by , 3:00 PM EDT, September 14th, 2001
The Mac Geniuses of the Peabody Apple Store thought differently about what to do with their time on Tuesday, September 11th, after the Apple Store closed down for the day. The Peabody store is just outside of Boston and opened two weeks ago. Several of the store's employees wanted to do something to help, and decided to give blood at the local Red Cross.
"Apple allowed us to close the store," said David Schultz, one of the Mac Geniuses for the Store. "A bunch of us were sitting around feeling helpless, and we decided to give blood. We jumped in a bunch of cars and went down, including some guys from the Albany store." The Albany store employees are training in Peabody in preparation for the opening of Albany Apple Store.
When they got to the Red Cross they found there was already a line forming, and the Apple employees queued up. "We got in line for a while and hundreds of people showed up," said Mr. Schultz. They quickly found out that the Red Cross location had run out of water, and this is where the Geniuses thought differently. The group went back to the Apple Store and gathered the 12 cases of Evian bottled water that was in stock for promotional use.
Said Mr. Schultz, "We jumped in our cars, opened up the store and got all the water we could carry, all of it in fact, and drove it back." Once back at the Red Cross, they distributed the water to people in line. Some members of the group who were ineligible for giving blood due to overseas travel restrictions handed out water to Red Cross staff. "It was pretty cool," added Mr. Schultz.
Mr. Schultz also told the Mac Observer that one store employee, Ed Duffy, was among the National Guard Reserves that were called up and sent to New York to assist with the search and rescue operations. "It put a face on this for us, and that really brought it home."
The Peabody Apple Store closed for an hour today in observance of "The Day of Prayer," and the entire Mall will be closing for another hour at 6:00 PM Eastern this evening.