A few months after the World Trade Center disaster, members of the band Perfect Thyroid abandoned their ear-pounding round of bar gigs in favor of steady jobs and regular home lives. Why would musical rebels suddenly transition from the cool to the conventional? The collapse of the Twin Towers “definitely changed a lot of people’s priorities,” a band member explained somberly. “A lot of people became focused on friends and families.”1Driving trendy horn players into ordinary employment is but one manifestation of the profound effect that the events of September 11, 2001, have had on the workplace. The catastrophe in Lower Manhattan has occasioned not only career changes but also fundamental shifts in attitudes about the balance of work and family life. It has also exposed insecurities and inadequacies that may lead us to reinvent the concept of work in the post-9/11 world.
