.
Let me take a step back here because it is pretty. It is pretty wild that. I mean, everything stopped on 9 11. I remember I was in grade seven. Like even, like school stopped. We literally, in Toronto, we're not, obviously we're affected by it, but we're not in New York. And even our classes stopped. Everything stopped. All the new stuff people just went home from. Like, it was that serious. Even here in Toronto, you had family in New York, in Manhattan, directly impacted. And the response from your manager was, you have a deadline tomorrow. Yeah, that's messed up.
It was messed up. It's a long time ago, so I'm comfortable talking about it now. But that was just an example of what it was like to work there at the time.
