I was a restaurant general manager at a Pizza Hut and worked an open to close shift after my closing manager called out. Crazily enough, I didn't even find out what happened in New York until ~11PM that night.

I opened the restaurant and was listening to music on cassette tapes while doing my prep work, so I never heard the news.

My opening server showed up after having seen the broadcasts and assumed I already knew about it. I just remember her seeming to be very depressed and my response was giving her space, figuring she'd talk to me about what was bothering her when she was ready.

Our lunch buffet was normally busy but we only had a few customers show up in the dining room. I was extremely puzzled when we had more delivery orders on a Tuesday morning than we normally had on Friday nights, but I didn't have too much time to contemplate why it felt like it did an hour before game time on a Super Bowl Sunday.

I called every single driver on my staff to see if they wanted to come in and make some money. They all showed up and we were cranking out deliveries.

Another thing that really caught me off guard was not one customer complained when I answered the phone and told them it would be an hour or longer for delivery. None of them cancelled their orders and all were very understanding. My drivers were getting $5-10 tips from many customers and that's all they really talked about, so I still had no idea why this was happening.

I was focused on prepping more dough to meet the demand, staging orders so customers would get hot pizzas (i.e. not putting orders in he oven right away but timing it so they'd be coming out as drivers returned from their previous runs), etc.

Meanwhile, my employees either thought I had lost my mind because I was so upbeat and happy in spite of what had happened, or that I was trying to put on a strong face for their benefit.

After my closing manager called out, which I chalked up to morning sickness as she was 6 months pregnant at the time, I continued focusing on meeting the demands and keeping product in stock. We ended up doing over $5000 in sales, which is more than we normally did even on Friday nights.

The dining room continued to be empty and my closing server asked if he could clean everything up and go home, which I agreed. We ended up getting a table right before the restaurant closed, and I waited on the table.

When the customer brought her bill to the register, she thanked me for helping them to feel like everything was going to be fine and for helping them escape from reality for even a brief moment.

When I honestly told her I had no idea what she was talking about, she first thought I was messing with her. But I persisted and she ultimately asked me, "You don't know about the towers that fell in New York today?" I was shocked and told her I'd been at work all day because my closer called in and nobody had bothered mentioning anything about it.

All of this story above was to set up this final statement. The first thing I did when I got home was turn on the TV only to hear some newscaster report intact passports from the terrorists had been found in the rubble. My immediate reaction to this news was disbelief in the official narrative.